Backlash Politics, Right-Wing Populism, and Feminist Activism in Chile

• In Event: Anti-Feminism

Abstract

Gender politics sit at the center of Latin America’s current political struggles over the future of their democracies. On the one hand, over the last twenty years increasingly powerful and organized feminist movements have expanded democratic access and quality by pushing electoral gender quotas, campaigns against “femicide” and gender-based violence, expansion legalized abortion, and protecting the rights of sexual minorities. On the other hand, populist right-wing leaders and parties are also on the rise. Along with their open contempt for democratic processes, these parties and leaders, such as Bolsonaro in Brazil and Milei in Argentina, often specifically target the gains of feminist and LGBTQ+ movements as a way to gain political support. How do we understand the relationship between these two opposing political forces? How will the outcome of these struggles shape the possibilities for Latin American democracies in the future?

I examine these questions in the context of the Chile’s contested constitutional process of 2019-2023. I draw on a range of methods, including archival research, media analysis, interviews, and participant and non-participant observation. I argue that the failed constitutional process over these four-years provides an important window into the tensions and struggles between the political mobilization of powerful feminist movements and an emerging right-wing leader and party that sought to capitalize on backlash politics in their push to try to reshape Chile’s democracy. In the paper, I argue that rather than thinking of these two movements in isolation, we need to examine the centrality of backlash politics against feminist and LGBTQ to the ideological projects and organizing strategies of right-wing populist actors.

Specifically, I trace these two movements through the four-year process. I focus on the role of feminist movements in the massive social protests, or estallido social, that began in October 2019. Student led-protests against the rise of the cost of a metro ticket exploded into massive political protests against Chile’s adherence to neo-liberal economic policies, the lack of robust state welfare programs, and deep social inequity. For six months, Chile was gripped by street protests that grew to an unprecedented 10% of Chile’s population and featured marches in Santiago that routinely drew tens of thousands of participants, including a few protests that were estimated at between 2 and 3 million participants.

I show how Chile’s feminist movements were at the forefront of shaping a central political demand that emerged from the protests: the need for a new constitution. They helped push for a national plebiscite in 2020 where 78% of Chileans voted to rewrite the 1980 constitution put in place by Pinochet’s military dictatorship. They then helped pressure elected leaders to create a new electoral process that guaranteed gender parity in the elected members of the constitutional assembly. The 2022 draft constitution produced by this assembly also reflected the power of Chile’s feminist activists. The draft guaranteed women’s sexual and reproductive rights, including access to abortions, protected sexual minorities, and made the state responsible for the social welfare of its citizens by overturning the privatization of health, education, and retirement. However, by the 2022 plebiscite on the draft constitution, the politics of backlash were in full-swing making the political context radically different from the 2020 vote. Focusing on the plebiscite, I analyze how a highly organized right-wing lead a massive disinformation campaign to help defeat the draft constitution with 62% of Chileans voting against it. This defeat paved the way for a second attempt at revision, with the process now dominated by an emerging right-wing populist faction lead by Antonio Kast and the Republican Party. This second draft, which some analysts claimed was to the right of Pinochet’s 1980 constitution, was also defeated in a vote of 55% on December 17th, 2023. Leading the vote against the right-wing constitutional draft that specifically threatened reproductive rights by were the 70% of young women under 34 who voted no. Overall, while a majority of both women and men rejected the draft, there was almost 7 points of difference between women who voted ‘no’ (58.9%) and men (52.1%).

Thus, in this paper, I use this extraordinary sequence of events as a lens to analyze the broader struggle over democracy taking place between feminist movements and right-wing populist leaders and parties. By placing feminist movements at the center of my analysis, I show how right-wing populists seek to capitalize on backlash politics, and how feminist movements and activists spearhead resistance to democratic backsliding.

Author

• Gwynn Thomas, SUNY, University at Buffalo