Chileans vote for Constitutional Convention delegates (May 14, 2021)

Chileans head to the polls this weekend to pick 155 citizens to rewrite the country's constitution, a document that will replace the current dictatorship-era charter. The constitutional convention will have gender parity, 17 seats reserved for Indigenous representatives, and at least five percent of each list is for people with disabilities. The vote, which will take place over two days, is a step towards meeting the demands of the 2019 protest movement, but it is less clear whether a new constitution will be able to remedy the deep causes of social unrest. (El País, El País)

It is not clear how many people will participate in this weekend's vote, a plebiscite last year on whether and how the constitution should be rewritten had 51 percent participation. (El País, AFP) "The legitimacy of the constitutional convention now depends on the distance delegates can set between themselves and the Chilean politicians of the past," according to Jennifer M. Piscopo in Nacla.

Delegates will spend a maximum 12-month period debating and crafting the new text, with a two-thirds majority required for each key decision. (Reuters)

There are 1.373 candidates, 649 who are women and 629 men. There are 95 Indigenous candidates competing for 17 seats that will be chosen solely by Indigenous voters. Seven of those seats will be held by members of the most numerous Mapuche ethnic group. The candidates are grouped in lists and seats will be distributed by the D'Hondt system. Some experts have voiced concern that the lists don't have clear platforms, and that most voters will be choosing individuals. Most of the candidates to the convention do not respond to any political party, but are not necessarily independent either. A significant number of politicians have resigned their positions to be able to run. Though "the notion of citizen-delegates conjures images of a process open to everyday people, ... that’s not quite the case," explains Piscopo. "Most candidates are running in pacts formed by political parties, meaning parties could filter out certain candidates."

 
The convention will need two-thirds majority for each norm to be included in the new text, so the balance of who is voted this weekend will determine the tone of the process to come. Further, it is unclear how the people elected to the assembly will write the new constitution to translate citizens’ desires into constitutional language and institutions, adding another layer of uncertainty to the process, notes the Latin America Risk Report. Achieving a supermajority in the Assembly will be especially difficult as Chile selects a new president and representatives in November, a process likely to feed political polarization that could spill over into Assembly debates, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Chilean President Sebastián Piñera's extended lame duck period comes at precisely the time when the country is in need of firm leadership to guide the constitutional process, writes Paula Schmidt at Americas Quarterly. "The hopes that a new constitution would be enough to heal Chile’s wounds and right the wrongs was always a bit naïve, but without a strong leader to steer the ship, the process is now in peril of succumbing to a fragmented political landscape – and a tough puzzle for the next president Chileans will elect in November."

Women's rights activists have high hopes that gender-parity in drafting, which will take place in the midst of significant feminist movements in the region, will contribute to an inclusive perspective for all minorities. (Guardian) Indigenous rights activists hope the new constitution will define Chile as a plurinational state, as regional countries like Bolivia and Ecuador and other nations around the world have done. (EFE) Indigenous peoples are unrecognized in the present charter and communities are seeking changes including the teaching of indigenous history in schools and greater recognition for traditional medicine, reports Reuters.

News Briefs

Venezuela

• Venezuela will hold regional and local elections on Nov. 21, announced its electoral authority (CNE) yesterday. (Efecto Cocuyo) The mayoral and gubernatorial elections will be the first overseen by the new council, named earlier this month, which includes three members linked to President Nicolas Maduro's ruling Socialist Party and two members close to the opposition, reports Reuters. (See May 5's post.)

• Maduro's recent moves with the CNE and other concessions to international demands should not be characterized as "goodwill" argues Francisco Rodríguez. "What has changed is not the willingness of Maduro to make overtures, but the willingness of the opposition and the United States to accept them." (See yesterday's post.)

Uruguay

• Uruguay has gone from regional coronavirus control model to the highest Covid-19 death rate per capita in the world last week. Vaccination is proceeding rapidly, but Uruguayans are reluctant to return to strict lockdown, complicating efforts to reduce contagion. (Washington Post, New York Times)

Brazil

• Eyewitness testimony from a violent raid in Rio de Janeiro's Jacarezinho last week indicates a police-led massacre, and caused an outcry, nationally and internationally, but that is unlikely to change the state's dynamic of police lethal violence, reports InSight Crime. (See Tuesday's briefs.)

• Residents and witnesses are being threatened to remain silent about the incident, in which 27 people died. Police claim the deaths resulted from confrontations with alleged gang members, but locals reported that some of the men were unarmed and  trying to escape as the police entered, reports VICE. (See Friday's post.)

• The latest Datafolha poll gives former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a significant edge over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in a hypothetical second round vote in 2022. Increasingly cornered politically, Bolsonaro is rallying his base, literally, reports AFP.

• Food insecurity—a lack of consistent access to enough food—affected over half of homes Brazil's homes, or 117 million Brazilians, during the first year of the pandemic -- Economist.
  

El Salvador

• The El Mozote massacre trial in El Salvador has put the country's civil war atrocities, and U.S. involvement "into the open, offering a different lens through which to view Central Americans’ migration to the United States and the debate about U.S. border and immigration policy," write Nelson Rauda and John Washington in the Washington Post. "News out of Central America rarely appears in U.S. media. Central Americans fleeing the carnage are only seen as embodying the border crisis and domestic issue, with little regard as to what sent them north. Rarely acknowledged is the past and current role of the United States in Central America."
  

Migration

• A still-unknown number of teenagers have been sent by U.S. authorities to juvenile jails that are often thousands of miles away from their families, and where there are no safeguards in place to guarantee that they were represented in court for the months—and in some cases, years—of their detention, reports The Nation. Advocates say the practice is illegal.
  

Guatemala

• Guatemala’s Constitutional Court overturned an earlier ruling that stopped controversial legislation targeting non-governmental organizations. The new law will give the government the right to pry into the affairs of and even dissolve non-governmental organizations. The move is likely to alarm rights groups and the United States, reports Reuters. Lawmakers blocked Judge Gloria Porras from re-appointment to the Constitutional Court, apparently in retaliation for her anti-corruption rulings. (See April 14's post.)

Regional Relations

• There have been more than 130 incidents of unexplained brain injury known as Havana syndrome among U.S. diplomats, spies and defense officials, some of them within the past few weeks, reports the Guardian. The new total adds cases from Europe and elsewhere in Asia and reflects efforts by the U.S. Biden administration to more thoroughly review other incidents amid concern over a spate of them in recent months, reports the New York Times.

Argentina

•  The Paris Club is willing to delay a $2.4 billion debt payment from Argentina due this month if the country meets certain conditions, reports Bloomberg.
  

Regional

• The Covid-19 pandemic provoked the deepest global recession since the second world war, but Latin America has fared particularly badly. The reason is a combination of factors ranging from public health, to lockdowns, to domestic employees, to fiscal management, according to the Economist.

• Faced with pandemic economic recession, Latin American countries must decide whether to turn to unpopular tax reforms or unsustainable debt, reports El Pais.

Women

• A decade after the launch of the Istanbul convention, the landmark human rights treaty to stop gender-based violence, women are facing a global assault on their rights and safety that qualifies as its own pandemic, according to Dubravka Šimonović, UN special rapporteur on violence against women. (Guardian)