Elite and popular uprising in Chile: interpretations of inequality

Abstract

Within the framework of the research on territorial inequalities in daily life by the Social Work Department of Alberto Hurtado University, this article, based on an analysis of qualitative interviews and press releases, reflects on the effects of a minimalist concept of the State on the persistence of inequality on the disarticulation of social conflict and on the discursive masking, by the economic and political elite, of structural conditions that depoliticize social relations. Our thesis is that the popular uprising of 2019, as an emergence of opposing discourses, dismantles the fiction of meritocracy and vindicates democracy conceived as participation and enjoyment of social rights. This requires the re-establishment of a social pact based on equality and dignity, thereby unveiling the conflict surrounding the interpretation of inequality: normalized from the government policy’s standpoint, and seen as a deficit in democracy and a violation of dignity from the viewpoint of citizens. We address the more political dimension of this scenario to contribute to the study of inequalities, as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), signed by Chile before the United Nations.