From mass mobilization to mass deliberation: Popular assemblies in the 2019-2020 Chilean Protests

The so-called “estallido social” in Chile became the face of the mass protests that swiped through Latin America in 2019. These mobilizations endured not only harsh repression but also the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken by the government during 􀃃0􀃃0. Despite the extraordinary circumstances, the movement emerged as a victorious experience with the approval of a new Constituent Assembly, currently preparing to rewrite a Constitution that dates back to Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The Chilean protests have much in common with the Ecuadorian, Puerto Rican and Colombian protests from 2019: these movements identified the heritage of decades of neoliberal and elitist policymaking as the larger cause behind the region’s democratic quandary. In response, they created citizen-led spaces, both discursive and physical, to address the countries’ deepening inequality and institutional insufficiency. Understanding neoliberalism as a form of governance that uses immiseration (through the de-politicization of inequality) and subjection (through the exclusion of citizens from decision-making processes), this paper investigates processes of collective subjectivation in the region against the neoliberal status quo. We focus on the epistemic value of the Chilean movement by investigating the role of convenors and participants within popular assemblies and open, self-organized spaces of public deliberation. From a qualitative and reconstructive perspective, we examine how these new protest movements are claiming agency by turning to historic forms of assemblies - based upon creating, deliberating, spreading knowledge and making decisions through decentralized and direct participation. Relying on documentary and interview data, we address the emergence of bottom-up, long-term mobilization strategies as response to the conservative wave advancing in the region. We will argue that, in doing so, they seek to bypass the oligarchic capture of representative institutions and to grant decision-making impact to citizens, but also signal towards systemic and epistemic impediments in participatory institutions developed until now across Latin America.