Health Brigades in the Chilean Social Revolt, a Case Study

The social revolt in Chile in October 2019, marked a turning point in the recent history of the country as a milestone and peak of the waves of post-dictatorial protests that had been exposing the deep structural inequalities and the exhaustion of neoliberalism established during the civil-military dictatorship. This movement, which began as a student protest triggered by the price of public transportation, quickly evolved into a mass mobilization that questioned the foundations of the Chilean political, social and economic system —although always in a contradictory manner, moving in a dialectic of questioning the system and reconstituting it—. In this context, the repression exercised by the forces of capitalist order generated a humanitarian crisis characterized by massive and systematic human rights violations, including eye mutilations, physical violence and excessive use of force, assassinations, arbitrary detentions and political and sexual violence, among others. Faced with this situation, the health brigades emerged as a collective and self-managed response to the systematic repression of the State, playing a fundamental role in the care of people injured in the demonstrations. These brigades, made up of health and community volunteers, operated under principles of solidarity and resistance, cooperation, providing first aid in a context of high state violence and limited resources. In this context, imagination and creativity were fundamental factors in solving emergency problems. This study addresses the role of the health brigades during the social outbreak, specifically through the case study methodology, analyzing their emergence, organization and the dynamics of their performance in the context of a revolt typical of the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Based on testimonies and data collected, a balance of this experience is presented, highlighting its achievements, challenges and limits. It also reflects on the impact of the brigades in strengthening the social fabric and as a specific moment of the effectively emancipatory dimension of the revolt, the resignification of health as a collective right and its contribution to the international denunciation of human rights violations in Chile. The paper concludes with a critical assessment of this experience, pointing out the importance of the health brigades as expressions of collective action and resistance to state violence, their potential implications for future scenarios of social mobilization in similar contexts, as well as their intrinsic limits and problems.