Listen to the 58th edition of Free City Radio, with voices from a conference co-hosted with Alternatives, we hear from :
Javiera Araya, La Olla de Chile
Gisela Frias, Place de la Dignité
Sibila Sotomayor, LasTesis Collective
This is the write-up on the event, the accompanying music is by Nicolás Jaar of @otherpeoplerecords
During the "social outburst" of October 2019, Chile reactivated its political and social life collectively throughout its territory. There was an intensification of feminist mobilization, deployed through a diversified political repertoire, including protest performance. “And the fault wasn’t mine, not where I was, not how I dressed [Y la culpa no era mía, ni donde estaba, ni como vestía] was sung all around the country and in other continents, by thousands of women denouncing gender based violence. Without any formal or institutional direction and mainly through mass protests, the shared experience of oppression was enough for the song to spread around the country, capturing the feminist demands that, along with other movements, challenged the systemic violence and structural oppression of a constitution framed in the context of the Pinochet dictatorship, successfully forcing the Chilean state into having a popular referendum that resulted in a vote to redraft the Chilean constitution. This feminist mobilization was interwoven with other transformative projects, in particular at community level, with the critique of neoliberalism, the narrative of the market, and structural inequalities that had been manifesting themself in our country for a (too) long time.
The pandemic that a few months later threatened the livelihoods of most of the population, particularly of the urban poor and working class communities, was also the context for political organization and resistance. Since delayed and intricate cash transfers programs implemented by the government were not enough to help families get by during the crisis, local communities organized collective kitchens in the major cities of Chile. These kitchens, locally and autonomously managed, fed people during the most difficult months of the pandemic, distributing meals in the territories. Beyond the diversity in the political views of people organizing these kitchens, they were all driven by principles of solidarity and mutual aid. They were all led by women.
Almost two years after the uprising, what does it mean to challenge neoliberalism in Chile today? What kind of grassroots movements took shape in these last years? What role does feminism play in these movements and in the population’s strategies for survival? How can these movements intersect with the institutionalized and formalized constitutional process?
Free City Radio is hosted by Stefan @spirodon Christoff
Accompanying art work by Carlos Cruz-Diez.
