Social Movements, Constitutional Change and Transitional Justice in Chile (2019-2023)

In South America, with the end of the civic-military dictatorships that ruled almost all the countries of the Southern Cone in the frame of Operation Condor (Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile) between the '60s and the ´80s, we can see the start of different legal responses to the State Crimes committed, reestablishing democracy and rule of law in the region. Since the mid-1980s, Latin America has seen an intense period of constitutional change, as almost all countries either adopted new constitutions. After the worldwide known Chilean Uprisings in 2019 (“estallido”), Chile started a political and legal process to substitute the 1980 Constitution, a strong political symbol of Pinochet's dictatorship era (1973-1990). On the 27th of October 2020, Chileans massively voted in favor of the beginning of this new constitutional process that could play an important role in the unfinished Chilean transition to democracy. On the 4th of September 2022, the First Draft of the Constitution presented by the elected Constitutional Convention was overwhelmingly rejected by Chilean citizens. In 2023 a “Committee of Experts” wrote a new draft that had to be discussed by a “Constitutional Council” and then voted through a new Referendum on the 17th of December 2023. This second draft was also rejected, through different arguments and positions by social movements and parties of the Chilean political spectrum. Here we seek to investigate the post-"estallido" constitutional process in Chile, to understand its relationship with the transitional period and its unresolved issues. The preliminary results of a 2 months fieldwork in Chile will be presented, in order to share some insights on the processes of political and social change from the point of view of differect actors interviewed in Santiago.