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Chile: Progress and its discontents | The Economist

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Chile
A popular student rebellion shows that, as Chileans become
better off, they want the government to guarantee a fairer
society. Politicians are struggling to respond
Apr 14th 2012 | SANTIAGO | from the print edition

IN A
ritual
marking
the start
of the

academicyear, last month the streets of Santiago were full of students
dressed in colourful combinations of rags and body paint politely
seeking donations from passers-by in the late-summer sunshine. Many
of their predecessors had spent their summer holidays swotting, having
devoted last year to occupying classrooms and taking to the streets in
their tens and hundreds of thousands, in sometimes violentdemonstrations to demand free and better higher education. This mass
popular protest, and the huge public sympathy it aroused, took the

12/04/2012 04:01 p.m.

Chile: Progress and its discontents | The Economist

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centre-right government of Sebastián Piñera by surprise, leaving it
floundering.
The habit of protest seems to becatching on. Thousands of residents of
Aysén, a remote region in Patagonia, have blocked roads to demand
cheaper petrol and in protest over a new fishing law. Similar regional
protests have occurred in Calama, a mining area in the northern desert,
and (last year) in Punta Arenas.
Such protests have been commonplace for years in Peru, a poorer and
more diverse country. But Chile? In the twodecades since General
Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship gave way to democracy, Chile has stood
out in Latin America for its rapid growth, social progress, political
stability and relatively robust institutions. Now Chile’s political leaders
are wondering if they are seeing a popular rebellion against “the
model”, as some call the free-market policies bequeathed by Pinochet
and left largely intactby his successors.
Two years ago Mr Piñera, a billionaire businessman, led the centre-right
Alliance to power after two decades of rule by the centre-left
Concertación coalition. When his government organised a successful
rescue of 33 trapped miners in October 2010, his approval rating soared
to 63%, says Adimark, a pollster. Thanks mostly to the students, it is
now just 29%.
Part of theproblem is that Mr Piñera has proved to be an inept
politician—a view not confined to the opposition. The government was
slow to respond to the student protests. The president zigzagged
between talking tough and giving in, undercutting his ministers in the
process. The latest casualty was the energy minister, who resigned over
the mishandling of the Aysén protest. The public dislikes Mr Piñera’sarrogance. “He has convinced Chileans that he’s very intelligent, but he
hasn’t convinced them he has a heart,” says Arturo Fontaine of the
Centre for Public Studies (CEP), a liberal think-tank.
But the public is equally dismissive of the Concertación. At just 21%,
its approval rating is even lower than the governing Alliance (24%),
according to Adimark. Rather, the emblematic figure ofChile’s year of
discontent is Camila Vallejo, a 23-year-old Communist student leader.
Having been an irrelevance on the margin of Chile’s two-party system,
the Communist Party enjoys “more influence than at any time in the
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past 20 years,” says GuillermoTeillier, its president.
What makes this collapse of public confidence in the system odder is
that in many ways Chile continues to thrive. The economy is growing
by 6% a year, and with virtually full employment, wages are rising
equally fast. The government has done a reasonable job of
reconstruction after a severe earthquake two years ago.
Less poor, still unequal
In opinion polls the...