Chile, its people, and the pleasure of defeating a fascist

Pelao Carvallo*

An anarchist explanation of the defeat of the anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-poor candidate in the Chilean presidential elections of December.

Kast's defeat as a pleasure for the people

The people who make Chile what it is defeated Kast. They realized the victorious, sadistic political eroticism of beating the powerful, while simultaneously denying them the masochistic reciprocity of that pleasure. It was a unilateral, vengeful enjoyment by the people against the perennial victors, who finally experienced the confirmation of the defeat they had been living since October 2019. The political eroticism of resistance.[1] transmuted into the full joyful eroticism of making the embodiment of racism, classism and misogyny bite the dust during the transition.

The Chilean presidential runoff election on December 19th mobilized the people who make Chile what it is, driven by their desire to win and to achieve the complete defeat of the popular and social ills embodied by Kast. This is why Kast's defeat and Boric's victory are not the same thing. Kast's defeat was the full exercise of the pleasure of vanquishing the threat, not just banished it, but shattered it. Those who don't vote on principle weren't mobilized to vote by fear of the Kast threat; more important, more mobilizing, was the immense pleasure of being an active participant in the fall of the right-wing, misogynistic, anti-immigrant, anti-poor illusions embodied by the sad blond cowboy.

And, from a social perspective, more than a victory for Boric, what we saw was a defeat for Kast. The concrete fact is that women and those who radically abstain from voting gave Boric a resounding defeat.[2]This was clearly evident in the streets, markets, and families of Chile between November 20th – the first round – and December 19th – the second and final round. On November 20th, in the streets, neighborhoods, and markets of Santiago's greater suburbs, the surname Kast shamelessly permeated conversations, jokes about voting, and banter.[3]"in the open-air markets. By December 20th, that surname had disappeared from those same streets, neighborhoods, and markets. Not from social media, but from the conversations in the neighborhood and among families. Shame had returned. And that wasn't due to a momentary event, a sudden shift in stance or awareness, stirred by the pressure of election campaigns. It was the decades-long politicization that feminisms and anarchisms in Chile (among other "isms") have built in and through student rebellions, feminist strikes, school occupations, anti-AFP protests, and revolutionary social uprisings—like the one in October 2019. That's what anarchism and feminism have done: remind us, the neighbors, that just as happy submission is political, so is joyful insubordination. Kast's defeat is a product of the joyful politicization and insubordination of the people who make up the communities and who found a pleasurable, blissful reason, to go vote. If it were only out of fear, this wouldn't have happened the way it did.

The dispute over memory

History is not ours, and it is not made by the people: it is made by historians and belongs to the states. Memory, remembrance, that is ours, and we, all peoples, in all territories, and with all our imaginations and desires, create and recreate it constantly.

Following Kast's defeat, a dispute has arisen in Chile over the memory and interpretation of that defeat and its context. That is where we stand. The narrative of events, as a matter of memory, is under attack from the historicist normalization that the establishment needs in its sustained demand for ex post facto legitimacy. This operation ranges from reminding us of the institutional nature of candidate Boric.[4] Even figures like Lagos or Bachelet have joined Boric's campaign to shape the consciences of the old Concertación and justify a new transition represented by the cabinets being formed. The goal is for us to remember these elections not as a defeat for Kast but as the victory of a new 30-year transition. This is being done even by trying to erase the memory of the October 2019 uprising, as Lagos himself has attempted.[5] and the bad poet Zurita[6] The struggle over memory, over the form and content of remembrance, is very intense at this time due to the needs of those in power.[7] to make things easier for the future president, Boric. They don't worry about history because they've already won. Disputes over memories and history are fought in the present.[8] with a very fast-growing nostalgia industry that is turning collective events into nostalgic experiences, trivializing them[9] as evidenced by the Matapacos/Brownie debate.

This dispute aims to give Boric space for governance and legitimacy, by co-opting the collective memory of the pleasure of defeating Kast into a sweetened narrative of electoral support for an increasingly normalizing proposal, as was the evolution of Boric's (and Kast's) discourse between the first and second rounds.

The defeat of the avant-gardes, incidentally

The people know. Above all, they know how to persevere. Those who wish to move beyond mere resistance and persistence to rebellion and revolution must strive to give and acknowledge the victories of the people. Remaining solely focused on the narrative of resistance, defeat, and accusations of political error only serves to hand over the people's narrative to those in power.[6]Interpreting an election, that political statistic, solely according to the results that suit incoming (or outgoing) governments is a repetitive and unproductive vanguardism for greater popular autonomy.[7] It's best to leave that task to the fear analysts. [8] that flourished in these elections.

Among other reasons, the scenario allowed the revolutionary sector that doesn't vote, and even more so, the disillusioned sector of society that doesn't vote, to make the difference in the absolute defeat of the anti-women right wing, since the guaranteed vote doesn't count in this calculation; this scenario is marked by the voluntary nature of voting, so threatened lately… if voting were mandatory, the popular desire to give the right wing a beating wouldn't have acted because, precisely, it would have been mediated by the opposition to mandatory voting[9]

It is necessary to emphasize Kast's defeat because it is, strictly speaking, the popular fact, the social fact, the pleasurable fact of these elections held to end the normalization of the revolt[10] And that's why an effective candidacy had to invoke the revolt—precisely to normalize things—that's why it was Boric, not Provoste. The people are not naive, and they know that the exhaustion of permanent resistance is unsustainable, and within the existing circumstances, they seek to find their own victories, against what vanguard moralism dictates and against what power and statist normalization desire. Therefore, Kast's defeat belongs to the people who make Chile what it is, and Boric's triumph belongs to statist normalization, and that's what we must continue fighting against, fortunately not from a position of permanent defeat, but from a joyful and resounding victory to which Boric himself must pay attention, since it was the "extra" votes that defined the situation, those "extra" votes from those of us who don't vote, from women, from the rebels.

December 25th 2021

* Member of the CLACSO Working Group on Collective Memories and Practices of Resistance.

[1] https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-12-15/ricardo-lagos-las-posiciones-radicales-de-la-extrema-izquierda-le-han-hecho-la-campana-a-kast.html

[2] https://www.laizquierdadiario.cl/De-Ricardo-Lagos-a-Raul-Zurita-PC-la-estrategia-de-criminalizar-la-protesta-y-blindar-al-regimen-de

[3] https://www.clacso.org/anarquismo-en-tiempos-de-punkdemia/

[4] https://www.agendaoculta.com.mx/2021/02/16/wandavision-en-la-memoria-de-la-memoria-audiovisual-y-la-nostalgia-del-imperio-2/

[5] https://twitter.com/imononerd/status/1473810809104965633

[6] https://elporteno.cl/el-triunfo-de-que/

[7] https://www.eldiarioar.com/opinion/18-brumario-chileno_129_8605857.html

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq4JqFk4ZWk

[9] https://www.elciudadano.com/columnas/chile-contra-la-rebeldia-antielectoral-el-voto-obligatorio/06/18/

[10] https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=551884639376177