THE BROKEN PROMISES IN CHILE
Greetings to everyone.
This piece examines how various governments in Chile, from the Unidad Popular to the current administration, have failed to fulfill their promises to the working class and vulnerable sectors. It argues that the political leadership, regardless of their ideology, ultimately end up governing for their own interests and perpetuating the disconnect with the citizens.
The contemporary history of Chile can be summarized as a pendulum of collective illusions that, systematically, have ended up crashing against the ground of reality. From the 1970s to the present year 2026, each generation that claimed for itself the leadership of the national destiny ended up betraying its mandate or collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. For the working class and the most humble sectors of the homeland, the final balance is as bitter as it is unappealable: at the pinnacle of command, none fulfilled.
The first major collapse of this cycle began with the Unidad Popular along with Doctor Salvador Allende. This project embodied the hope of an institutional and democratic revolution for the people. However, its definitive failure lay in an ideological voluntarism that attempted to force a radical transformation based on the utopias of the Chilean path to socialism, ignoring the laws of economics and the reality of the moment. Beyond the brutal intervention of domestic and foreign de facto sectors, the financial management of that experience was unable to control stifling inflation and massive shortages. Attempting to re-found a territory without relying on real parliamentary majorities led to a general paralysis of the nation that left the citizenry disarmed and unprotected before the worst tragedy of our history.
That breakdown was followed by the tyranny of the cruel dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who, by usurping command, promised to restore public peace and establish a regime of prosperity at the cost of state terrorism. The much-touted strategy imposed was a shock capitalism that left an open wound with thousands of executed, tortured, and disappeared persons, and with a toll of thousands of compatriots who had to go into exile, which fractured the national soul, while the most essential human rights such as pensions, health, and education were privatized. That design turned social welfare into an exclusive business for big capital, and the myth of its supposed moral authority completely crumbled when international justice uncovered the plunder of fiscal funds hidden in secret accounts abroad.
With the return to democracy, the Concertación and the Nueva Mayoría won the executive under the false promise that joy was on its way. What came, in reality, was the assimilation and bourgeoisification of a collective leadership that preferred to settle in the salons of the elite rather than dismantle the neoliberal framework implanted by the previous regime. The party leadership and the parliamentary caste ended up captured by corporate money. They financed their campaigns through fake invoices delivered by the same monopolistic firms that abused the population. Furthermore, they invested their millionaire funds in the stock market and traded with the opposition to protect their privileges. All of this paved the way toward the social outburst due to their total disconnect from the street.
Another of the great broken promises arrived with the cohort of Gabriel Boric and the youth of the Frente Amplio, who reached the Moneda with a banner of ethical purity and proposals for structural transformations. Four years later, the balance of their administration is the definitive rock bottom of illusions. Their discourse of moral superiority collapsed with the Caso Convenios, where militants from their own parties diverted public resources intended for the country's most vulnerable shantytowns. Forced by a security and organized crime crisis that completely overwhelmed them, they ended up applying the same states of emergency they previously criticized and handing over key ministries to the old guard of the Concertación.
THE ORPHANHOOD OF CHILEANS
Finally, the current drastic shift to the right under the leadership of José Antonio Kast has ended up closing this circle of contradictions in its first months of management in 2026. After a campaign where he promised austerity, growth, and a massive cut in fiscal spending, his cabinet has deepened the lack of protection for the citizenry by eliminating essential benefits and welfare support under the slogan of reducing the state apparatus. In a contradictory turn, the Ministry of Finance introduced a project to increase Chile's public debt by an additional 6.2 billion dollars, evidencing premature wear and tear and a deficit that future generations will end up paying. Likewise, this period has been marked by maneuvers to accommodate and grant prison benefits to former military officers convicted of human rights violations, while the tax reforms promoted focus on favoring the economic interests of domestic and transnational elites through tax cuts.
The people find themselves in an absolute orphanhood of legitimate leadership. The acronyms change and the faces are renewed, but the inner circles continue to govern for themselves, leaving the hopes of the most humble buried under the broken promises of power.
Facing this crossroads, my conviction as a writer is that Chile must transition toward an open and mature system, inspired by the model of nations such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark or Norway. International experience shows that these societies stabilize power through parliamentarism and real consensus, guaranteeing unrestricted respect for workers and maintaining peace with the political, economic, and social environment. Our homeland needs to achieve that institutional maturity through a robust welfare state and a regulated market, leaving behind, once and for all, the ideological adventures that have caused us so much harm.


























