On Sunday, 61.8 percent of Chileans voted to reject the Constitutional Assembly’s draft, while 38.1 percent voted to approve it. Nearly 13 million of 15 million Chileans and residents who were eligible to vote cast ballots across more than 3,000 voting centers.
Chile’s experiment and constitutional rewrite is a global lesson in direct democracy for both good and bad.
Today, a new administration under President Gabriel Boric will take office in Chile. The new government will face a variety of economic and political headwinds and challenges, which in a sense may also offer up their own opportunities.
In word and deed, Boric embodies change. But this does not guarantee success. The new president’s legacy will be determined in large measure by how he handles the constitution. Here, he faces at least three difficult scenarios.
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Chile could become a global beacon for a younger generation of social democrats, inspiring new leaders from Brazil to Belarus. To do so, Boric will need to find balance as well as inspiration for a brighter, inclusive, and more modern Chilean model in the years to come.
Brazilians learned they have a gay governor; LGBTQ acceptance is expanding in some countries; and Chile adopted full marriage equality.
The Chilean election poses a positive, if selective, narrative about Chile’s past and its remarkable transformation, against a new generation’s discontent with some parts of that transformation and the problems it has generated or failed to resolve.
U.S. military role should combine traditional missions in the region with adaptations supporting transparency, rule-of-law, and strengthening partner nation institutions.
Often out of the spotlight of Latin America observers, Paraguay continues to make quiet but sustained economic progress. However, Paraguay’s path toward prosperity is increasingly complicated by external constraints on growth.
