The general strike conducted in Chile April 30 was the culmination of four straight days of often-violent protest around the country, as citizens took to the streets to excoriate millionaire President Sebastián Piñera for attempting to prevent them from withdrawing 10% of their private pension accounts for the third time since July of 2020. The cash withdrawals have been a life line—although a very thin one—providing people with cash for food, rent, and other basic necessities in an economy whip-lashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even some leaders of Chile’s right-wing establishment okayed the measure, preferring to risk fiddling with the jewel of the country’s free-market system—private pensions—rather than face social upheaval.
Congress had voted to allow for the third cash withdrawal, but Piñera blocked it, until the Constitutional Court, in a stunning defeat for Piñera, voted April 27 to reinstate the measure, Bloomberg reported the same day. “Piñera Resign!” was the rallying cry at the strike, which included private- and public-sector workers, miners, dockworkers, students, trade unionists, and peasants among others.
The days of violent protest and nightly pots-and-pans demonstrations reflect months of pent-up rage over Piñera’s response to the pandemic, which has been incompetent despite the successful rollout of the COVID vaccine. That he tried to block the cash withdrawal in the middle of the current surge in COVID cases, which is again straining the precarious healthcare system, was the last straw. While Piñera is now frantically trying to patch together some emergency measures to address citizens’ needs, his goose is likely cooked. If he makes it to the Nov. 21, 2021 presidential election, in which he can’t run for re-election, he will do so with a 9% approval rating.
