Chris Moss visits some of southern Patagonia’s most pastoral corners - and fits in a little cruise en route.

The moment you cross the border at Rio Turbio you know you’ve left behind a rain shadow. Not, mind you, that it was raining when we crossed over. The sky was a soft light blue and the wispy clouds seemed always to remain on the far horizons.

But the grass was green. Where Argentine Patagonia – east of Turbio – is mainly steppe, ravine, desert and dry scrub, on the Chilean side of the Andes, at the same latitude, it is bosky and gentle on the eye. With Puerto Natales at its heart, and fjords, Andean mountains, the southern ice-field and the Torres del Paine along its edges, it’s an enticing part of the world and a sort of topographic finale at the bottom of a land of many latitudes.

I first visited Puerto Natales almost twenty years ago. Back then it looked like a frontier town. I remember corrugated iron panels on the walls of houses and hotels, a grey sky looming over Last Hope Sound, and snack bars. I’d come down from Puerto Montt on the Navimag Puerto Eden, a container ship converted to carry passengers through the long channels.

Now the town is full of boutique hotels and smart bars and restaurants, with the grand new Singular at Puerto Bories on its northern edge  - a former cold storage depot and wool factory turned into a spectacular luxury hotel. If the dwindling of the factory in the 1960s was a symbol of a troubled past, its reopening in the summer of 2011-12 was a symbol of the new Chile – ambitious, cool, design-conscious.

There are three directions you can take from Natales. One is south to Punta Arenas, a gritty place and the closest thing southern Patagonia has to a city. Rich in maritime history, it’s the port that the Panama Canal turned into a near-ghost town, and something of that loss of status no doubt hangs over “Sandy Point". But it has a cemetery full of foreign surnames, a penguin colony, the cold winds of the Magellan Strait and lots of little cafes to hide from it. If you’re ever in Chile’s XII region, drop in.

But I was heading off, for the moment, in the second direction, towards Torres del Paine. I’d passed through before, but this time I was doing - in just 12 days, if I could manage it – the whole 100km circuit around Paine Grande.

For two days, me and trusty co-walker, Bob, had to camp out in the cool drizzle. We couldn’t bring ourselves to set off in the rain after a lifetime of English country walks. The hiatus gave me time to read a bit – Chilean Patagonia has a big library, and I was enjoying the stories of John Byron, whose ship foundered in the area.

Then, the sun came out in a sky of wispy cirrus clouds and we were soon hiking, gently at first, towards Lago Dickson. This took us through flower-filled grasslands, along the banks of the Paine and the Los Perros rivers, with some slightly tougher walking through nothofagus forest. At Laguna Los Perros, we shared a pasta dinner with a Chilean family and shared our first tetrapak of super-cheap wine.

A very literal high point came next, as we forded a 1300-metre-high pass en route to Lago Grey. A blizzard met us at the top, but when it cleared – summer snowstorms are short – we had views of the immense Grey glacier, a long, white tongue of the southern ice field. It was this immense body of ancient white rock that was stirring up the weather, and we camped that night in winter-gear.

Cerro Paine Grande, the central peak of the park, is  around 2880 metres above sea-level (mountaineers dispute its height).  All the time, this snow-capped beauty teases you as you walk. Often there are clouds swirling around the craggy, ice-shattered walls at the summit, but when they clear, the views – like the warmth – are deeply satisfying. The great thing about the circuit of the park is that you experience, on terra firma and with your eyes, a huge range of environments: meadows, temperate and rain-forest woodlands, scrub, patches of steppe, mountain traverses, scree, and every ecotone between all these.

Beside Lago Grey, which was full of drifting bergy bits, there was a good campsite and even a restaurant. I prefer home cooking when I am doing the backpacker thing so Bob and I decided to forgo the stews on offer in the heated cabin and cooked up our last bowl of polenta and tomato sauce – pretty delicious, but mainly because we were feeling fit as well as fatigued after the pass.

Many of the glacier-fed lakes in Patagonia are turquoise, but Lago Pehoe might just be the most surreal.

Chris Moss

The next section was easier, but if anything more wondrous. Many of the glacier-fed lakes in Patagonia are turquoise, but Lago Pehoe might just be the most surreal. It has a sort of milky, blue-green colour, and when a southern wind blasts across the surface, white ridges form making it look like a sea from a sci-fi fantasy. After crossing the southeast corner of Cerro Paine, towards Rio Frances, I could take in one of the best views of the massif.  The pink-granite “towers” that give the national park its name are the remnants of a cirque sheared away over millennia and the cuernos, or horns, are hulking mountains of grey granite with black shale summits, and perhaps even more striking.  The trail took in lagos Nordenskjöld and Torres, and a herd of russet-coloured guanacos grazing on a riverbank, and then we were back, as dawn fell, at our original base. We set up the tent, but this time we dined in a restaurant: Patagonian micro-brewery beers, Patagonian wine, Patagonian lamb, deep sleep.

The following day, I left Natales in the third direction – the fjords – aboard a 100-birth adventure cruiser. It was a three-day trip up towards the central part of the southern ice field, by way of several glaciers and inlets. The channels of Patagonian Chile are narrow, labyrinthine and truly wild – there has not been settlement here for more than a century and the long-gone indigenous Halakwalup inhabitants were canoe Indians who only populated the shores.

The Andes are submerged here, and the ship was often walled in by bare mountains. Steamer ducks and dolphins could be seen off the bow, and I saw a condor wheeling over a hanging glacier. There are puma in these parts, and I spent hours on deck scouring the greyish section above the tree line, but to no avail. Dense forests provide perfect cover for the shy cat, and also for the rare huemul deer.

On excursions to the shore we did a few gentle walks, which stopped my Paine-worked legs from seizing up. And we were able to get right up to the walls of the glaciers, feeling the chill they emanated and listening to the growing noise of calving and the deep, invisible ruptures that occur all the time.

But the fjord cruise is a very gentle mini-Antarctic affair. You are in one of the loneliest and in some ways harshest settings in South America, but you have your boat, your ceviches and stews, your cabin. It was a relaxing wind-down after a longish trip through the two Patagonias – the dry, arid emptiness of Argentina and the more varied, more verdant and more walkable climes of southern Chile.

Chris Moss is the author of Patagonia: A Cultural history (Signal Books, 2008). He travelled to Chile witb Air France and Audley Travel.

Through now revealed secret government documents, Asociación Ilícita: los archivos secretos de la dictadura details the extent of the far-reaching reign of terror imposed by Augosto Pinochet's dictatorship. Ramona Wadi reviews.

Re-enacting Chile’s dictatorship history is an arduous task, undoubtedly hindered by Augusto Pinochet’s insistence upon oblivion and legally sanctioned by the enacted impunity laws. Seeking to annihilate memory by imposing a reign of persecution, torture, disappearances and exile, the struggle to delegitimize the leftist struggle degenerated into Pinochet’s obsession to legitimise his dictatorship. Evidence compiled by authors Carlos Dorat and Mauricio Weibel reveals a sinister collaboration extending beyond the secret network Dirección de Intelligencia Nacional (DINA) and later Central Nacional de Información (CNI), involving ministries, embassies, diplomats, the FBI, the Vatican and right wing Latin American governments.

Asociación Ilícita: los archivos secretos de la dictadura (Ceibo Ediciones, 2012) examines documents which for some reason, failed to be destroyed by the CNI in 1988 prior to the transition period. The documents, detailing extensive correspondence on behalf of Pinochet, are mainly attributed to Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, Odlainer Mena, Humberto Gordon and Hugo Salas, proving the extent of collaboration between various governmental and international bodies, as well as incursions to divert civilian attempts to shed light upon Chile’s reality. From El Plan Condor to inscribed orders from Pinochet requesting the detention of socialist opponents, terror and diplomatic strategy comprise the analysis of what the authors term ‘a catalogue of horror and intolerance’.

September 11, 1973 unleashed the neoliberal experiment upon Chile, supported by the US which was, in Kissinger’s words, unwilling ‘to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide from themselves’. Following an initial purging of socialism in Chile, the published documents in this book reveal how political strategy, in collaboration with the Vatican, was aiming to install Pinochet as an icon of freedom and anti-communist struggle. Apart from the well known targeting of Communist Party and Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR) militants, the military advocated a complete dismantling of social movements, student organisations and embarked upon restricting the Church’s activities. With regard to the latter, correspondence with the Vatican illustrates the alignment of the church oligarchy with Pinochet’s dictatorship, as opposed to priests working in the country who, contrary to what had occurred in other countries, aligned themselves with the left. While the Vatican urged priests to adhere solely to ceremonial roles, Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez had abandoned the designated conservative role in favour of exposing dictatorship atrocities through the Vicaria de la Solidaridad. Part of the political strategy against human rights groups was to seek invalidation of exposed atrocities by citing Marxist infiltration.

A brief overview of DINA establishes an ideological framework attributed to Jaime Guzman, who fostered a counterinsurgency programme based upon combating Marxism and seeking the annihilation of social movements from the political scene. As DINA’s power intensified, counterinsurgency became central to the stability of the dictatorship, lending the state a channel through which to intensify diplomatic efforts with other right wing governments and repressive bodies, in order to present a formidable opposition to organisations expressing their outrage at the widespread violence. Documents relating to Operaciones Epsilon reveal that former head of DINA, Manual Contreras, was authorised to give orders to various ministries. An 11 page document relating to the assembly of ‘Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos’ sought to ‘neutralise worldwide accusations of human rights violations in Chile’, instead proposing an emphasis of human rights disputes in Vietnam and the Soviet Union, among other countries.  The neutralisation of any verbal opposition against the dictatorship was to be met with an open and clandestine psychological campaign, in order to preserve Chile’s ‘image’ from any possible ‘discrediting and spreading of false information’.

The political threat was personified in particular by the clandestine Communist Party and MIR, who waged armed resistance against the dictatorship and suffered great losses due to persecution and disappearances of many militants, including the notorious Operacion Colombo. The book states that, according to research carried out by renowned author Manuel Salazar, Contreras had been compiling information about political leaders of leftist organisations since Salvador Allende’s presidency. Related documents published in this book and stamped as confidential outline the activities of several left wing leaders, including Victor Diaz and Luis Recabarren.

‘The problem of human rights’ constituted a major problem for the dictatorship, as it relentlessly sought to portray any internal or external criticism as tarnishing the image of Chile. Despite the extermination of socialist leaders, subsequent regrouping of MIR, Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitario (MAPU) and other left wing groups gave rise to an initiation of protests against the dictatorship, with people demanding the return of their exiled relatives. Hundreds were massacred by the CNI, as the military was deployed to the streets in an effort to stifle dissent. As the dictatorship faced the most difficult years of its era, Guzman advocated an ideology shifting towards permanent military rule.

The authors describe the oppression as methodical – indeed the documents reveal statistical data of ‘terrorist activity’ and ‘manipulation of conduct’. The constant preoccupation and compilation of data enabled the dictatorship to enact legislation according to the circumstances, in order to ensure a continuation of impunity. A trend of state terrorism is easily gleaned from the documents produced in the book, as well as the analysis provided by the authors. The ‘Caravan of Death’, the ‘Plan Condor’, which was carried out in collaboration with other Latin American countries, ‘Operacion Colombo’ – also known as the Case of the 119, ‘Operacion Epsilon’ and the collaboration with the US regarding ‘the distortion of Chile’s truth in favour of Marxism’ gave rise to the tracking of dissidents' and exiles' activity abroad, in order to prevent the possibility of the formation of a government in exile. Embassies were also authorised to keep copies of any published material relevant to Chile, in particular reports concerning human rights violations. The exercise was described as ‘censorship of negative information’. However, the dictatorship’s targeting of any person suspected of harbouring leftist sentiment, even through association not related to political activity and irrespective of nationality, led to disclosure of torture practices in international media. The case of Sheila Cassidy – a British doctor suspected of having offered medical assistance to Pinochet’s opponents led to international outrage, which in turn the dictatorship tried to stifle by refusing to issue working permits for journalists travelling to Chile in order to report on human rights. State organisations were also forbidden to comment about Chile without prior permission granted through formal official channels. At least 761 journalists were prohibited from reporting about human rights violations in Chile and their details were included in the dictatorship’s archives.

Hostility against the media was enhanced by the fact that culture – an integral part of Allende’s campaign and perhaps synonymous with the nueva canción movement, was not to be stifled. Inti Illimani and Illapu, together with other singers in exile such as Angel Parra, Isabel Parra and Patricio Manns maintained their political stance and disseminated their convictions through music. The literature of Ariel Dorfman and Antonio Skarmeta was banned in Chile, as was the political thought of Eduardo Galeano and Karl Marx.

Perhaps the significance of this book lies in the fact that it is yet another sliver in Chilean memory elucidating the callous ideology behind the committed atrocities. By analysing this archive of documents, Dorat and Weibel have succeeded in reassembling the fragments of the dictatorship, most importantly eliminating the gap between the experienced violations and the dictatorship laws which ravaged the lives of thousands of Chileans.  

Asociación Ilícita: los archivos secretos de la dictadura

Authors: Carlos Dorat Guerra, Mauricio Weibel Barahona

Publisher: Ceibo Ediciones, 2012.

Washington political analyst Patricio Zamorano reflects on a turbulent term for the Chilean President. For a Spanish version of this article see below.

Patricio Zamorano, political analyst

Washington DC

www.chileno.co.uk/blogs

Four publishing companies with global reach have focused their attention on the case of Chile in the last few years. Of these media, all have dealt in some way or another with the Chilean student movement of 2011-2012 (which is still active) and, by extension, with the problems of political management in Sebastian Piñera’s government. Now added to this in recent months is the Government's controversial decision to use the full force of an anti-terrorist law against Mapuche activists accused of acts of violence in southern Chile. Piñera has chosen a military rather than a socio-economic approach to the complex situation of the Mapuche people, who are engaged in a struggle to recover their lands. The Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS) José Miguel Insulza, who is also a Chilean, has recently stated that the policy of applying anti-terrorist laws against indigenous activists "has a complicated international image," and should be eliminated. Furthermore, he stated that the way the law is being implemented by the Piñera Government makes it appear that it only applies to Mapuche people implicated in acts of violence.

The topic of the student crisis has received worldwide coverage. First, The Guardian named the leader of the Chilean student movement Camila Vallejo “Person of the Year” at the end of 2011. Shortly afterwards, The New York Times described Vallejo as “the world’s most glamorous revolutionary.” In April 2012, The Economist called Piñera “inept,” a strange adjective for a conservative publication to use when, in reality, he should be a “favourite son” according to their editorial line. The same month The Wall Street Journal accused Piñera of being “weak and incompetent” and of becoming a “leftist”. The newspaper considered the implementation of social policies as a sign of weakness against the student movement which enjoyed legitimacy both internationally and at home. The student reform movement and the activism of hundreds of thousands of young people has lead to a new wave of political leaders who, despite their youth, have started political careers to be elected to the Chilean Congress, amongst them Camila Vallejo, Giorgio Jackson and Camilo Ballesteros.

Piñera, defending the role of the State?

The country, thought to be a miracle of macroeconomics, is an illusion of development which owes a huge debt: to clean up the high levels of inequality in income, the workplace, and education and, in general, to address the issues that the Concertación [centre-left coalition] did not or could not remedy. The consequences are very clear. After the aggressive assertion of The Wall Street Journal against the "leftist leanings" of Piñera’s public policies in response to the student movement, we encounter a historical paradox of huge proportions, stemming from the words of the former Secretary General of the Presidency and current Minister of the Interior, Andrés Chadwick. The leader, who defected from the radical left under the Unidad Popular party to become the most committed Pinochet devotee, is a central figure of the Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), the party that represents the most conservative values in Chile, with a strong presence of Opus Dei in their ranks. When the strong criticism was published in The Wall Street Journal, Chadwick came out before the television cameras, defending the social policies of Piñera. "The State has to play a role to create equal opportunities," he said as a defence to the criticism of the US newspaper. And he suggested that the critique coming from the newspaper of Piñera's government "was not surprising" since the publication is "very committed to economic freedom and the business world" -- odd statements from one who provides advice to a President whose fortune is one of the four greatest in Chile.

The words of justification from a conservative like Chadwick defending the role of the State are interesting. They demonstrate, first, that The Wall Street Journal is indeed correct, the Piñera Government has had to move its strategy of public policies to the left. But the main issue goes beyond that: it demonstrates that, 20 years after the end of the dictatorship, there is an accumulation of progressive values in the political and economic spheres in Chile about which there is consensus in all sectors. Chilean society has learned from the debacle caused by years of aggressive neoliberal policies in the 1990s and profound inequality. The Frei Government in the Nineties had a worse distribution of wealth than the dictatorship. This process of progressing towards a more constructive role of the State as regulator and protector of the most vulnerable sectors of society opened the door to a paradigm more focused on equal opportunity as a basis for the great dream of all the political groups: to achieve the socioeconomic level of a developed country. Piñera has no other option but to continue on that path.

Popular approval: historical lows

I personally met the then Senator Piñera in the Nineties, whilst working as a reporter on the right wing parties for the now defunct newspaper La Época. I do not agree at all with the adjective "inept" offered by The Economist. I remember him as an intelligent leader who took a hard line in the political game with internal adversaries within his party, Renovación Nacional, and especially with the UDI, although he was open on social issues and values. However, at that time, the scandal that had produced audio recordings of Piñera instructing a journalist friend to ridicule his opponent in presidential primaries in a television interview, Evelyn Matthei, his current Minister of Labour, was still fresh. It never crossed my mind that the Chilean people would honour him with the Presidency. His race for the presidential seat seemed stained forever after that scandal.

Piñera now governs with a very low level of approval, which fell to a historic low of 26% according to an Adimark survey in April 2012. In the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP) survey of May 2012, Piñera’s popularity fell even further to a mere 24 percent and, in January 2013, he was still polling at 31 percent. Furthermore, 61% believe that the government has acted "without skill or ability." 52% disapprove of Piñera’s economic management, and 63% stated that the President "does not give [them] confidence." A full 72% considered him "distant".

The errant President

President Piñera has cloistered himself in a political realism that he wasn't accustomed to. He has had to abandon all the business acumen and entrepreneurship that he surely would have wanted to use to thrive as President, and instead has had to invest all his political capital in a series of political and social crises which he has been unable to dispatch completely. This lack of proper tools in the political game can be appreciated from Washington DC. He has worn out the recurring theme of the impressive rescue of the 33 miners trapped underground in the north of Chile in October 2010 -- the only noteworthy message coming out of the Chilean Embassy in the US city for two years -- as a communicational strategy for promoting Chile. That President Obama mentioned the rescue in his State of the Union address to Congress was enough for Piñera to cling to the issue, repeating it as a monothematic message in the U.S. capital. It must be remembered, however, that Obama mentioned the Chilean rescue, on that occasion, primarily to draw attention to the US company and workers who built the evacuation tunnel that managed to reach the miners first.

Furthermore, in an incomprehensible act of political strategy last year in the aftermath of the student crisis of 2011, President Piñera appointed the former Minister of Education, Felipe Bulnes, Ambassador of Chile to the United States, perhaps the most important diplomatic post on the planet for a Chilean to hold. During Bulnes’s administration as Minister, the Government exercised tough police repression against young people in the streets, with the conflict ending in deadlock, without a concrete solution. In the same Adimark survey last April, a year after the beginning of the student demonstrations, there was still a clear 72% disapproval in the way the government handled the issue of education.

In another example of his lack of connection with political reality, Piñera still keeps Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter in the government, another politician responsible for strong police repression against the students during 2011. The police are now under the command of the Ministry of the Interior, which was directed by Hinzpeter during that period. In addition, Hinzpeter failed on the subject he had declared to be the most important of his tenure as Minister of the Interior: crime. This area was evaluated as the worst of all in April 2012, with an 82% rate of disapproval. In the CEP survey of May 2012, Hinzpeter managed to reach 30% approval. Recently, in November 2012, rather than removing Hinzpeter from the Government, Piñera appointed him Minister of Defence...

Similarly, in the case of ex-minister Bulnes, President Piñera appears to betray his own business past. "Successful management" is based on managerial responsibilities and should be directly related to results. Performance failures have consequences, and successes, rewards. But for two Ministers in key posts, Education and the Interior, with abysmal performances, far from being asked to relinquish their posts and being replaced, they have been rewarded. On Bulnes, Piñera declared that he was accepting his resignation from office and appointed Harald Beyer because the Ministry required "a person who can calm tempers, bring more temperance, rationality, dialogue," -- that is to say, a clear listing of the fundamental characteristics that Bulnes lacked. In November 2011, Bulnes was the worst Minister evaluated with only 34% approval according to Adimark. It is incomprehensible, then, that Piñera again risked his political capital by giving an enviable consolation prize, an Embassy with global influence, to the person who lead the handling of a crisis in education that most affected the popularity of his Government.

A trap of his own making

Piñera has fallen into a peculiar pattern, the same trap that the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia fell into. The centre-left coalition had to administer and maintain part of the institutional legacy of a previous Government -- in this case, Pinochet’s dictatorship -- to maintain a minimum level of governability in the country. A comparable situation now keeps the Piñera government in a similar condition: a terrible earthquake and tsunami near the beginning of his Government, and the subsequent social unrest over an educational system in deep crisis, caused Piñera to postpone more aggressive market policies and exercise instead a political realism favouring an urgent social agenda. In that sense, he has had to maintain the protective role of the State, in some ways obliged to continue the spirit of the social-welfare-state under President Bachelet, who is still extremely popular (the first female President in Chile leaving power with a historic high of 84% approval, according to an Adimark survey in March 2010). Likewise, Piñera has had to endure strong tensions with militaristic and radical sectors of his own right-wing coalition in order to preserve the progress on human rights policies promoted by Bachelet. That is, Piñera has been forced by the still precarious circumstances of the social situation in Chile to advance Bachelet policy and many of the values that his own sector opposes.

If there had been no earthquake in 2010 or social crisis over education, Piñera would have followed the script that he had prepared during his entrepreneurial career. Concepts such as "modernisation", “technology”, “generation of markets”, "forward-thinking vision", "foreign investment", and "innovation" would have been the key words of his discourse during his term. He has had to replace them with "social crisis", "earthquake and reconstruction", "educational reform", "poverty", " population in need", "protective role of the State", "inequality", "human rights", "street violence", "indigenous claims". It is not the Presidency that he dreamed of. It is not the country embodied in his socio-political ideal. Perhaps that explains his errant way of behaving on many key issues, and the criticism from the population, including a large segment that voted for him, but gives him very poor ratings in the polls.

In that sense, Piñera has not been inept in his government. Strictly speaking, he has not been able to govern. Or rather, to be fair, he has not had the Presidency he dreamed of...

SPANISH VERSION

Piñera no ha gobernado la Presidencia que soñó…

Patricio Zamorano, analista político

Washington DC

 www.chileno.co.uk/blogs

Cuatro empresas editoriales de alcance mundial han puesto su atención en el caso chileno en el último par de años. De ellas, todas han tenido que ver de alguna u otra forma con el movimiento estudiantil chileno de 2011-2012 (y aún activo) y, por extensión, con los problemas de gestión política del gobierno de Sebastián Piñera. Ahora, en los últimos meses, se suma la polémica decisión del gobierno de usar todo el rigor de la ley antiterrorista contra activistas mapuches acusados de actos de violencia en el sur de Chile. Piñera ha elegido una estrategia militarista en lugar de un acercamiento socio-económico a la compleja situación del pueblo mapuche, que lucha por la recuperación de sus tierras. El Secretario General de la OEA, el también chileno José Miguel Insulza, ha señalado recientemente respecto de esa política de aplicar la ley antiterrorista contra los activistas indígenas, que esa normativa “tiene una imagen internacional complicada”, y que esta debería ser eliminada. Asimismo, señaló que en la forma en que estaba siendo aplicada por el gobierno de Piñera, pareciera que solo se aplica en contra de los mapuches implicados en hechos de violencia.

El tema de la crisis estudiantil ha sido portada mundial. Primero, The Guardian nombra a Camila Vallejo como “persona del año” a fines de 2011. Poco después, el New York Times señala a Vallejo como “la revolucionaria más glamorosa del mundo”. En abril de 2012, The Economist calificó a Piñera de “inepto”, en una extraña adjetivación de un medio de corte conservador contra quien debería ser un supuesto “hijo predilecto” de la línea editorial. En el cuarto capítulo de esa atención “al más alto nivel” sobre el caso chileno, The Wall Street Journal, en el mismo mes de abril, acusó a Piñera de “débil e incompetente”, de haberse “izquierdizado” y de implementar políticas sociales como muestra de debilidad frente a la movilización estudiantil, que dicho sea de paso, gozó de alta legitimidad internacional e interna. La reforma estudiantil y el activismo generado en cientos de miles de jóvenes ha provocado una oleada de nuevos líderes políticos, que pese a su corta edad han comenzado carreras políticas para ser elegidos en el Congreso chileno, entre ellos Camila Vallejo, Giorgio Jackson y Camilo Ballesteros.

Piñera, ¿defendiendo el rol del Estado?

El país, supuesto milagro macroeconómico, es una ilusión de desarrollo, que tiene una inmensa deuda: sanear la fuerte desigualdad de ingreso, laboral, educativa y en general de oportunidades que la Concertación no supo o no pudo remediar. Las consecuencias son clarísimas. Tras la agresiva aserción de The Wall Street Journal contra la “izquierdización” de las políticas públicas de Piñera como respuesta al movimiento estudiantil, nos encontramos con una paradoja histórica de proporciones, tras las palabras del ex secretario general de la Presidencia y actual ministro del Interior, Andrés Chadwick. El dirigente, que emigró desde la izquierda radical bajo la Unidad Popular al pinochetismo más comprometido, es una figura fuerte de la Unión Demócrata Independiente, partido que representa los valores más conservadores de Chile, con fuerte presencia del Opus Dei en sus filas. Cuando se publicó la fuerte crítica de The Wall Street Journal, Chadwick salió en su momento ante las cámaras de televisión defendiendo las políticas sociales de Piñera. “El Estado tiene que jugar un rol, de generar igualdad de oportunidades”, señaló como defensa a las fuertes críticas del periódico estadounidense. Y recordó que las críticas contra el gobierno de Piñera de parte del periódico “no eran de extrañar” debido a que el diario era un medio de comunicación “muy comprometido con la libertad económica y mundo empresarial”. Extrañas declaraciones de quien asesora a un Presidente cuya fortuna es una de las cuatro más poderosas de Chile.

Las palabras de justificación de un conservador como Chadwick defendiendo el rol de Estado son interesantes. Demuestran, en primer lugar, que The Wall Street Journal está en efecto en lo cierto, que el gobierno de Piñera ha tenido que “izquierdizar” su estrategia de políticas públicas. Pero que el tema de fondo va más allá de eso: demuestra que tras 20 años del término de la dictadura, existe en la actualidad un cúmulo de valores progresistas en lo político-económico en Chile sobre el que existe consenso en todos los sectores. La sociedad chilena ha aprendido de la debacle provocada por los años de políticas agresivas neoliberales en los noventa y que profundizaron la desigualdad (el gobierno de Frei en los noventa tuvo una peor distribución del ingreso que durante la dictadura). Ese proceso de avance hacia un rol más constructivo del Estado como ente regulador y protector de los sectores más vulnerables, abrió la puerta a un paradigma más centrado en la igualdad de oportunidades como base para el gran sueño de todos los grupos políticos: alcanzar niveles socioeconómicos de país desarrollado. Piñera no tiene otra opción sino continuar en ese camino.

Aprobación popular: mínimos históricos

Conocí personalmente al entonces senador Piñera en los noventa, mientras cubría como reportero a los partidos de derecha para el desaparecido periódico La Época. No concuerdo en absoluto con el adjetivo de “inepto” que le ofreció The Economist. Lo recuerdo como un dirigente inteligente y de línea dura en el juego político con sus adversarios internos del partido, Renovación Nacional, y especialmente de la UDI, aunque abierto en temas valóricos y sociales. Sin embargo, en esa época aún estaba fresco el escándalo que habían provocado grabaciones de audio donde se le escuchaba a Piñera dando instrucciones a un periodista amigo para ridiculizar en una entrevista televisiva a su contrincante en primarias presidenciales, Evelyn Matthei, su actual ministra del Trabajo. En esa época, por cierto, nunca se me cruzó por la mente que el pueblo chileno lo honraría con la Presidencia. Su carrera por el sillón presidencial parecía diluirse para siempre tras ese escándalo.

Piñera ahora gobierna con un bajísimo nivel de aprobación, que ha llegado al mínimo histórico de 26% según una encuesta de Adimark de abril de 2012. En la encuesta CEP de mayo de 2012 Piñera llegó a un 24 por ciento de apoyo, y en enero de este año 2013 alcanzó todavía un bajo 31 por ciento. Asimismo, un 61% considera que el gobierno ha actuado “sin destreza ni habilidad”. Un 52% desaprueba el manejo económico de Piñera, y un 63% expresa que el Presidente “no le da confianza”. Un 72% lo considera “lejano”.

El presidente errante

El presidente Piñera está enclaustrado en el realismo político al que no estaba acostumbrado, teniendo que abandonar todo su talento de empresario y emprendedor al que seguramente deseaba echar mano para prosperar como presidente, y en cambio ha tenido que invertir todo su capital político en una serie de crisis políticas y sociales a las que no ha podido dominar completamente. Esta falta de herramientas propias en el juego político se puede apreciar en Washington DC: ha desgastado la agenda comunicacional de promoción del país con el tema del impresionante rescate de los mineros en el norte de Chile en octubre de 2010, lo único sobresaliente del mensaje de la embajada en la ciudad por dos años. Bastó con que el presidente Obama nombrara el rescate en su mensaje anual ante el Congreso, para que Piñera se aferrara al tema como mensaje monotemático en la capital estadounidense. Hay que recordar, sin embargo, que Obama nombró en esa oportunidad el tema del rescate minero en Chile para destacar principalmente a la empresa y trabajadores estadounidenses que construyeron el túnel de evacuación que logró llegar primero hasta los trabajadores.

Asimismo, el presidente Piñera, en un acto de incomprensible estrategia política, nombró el año pasado al ex ministro de Educación durante la crisis estudiantil de 2011, Felipe Bulnes, como embajador de Chile en Estados Unidos, quizás el puesto diplomático más importante de la diplomacia chilena en el planeta. Durante la gestión de Bulnes como ministro, el gobierno ejerció una fuerte represión policial contra los jóvenes en las calles, y el conflicto llegó a un punto muerto, sin ninguna solución concreta. Incluso en la misma encuesta Adimark de abril del año pasado, a un año del comienzo de las manifestaciones estudiantiles, se evidenciaba aún un 72% de desaprobación a la forma en que el gobierno gestionaba el tema de la educación.

En otra muestra de su falta de conexión con la realidad política, Piñera aún mantiene en el gobierno al ministro Rodrigo Hinzpeter, también responsable político de la fuerte represión policial contra los estudiantes durante 2011 (Carabineros está ahora bajo el mando de ministerio del Interior, que fue dirigido por Hinzpeter en ese periodo). Además, Hinzpeter fracasó en el tema que había declarado como más importante de su gestión como ministro del Interior: la delincuencia. Esa área fue en abril de 2012 la peor evaluada de todas, con un 82% de desaprobación. En la encuesta CEP de mayo de 2012,  Hinzpeter alcanzaba un 30% de aprobación. Recientemente, en noviembre de 2012, en lugar de sacar a Hinzpeter del gobierno, Piñera lo nombró ministro de Defensa…

En el mismo caso del ex ministro Bulnes, Piñera parece traicionar su propio pasado empresarial. La “gerencia exitosa” se basa en que las responsabilidades de gestión deben relacionarse directamente con los resultados, los errores de desempeño tienen consecuencias, y los éxitos, recompensas. Pero a dos ministros en puestos clave, Educación e Interior, con un pobrísimo desempeño, lejos de pedirles la renuncia y reemplazarlos, los ha premiado. Sobre Bulnes, Piñera declaró al aceptar su renuncia del cargo y nombrar a Harald Beyer que se requería en el ministerio “una persona que apacigüe los ánimos, introduzca más templanza, racionalidad, diálogo”, en decir, en forma clara enumerando las características fundamentales de las que careció Bulnes. En noviembre de 2011 Bulnes era el peor ministro evaluado según Adimark, con 34% de aprobación. Resulta incomprensible, entonces, que Piñera nuevamente arriesgue su capital político otorgando un premio de consuelo de envergadura, una embajada de alcance mundial, a quien lideró el manejo de una crisis, la educación, que más afectó la popularidad de su gobierno.

Una trampa “a medida”

Piñera ha caído en un proceso peculiar, en la misma trampa en que cayó la Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia. El conglomerado de centro izquierda tuvo que administrar y mantener parte de la herencia institucional de un gobierno anterior, en este caso, la dictadura de Pinochet, para otorgar un mínimo de gobernabilidad al país. Una situación comparable ahora mantiene al gobierno de Piñera en similares condiciones: un terrible terremoto y maremoto casi apenas iniciado su gobierno, y posteriormente el estallido social en torno a un sistema educativo en profunda crisis, provocó que Piñera tuviera que dejar pendientes políticas de mercado más agresivas y hacer, en cambio, un ejercicio de realismo político a favor de una agenda social urgente. En ese sentido, ha debido mantener un rol protector del Estado, en cierta forma obligado a continuar el espíritu asistencialista-social-estatal de la Presidenta Bachelet, altamente popular (la primera presidenta mujer de Chile dejó el poder con un máximo histórico de aprobación de 84%, según una encuesta Adimark de marzo de 2010). Asimismo, Piñera ha tenido también que soportar fuertes tensiones con sectores militaristas y radicales de su propia alianza de derecha ante la necesidad de mantener el avance en políticas de derechos humanos potenciado por Bachelet. Es decir, Piñera ha sido forzado por las circunstancias aún precarias de la situación social en Chile a llevar adelante una política continuista del bachelletismo y muchos de los valores a los que su propio sector se oponía.

De no haber habido terremoto en 2010 ni crisis social en torno a la educación, Piñera hubiera seguido el guión que tenía preparado en su vocación empresarial. Conceptos como “modernización”, “tecnología”, “generación de mercados”, “visión de futuro”, “inversión extranjera” e “innovación” hubieran sido las palabras clave de su discurso en el poder. Las ha tenido que cambiar por “crisis social”, “terremoto y reconstrucción”, “reforma educacional”, “pobreza”, “población necesitada”, “rol protector del Estado”, “desigualdad”, “derechos humanos”, “violencia callejera”, “reivindicaciones indígenas”. No es la presidencia con la que soñaba. No es el país que tenía incrustado en su ideal socio-político. Quizás por eso se explica su actuar errante en muchos temas clave, y la crítica de la población, incluyendo un amplio sector que votó por él, que le otorga pésimas calificaciones en las encuestas.

En ese sentido, Piñera no ha sido inepto en su gobierno. En rigor, no ha podido gobernar. O mejor dicho, para ser justos, no ha gobernado la Presidencia con la que soñaba...

Photo: elclarin.cl

By Claudio Fuentes

On the heels of political controversy in Chile over the treatment of the Mapuche people in Araucanía (Southern region of Chile), political scientist Claudio Fuentes gives his considered view on the recent 'anti-terror' announcement by Chilean President Sebastían Piñera.

Translation by chileno

Militarizing Araucanía: A bad idea

Is it advisable to militarise Araucanía? Although the Government has not for the moment invoked any state of emergency, it has taken two steps. A decision was made to restrict the freedom of individuals that began with major police roadblocks and involving the armed forces with intelligence work. Indeed, in addition to an increase in the number of police officers, the President announced that police would establish a "special area of control and security in those places that have been most affected by these crimes, so as to establish permanent control daytime and night, both vehicular traffic and the identities of persons travelling in the most affected areas. "

The question that immediately arises is under what legal framework this "special zone of control and security" will be defined. The Criminal Procedure Code clearly states the circumstances under which the police can make an ‘identity stop’ [without a warrant from a prosecutor, the police may require citizens to show their identity cards]: (a) when it is considered that the person has committed an offence, (b) when it could provide useful information to investigate a crime, (c ) or if the person is wearing a hooded top. Unless we proceed from the premise that all people in the area are suspected of a crime, of course undoubtedly ridiculous, the President's announcement is problematic for two reasons: first, it significantly affects the rights enshrined in the Constitution (freedom of movement, for example), second, this decision is not supported by any legal framework that could validate the action of the police who, in fact, have already established identity checks at various points in the area.

The classic dilemma of security versus freedom is not resolved by providing a blank cheque for police. We know that too much discretion carries abuse, therefore delivering more power to police institutions ought to be backed by regulatory bodies governing their actions. By what criteria will a police officer decide to stop a person in the street tomorrow? The colour of their skin? The type of clothes they are wearing? The nervousness that they show interacting with armed police? The Guarantee Court of Pichilemu has already ruled against "nervousness" being a legitimate basis to justify an identity stop and subsequent arrest of a suspect (20/02/2011).

A second announcement by the President is also worrying. He said, "I have asked the director of the National Intelligence Agency, within its legal mandate, to collect information of a residual or complementary nature that the Armed Forces may have, and that is useful in order to increase the effectiveness and efficiency in the fight against terrorism and violence in the region".

If the Armed Forces are gathering "complementary information" about events that are clearly internal matters for the police then they are violating the Law of National Intelligence. This delimits the functions of military intelligence to matters strictly having to do with "national defence" with two exceptions: concerning police functions that correspond to the naval and air authorities over maritime and air controls. Therefore the call made by the President is also inappropriate because it is not the place of the Armed Forces to hold intelligence on things that are obviously internal in nature.

The next step, proposed by the presidents of UDI and RN, has been the establishment of a state of emergency in the area, that will allow the restriction of freedom of assembly and movement and appoint a Chief of National Defence in the area. Besides constituting an extreme measure, the main difficulty is that since the amendment of the normative constitution of the Estados de Excepción [akin to state of emergency], so far a new Act to regulate them has not been established. You read correctly. Since August 2005 the provision emanating from the Constitution issued to establish a new regulatory framework for states of extraordinary circumstances, emergency and disaster has not been complied with. We have  states of emergency that have been reformed during democracy, but the law that regulates these is from 1985.

In short, to establish a zone of "control and security" and to request "complementary" information from the Armed Forces are two steps of dubious legal status and will militarise the area. We hope that these announcements are reevaluated and rationality prevails given that their eventual implementation will exacerbate tensions in the area and will force, again, the courts and the Constitutional Court to assess whether these actions conform to the rule of law.

The original Spanish version of this article appeared in Chilean online newspaper El Mostrador

About the author

Claudio Fuentes is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Institute of Investigation in Social Science (ICSO) at Diego Portales University in Chile. Claudio graduated from Chile's prestigious Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile with a first degree in History, going on to earn his MA and Doctorate in Political Science from the University of North Carolina, USA. He has published on a broad range of political themes in books and academic journals and writes for many outlets in Chile (in Spanish) including  La Tercera, Cooperativa and El Dínamo.

Photo: www.violetalapelicula.cl

Why do I feel so much pain, Violeta Parra?

Or on how to assess the Chilean film “Violeta went to heaven” on opening night in Washington DC

© Patricio Zamorano

Translation by chileno and the author. Para la versíon original en castellano ver abajo.

So much pain I have felt tonight, Violeta, so much pain…

It hurts because Chile hurts… That’s it, isn’t it singer? Painter? Creator of forms and illusions? Chile hurt you with every second of recognition given in the few countries that through the miracle of your poverty chose to give shelter to your singing, your paintings, your intense tapestries like the brilliance of your sad eyes. Everything was empty upon returning to the homeland, down in the lost South of painful childhood and wandering life, where the people let you down in your dreams to universalize (in the half moon of the audience) each drop of creation exuded from your hands. The people let you down when the indifference of the public you longed for and loved so much hit you like a Santiago winter. How many artists have succumbed to the loneliness of the stage, beloved singer? So much despair, isn’t it? When silence is deaf to applause...

Oh singer of my soul! Chile killed you. Chile killed Víctor Jara. Chile killed Allende. Chile also killed Neruda (without a doubt, the soldiers spread the cancer with the demonic stench that grew amongst the flames from La Moneda¹). Chile killed De Rokha, another genius buried under the cold murmur spread by the mainstream. In a short time, Chile physically lost its most profound figures. It lost its land. The earth moaned.

Years before, Chile had also killed her first Nobel Laureate, the barefoot girl from Valle del Elqui, Gabriela² of profound “Mistralian” pain, always looking out of the corner of her eye towards the southern country that denied her so much, despite a sacred litany of verse and prose.

Chile killed democracy, Chile killed the communists and the socialists. Chile killed the joy of life for two, even three decades, if we add up the frustration of the Concertación³ in the nineties... Dearest Violeta, with your trigger and shot you began the dark age that was upon us, that fatal 1967, under the tent only visited during those last weeks by the wind accompanied by cold rain, as it only rains in the Mapocho Valley.

Don’t worry, my dear Violeta.

With your gunshot, Chile received an urgent affront, the fruit of our own miseries: The soldiers preyed on the people, supported at the same time by many twisted in their cannibalistic frenzies. The people killed the people. That 11th of September in 1973, dearest Violeta, your heart would have tightened in a grimace of horror to see the slaughter led by the jingoistic soldier. The Chile that ignored you in life, dear Violeta, was the same that squeezed your trigger, and the trigger of Allende, and the trigger of the soldier who took no mercy on Víctor, and the trigger of the thousands of those executed in the streets of Santiago… (the eternal trigger, as long as the rifle that the real contours of Chile represents in a map of its own geography. Santiago, where death circled the majority trapped for the massacre, is situated --oh sweet irony!-- near the firing pin…).

Oh Violeta, but your songs remain! Oh Violeta, you left us your “Volver a los diecisiete”! Violeta, you left us your hawk, the sorrows of your Arauco, your “Run-run” that made you suffer so much from unrequited love! Your guitar transpositions, peasant girl from Lautaro, universalized you. Your “Thanks to life” (“Gracias a la vida”), that profound song full of laughter and tears, is enjoyed by both rich snobs and blue-collar workers. Diplomatic bodies take advantage of you to sell the “Chile” brand, and your soul writhes… A little bit ironic, isn’t? A bit of pissing yourself laughing, that Chilean way of laughing, at the same time bitter, sarcastic and full of the joy of life, the life of islands adrift, the life of the Chilean isle, where your glory came to die in a body, a female Christ crucified on guitar timbers, to free you and liberate us from your soul that flies, now full of your desires, before the wide sky of our misery…

Notes.

¹La Moneda is the Palace in Santiago that serves as the seat of the President of the Republic of Chile.

²Gabriela Mistral was a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat and feminist. She was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945).

³Center-left political party coalition. Candidates from these parties won every election in Chile from the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship (1990) until the election victory of Sebastián Piñera in 2010.

 About the author

Patricio Zamorano is a singer song-writer, poet, writer, journalist, political analyst and academic currently at George Washington University. Recently in 2010 Patricio Zamorano won by unanimous decision the First Prize of the national competition “The Chilean Press and the Bicentennial”, organized by  the Society of Journalists of Chile and the University of Santiago, with his, “Chile en tres actos” (“Chile in three acts”) (http://patriciozamorano.com/chile_en_tres_actos.html).  Patricio Zamorano is also an analyst of international affairs and writer, and has published innumerable journalistic articles including stories, interviews and columns, in various American and Spanish media outlets. His collaborations as a political analyst and writer include CNN in Spanish, Al Jazeera, Telesur, Univision, BBC and BBC Mundo, La Opinión de California, ContraPunto de El Salvador, Radio Pacífica y Radio Miami, and various Chilean media (magazines like El Periodista, Mensaje, Caras, Plan B, The Clinic; newspapers like La Nación and La Época; radio-station like Bío Bío and Cooperativa; TV stations like TVN, CNN Chile, Canal 2). Patricio Zamorano is also a member of the Chilean Performing Rights Organization, as well as the Professional Association of Chilean Journalists, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists of the United States.

Feel free to comment below in Spanish or English.

¿Por qué me dueles, Violeta Parra?

O sobre cómo valorar la película chilena “Violeta se fue a los cielos” en noche de estreno en Washington DC

© Patricio Zamorano

Tanto me dueles, tanto me doliste esta noche…

Me dueles por que me duele Chile… Eso es, ¿no, cantora? ¿Pintora? ¿Creadora de formas y de ilusiones? Chile te dolió en cada segundo de reconocimiento en los pocos países que el milagro de tu pobreza eligió para cobijar tu canto, tus pinturas, tus arpilleras tan intensas como el brillo de tus ojos tristes. Todo era el vacío si volviendo a la patria allá en el sur perdido de dolores de infancia y de vida errante, el pueblo no te era pueblo en tus sueños de universalizar en la media luna de la audiencia cada gota de creación que exudaba de tus manos. El pueblo no te era pueblo cuando te golpeaba como invierno santiaguino la indiferencia del gran público que  añorabas y amabas tanto. ¿Cuánto artista no ha sucumbido a la soledad del auditorio, amada cantora? Cuánta desesperación, ¿no?, cuando el silencio es sordo de aplausos…

¡Ay cantora de mis adentros! Chile te mató. Chile mató a Víctor Jara. Chile mató a Allende. Chile mató también a Neruda (los milicos sin duda empujaron con su tufo de demonios el cáncer que creció junto con las llamas en La Moneda). Chile mató a De Rokha, otro genio sepultado bajo el frío rumor del Chile oficial. En una brizna de años Chile perdió físicamente a sus figuras más profundas. Perdió a su tierra.  Gimió la tierra.

Años antes, Chile también mataría a su primera premio Nóbel, a la niña sin zapatos del Valle del Elqui, Gabriela de dolores profundos mistralianos, mirando siempre de lado a esa patria sureña que le negaba tanto, a pesar de tanto verso y tanta prosa regalada como en una letanía…

Chile mató la democracia, Chile mató a los comunistas y a los socialistas. Chile mató la alegría de vivir por dos, tres décadas, si sumamos a la frustración concertacionista en los noventa… Violeta, querida, inauguraste con tu gatillo y tu disparo la época oscura que se nos venía encima, ese 1967 fatal, bajo la carpa a la que asistía en esas últimas semanas sólo el viento acompañado de lluvia fría, como solo llueve en el valle del Mapocho.

No te preocupes, Violeta querida.

Chile con tu balazo recibió como un escarnio urgente el fruto de nuestras propias miserias: los milicos se cebaron en pueblo, apoyados a su vez por tanto pueblo torcido en sus devaneos caníbales. El pueblo mató al pueblo. Ese 11 de septiembre de 1973, querida Violeta, tu corazón se habría apretado en una mueca de horror al ver la masacre liderada por el milico patriotero. El Chile que te ignoró en vida, querida Violeta, fue el mismo que apretó tu gatillo, y el gatillo de Allende, y el gatillo del soldado que se ensañó con Víctor, y el gatillo de los miles de ejecutados en la calles de Santiago… (el gatillo eterno, tan largo como el fusil que representa el contorno del Chile real en el mapa de su propia geografía. Santiago, donde la muerte rondó a la mayoría cebada por la masacre, se ubica ahí en el sector aproximado ¡oh dulce ironía! del percutor…)

¡Ay, Violeta, pero quedaron tus canciones! ¡Ay, Violeta, quedaron tus “diecisietes”! ¡Violeta, nos dejaste tu Gavilán, las penas de tu Arauco, tus run-runes que tanto te hicieron sufrir de amor de hembra! Tus guitarras traspuestas te universalizaron, campesina de Lautaro. Tus gracias a la vida, con risa y con llanto, las disfrutan pijes y obreros, cuerpos diplomáticos aprovechan de vender la marca “Chile” y tu alma se contorsiona, un poco irónica, ¿no?, un poco cagada de la risa, de esa risa a la chilena, al mismo tiempo amarga, sarcástica y llena del gozo de la vida, la vida de las islas a la deriva, la vida de la isla Chile, donde vino a morir tu gloria en cuerpo, una Cristo crucificada en maderos de guitarra, para liberarte y liberarnos de tu alma, que vuela, ahora sí, plena de tus deseos, ante el cielo ancho de nuestra miseria…

 Sobre el autor

Patricio Zamorano es cantautor, poeta, escritor, periodista, analista político y académico, actualmente de la Universidad George Washington.  Recientemente en 2010 Patricio Zamorano ganó por unanimidad el Primer Premio del concurso nacional de crónica y ensayo “La Prensa Chilena y el Bicentenario”, organizado por el Círculo de Periodistas de Chile y la Universidad de Santiago, con su relato “Chile en tres actos” (http://patriciozamorano.com/chile_en_tres_actos.html). Patricio Zamorano es también analista de temas internacionales y escritor, y ha publicado innumerables artículos periodísticos que incluyen crónicas, entrevistas y columnas en varios medios de América y España. Sus colaboraciones como analista político y cronista incluyen CNN en Español, Al Jazeera, Telesur, Univision, BBC y BBC Mundo, La Opinión de California, ContraPunto de El Salvador, Radio Pacífica y Radio Miami, entre otros, además de varios medios de comunicación de su Chile natal (revistas El Periodista, Mensaje, Caras, Plan B, The Clinic; diarios La Nación y La Época; radios Bío Bío y Cooperativa; canales de televisión TVN, CNN Chile, Canal 2). Patricio Zamorano es miembro de la Sociedad del Derecho de Autor, del Colegio de Periodistas de Chile y del National Association of Hispanic Journalists de Estados Unidos.

Sebastian Piñera’s rollercoaster ride as president of Chile may be a watershed in the nation’s post-Pinochet politics. Simeon Tegel reports.

If anyone embodies the theory that being a skilful politician requires more than just brains, then it may well be Sebastian Piñera.

A self-made billionaire with an economics PhD from Harvard, Chile’s president has seen his popularity ratings plunge to the low 20s just two years after his March 2010 election.

That is about as low as it gets in a stable, modern democracy – and a stunning fall from Piñera’s October 2010 high of 63%, according to pollster Adimark, following his hands-on leadership  of the rescue of 33 miners trapped half-a-mile underground for more than two months.

Gaffe-prone and viewed as aloof, the 62-year-old president has seen his ambitions of re-election go up in smoke as the perception has taken hold that he simply does not understand the tribulations of ordinary Chileans.

The verbal clangers have become so common that Chileans, trapped uneasily between laughing at their president and an acute sense of national embarrassment, have even come to term them “Piñerias”.

Piñera caused widespread mortification in Chile last year when he signed the German presidency’s visitors book with the words “Deutschland Uber Alles”, presumably unaware that the words come from a stanza of his hosts’ national anthem that has been disused since 1945 as a result of its Nazi associations.

The president has also called for Chile to model its economy on Czechoslovakia’s, apparently ignorant of the fact that the Central European nation has not existed since splitting into two in 1992.

And as he attempted to warn of the risk of a tsunami following the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, Piñera was the subject of ridicule as he mispronounced the Spanish word for tidal wave, “maremoto”, as “marepoto”.

It should be understood that “poto” is South American Spanish for “bottom”, the kind of hilarious malapropism that might have proved beyond even George W Bush.

Yet behind the clumsy soundbites and extensive business empire that included major stakes in LAN, Latin America’s largest airline and a TV station, Piñera’s failure to resonate with his compatriots may say more about Chile than it does about the president.

Piñera remains Chile’s only elected rightwing president in half-a-century. And his win, in January 2010, over progressive Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei, was by a razor-thin majority, 51.6% to 48.4%.

Or, as many commentators have noted, contemporary Chile is at heart a centre-left society which, as a result of a confluence of temporary factors, elected a conservative government that it quickly came to repudiate.

And complicating the mix is the ongoing process of Chile’s coming to terms with the legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship. For the modern democratic right, with Piñera at its head, that process is proving particularly awkward.

One small example is the row that erupted at the beginning of the year over the proposal to describe the unelected Pinochet administration in school textbooks as a “military regime” rather than a “dictatorship”.

The government eventually backtracked but the furore is indicative of how modern Chile, despite an official truth and reconciliation process, continues to carry heavy baggage from the Pinochet era.

Beyond the moral dilemma of balancing justice with national reconciliation, Chile also faces major challenges regarding the structuring of its economy, with many deeply unhappy at the neoliberal reforms imposed on the country by the Pinochet regime without the legitimacy of an electoral mandate.

Chileans, for example, are required by law to have private health insurance and pension funds. Those reforms have helped set the stage for a remarkable economic success story. GDP is expected to grow by 6% this year and poverty has fallen from 45% of the population in the 1980s to just 15% now.

Yet many Chileans remain deeply unhappy. The clue to the cause of that unease can be found in the fact that Chile is, notoriously, the most unequal society in the OECD, a club of the world’s 34 richest democracies.

And nowhere has that tension been more evident than in Chile’s education system, which, critics say, has locked in that inequality from generation to generation.

By most international standards, Chile’s schools and universities, both public and private, perform poorly and far below the rest of the national economy.

The schools are run on a voucher-system established under Pinochet, yet with Chilean teachers falling behind international standards. Meanwhile, even the state universities are largely funded by tuition fees, which overall provide around 80% of the national higher education budget, and represent a huge hurdle for students from poorer families.

The result has been the face-off that has pitted Piñera against Camila Vallejo, the charismatic, photogenic 23-year-old Communist Party member who has become the figurehead for a wave of student protests that swept Chile in 2011 and 2012, with the aim of winning free, quality university education for all.

The Communist Party is challenged to break into double-digit support in Chile. Nevertheless, the confrontation between the student leader, with a pierced nose and penchant for sit-ins, and the billionaire businessman turned president, has proved utterly one-sided, with Piñera getting battered on the ropes almost from the word go.

And the student protests have merged with demonstrators calling for a primal soup of other demands including everything from cheaper petrol to an attempt to stop the construction of hydroelectric dams in Aysén, a remote, breathtaking stretch of Patagonia. The result has convulsed Chile.

The president has made some concessions, including a proposed tax reform aimed at raising an additional £435 million a year for the education system, equivalent to 0.3% of GDP. He has also proposed capping interest on student loans at 2%.

Yet that is a long way from the students’ main demand, backed by 70% of the population, according to polls, of free higher education for all.

But with the leftwing Concertación alliance now faring almost as badly in the polls as Piñera, Chilean politics seem ripe for a historic political reconfiguration, possibly involving electoral wipe-outs for the traditional forces of left and right.

Only time will tell if that turns out to be the president’s lasting legacy.

 Simeon Tegel is a British journalist based in Lima, Peru. He writes about a broad range of themes across Latin America and publishes widely. He writes regularly for The Guardian and The Independent.

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