The mayor of La Pintana, Claudia Pizarro, during the interview with EL PAÍS, on September 1, 2022. Cristian Soto Quiroz
Claudia Pizarro (Pedro Aguirre Cerda, 57 years old) says that when she was a child her parents lived "in a hole."
They left there to occupy a plot without water or electricity.
The school was run on a bus and since there wasn't even a church, communion was taken in the patio of a house.
Little Claudia began to work with the priests and in the eighties she joined the Christian Democracy.
In 2016, her neighbors elected her mayor.
In 2021, she tripled the number of votes and repeated her mandate.
The history of the Pizarro family is that of the founders of La Pintana, a dormitory town of 180,000 inhabitants that has the highest poverty rates in the Santiago metropolitan region.
The per capita income of its inhabitants is 180 dollars per month, ten times less than in the richest communes.
Pizarro keeps the bullet casings that neighbors find on the street in a plastic cup.
And he shows the hole left in the wall of his office by the bullet that someone fired at him from the street.
He says that this was the price of fighting drug trafficking in his district.
Today he is one of the most visible faces of the campaign for the approval of a new Constitution.
In this interview with EL PAÍS he recounts the efforts to reverse the fear that the new text arouses among the poorest.
Question
.
How has it been to defend approval in La Pintana?
Response.
It has been more complex than in previous elections, because this is not a typical election like the presidential or parliamentary ones.
It has not only been difficult for them to open the doors for us, but also to introduce a collective concept of what is to come, far from the individualistic and competitive vision that we have had for more than 40 years.
This new Chile that we want to promote invites you to look at us as a whole, to worry about others.
That is why it has been difficult for people to be willing to listen.
The Constitution has many concepts that we have never heard of, such as plurinationality, and that is scary.
Here not only was an economic model established by blood and fire, the social fabric was also broken.
But the community of La Pintana believes us.
When Claudia Pizarro goes, they settle down, they know I'm not going to lie to them.
Q.
Are the poorest afraid of the new Constitution?
A.
In 2020, 88% of La Pintana voted to change the Constitution.
And my bet, without any study to back me up, is that the approval will reach 60% on Sunday.
I have not seen community leaders, only on Sunday they called us to meet at the National Stadium and four mayors of more than fifty arrived.
Q.
Why does rejection lead the polls?
R.
Fear is for change.
This is a very vulnerable dormitory commune, and if you don't have a job you can't pay for your family's or your health;
and the pandemic is there latent.
The Constitution is like in the background for all those people.
Q.
Was it not in the foreground an error in the campaign for approval?
R.
_
It was a bad campaign, very short.
It is not that the main command did more things, but we did not carry out a united and coordinated campaign.
Because there was little time or because we didn't see it coming, I don't know.
And it has caught my attention that in the conversations I have with the neighbors it is that they are entangled.
Today they see people from the center-left as faces of rejection, whereas before they were elsewhere.
They tell you that they do not understand anything, they are afraid and confused.
P.
What will happen on Monday?
A.
There will be a very narrow margin for both sides.
The scenario that is coming is complex and bridges will have to be built on both sides, because we need to move forward, we cannot allow the country to catch fire.
There are those who think that the process should be left in the hands of a mixed commission, a new convention or Parliament.
And then in three more years we are going to see something, but people are not ready for that scenario.
Q.
How do you explain a new Constitution?
R. It is super complex.
And there has been a good rejection campaign, which has penetrated very strongly from the media.
People believe that what is on TV is the truth.
That is why we have spent all this time clarifying what we have not done, on the defensive, and we spend a lot of time on that.
We spend clarifying fake news, not how positive the new Constitution is.
P.
In his re-election he tripled the vote of his first victory.
How did he do it?
R. It is very difficult for me to be an authority, I like to be horizontal.
And I also faced a lot of drug trafficking.
People look at that change.
I received a commune full of garbage, and people had a feeling of abandonment.
We put flowers, lights, we started talking about drug trafficking.
And I speak with reason, because I come from poverty, I have poverty scars that hurt me and it reminds me of it.
More than a party, I am faithful to that feeling.
I have had my entire right leg burned since I was two years old due to an accident at home.
My grandmother ran out of gas and she lit a brazier in the middle of the living room to cook.
And I fell on the brazier with firewood.
For a long time I was covered.
Today I am mayor and when I look in the mirror I remember where I come from.
P.
Is the resident of La Pintana stigmatized?
A.
Don't go in there, they tell you.
P.
And how does that affect the population?
R.
You have to be very brave to get ahead, because here you suffer more than in the rest of the metropolitan region.
People get up at five in the morning to be at work at eight.
That subtracts hours of rest and with his family.
They are very hard-working and are used to being tough to get ahead.
Q.
How do you see Chile and President Gabriel Boric?
R.
I see him as an honest person.
And for that generation of young kids, who are not from my party, it worked out for them.
Nobody bet on them, and I find it admirable that one of them is the president of the Republic.
I remember that in my party when democracy returned there were the same people as in 1973. There had been no renewal.
These [young] kids didn't have the obstacles of the old politicians and they advanced faster.
They didn't leave my generation.
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