The Chilean writer and journalist Patricio Fernández (Santiago, 53 years old) was the protagonist of the two constitutional processes that Chile sought to change the 1980 constitution that emerged from the military dictatorship. First promoted by former Socialist President Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018) and then between 2021 and 2022 as one of the 154 elected Conventions was the Socialist Collective, which worked on the Magna Carta proposal, which was rejected by 62%. in a referendum last September.
Fernández has been both a protagonist and a privileged witness of the political, social and cultural processes that Chile is going through, and today he is preparing a book that will treat “this whole world of transformations”, he tells EL PAÍS. Close to left-wing President Gabriel Boric, he is today also advising the government on commemorating the 50th anniversary of the coup that will take place on September 11 and will be led by Culture Minister Jaime de Aguirre.
It is in this “world of transformations” to which Fernández alludes that much of the profound changes that Chile is facing, especially since October 2019, since the social outbreak, are found. In addition to the constitutional processes – the country has just begun its third attempt at a new Magna Carta – a government took office a year ago that implied a new generation came to power “with a president born in 1986 at the end of the dictatorship, while all the above were protagonists at the time of the coup”.
In a complex year of setting up this administration, public opinion has also shifted its priorities. Safety is now the top concern for Chileans, over pensions and health, demands emphasized in the social outbreak, according to the Center for Public Studies (CEP) poll in January. Boric’s ruling party has also changed ahead of the outbreak of a new armed crime. It’s a speech that debuted a week ago, on March 26, when a police officer was murdered by a group of criminals.
Questions. What do you observe of the moment Chile lives in?
Answer. We are in a moment of cultural transformations in which Chile participates as part of a world that is also experiencing them. And Chile is doomed to find this new way of life without having found the point yet. These are confusing moments when you see how immediate reactions take precedence in the search for an answer that is much larger than the immediate. We close one historical cycle and see another open. As if that weren’t enough, in Chile the days of political parties with broad social representation are over, and therefore there is a very high dispersion.
Q And that is reflected in Congress.
R. In Congress and in social life. Even after the dictatorship there was still a party system that more or less represented society and could speak for important social worlds, but all that has broken down; today it is very fragmented. According to the latest CEP poll, only 4% trust political parties, making the vast majority very difficult to decipher.
Q. How does this dispersion affect government?
R. It’s a super difficult time to govern. It is a moment when it is necessary to seek and build new ways of governability. The constitutional procedure that failed last year was a further step on this search path.
The writer Patricio Fernández in his home in Santiago, Chile Sofia Yanjari (EL PAÍS)
Q. What were the requirements of the 2019 social outbreak?
R. A good part of this problem is still fully alive, what happened is that it was urgently replaced. Today, security and crime is the issue that has prevailed worldwide after the pandemic because violence has increased in many places. But in Chile it was in a special way because there is a type of crime that has mutated and increased in very surprising ways.
Q. How did you live the experience of the Constitutional Convention?
R. The 2021-2022 convention was the daughter of the outbreak and it is a grave mistake to forget it in the assessment as it emerged from a country in revolt. Something that has to be recognized about this process is that it fails miserably on the text but succeeds on the institutional route. This is a very Chilean thing because it led to the street riot in front of the National Congress building. It was a convention without articulation. And those who could or should have practiced it, not knowing how to do it or not wanting to do it, allowed themselves to be carried away by the hegemony of this angry discourse.
Q. How did you find this angry speech conventional?
R. I’m essentially a moderate. And what interested me was how to build an agreement. I didn’t come with a constitutional idea or a concern. But what worried me, not to say uneasily, from the start was the lack of will to reach that agreement. A unique opportunity to create a broad space for democracy building was squandered by the intolerance and arrogance of groups within the Convention.
Q How do you see this new constitutional process being drafted by the parties in Congress?
R. If these parties and their representatives do not have the generosity to understand that they are necessary to give the ability to govern, but the agreement between them is not necessarily the agreement of the whole country, Chile risks giving birth to a constitutional text, but not to generate the legitimacy that gives necessity to this process from the start. Because this constituent path was born (in 2019) because these parties felt unable to represent a situation that prevailed on the streets during the outbreak. And the latest data we see in the Cadem poll is that 44% of Chileans say they would oppose the new text without reading it and 34% are in favour.
Q How do you understand the radical changes in Chilean public opinion?
R. Talk about the complexity of the times we live in. We want security, economic freedom to be able to implement and realize our projects, but also social security. However, the immediate and urgent mutate, but that doesn’t make the worries go away. Indeed, in Chile today we are witnessing levels of criminal violence that we were not aware of. And that’s people’s first priority from the moment you get it on top.
The journalist’s residence in Santiago Sofia Yanjari (EL PAÍS)
Q. How did you see President Boric going from questioning the carabineros to giving a speech of support?
R. I think it is necessary to lower the ball to the ground. The constituent process we are witnessing today is also an overly hasty, stomach-churning, and literal response to the rejection in the September 4, 2022 referendum. The President has come to govern a country, and when a politician resigns from a moat to the President of All Chileans are obliged to see reality in all its facets. I am very happy with the path he has taken. One of the things that makes me see him as someone capable of building government capability in the future is precisely his ability to integrate variants that he hasn’t integrated before and see a reality that he has not seen before in its breadth. One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is not seeing it.
Fr. Cristian Valdivieso, director of the Criteria survey center, said Boric did not have “sufficient credibility” to lead the security agenda.
A. It’s a complication. I think if this continues to work with immediate answers to problems that arise immediately, and therefore answers come in spurts, it will be difficult for President Boric to build credibility by passionately shifting from one position to another about what is what is in happened lately. Instead, he faces the challenge of translating his transformations and learning into a coherent discourse that explains, shapes. This government is not the same that started. It’s different today and I can see that with good eyes.
Q. Is the government in a learning process?
A: This education in which the Boric government also comes from society, in the sense that we are looking for ourselves. We want to be many things at the same time and have many conflicting demands. So what the Boric government is experiencing is not just the growing up of some young people, it is also a social process, as Chile is in a process of confusion and transformation. Today, Gabriel Boric no longer walks with the same character or with the same speech and beliefs [inamovibles] than the ones he had when he was MP.
Q. Are these changes related to the age of the President?
R. There is something that is forgotten in Chile. In one year of government, this generation has changed, adapted and changed. Some might say why do we have to pay for these boys to study? We forget that part of the left generation saying this today and accusing these others of being immature was the one who saw the collapse of democracy in Chile and cost it a 17-year dictatorship. There are people here who were part of Popular Unity, who said things and believed things, who pulled the strings in a certain way, and who emerge today as a shrill and revolutionary group that is nowhere near the shrillness that they Have had. itself. But the sharpness of the new generation of leftists has declined very progressively and rapidly. I am amazed at the speed of learning in this world of power. It is a government that moderates and tries to build stability in its dialogues. It was not a stubborn government.