If the life of contemporary societies were a little more rational, more mathematical, the anti-popular elites would have serious difficulties in staying in government and imposing their policies for the simple reason that they are increasingly a minority, and the dissatisfied masses (who are increasingly day they are more nourished) would throw them out of power. But things are not that simple. It turns out that the elites have the repressive apparatus to maintain order by force. And, above all, they have the pernicious tendency of the masses to shoot themselves, supporting their executioners.
What happened a week ago in Chile is another of the many proofs of this: the masses get a chance for change, paying a high cost in lives, injuries, arrests and other suffering, but when the time comes to make that change happen, the collective loops, turns against itself, betrays itself.
And then the elites throw big celebrations because what more can a tiny group of privileged ask for if they have a people that does not dare to change and, consequently, votes in favor of the dominant interests? If it rains like this, let it not clear up, they say.
During the week I read several comments about very poor people, not owners of property or fortune, excluded from the possibility of social advancement through education (in Chile that is little less than impossible), exploited to the extreme by an inclement labor system , but who went to vote for the Rejection and woke up on Monday very happy because the threat that “they would take away what was theirs” had dissipated.
There is a reason why it is said that the best invention of capitalism is the ” poor right-wing “, the one who lives segregated from society, plundered with impunity, sometimes in the harshest misery, but thinks with the head of the owner, the banker, the millionaire.
This phenomenon has occurred in recent years in practically all of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba. In Venezuela, we must remember that in 2007 the referendum on the Constitutional Reform was lost, which was essential on the road to socialism, because many poor people who did not even have a couple of steaks in their fridge (some did not have a fridge either) he got it into their heads that communism was going to take away from them a hypothetical and nebulous butcher shop that belonged to them, perhaps in some parallel universe. And the real owners of the cows, the slaughterhouses, the refrigerators and the real butcher shops celebrated the defeat of the constitutional change, presumably with succulent barbecues.
In the Argentina that, after the most obscene neoliberal looting, finally raised its head during the progressive governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández, the masses favored by their social policies, went out one bad day to vote for Mauricio Macri, an outright rich man that put them back in “their place”, that is, in poverty.
In the Uruguay that the socialist governments of Tabaré Vásquez and Pepe Mujica built, the citizens got bored with so much progressivism and voted for the candidate of the elites, Luis Lacalle Pou. Now, official policies are stifling public education and teachers and students have taken to the streets to protest that the right-wing government is behaving like a right-wing government. And how did they expect him to behave when they voted against the left?
In the Ecuador that came out of the pit thanks to Rafael Correa, the people allowed the flagrant betrayal of Lenín Moreno and then voted for one of the richest men there. A few months after Guillermo Lasso was elected, the Andean country was already a limelight. Once again, the masses are furious that their elected millionaire runs the country as if he were his bank.
All these cases are painful, but Chile’s is especially lacerating. In the first place, because the Constitution that remains in force after the defeat of the Constitutional Convention proposal is the one imposed more than 40 years ago by the gorilla Pinochet, a bloodthirsty dictator whom the Chilean elites love (and part of the masses also, you have to admit it and analyze it). Second, he is hurtful because a few months earlier, the people had spoken out in the majority for a change in the Magna Carta and had backed the presidential candidate who supposedly embodied that desire for change, Gabriel Boric. After a short time, he made the aforementioned loop and defeated the constitutional project by beating.
My favorite political scientist, Prodigio Pérez, says that the masses cannot be held responsible for this apparently masochistic behavior, since ordinary people end up defending their exploiters due to the confluence of a series of mechanisms of domination and subjugation that range from official religions to the media, passing through the school and the corporate culture with which workers are indoctrinated.
In addition, says the expert, the capitalist model is very ingenious and contemplates two types of owners: the real ones and the aspirational ones. The former defend the status quo because they are part of it, and their preservation depends on their continuing to enjoy privileges and wealth; the latter defend it because they have the hope, the illusion, the dream that one day they will be rich and famous. Most of them will die without even touching those worlds they see on television, movies, advertising and magazines about celebrities, but the chimera keeps them in that particular “fight”, diametrically opposed to the one they should be fighting.
On the Chilean stage (when not?) the Venezuelan colony had its leading role, especially the political activists who claim to have fled from a dictatorship and there claim the Pinochet Constitution and some (hopefully not many), defend the “work” of the gorilla
To complete a week full of expressions typical of the masses who shoot themselves, we find the exhibitions (that’s what they are, basically) by Latin Americans who dream of being vassals of some monarchy and for this reason have declared themselves devastated by the death of Isabel II and have spent hours and hours watching documentaries about the nobility of Perfidious Albion and their idle, gifted and resplendent lives.
“As a great invention of capitalism, the only thing cooler than the right-wing paupers are those self-proclaimed British subjects,” Prodigio says. My condolences to them.”
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 