Chile: Social Revolt in Advanced Neoliberalism

Abstract

The Chilean social revolt is analyzed under the depth and duration of the neoliberal transformation, and the specificity of the popular subject that emerges from the contradictions and conflicts typical of said conditions. The character of the crisis and its origin in such social and cultural conditions are discussed, rather than in a conjunctural economic or political crisis, unlike other regional experiences. The changes in the Chilean social structure, of classes and social groups, in the last decades, and the new conflicts and polarities linked to it, are reviewed. The inability of the political sphere to process such conflict and its overflow, typical of an ongoing legitimacy crisis, is addressed. Finally, it is proposed that there are underlying social, political and cultural conditions for the emergence of a new people, capable of opening a new historical cycle, whose specificity distinguishes it from the one that in the twentieth century faced the old oligarchic-agrarian order.