Chile
A Changing CountrySpring 2004
Chile Has Changed
....but in what ways has it changed?Pedro E. Guell
A tourist or a foreigner on a business trip returning to Chile after a few years away receives a crystal clear impression upon arrival: Chile has changed. What he (or she) sees confirms press descriptions and favorable commentary in the hallways of the First World. The country has carried out a successful process of reform that seems to set it apart from the historic ills of the region. Government affairs are more stable; there is sustained economic growth; levels of corruption are low; the atmosphere is more cosmopolitan; cities are more modern and it's easier to do business.
This impression has a solid basis. Statistics from the 2002 national census demonstrate Chile's historic evolution and provide comparative international data that confirm that the country has changed. In fact, it has changed for the better. The quality of political and economic life is better today than before. However, this measurement, based in economic statistics, institutional performance and political matters does not manage to tell the whole story. Moreover, it does not demonstrate what has really changed in Chile.
Chile's cultural history made it one of the most repressive countries in the region in regards to the bodies of its inhabitants and one with the highest rates of interpersonal mistrust. Yet in August 2003, several thousand Chileans gathered on a cold winter morning in response to a call by the U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick for a nude photo shoot. They came not only to show their bodies, but to demonstrate that it was possible for thousands of people who did not know each other to come together to form a sort of community without fear of the greatest vulnerability: nudity. Chile is changing, and the event took on significance as a benchmark in that cultural change.
But the surprises don't stop there. The press has lately denounced the corruption of political institutions, sexual abuse by some clergy members, private perversions of some powerful figures, dark dealings by some judges, and dealing and wheeling between economic and political powers. Indeed, there is even more to add to the evidence of cultural shifts. The most successful Chilean films in recent years have ironically exposed the poor quality and double standard of our sexual life; the most innovative and best-selling newspapers and magazines have dedicated themselves to commenting ironically, uncovering and challenging the powerful elite, tradition and prejudice. To appreciate these facts, one has to remember that in Chile, the media has historically been dedicated to legitimize the institutions and to protect the privileged few.
Perhaps one of the newest symptoms of the change has been the way that the media and academic and political circles treated the thirty-year anniversary of the Pinochet coup. The anniversary stimulated a debate without fear and with free expression of differences, hatred, suffering and remorse. As never before, Chile can now look at one of the darkest periods of its history with honesty and calmness.
There are many more significant and unexpected symptoms of the change, and many more will appear in the months to come. These many signals are enough to make us ask: what is happening with the Chileans that we are now able to do all of these previously unthinkable or frankly dreaded things.
The answer is not very difficult. In Chile, the type of culture that has defined the relationship between individuals and establishment institutions is changing very rapidly. In short, the reverential fear of the weak towards the powerful is lessening. That traditional fear had long hindered questioning of the ties of dependence on the powerful and their institutions. What's new about this change is the cultural transformation that has begun to weaken the two profound myths of our political culture.
The first myth holds that order and containment of violence can only be produced by the conservative elite, because the rest of the country-the "ignorant" masses-are, by their nature, prone to violent disruption of order and unreasonable demands. In his time, Pinochet used this myth for this own benefit. The aggravating of the ancestral fear of disorder allowed him to justify himself as a fatherly savior and disciplinarian. In its beginning, the transition to democracy also somewhat relied on this tradition to reassure "governability." This myth, it could be suggested, set the groundwork for the authoritarian and conservative traits of the Chilean political culture, as well as the difficulty of creating a citizenry that is not dependent on the authoritarian institutions representing law and order.
The second myth holds that work, public goods and state support are possible only within a conservative order constructed by the elites and for the elites. According to this myth, societal benefits should be received as a gift which elites have made through their own generosity. As a result, the masses should, in turn, reciprocate this gift through obedience, not raising any demands for an increased or better distribution of wealth. This primitive idea of gift and submission as a form of social reciprocity underlies much elitist discourse, especially in its concept of work and labor rights, and has also manifested itself in the difficulty of ordinary folk to formulate their needs in terms of demands and rights. In this myth, one finds many of the explanations for the relative absence of a culture of equality as the basis for Chilean social relations in spite of the abundance of empty words spent promoting this concept.
These two myths have worked together to produce the paradoxical form of institutional stability and social discipline that has characterized Chile for long periods and which, without a doubt, has differentiated the country from much of the region. Together, the two myths have produced a social cohesion based on fear - fear of calling the elite into account because of the belief that, without its benevolence, it would not be possible to live in peace and prosperity. This is perhaps why on the day Pinochet abandoned power in the midst of a booing public, he could only manage to declare "Ungrateful people!"
These two myths have begun to collapse. The historical way in which Chileans have understood themselves and their way of forming part of society is losing the basis, discourses and experiences that made this way of seeing things possible. This is what is really new in Chile. New forms of imagining and constructing social bonds have begun to appear. But this change has not occurred because of political or intellectual criticism, but as the unintentional effect of the coincidence of many experiences and diverse aspirations in many distinct spaces within the society. The great task of democratic transition has created, in a completely unintentional manner, the conditions to express these practices and aspirations and to evolve into the changes we are discussing here.
The debate about change in Chile that is really important refers to culture. Several authors have already begun to detect this phenomenon and to give it a name. They talk about Chile's desoligarquización-the retreat from oligarchy, the "agony" of the conservative elite, the final arrival of long-awaited modernity and the passage from a society ordered by the state to one ordered by the market.
However, it is very early to attach a name to this emerging cultural stamp and it is even more premature to establish its direction and future consequences.
Cultural changes always come about over long periods of time, in different places and with diffuse tendencies. To try to demonstrate them and give them a name inevitably involves a risky act of interpretation based on partial and disperse symptoms. However, we'll attempt to briefly describe some of the cultural processes that have been stimulating these changes.
The first and doubtlessly the most important process is the individuation of Chilean society. The manner of imagining social order is rapidly changing from the primacy of the collective to that of the individual as a subject of social order. Already, it is not the collective histories and belongings that give meaning to personal life but rather one's own biographical project-what Americans call inventing oneself-and loyalty to that project. The collective sense of life and order are not disappearing, but the bonds that make up that collective sense are not necessarily seen as set in stone. The new bonds are increasingly chosen, changeable and varied; they should be reinvented from time to time in order to better take advantage of the new diversity of biographical projects corresponding to one's feelings.
The second is the increase in the demand for liberty and autonomy accompanied by affirmations of rights and agreements as a form of regulation of these liberties. As never before in public conversations, Chileans today are demanding the right to choose their own lifestyles and rejecting institutions that seek to mold individual actions with criteria external to individual choice. The present public discussion about divorce-Chile is the only western country that still does not have a divorce law-is a good example of this. This affirmation of freedom has simultaneously happened with the development of the idea of politics as a framework for free and consensual regulations. This has led to an important transformation in politics, making increasingly less room for debate about the desired form of social order and increasingly more space for demands for regulation emerging from conflicts between private parties.
The third is the transformation of the role of the media. They have been principal actors in the expression and acceleration of the cultural changes in the country. In oligarchic Chile, the media fulfilled the almost liturgical role of representing to the masses the goodness of the institutions of law and order. As a result, one of the basic codes for representing reality was to depict the unrestrained and irrational common folk contrasted with the civilized elites. This has changed abruptly. Today, the media have begun to ally themselves with the demands of the masses in order to unmask the irrationality and corruption of the institutions. What was previously represented as the public's immoral lack of restraint is now seen as the "right to entertainment." What lies behind this change is certainly the discovery of the commercial advantages of satisfying the demands of consumers, rather than those of the authorities.
The fourth process is the transformation of the forms of conversation. Cautious conversations are characteristic of an oligarchic country that survived by taking precautions for the "good order" through fear and reverence for the elites. What can and can't be said, what can be seen in public and what must remain private were strongly regulated affairs. Antiseptic legal vocabulary proclaimed the rule of the "good order." Mention of sources of irrationality such as the body, conflicts and thirst for power had to be cloaked in the language of ambiguity and veiled remarks. Today, from the affirmation of differences to the role of denunciation of the media to the legitimization of popular passions, language has become self-assured and more direct. The use of obscenity has become normal on television as expressions of disagreement or as self-affirmation. In Chile, where the pureness and neutrality of legal vocabulary once dominated speech, language now names the passion of the body and the force of will.
Finally, perhaps as the profound consequence of the previous transformations, there is a diminishing of the ancestral terror of disorder and intolerance of differences that has characterized the cultural history of Chile. This is basically a transformation of the image Chileans have of themselves. The former indoctrination of Chileans with images of their own tendency toward irrational destruction of order contrasts with the experiences of recent years, some of which we mentioned at the beginning of this article. These new ways of being have demonstrated that one can affirm one's autonomy, demand his or her rights, criticize tradition and make fun of threats, and that not a single one of these actions will cause a painful catastrophe. At the same time, the gradual installation of a meritocracy, which means that one can confide in one's own efforts, has limited the paralyzing effect of the traditional threat of denying access to public goods and work to those who rebel against the established order.
These developing tendencies of Chile are indications that the society is undergoing a transition from an authoritarian and conservative culture to a culturally modern society. This change is a great opportunity for Chile, but also a great challenge. None of these trends in and of itself guarantees that Chile will achieve longed-for modernity in its social relations. These tendencies also have implicit threats. One is especially important: without a society of strong bonds and social consciousness that serves as support and a roadmap for the construction of biographical projects of individuation, individualism becomes aggressive. The cultural challenge for Chile is to replace the oligarchic and authoritarian order with a sense of history and collective relations capable of strengthening ties of solidarity among individuals who are increasingly diverse and sovereign.
Pedro Guell is the Executive Coordinator of the Reports on Human Development of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) -Chile Coordinador Ejecutivo de los Informes de Desarrollo Humano del UNDP-Chile. With a PhD in sociology from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, he specializes in themes of cultural change. This article reflects the personal opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the position of the UNDP.