National Strike Shows the Strength and Limits of Chilean Protests
National Strike Shows the Strength and Limits of Chilean Protests
(Bloomberg) -- A national strike failed to paralyze Chile on Tuesday, yet offered little respite for a government reeling from the worst civil unrest in a generation.
While port workers and some miners downed tools, Santiago’s public transport system kept operating, building works continued and shops remained open. Most of the giant copper mines in the north were unaffected.
“The border posts and airports are working normally,” the deputy Interior Minister Rodrigo Ubilla said. “Turn out for the strike has been quite low” in the state sector.
Protesters had hoped the strike would raise the economic cost of the unrest, ramping up pressure on the government to cede to demands for better healthcare, education, pensions and transport. As it was, it showed the limitations of a mass movement that remains largely leaderless. That may come as little comfort for the government though.
“The strike showed that this isn’t going to be resolved with a simple list of demands, but through a long, complex process of dialogue with citizens,” said Noam Titelman, a research assistant at the Universidad de Chile.
Political parties, social movements and even the labor unions have been bypassed by the protests and riots, he said.
New Constitution
“It has gone badly for anyone who tried to become their spokesman,” Titelman said.
As an example of that, thousands turned out for fresh demonstrations in Santiago and other major cities on Tuesday, blocking the main thoroughfares in largely peaceful protests. Yet, there were no public speakers at the events.
In an attempt to placate the protesters, Chile’s center-right government gave its backing to plans to write a new constitution on Sunday.
The announcement created near panic in financial markets, which feared a new constitution would undermine the free-market policies that have created enormous wealth in Chile, and enormous inequality. The peso fell as much as 7% over the past two days, dropping to a record low, while the benchmark IPSA stock index slid 3.6% over the same period.
Only a verbal intervention from the central bank, which said it had the tools available to control the volatility, prevented the peso from going still lower.
As the protests near the end of a fourth week and police brace for another night of skirmishes, Chile’s social upheaval shows no signs of coming to an end.
--With assistance from Maria Jose Campano, Eduardo Thomson and Sebastian Boyd.
To contact the reporter on this story: Philip Sanders in Santiago at psanders@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Cancel at dcancel@bloomberg.net, James Attwood
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.