Aphorisms and loose ends – Part 2
Part 1 here.
- The communist party that wasn’t.
Marta Lagos, a Chilean public intellectual, making the point that some communists are more equal to communism than other communists.
Marta Lagos, a Chilean public intellectual, making the point that some communists are more equal to communism than other communists.
Leaving Chile
We decided to leave Chile after ten years of living here. I wrote down some of my impressions of the last four years, things I have thought about and will continue to chew on for a while. I don’t claim any sort of expertise, so this is just a collection of observations from some foreigner who lived in Santiago for a decade. I am sure that, with time, I will have been wrong on at least 20% of what I wrote, and I will view writing about Chile as a way to update my priors. I thought this would be a short piece, but it got really long so I decided to split it into three parts.
Part 1 (below) is my way of trying to understand the role that a section of civil society played in the estallido.
Part 2 is a collection of things I learned from the estallido.
Part 3 (still to come) is a couple of personal anecdotes that taught me a lot about the institutional fracture that the estallido provoked.
As a note, I keep using the word estallido instead of the english translation (revolt) because I find it more appropriate for Chilean purposes and I really like it.
Anatomy of a Revolt – Part 1
This is the second time I witness a popular uprising of such a massive scale. The first was in my native home, Albania, when I was 14 years old. I can say without exaggeration that my first experience was much more as a willing and passionate participant, while during my second time around, in Chile, I was a more neutral observer. (more…)