On the night of October 18, 2019, the then Chilean president Sebastián Piñera —who governed Chile in two periods (2010-2014 and 2018-2022) and died in February in a helicopter crash— was at a family party. In a well-known pizzeria in the gastronomic district of Vitacura, an upscale area of Santiago, Piñera was celebrating the birthday of one of his grandchildren when he was warned that the area around Baquedano square, which divides the rich neighborhoods from those of the middle and lower classes, was upside down. the air.
Protesters were clashing with carabineros (Chilean police), subway stations were broken, cars were set on fire, and repression came with rubber bullets and tear gas.
Piñera abandoned the celebration and headed to his office. At first, the reaction was energetic, and the reports of human rights abuses that were concentrated in the first weeks of the protests were categorized by him as the work of “infiltrated foreign agents” and “fake students”. Then-first lady Cecilia Morel said the riots looked like “an alien invasion.”
Now known as “el estallido” (the explosion) of 2019, the weeks and months that followed until March 2020, when the coronavirus emptied the streets, were not just any wave of demonstrations. The movement questioned the way democracy was working in the country, called into question aspects of the neoliberal model, demanded concrete changes in issues such as pensions and public education and exposed the inequality and neglect experienced by indigenous minorities.
It also left a trail of violence: 34 dead and more than 3,000 injured, of whom 347 lost total or partial vision.
“From a political point of view, the most important thing was polarization, the collapse of traditional parties and the opening of a space for the expansion of the extreme right,” he says to Sheet analyst Claudia Heiss, academic at the University of Chile.
Today, the numbers show a country divided regarding the outcome of this process. According to the Center for Public Studies, 55% of the population said they supported the demonstrations in 2019; today, that figure is just 23%.
After the forced deflation of the movement due to Covid-19, a group of young politicians —among them Gabriel Boric, now president of Chile— began talking to Piñera. The solution agreed upon to calm tempers was to convene a Constituent Assembly to replace the Charter promulgated in 1981 by dictator Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006).
The process, however, was clumsy and full of obstacles, culminating in the victory of those who rejected the changes.
The Constitution has not changed, but the political scenario has. In the 2021 elections, the main forces suffered a strong dehydration, both the democratic right represented by Piñera’s Chile Vamos alliance, and Concertação, a coalition of center and center-left parties that has governed Chile since redemocratization in 1990, until 2010.
A new left-wing party, the Frente Amplio, gained traction, which renewed progressive flags, including gender and identity issues. Leaders such as Boric himself and Giorgio Jackson, who was Minister of Social Development, emerged from there. In many cases, the front members made an alliance with the traditional Communist Party of Chile, whose most popular figure is the former student leader and current General Secretary of the government, Camila Vallejo.
On the other side of the party spectrum, the Republican Party and its leader, José Antonio Kast, who are ultra-right and who claim Pinochet’s legacy, gained prominence. Kast symbolized the voices against the proposal for a Constitution that would recognize Chile as a plurinational country, promote greater inclusion or approve laws such as abortion only at the will of the woman.
In that election, Boric won in the second round against Kast, but by a small margin. To govern, he had to put some of his most progressive projects on hold and form alliances with the right, something highly criticized by his supporters. The Communist Party split, and part of it returned to the opposition.
For the November 2025 elections, no name from the Broad Front has emerged as the strongest candidate for now — Boric cannot run because consecutive re-election is vetoed. Kast should run again, and another likely name from the right is Evelyn Matthei, from the traditional UDI (Independent Democratic Union), economist and daughter of a military man who was Pinochet’s minister.
A configuration that could not be imagined until that night with Piñera at the pizzeria.
