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Statue covered in paint and flags during a protest at Santiagio’s Plaza Italia square. Santiago, Chile – December 6, 2019. Roberto Baeza / Shutterstock.com
Over the past year and a half, Chile has been making global headlines. Beginning in October, 2019, a wave of historic insurrections swept the country. Kicked off by high school students protesting against a transportation fare hike in Santiago, the cycle of struggle reached a new milestone one year later with an overwhelming vote to replace the old, Pinochet-era constitution.
The significance of this revolt stretches far beyond the confines of Chile itself. The country was, in many ways, a laboratory of neoliberalism. Introduced following Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup, many of the mechanisms of privatization and inequality which citizens across the world live with on a daily basis had their start in the country, transforming it into a key Latin American ally of the United States. Today’s rebellion against that