This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.<\/p>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> This is Democracy Now!<\/em>, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report<\/em>. I\u2019m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonz\u00e1lez.<\/p>\n We turn now to Chile, looking at the election of Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast, who\u2019s set to become Chile\u2019s most right-wing leader since the U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet. In Sunday\u2019s election, Kast won about 58% of the vote, defeating Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party. She had served as labor minister under outgoing Chilean President Gabriel Boric, who was not eligible to run for reelection. Kast once praised Pinochet, saying, quote, \u201cIf he were alive, he would vote for me,\u201d unquote. On Tuesday, Kast traveled to Buenos Aires to meet with Argentina\u2019s far-right President Javier Milei.<\/p>\n We go now to Santiago, where we\u2019re joined by Ariel Dorfman, the acclaimed Chilean American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic and human rights activist, distinguished professor emeritus of literature at Duke University in North Carolina. Ariel Dorfman served as a cultural adviser to Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973. After the U.S.-backed military coup that installed dictator Augusto Pinochet, Ariel Dorfman fled Chile and went into exile. Today he\u2019s recognized as one of Latin America\u2019s greatest writers. His essays, novels, poems, plays have been translated into more than 40 languages. And he has a new article<\/a> in The New York Times<\/em> headlined \u201cChile\u2019s Election Is More Than Just a Swerve to the Right.\u201d<\/p>\n Thanks so much for being with us, Ariel Dorfman. Explain the significance of Chile\u2019s election today.<\/p>\n ARIEL<\/span> DORFMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, thank you so much for having me, Amy, and it\u2019s a pleasure to be on Democracy Now!<\/em>, especially when democracy now is in such danger in Chile and around the world.<\/p>\n There has been since \u2014\u00a0since democracy was restored in 1990, we have had, basically, center-left governments, except for two occasions, which was of Sebasti\u00e1n Pi\u00f1era. And Sebasti\u00e1n Pi\u00f1era twice was elected president, but he could be understood as a moderate conservative. What made it possible for him to be elected in Chile over these 35 years, eight years of the 35 years, is that he voted against Pinochet remaining in power in the referendum of 1988.<\/p>\n In that referendum of 1988, a young, 22-year-old student called Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast appeared on television saying how he adored the general and hoped that he would remain in power forever. Now that same man, who since then has accumulated a series of more outrageous statements still, is going to be the next president of this country. In other words, a land that got rid of General Pinochet, that danced in the streets when Pinochet died in 2006, that man is now going to be the president of this country.<\/p>\n It is a political and ethical earthquake, because there are \u2014 I mean, I can just go on and on about what this man means. He is going to assault the network that has been constructed, not in the last 35 years, but in the last hundred years, the economic and social rights of workers, the Indigenous rights. He\u2019s against abortion even if the mother\u2019s life is in danger. He\u2019s against gay couples, obviously.<\/p>\n I could just go on and on and on about this man, whose father, by the way, was a Nazi himself. He was \u2014\u00a0in 1942, joined the Nazi Party as an officer in the Wehrmacht of Germany. And then, he, under false papers, arrived in Chile. So, it\u2019s very strange, you know, because Kast has based his campaign on an anti-immigrant agenda, and according to that agenda, his father would be expelled right now, because he arrived undocumented to Santiago.<\/p>\n JUAN<\/span> GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong> Well, but, Ariel, to what do you attribute the majority of the Chilean people voting for him? And also, to what degree do you think he\u2019ll be able to implement that program? He still needs support in the Chilean \u2014\u00a0in the Chilean government, as well, among the elected deputies of that country.<\/p>\n ARIEL<\/span> DORFMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> So, let\u2019s go first to your first question, which is \u2014\u00a0by the way, he won 58%, not 50%, of the vote, 58%, which is an enormous majority in Chile, more than 16 points more than Jeannette Jara, who was his adversary. But the point about this is that the major problems that Chileans constantly are speaking about is too much immigration, enormous amount of crime, though the crime is not linked to immigrants, as the right wing will say \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s mostly Chileans against Chileans, but it doesn\u2019t matter; that\u2019s their message, and people are buying it \u2014\u00a0and the problem of affordability. But, you know, Kast would not be able to have this victory, this significant victory, in which a series of people who are not necessarily against democracy want security in their lives \u2014\u00a0they want somebody strong, like Bukele in El Salvador, in fact, you know, because that\u2019s one of the things. Kast has had advisers from Bukele, the Salvadorian despot, to build maximum-security prisons here and do away, basically, with habeas corpus<\/em> and other forms of democratic institutions. So, Kast would not have been able to fill this void if the center-left had not, over many, many years, in some senses, turned its back on the troubles of the people.<\/p>\n I want to mention here, because I think I had mentioned this before when I spoke about coming on the program, in my novel The Suicide Museum<\/em>, there\u2019s a long section, several chapters, on the year 1990. All of it happens in the year 1990, which is the year of the transition from dictatorship to democracy. And I focus on the moment when Allende, Salvador Allende, is taken from his anonymous tomb and given a state funeral in Santiago. I was there. I was part of that. I was living there at the moment. And what called my attention, and I mentioned in the novel The Suicide Museum<\/em>, is that the elite was inside the cemetery and in the cathedral where Allende was being buried, but all the people, the young people, the women, the workers, the peasants, the students, everybody who had given their lives and fought for 17 years against Pinochet, those people were left outside. They were even tear-gassed. In other words, because they wanted also to give a homage to their president, their dead president, the people who had made it possible for Allende to be buried in democracy, for democracy to be returned to Chile, were sort of left out. I found this symbolic.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that in 35 years many good things were not done. You know, poverty was diminished significantly. Infrastructure was major. Major things were done in Indigenous rights. Major things were done in sexual rights and reproductive rights. So, there have been very, very big advances in that sense. But it\u2019s been insufficient. And I think that there is a need for the center-left and the left, in general, to look very carefully at what blindness or mistakes or fractures they have allowed in the past, and ask themselves what they need to do to reimagine the country in a different way, to think of the country as a different project.<\/p>\n You know, I found that \u2014\u00a0one of the things that I found in Chile this last month and a half that we\u2019ve been here is there\u2019s a sense where people are detached. They\u2019re uneasy. I call it \u201dmalestar<\/i>\u201d in my article<\/a> in today\u2019s New York Times<\/em>, malestar<\/em> meaning they don\u2019t feel well with themselves. They\u2019re a bit sick. They\u2019re a bit unhinged. They don\u2019t feel that things are going well. And so, of course, they\u2019ll say, \u201cWell, somebody offers us security. They offer us a clear solution, even if it means, you know, getting rid of some democratic institutions. Well, let\u2019s be secure at last. Let\u2019s not have criminals roaming the streets.\u201d I hardly know of anybody who has not had some sort of assault, a criminal assault of some sort, not all narcotrafficking, but a lot of that, right?<\/p>\n So, people are fed up with that and tired of that, and the left has not given them a solution. And this is not, I think, only the case in Chile. I think it\u2019s the case worldwide. The rise of authoritarianism is only possible because we, who want a just and equal society, who do not want to continue with exploitation and super millionaires deciding everything for us, and climate apocalypse \u2014 because Kast, of course, is getting rid of all the watchdogs on climate, climate change, right? We want, and\u00a0we want to make sure, that those people who are decent, progressive people, and who are, I think, the great majority, find a way of expressing themselves in something that inspires, inspires the people. I don\u2019t find my people here inspired. I find them angry, confused, sad, with malestar<\/em>, with that sense of unease and malaise everywhere almost, right?<\/p>\n There\u2019s still \u2014\u00a0you know, there\u2019s still a great deal of joy in the people. But I think that in the referendum of 1988, the people of Chile, in the worst circumstances, they managed to defeat the dictator, even if the dictator had \u2014\u00a0this is the one where Kast was for Pinochet, and Pi\u00f1era, the moderate conservative, was against him. In that election, the people of Chile rejected that, that possibility of Pinochet staying in power. And that is why I have some hope, as well. I feel as if that joy was demobilized. That struggle, that sense of participation, of protagonism, that was possible all during the dictatorship, from 1988 especially until 1990, it was stopped. In some sense, it was said, \u201cGo home, produce, consume, be happy, and just leave the governing to us,\u201d instead of saying, \u201cLet\u2019s continue the mobilization.\u201d You know, when Pinochet was commander-in-chief during \u2014\u00a0in democracy even, he put his troops on alert, because he was being investigated. Instead of calling the people into the streets and saying, \u201cWe are stopping this country. Stop it. You\u2019re not in charge, General Pinochet, anymore,\u201d they said, \u201cGo home. Don\u2019t worry. We\u2019ll take care of things.\u201d So, it\u2019s been compromise after compromise, and it\u2019s been too many. And I think people, therefore, are uninspired, basically. And if you have an uninspired left, an uninspired people, they will tend to \u2014\u00a0the void will happen in that sense.<\/p>\n You know, I have a metaphor for this, by the way. The reason why I think that Kast is in trouble and may be in trouble in the future, first of all, I think he\u2019s not going to be able to put into his \u2014\u00a0he wants to get rid of hundreds of thousands of civil servants, because they\u2019re parasites, according to his adviers. He wants to deport 330,000 undocumented immigrants. He wants to build a wall, of course. I mean, he wants to finish with all the transgender rights and the gay rights and the women\u2019s rights, a series of things. But apart from that, it turns out that he wants to erase the country\u2019s history. He wants to get rid of the story of what the coup was about and what the coup engendered. He wants his hero, Pinochet, once again to be venerated by all. He wants to forget the concentration camps and the executions and the torture and the exiles and all the terrible things that have been memorialized in this time.<\/p>\n I think that there\u2019s a saying \u2014 I like this saying. I was thinking of it. I was thinking about Kast, you know? It says \u2014 an African proverb says, \u201cThe ax forgets, but the tree remembers.\u201d And I think this is true in Chile. I think the dead of Chile remember. I think the survivors of Pinochet remember. I think many people in Chile remember. I think \u2014\u00a0I mean, I know this is. I mean, I\u2019m a writer. I\u2019m a novelist. I\u2019m a poet. So I think there\u2019s a lyrical sense to this, which is, the Kast presidency will be haunted by what it tries to suppress. It will come out from all the trees of Chile. I think Chile is a forest of resistance.<\/p>\n We are a minority now for the moment. We are taking our time. It\u2019s 42%. It can be more. It doesn\u2019t matter how many you are, really. It matters that in the streets, people will not allow a regression of this sort. And if Kast wants to throw the army into this to try to repress the people, as happened in the past, because the story of Chile is a story of massacres of peasants and workers and students for a hundred years now \u2014\u00a0if Kast wants to do that, he may find that there is a recalcitrant army. The army already went through the shame of having been the pawn of Pinochet\u2019s dictatorship. They do not want it anymore. And when there was the estallido<\/em>, the explosion of hundreds of thousands of Chileans who were fed up, this time from the left, let\u2019s say \u2014\u00a0right? \u2014 and almost brought down the government, Pi\u00f1era, who was then president, before Boric, Pi\u00f1era asked the armed forces to police the streets, and the general in charge of the armed forces says, \u201cWe are not policemen. That is not what we do.\u201d And this is a very big change, right?<\/p>\n So, let us see what\u2019s going to happen as Pi\u00f1era \u2014\u00a0as Kast tries to impose a neoliberal model on a country that has, in fact, in the polls, constantly said that it\u2019s against so many millionaires having so much money, so much inequality, so much injustice. But people want control over their lives.<\/p>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> Ariel \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n ARIEL<\/span> DORFMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> And they can\u2019t have control over their lives if they feel that there\u2019s a security threat next door to them and that things will happen which they can\u2019t control their own neighborhoods, in that sense, right?<\/p>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> Ariel, we have 20 seconds.<\/p>\n ARIEL<\/span> DORFMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> So, we\u2019re up against a very special moment \u2014\u00a0I\u2019m sorry, yes.<\/p>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> I want to thank you so much for being with us, Ariel Dorfman, acclaimed Chilean American writer. We\u2019re going to link to your New York Times<\/em> op-ed<\/a>, \u201cChile\u2019s Election Is More Than Just a Swerve to the Right.\u201d<\/p>\n Coming up, \u201cScams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich.\u201d Stay with us.<\/p>\n [break]<\/p>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> \u201cAntipatriarca,\u201d \u201cAnti-patriarchy,\u201d by the Chilean musician Ana Tijoux, performing in our Democracy Now!<\/em> studio.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License<\/a>. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.<\/p>\n