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Editor's Note: Winner of the Marta Brunet Prize for the novel Allegados (2017) and professor of the Creative Campus of the Andrés Bello University. His new novel that will be published soon is called "Own House."
(CNN Spanish) - I read the Chilean morning headlines with the news that former foreign ministers are worried about the country image after the cancellation of the Apec, where the US-China trade war was expected to end, and the Cop25, with Chile leading the environmental struggle
This political elite seems to be concerned about a mirage manufactured only for the outside and far from reality. This is not an oasis in Latin America, we are only talking about an excellent advertising slogan that has been falling apart in front of our eyes for 14 days: since the fierce social outbreak of an OECD country began, developing and with enviable figures for any neighbor in the region: almost 25 thousand dollars per capita, steady growth in recent decades and a postcard that has been a magnet for immigrants with such a dream to achieve Chile.
But there is no such Chilean dream. There is no Chilean dream. Do you understand it or do I say it in Russian? This is and has been more of a nightmare for a large majority since the Chicago Boys * forced their fierce model of wild capitalism in the 1970s and privatized our rights. A state of affairs that democracy only continued to apply with very few corrections towards social needs.
My origin is from extreme poverty. My mother, an elderly mother, was single. He didn't get married, ergo, I'm huacho, I don't have a father. A few years ago, the current Minister of Justice fully defended the legislation that left me and all illegitimate children without the same rights as a child born in marriage. Those same ministers who are now part of a government that says they have heard the message of the demonstrations, publicly and shamelessly defended inequality.
With my sick mother we live 20 years of close friends, that is, from house to house, from roof to roof. 20 years without your own home! I repeat: my origin is from extreme poverty and I had to borrow from the so-called tax credit of my time to pay for my university education in a public institution such as that of Universidad Chile.
Billionaire Sebastián Piñera was able to study for free at the university in Chile of his time. In the country that destroyed Pinochet's coup in 1973 and in the country that people like his brother José Piñera (inventor of the questioned Pension Fund Administrators) helped raise for the convenience of economic groups but not the population, I I finished paying for my education just at age 43. I am indebted to pay an apartment and I just paid with much effort, like all Chileans, this year's contributions. I pursue my debts to annihilate with anxiety, while Sebastián Piñera has not given a public apology for owing 30 years of tax contributions. 30 years!
Why do I talk about my pension. I don't think about her because I'm realistic. As things stand, there is no future in Chile for the elderly: the highest suicide rate is in the range of older adults. With an average of 256 thousand pesos (US $ 344) per month of retirement, you cannot live, just die slowly.
This cruel model gives almost monarchical privileges to only 1% of the population, a group of millionaires and super millionaires (eleven of them on the Forbes list) who became the owner of almost 30% of our wealth. The rest, the vast majority, live on miserable third world salaries with a European cost of living. That is why only 30 pesos were enough on the rise, a new rise in the Santiago subway, to crush and break the spell.
Chile woke up. He opened his eyes angrily, tired of enduring the corruption of this political, economic and military elite: collusions of private parties, laws dictated by the management of the companies, billions of pesos in fraud in the army and police. Add decades of abuse, deactivation of the social fabric and the construction of an individualistic ethos, explain the great discontent, anger and the explosion of violence.
And what was Piñera's response? Eat pizza in a Smurf restaurant while Santiago burned. And then, desperate, take the military to the streets and do the best cosplay of the dictatorship ever organized by a president in democracy. The numbers of human rights abuses rise day by day and the brutal repression of police officers tells statistics that include sexual abuse! and that also consider more than 100 people with eye damage as a result of police shooting. Inexplicably, it turns out to me that an observer from the INDH (National Institute of Human Rights) was injured with seven balls in his body.
I do not justify the looting or destruction of public goods such as the subway. They are condemnable acts of barbarism. I just try to explain the brutal violence expressed in an apocalyptic scenario in which we are and where the elite say they have heard the message that the exemplary and peaceful march of one million two hundred thousand people sent from the street: "no more abuse", "no more privileges. "
There were already major student social protests in 2006 and 2011. The message is being sent for a while. But this little Versailles that governs and governs us from all the pillars of life, this Versailles that says he is listening to us, still does not listen. To placate three decades of abuse, a discreet presidential pardon is not enough, neither economic crumbs nor less enjoy a pizza sitting on the summit and with the social hell burning under his feet. A makeshift cabinet change much less helps: The incoming Interior Minister was elected at the last minute and during the televised broadcast!
To the ex-chancellors and members of the elite I propose this other image instead of the country image. Are you ready? Focus on this: An old woman who was sick and worked all her life and then only got a miserable retirement, dying in the public service. This old lady is my mother. She, behind her oxygen mask, is crying because she knows she is going to die and she will leave me alone in this bloody and Spartan Chile that belongs to 1%. You can't tell me with your voice. He can barely breathe. He writes it tremblingly in a green notebook with his last breath.
"Take care child, nobody else will take care of you here."
That happened 20 years ago, I was poor and despite the passage of time, I sadly note that nothing has changed. Any.
ProtestsSebastián Piñera