Chapter 3: Youth and New Forms of Politics in Chile

As a tri-continental country located in the southwest of South America between mountains, seas, desert and snow, Chile is entering the third decade of the century under strong social pressures derived from citizens’ expectations to achieve greater levels of equity, social justice, political transparency, multiculturalism and a balance between environmental preservation and economic production. Advances in modernisation, access to more consumption, more education, and techno-sociability have led citizens to notice increasing social inequalities and greater deterioration of their natural environment (Letelier, 2020). Everyday lives are alerted in different ways to the fact that Chile is one of the countries with the greatest social inequality in the world (OECD, 2020). There is a growing public clamour for the state to assume a more central role in the economy and society (Calderón & Castells, 2019). The happiness of the Chilean population is undermined by the rigours of the daily grind of inserting and maintaining oneself in a society labelled as successful, and by the decline of national pride sustained by the probity of its institutions, now called into question. Citizen subjectivities are strongly affected, by the delegitimisation of institutionality and of the political orientations that guide its development taking shape (Calderón & Castells, 2019; Letelier, 2020). Political apathy and hopelessness about the future are taking over the national scene. ‘A kind of frustration of expectations positioned itself at the political centre of the different Latin American countries’ (Calderón & Castells, 2019, p. 51). Chile was no exception.