The Role of Elites in Emerging Societies, or How Established Elites Deal with an Emerging Society: The Case of Business Elites in Contemporary Chile (original) (raw)

In contrast to the diagnosis of order and continuity in which every social position seems to be fixed and uncontested, the year 2011 brought a novelty to Chile, hitherto the model of political stability and economic orthodoxy in an always turbulent subcontinent. What the different protests of students, environmental movements and regional vindications of 2011 (and beyond) have in common is the return of public concerns after decades of the hegemony and celebration of the private realm (Atria et al. 2013). Remarkable, too, is the fact that both the semantics and rhetoric of those protests are and were mainly moral in nature and revolved around the discourse of abuse. Apart from some radical expressions, the massive claims are not directed against the model itself or its foundations and promises. They are mainly against its excesses, including but not limited to the scandal involving the retailer " La Polar " , considered one of the biggest scams in the history of Chile, the big pharmacies' collusion to secure deliberate and sustained increases in the prices of medicines, Chile's pension system, which is harshly criticized because it does not assure workers decent pensions, the emergence of the profit system in higher education by using state credits for students, mega-investments in energy (hydropower and thermo-electrics) without providing for even minimal environmental regulations, etc. In a sense, the cleavage is not a classical political or ideological one (left-right or industrial and agrarian proletarians against conservative owners). The claim is mainly a moral one and has been made by the middle classes, students not socialized in the crucible and crossroads of Chilean politics since the end of Pinochet's dictatorship and regions abandoned by centralism in Santiago struggling for recognition and expressing the voice of the victims of abuses. Who is being held responsible for these kinds of repeated abuses? One need look no further than the business elites. Behind them, political elites are also scrutinized as possible accomplices, particularly the center-left Concertación which ruled Chile from the return to democracy until 2010 (or at least until the business elites themselves took control of the government again with Sebastián Piñera, one of the big millionaires in the region). These business and political elites represent the pillars of the neoliberal experiment introduced in Chile during Pinochet's dictatorship subsequent to the economic crisis in 1982.