It Could Happen Here - Chile and The Shock Of Victory

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

We talk to Chilean activists who spent months confronting riot police and tear gas and, wildly, kinda-sorta won. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast welcome to it happens sometimes the podcast where it's happened. Shit. Garrison, Chris, somebody, somebody, somebody pick this up. This is on you. Anybody? Nope. Anybody got help? Not bailing you out of this one. Okay. Well, you know what podcast this is. You've been listening presumably for months, or this is your first time listening. If so, I've probably lost you already with that

Bush League introduction. Jesus Christ. I'm Robert Evans. This is a show about how things fall apart and how to maybe stop them from falling apart as much. And today we're talking to some people who were in kind of the best case scenario situation for having a bunch of authoritarians try to dominate your country, by which I mean we're're talking to some Chilean activists who won in as much as it's possible to win in the world. It's a pretty exciting situation happening there. I'm excited to introduce people to like what's been going on. But first, I want to introduce our guests for today. Y'all want to say hello? Hello. My name is Jeremiah. I'm from the United States, but I've lived in Chile for the last 10 years. I'm Stephanie. I'm a Chilean and I live here with my husband. Hi, I'm Nicolas.

I'm Chilean and I have been living here for my whole life. Yeah, so we started a small group called Vecinos Unidos to do some activism to try to get out the vote for the Pueblocito to try to, tried to, last year to get the constitution approved to be voted on and it was successful. So we are proud of the small bit of work that we did to help that happen. And so today the constitution is being written and it's a very exciting time. Yeah. And I want to, let's pull back a little bit because the last time we talked about Chile on Behind the Bastards in 2019, when a protest that started as some I think it's fair to say Zoomers protesting a fare increase by like jumping fares at the at the underground, the subway was met with police doing police stuff, which was met with people taking to the streets in very significant numbers which is the thing that by now a lot more people are experienced with but unlike kind of what happened in my country you did it you made them blink and and that's what the plebiscite is right like the there was an agreement made to give because chile was still if i'm not

mistaken governed under the same constitution that that pinochet had had right um and pinochet famously not a great guy um so i wonder if you might give us kind of an overview of y'all's experience during that time from like the start of the protests to oh shit we might actually get to change things at a pretty fundamental level in our country? Yeah. So it was incredible time about exactly two years ago. So just the 18th of October was just the two year anniversary. And as you said, it all started with literal high schoolers, 16-year-olds who are protesting a 30 peso increase, which is, you know, like 20 cent increase in the metro. But we, of course, have one of the most expensive metros in the world and a very low minimum wage here. And so, as you said, they went out there and started to jump the turnstiles,

but in massive groups, hundreds of them going to the metro together and all jumping together. And in response, the government ended up closing the metros. And so it was this Friday night closing the metros. And so it was this Friday night and we were having dinner and suddenly the metros were all closed and everyone had to just walk home from work or dinner or where they were. And that was kind of the beginning of everything. And it was almost like the government brought it on themselves because suddenly there were thousands of people in the streets just because they had no other way to get home. And from there, there were protests and the protests were met with extreme police oppression and water cannons and tear gas and all of that. And eventually it led to one march, which had over a million people throughout Chile marching and a series of marches and protests basically every week for months.

And finally it came down to, they announced that there would be this plebiscite and it was a vote, yes or no, to create a new constitution. Because, yes, Chile is still, there were some reforms in the early 2000s to the constitution, but still we live under the constitution written by Jaime Guzman, kind of Pinochet's right-hand man. And we happen to live, Nico is our good friend and also our next-door neighbor. And we live about four blocks from the plaza, formerly Plaza Italia. Now the protesters have deemed it Plaza Dignidad. And so we've been just in the middle of it. And for a couple months, our whole neighborhood was like a war zone. And just really crazy protests every single day.

And tear gas and all of that. And it was really intense for a while and it still is, you know, last Friday we, you know, we're met with tear gas and water cannons again. So it's, it's, it's even though the kind of the constitution is being written again and the plebiscite was a year ago but the police are still out there um being bastards yeah i'm curious what each of you kind of sees as the moment when or if you because maybe i was going too optimistic right like i guess i'm wondering do you think that

a corner has been turned and and if so what was kind of the moment each of you felt that like, oh my god, we might actually, this isn't just going to be like showing up to get the shit kicked out of us. We're going to get some at least of what we're fighting for. What do you think? I think that that particular moment was when

we finally went to the election, I don't know what you call election, the referendum, for this new constitution. And we were kind of skeptical about the percentage of people who approved this new constitution. Because a few months ago, or a few weeks before this referendum, we had polls and they were kind of 50-50.

So we were kind of sceptic about are we going to have a new constitution or not? And the same night, I mean, the process is very quick. So after this thing closed at 6 p.m. and then you have the results like three hours later. So on the same day, we were having the results and it was like 80 against 20. So it was like kind of shocking.

I mean, I think that nobody was expecting to have this kind of 80% of the people in Chile where they went to throw I don't know, throw to the bin the Pinochet constitution. So it was kind of like, I don't know, I would say like the best moment. Yeah, there's this, there's an American, a deceased American sociologist

who wrote an essay that I find quite influential called The Shock of Victory. And it's about how activists often fail to take advantage of their momentum, like because they're kind of surprised at the success early on, and then they don't properly take advantage of what they have when they have it. And, you know, progress gets turned back, which I think we've seen happen in the United States in the wake of what happened here last summer. Why do you think that that hasn't happened in Chile? What do you think it is that that that enabled you all to actually keep the pressure on and take advantage of that that moment in time, which which never I guess that's what I'm impressed with the most is that you all did manage to to make that momentum work for you rather than kind of letting it pull you off balance. And I guess I'm just trying to get a handle on on how.

I guess for me, what I think gets lost a lot in the conversation is the primera linea. So the first line of defense. So the first line of defense. And so you have a bunch of young people, anarchists, you know, they're the delinquents. And, you know, we talk a lot about the big marches when there was a million people in the street. And obviously, like Nico said, winning the vote by 79% showed that it was something that everyone in Chile wanted, but it never would have happened if it weren't for the, this small group of, of fighters who were there every single day facing tear gas and water cannons and police beating them up with, you know, throwing rocks and stuff like that. So I think that's the main thing. It wasn't like

once a month or even once a week. It was every single day. And they were there on the front line. And none of this would be possible without them. That's fascinating to me because obviously things like that, groups like that existed here, like in Portland, went every night for not as long, but for not an insignificant amount of time. And it was those same. It was a lot of these kind of young anarchist frontliners who were willing to go toe to toe with the cops every night. But you didn't have you didn't have that kind of the more moderate people who still supported change around you because that that dynamic exists in any mass protest movement and i'm it it worked where you are and i'm trying to get a handle on maybe how it was different than than what i saw in portland uh so now a lot of them are in jail or without one eye. So it's really terrible because we have all these new beautiful process,

but we are without really a complete democracy with liberty for this guy or democracy for all this person that lose eyes or resultaron como heridos. Yeah, and everyone that was injured. So yeah, a lot of protests nowadays. Actually, I think today, right now, there's a protest going on to free the political prisoners. And, but yeah, I mean, I think there even among, you know, obviously, with 80% of the country voted for the new constitution. So there's a lot of different points of view there. But But yeah, there was division, constitution. So there's a lot of different points of view there,

but, but yeah, there was division even among the left. A lot of people said, you know, this is not the form of, this is not the way to protest and we should not be violent and, you know, burning things. And but, but there was a lot, I mean, you saw a lot of the opposite where people were saying, just as you said, like those out there on the front line are the reason that the older people and those who are less confrontational to be out there and protest. So for me, some of the most inspiring signs I remember seeing are folks that are 80 years old and they have signs that say, gracias a la primera linea, that say, you know, gracias a la primera linea, you know, like, thank you to the frontliners who are taking that violence so that they are able, the others, to protest in a more peaceful way. That's such a fascinating situation to me, that you've got these more radical frontliners who

were, as you say, critical in allowing this really groundbreaking change to occur in your society, but at the same time, things haven't changed enough that, number one, the cops who beat the shit out of them, I'm guessing, are still largely employed, and a bunch of them are in jail. Do you have much hope that, at the very least, there will be something to get these people out? Or is that maybe a bridge i don't know i i i don't know your country obviously as well you know i'm curious like do you feel like there's much hope in pushing for that because it seems like you know those people need to be free i mean most of these guys who are in prison and they have spent like oh no like 12 months in prison without any evidence so yeah it's only the

the word of the cops against them so after i know like 13 months 14 months they will finally get released because they hope they have no evidence or they could they may find that the police they made up all the evidence so the they finally go out but i mean you spend like almost a year in prison that's yeah me it's clearly like political i mean you're a political prisoner like they got they got you in prison with no evidence and who's gonna pay for that i mean you lost a year yeah welcome i'm Danny Trejo won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. We're talking so far about the sacrifices made here. What do you think with this new constitution, you and your your your fellow Chileans, what are you going to get? What are the changes that seem to be most concrete and the ones that you think are most important? I think already it's been groundbreaking. I believe it's the only constitution ever to be written by a plurality of women. by a plurality of women and also to have a representation from the indigenous peoples. And so it's already been very inspiring and groundbreaking.

The president of the Constitutional Convention is a very inspiring Mapuche leader, woman. And the good thing is that the right represents less than one third of the constitutional convention. So they don't have the power to block anything as far as only by the right. So we will see. But they literally just started writing the Constitution last week. there a kind of a broad agreement that one of the things that needed to happen here was a redress of grievances between the indigenous people um and the and the the state because it sounds like that's a significant chunk of what's what's been already agreed upon just by like how this is coming together yeah so uh well nico could probably tell a lot more about this than I could, but there's a big deal with the United, with the indigenous people in the South and the government basically waging war against the indigenous people.

Actually, two weeks ago, Pinera, the current right-wing president, declared a state of emergency in the South, and he just extended it for 15 more days. So we have the military in the South, and they are, you know, with the tanks and attacking the Mapuche and other indigenous people there. indigenous people there. And so, yeah, a big aspect of Chile right now is the fight between and the oppression of the government against the native people. And it's a cultural thing, too. I mean, it's really heavy. Everyone, most people here in Chile are mixed, you know, between the natives and the white men and everything and, you know, the Europeans. But the Mapuche and the other indigenous groups have really not received a lot of respect in the last 30 years.

And so, yeah, that's a big aspect yeah i will say like for me it's very inspiring to have like the president of this new constitution to be a mapuche woman so um yeah i mean um i guess like the most important thing like the the the thing that the this indigenous people want to claim is their land i mean land for them is the most important thing and that's what the government i mean for the last 300 years they have been taking from to them and they are now like trying to claim again their their their space so i mean let's hope that this new constitution will bring them back their land, the respect that they deserve.

There's been a lot of discussion about this new constitution as, I think, the term used is an ecological constitution. And it's the necessity of it addressing a lot of the, not just climate change, but a lot of the things caused by climate change, like unequal access to water. There's been discussion, I think Ezio Costa of

the FIMA NGO is arguing currently that the Constitution needs to enshrine a human right to water and recognize it as a common good. It's obviously, again, they're writing it this week, so it's kind of unclear if that's going to happen. But I'm wondering kind of what you what y'all think it's actually because as you've talked about, you know, with the protests ongoing, with the military being deployed in the south, this is not a finished fight. It's just a fight that a lot of progress has been made on. What do you think is reasonable to expect from this new constitution in terms of of climate change in terms of ecological justice i will say the right of the of water so water is privatized here so chileans here in santiago we have to pay a spanish company for our water? Sure.

I would say the economy in this country is based on extractivism. The most productive thing is mining and then you have forestry. All these things have an enormous impact on the environment. The people in Chile,

the people who live right next to these kind of things they don't get anything from them I mean the poorest places are like right next to the forestries right next to the mining so it's kind of

like we are creating a lot of income from these things but we're not getting anything from them I mean also it's not like a thing like let's get everything back to the state, I mean to the state because it's more than that, it's just like ecological equality, equity. Yeah, it's not saying we should take all of the private water and give it to the state as much as it's saying everyone who lives here has a personal right to enough water to survive. Yeah, so you have towns where small little towns and they don't have any water to drink because all of their water is going to the farm owned by Nestle to make, you know, to grow avocados to sell to

Europe and the United States. So, yeah, it's it's. It's a pretty crazy thing. One of the things that's most interesting to me about your situation is you you are in a place where not entirely dissimilar dissimilar from the united states you have a police and a military that are heavily dominated by by right-wing ideology um obviously like the united states is partly responsible for that in your case we we funded it for a very long time um and uh and so it's still an ongoing fight. But at the same time, clearly, the people are unhappy enough with that situation and hold like they were able to make they were able to force the folks with with guns to to recognize that they can't hold on to everything that they wanted to hold on to. And I guess I'm, how can we do that? I'm very impressed by like, and, you know, watching from the sidelines, I was just so happy to see this not go where I think we were all scared it might go, you know, in either the direction of like Syria, where it turns into this horrible bloodbath or where everything gets crushed.

You know, and I I'm wondering, like, why you think on a on a broader scale, what do you think was responsible for those people with access to the guns deciding we can't hold on to this? Like, yeah, I'm just I'm so intensely I'm so intensely curious about that. Cause it's, it's, it's important for a lot of people in a lot of other parts of the world. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think it was just the, the protest and the daily protest and, and just getting out there, keeping the pressure on. And at some point, you know, it's like, Hey, this is not good for the economy, you know, like, so all of the rich people and, you know, the 10 families that are in control of, you know, 60 or 70% of the wealth of the country. And equality.

had to recognize that this was something that had reached its boiling point and they could no longer respond with just force because they tried it and it didn't work for months. And it was just months and months of protests. And obviously that caused a hit to the economy and that caused a hit to the wallets of the ultra rich. And so at some point they realized that they had no other move to play than to accept it in some way. And that's how we got this new constitution that is being written. this new constitution that is being written. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One thing I'm interested about is the geography of the protest. Because I know Chile is a very urban population.

And also, it's like a quarter of the population or something lives in Santiago? Or like in that area? More than a third, I think. Wow. I just want to note, if I'm not mistaken, there were only five. You have kind of communes instead of states is what they're called. Like 10 voted in favor of the referendum and only five voted against it, if I'm not mistaken? Well, communes are within cities.

Oh, within cities. So it's not like different communes. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. It's like boroughs in New York. But we have different regions instead of states. Right. And I think they all voted. Yeah, there might be like seven who voted.

But what you might be thinking of um yeah robert you might be thinking of communes in santiago where santiago is very um so it's all on the rio mapocho the the river which goes east to west across the city and basically you have this like very rich part on the East and up into the Hills. And, and then it gets poorer and poorer as you go to the West. And yeah,

for the vote for the constitution, it was everyone voted for the constitution, except for these communes, these ultra rich in the east oh wow amazing okay something I was also curious about this was so when the protests were going on

because you know Chile's had like huge protests before I mean even the last sort of decade what I was interested also with this time is like well hey what do you think is different about this than say like 2011 2013 and then b in terms of like the geographic breakdown of where people are and where they're going is it that you know so so you you have this you have this

classifying the city but we're we're we're the working class districts like were people staying there in those districts or were they like moving from those places, like to protest inside of the richer urban areas? students protest and then you have like you know like a university protest but when we have like this protest like that we like the one we have in 2019 is like something that unites everyone I mean you don't have to be a student you don't have to go to university to protest I mean it's something that is affecting everyone I mean the fares of the metro, they affect everything. The inequality in the country affects everyone. So, I mean, I guess that's the thing that made this protest of 2019 unique in this term. Yeah, and I think it was actually a problem when all the protests were happening. A lot of people were saying, we can't keep going to the plaza.

The cops are just going to wait for us in the plaza. And, you know, it's going to be a shit show. And we need to, you know, protest all over. And there were protests across Chile in every single major city. But I will say the majority of the protests have been here in the plaza and close to La Moneda, where the presidential palace, but some of the most memorable protests... And the Costanera Center too.

And the Costanera Center, the tallest building in Latin America, which is a mall and a monument to this idea that Piñera has of Chile being an oasis in South America. We're not like other countries, we're like the United States, you know, we're this capitalist oasis. But yeah, so some of the most memorable protests, they weren't super common, but were exactly that, where the people said, you know what, we're not going to the plaza. We're going to Costanera Center, or we're going to Vitacura. We're going to where the millionaires live, where they work. And those were really powerful. And so that's when you started to see like all of those banks and malls and just blocks and blocks of what the rich folk like to call San Hatton, you know, Santiago, Manhattan, the skyscraper part of the city. And it was just all boarded up, you know, because there were definitely a couple weeks where the protests went that way. And and yeah, it was inspiring. What I keep coming back to when I look about like why it worked, it wasn't because the frontliners just kept the pressure up because the frontliners did in a lot of places here, the frontliners stayed out well after everyone else stopped coming out it's that the population kept up the pressure like the the there were like chile as a as a as a nation as a as a people kept up the pressure

in a pretty significant way um as opposed to kind of fading back after the first couple of weeks. And I mean, I think I'm sure the question of why it happened has a lot to do with, like you said, inequality, you know, things that have been going on for decades. It's a complex situation. But it does seem like that's one of the big takeaways that if you can secure, even in, even in a pretty terrifying situation, a lot of concessions, a lot of, uh, of what you need, but, but people have to, have to keep putting themselves out there. Yeah, absolutely. I would say it's a couple of things. Um, one is, um, as you mentioned, I think it's like the culture of protests here, you know, especially in the last 10 years, like with the Revolución Penguino in 2011, you know, and there were

and the feminist protests, the 8M. And so it's not something that just happened two years ago. It's the last decade or two has been the people, especially the young people going out there and protesting. And that's one thing that's inspiring about Boric, the candidate for president. The election is next month. So the left-wing candidate, Boric, and he came out of that movement. He was a student protester and a leader of the student movement. And so I think it's like, it grew out of that. It grew out of kids in high school saying, this is just what we do. This is normal. We go out there and protest when shit happens. And the other thing is, yeah, you know, we always say here in Chile, after the protest started,

it's not 30 pesos, it's 30 years, you know, 30 years of neoliberalism, of this revolving door of center right and center left and just continuing on with the economic oppression. And the other thing I feel like people don't understand is that people either think Chile is like the United States or they think it's like Peru or something. And it's really neither. or something you know and it's really neither in chile the the minimum wage is half of what the united states is which is already terrible yeah yeah but um the cost of living here is almost the same as you guys in portland i mean not the housing probably but like you know food and stuff yeah yeah it's like europe you know, food and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Europe, you know,

I could move to Berlin and live cheaper than here, you know, but it is hard to three times that, you know? So, so I think it's, that's the other thing is people just, they, they had no other choice, you know, and they were just bored down by, by 30 years, you know, after 20 years of a dictatorship, 30 years of of this terrible wages and just neoliberalism. And so so I think it's partially that and partially just like the culture of protests that grew out of the student movements in in the early 2000s yeah there was one thing i was interested also interested about that i don't remember seeing much of at the time was what was chilean organized labor doing during this

uh it's a good question honestly labor hasn't been a big part of the protest, at least from my point of view. You know, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it took a pretty strong hit during the Pinochet years, if I'm not mistaken. So there was kind of that, like, I guess that does make sense. Sure. Yeah. Honestly, I don't know a whole lot about labor history here in Chile. uh sure yeah honestly i don't know a whole lot about labor history here in chile but um but yeah it definitely is i mean you would see you know um union groups in the streets uh here and there but um but but definitely they weren't a leading voice in the protest i would say yeah so i guess that leads into the other i guess one one of the other things that from my understanding has been happening all across Latin America, but in Chile in particular, is the rise of the informal sector and people just sort of not having access to sort of stable wages and labor and i'm wondering about okay so organized laborers like so the classical

unions aren't really involved in this and i guess i'm i'm interested in how if i'm right that that you're dealing with a lot of people who aren't doing traditional labor stuff what was the process that was able to get people mobilized is like especially people who just have no sort of like people people who are in the informal sector and people who aren't involved in the sort of older classical organizations yeah i don't know i guess i would just say uh it's like that that culture of protest um that comes from the the young people uh in the last 20 years then, of course, the older folks who, you know, lived through the dictatorship. And of course, there were an incredible protest at that time, too. And so I don't know. I mean, honestly, I was even after living here for, you know, six years, um, I was shocked. I never thought it would

come to this. I never thought I would see, you know, over half a million people in the streets of Santiago. Um, and, and I would never, never thought we'd see a new constitution. So, um, I don't know. I don't, I don't have the answers. It's surprising to me. But what I will say, though, is I don't want to paint a rosy portrait of Chile right now because if like we mentioned, you know, tomorrow night, if you guys go to Galleria CIMA on YouTube orI-M-A, on YouTube or Instagram. They have a live feed of the plaza four blocks from our house. And every Friday, you know, the protests come out. And sometimes the cops are there right away. And they make a whole perimeter with 200 cops and all of the, you know,

tanks and everything blocking entrance to the plaza in every direction. Sometimes they let the people protest, but then at 10 o'clock, you know, after the sun comes down, they come out there and, you know, it's the same thing. We had a young woman was killed a couple of weeks ago. Jesus. Yeah. was killed a couple weeks ago jesus yeah so and the other thing is that we have this election coming up and uh this guy uh cast extreme right winger pino chetista um just like they call him

the chilean bolsonaro like a real piece of shit and uh he has has he has really risen in the polls in the last month or two. The right wing candidate, Sitchell, who won the right wing primaries and was kind of going to be the successor to Piñera, the current right wing president, because in Chile, you know, you can't run consecutive, you can't have consecutive terms. But Sitchel just kind of was not a great candidate and kind of blew it. And he went down and now Kast is going up. And it's really scary to think about Kast getting into the second round, where it will probably be him versus Boric. And so, yeah, you know, even though the Constitution was approved by 79% of the country, you know, it's very possible that this election is going to come down to a runoff between a,

you know, moderate socialist like Boric, not the most extreme leftist. In fact, known as Amarillo, you know, very yellow bellied here in Chile. That's his nickname. But it will probably right now it's looking like it's going to come down to him and cast who is like almost a return to the dictatorship. So, yeah, it's pretty scary. Geez. So it's just this. There's just so much fighting to do.

It's just so much fighting to do. I mean, I. Yeah. to do. I mean, I yeah. Do you have, do any of you have anything else you want to make sure you say or talk about before we kind of close out for the day? I don't know. I will say like three days ago, I just

paid my, I finally paid my whole student loan. It was like, I've been working for more than 10 years of my life since I finished university and I've been wasting, I mean 10 years in my life since I finished the university and I've been wasting all my savings I just pay this fucking student loan I guess that you guys

in the United States are the same except for people don't pay off their student loan it just stays there forever I would like to wish to the Yeah, we just don't. It just stays there forever. And I just I would like to wish to the coming

people that, I mean, I don't wish that future for my from, I mean, for the future people in this country, I don't wish anyone that. I mean, university, I mean, all students should be

studying for free. I mean, it's like mean, all students should be studying for free. I mean, it's like inconceivable for me. Yeah. So that was a big part of it. And then also the IFP pension system here, which is totally privatized. And so the government just takes your money for retirement. So the government just takes your money for retirement. You get to choose between four or five options, which are private companies.

And then if you make money, then the company takes their chunk of your retirement as the payment for managing your fund. But if you lose money, then it's on you. So literally, you know, Steffi's mom is like, you know, checking on her retirement. How did I do this year? It's like, oh, you lost $2,000 this year. That's your retirement savings, you know. So you and you have, you know, people here trying to live on, you know, retirements of one hundred dollars a month while the military is receiving ten thousand dollars a month. You know, so that was a big part of it. But I think what I always come back to here in Chile is, like we've said, the activist renamed the Plaza, Plaza Dignidad. And that's what it all comes down to is just, we're not asking for, you know, ponies, as Hillary Clinton would say, we're not, we're not asking for the moon. We're just asking for basic dignity

that everyone deserves. And it's as simple as that. So we just have to cross our fingers and hope that we've done enough that, you know, at a minimum, you know, people can survive what's coming, which it's it's nice to see at the very least that that's a central topic of discussion. Whereas in the United States, everyone in power seems fine with just ignoring the increasing profits for now. So I don't know. You know, I again, I also don't want to be painting too rosy a picture. As you've made repeatedly clear, there's a lot of struggle left still. But at least you've achieved a lot. And I'm just heartened by hearing your story and hope that more people pay attention to what's happened there and

try to take lessons from it. Because I think we all need to be gearing up, as I'm sure y'all will continue to do. Anything else before we close out? No, that's it. I mean, I completely agree. I think that just like the message is that like, better things are possible. Like real change can happen. You know, like this started two years ago with high schoolers protesting, and now we're going to have a vote on a new constitution and it's going to be an ecological constitution, a plurinational national constitution with respect for the indigenous people. It's, it's, it's written by, you know, an equal amount of men and women and everything. And, and so, yeah, just, I think for me, it's so easy for us who have grown up in, you know, under the gloom of neoliberalism to just get really depressed and fatalistic about it.

And so for me, I feel the same way. Like, it's just such an inspiration. And the Chilean and especially the Chilean youth. But yeah, it's just an inspiration and proof that change can happen. But it's not just voting. And, you know, like Chileans have elected socialists, you know, the former president was a socialist, but it was just the same You know, the former president was a socialist, but it was just the same neoliberalism bullshit. So I think, you know, voting is great, but like that's just not enough. And so you have I hope you have a lovely rest of your day and a lovely continuing to stick it to the sons of bitches. All right. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Brass. Thanks for listening. by the most terrifying legends and lords of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.