Chile will vote this week on whether to finally replace the country’s dictatorship-era constitution. But for campaigners seeking equal rights for women and Indigenous peoples, the new draft constitution is a big disappointment.
The referendum, which will be held on 17 December, is the latest stage in a four-year political saga. An agreement to vote on a replacement for the dictatorship-era constitution during Gen Augusto Pinochet’s rule was first reached in 2019 after the country’s worst unrest in decades led to at least 30 people being killed, scores blinded by shotgun pellets, teargas canisters and non-lethal ammunition fired by police, and thousands more injured.
Women were at the forefront of the protests – demanding gender equality, less restrictive abortion rights, and protection from domestic violence. Pinochet’s charter was seen as the driving force behind inequality and upholding conservative, Catholic values.
As a result of the 2019-20 protests, campaigners proposed a progressive new constitution – the first in the world written by an elected citizens’ assembly with equal representation of men and women. It offered unprecedented protection for women, LGBTQ+ people and Indigenous communities, along with pro-choice reproductive rights.
However, the new constitution was deemed too radical by the majority of Chileans, who voted overwhelmingly against it in 2022.
This year, a second attempt to rewrite the constitution has been led by the far-right Republican party, which is intent on reversing abortion rights and seeks to promote Catholic moral values. The result is a text drafted by people who “never wanted to change the constitution in the first place”, said Dr Claudia Heiss, a political scientist at the University of Chile.
For example, in the new proposal protection is granted for the “life of who is to be born”. This is a change from the “life of that is to be born” in the current 1980 charter. This small alteration could make abortion access even more difficult in constitutional courts, as it places emphasis on the foetus as a person.
Abortion is permitted only under specific circumstances in Chile: when the mother’s life is at risk, when the foetus is not viable, or in cases of rape.
The new proposal also gives institutions the right to object to existing laws according to their religious values. This could affect the provision and availability of morning-after pills, legally permitted abortions, and same-sex marriage ceremonies.
The Guardian spoke to five people who took part in the 2019 national protests to ask what had changed since then and to find out what they thought about the new draft constitution.
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Natalia Aravena, 28, nurse
The protests showed the discontent that was previously swept under the carpet. When I was a child, there were talks about changing the constitution and after the uprising that became a necessity.
The first attempt didn’t bear fruit; I think the second one won’t either. This a long process, but at least changes are happening.
My case against the state [for blinding me during the protests] is still under investigation. They still haven’t done the paperwork. I don’t have the same energy or conviction, even though I still agree with all of the demands.
There have already been four suicides of protesters blinded during the social uprising: their deaths come from exhaustion.
The state has violated our rights, they have not given us any reparations, justice; they’ve washed their hands of it. We don’t have the possibility to go back to the lives we had before.
[President Gabriel] Boric and all the political parties that supported the uprising aren’t doing enough. They’ve abandoned us. Our mental health has been affected. I’m trying to care a bit more about myself, to be OK before I continue to fight, because if we don’t keep the pressure up there will never be changes.
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Constanza Valdés, 32, social scientist
The feminist movement pushed the 2019 social protests, and there was a gender perspective present in the demands for equality. The 2020 protest [on 8 March to mark International Women’s Day] was one of the largest marches of that time. Women are the principal participants in social organisations.
It’s bittersweet to reflect on what we achieved. The rejected constitutional proposal included ample rights for women and LGBTQ+ people. Nonetheless, there has been progress in the last few years: the [2021] law to protect students from sexual abuse in universities, or the [2022] same-sex marriage law that includes adoption rights.
There are more trans people in public and political spaces, but also strong questioning from conservatives about the necessity of representation for groups. They forget the need to always have different focuses on laws and public policy; the fact that we have better representation gives us new perspectives.
We have advanced but it’s still insufficient – better representation hasn’t translated into a better way of life. There’s still many trans women who are sex workers; many trans people don’t have work contracts.
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Patricia Nuñez, 49, seed collector and teacher
Opposition to the free trade pact [the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)] was an important demand of the 2019 social uprising.
Many people educated themselves to find out what it was about. It was, and is, the fight of all fights – it affects labour rights, health rights, all of them.
By ratifying it [the CPTPP] last year, the government totally betrayed us. It will lead to patents on seeds, which will criminalise people in the countryside who maintain and trade seeds and do agricultural work. We’re inconsolable. It’s a disaster.
Land-rights defenders aren’t well regarded in Chile. We’re called hippies, we’re mistreated, we’re threatened. I received a death threat one day before the 2019 uprising that forced me to leave my home for a few months.
Our lifeless bodies are found floating in water and then people are told that we killed ourselves, or accidentally fell.
The constitution they have worked on now is for business people and the rich, so the demands of the social movement are totally buried. But if they voted against the last one, they’ll vote against this one, because people don’t understand it. They are not informed.
Chile will continue with its social problems. Nothing has changed, everything is worse.
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Isonauta, 37, artist
I protested to highlight feminist demands such as abortion rights and the impunity for crimes against the LGBTQ+ community.
We are not moving forward on the demands for which we marched. We are one of the few countries in the world that preserves the same constitution drafted during a dictatorship. It’s frustrating that the first draft was rejected last year, because we came close to representing the diversity of the population and protecting our natural resources.
The current constitution proposal is being written mostly by Republicans, who want to reverse fundamental rights that are important to all of us and for future generations.
History will prove us right. The protests were not in vain; we were witnesses and protagonists of what a mobilised people with rage does. We have to remember that social changes are slow and often take a lifetime.
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Sofy Wakil, 27, publicist
I protested because the government never listened to the people. The metro fares were what broke the camel’s back; the capitalist system collapsed on itself. People weren’t benefiting from their own government, everything was so expensive.
I’m Mapuche [Chile’s largest Indigenous group], and the state doesn’t understand that our values do not rest on what has monetary value. They see land as something to take advantage of, but we are a people that care for our neighbours. We don’t seek to harm others; it is very communal, which is the opposite of capitalism.
Mapuche are still repressed for defending rivers, ancestral lands. There is a military state of emergency in Araucania [the southern region of Chile that is home to the largest Mapuche population] where homes are raided, people are stopped, searched and harmed, for no reason.
During the 2019-20 protests, people began to understand what it was like to be Mapuche. To have violence arrive at your home. Mapuche people who were living in cities began to learn Mapudungun [the Mapuche language].
People who aren’t Mapuche gained interest at the beginning of the protests, but now it’s not so much.
They like our culture, but our rage … they’re tired of it.
Four years after the uprising, nothing’s changed. Now we have to vote for something no one wanted. People are tired and don’t want to talk about politics.
