IN THE age of a rising tide of neoliberal authoritarianism and populist reactionary religious politics, the electoral victory of the left brings smiles to all progressive forces beyond Chile. 

The people of Chile defeated Jose Antonio Kast — a committed follower of the country’s former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, who established neoliberal authoritarianism in Chile before it spread worldwide. 

The decisive victory of Gabriel Boric is a celebration of people’s power beyond the borders of the Andean nation. 

History repeats itself yet again. The victory of the Chilean left brings hope that working-class people can defeat authoritarianism and its neoliberal reincarnation. Boric rightly said that “if Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.”

The victory of the left in Chile in a record majority is not a symbolic victory. It has reinforced the idea of class consciousness, class organisation and class struggle, encompassing issues of human and animal rights, individual freedom and dignity, gender justice, environmental justice, rights of indigenous communities over their land, forests, water and natural resources. 

The victory speech of Boric — Chile’s 35-year-old president-elect — covers all these universal ideals. The victory has shown that deepening of democracy depends on struggles on the streets with a clear agenda that rebuilds the politics of trust among the masses.

In terms of GDP per capita, Chile is the richest country in Latin America, and it outperforms other countries in the region, but Chilean income inequality is highest among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. 

The income share among the poorest in Chile is the lowest in the world. The Chilean economic conditions are not very different from the rest of the world. 

These economic conditions are direct outcomes of neoliberal authoritarianism. The mining-led capitalist industrialisation has enabled various forms of the Pinochet regime to maintain its control over the state and government for decades. That comes to an end now. 

Boric vows to end the mining projects that destroy the environment. They include the $2.5 billion controversial Dominga iron, copper and gold-mining project. The Boric government is going to be a government of the people and planet. 

But the bourgeois agencies are going into overdrive to demean the Chilean left victory as a forward-march of corruption and misery. 

These far-right reactionary forces have started their strategic mobilisation to prevent a radical transformation of Chilean society and the economy that works for the masses. 

The bourgeois media brands the victory of left in Chile as a Latin American abyss. Such an ideological onslaught on a working-class electoral victory shows that the bourgeoisie fears the power and wisdom of the people and its ability to reclaim its rights during turbulent times. 

It is only left politics which can not only defeat neoliberal authoritarianism but also can provide sustainable alternative for the people and planet. 

The Chilean left shows the way for left forces worldwide to reclaim the lost decades for a sustainable future. In the left’s victory, hope trumped despair in Chile.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is an academic at the University of Glasgow.