The deepening of an economic and political crisis: The first 100 days of COVID-19 in Chile

Abstract

When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in Chile, it deepened the economic, political and social crisis that sparked the October 2019 mass mobilizations against the government, answered with violent police repression. The sanitary emergency allowed Sebastián Piñera’s administration to put on hold the political dispute, reinstating Martial Law to contain the civil unrest that was still active; to bypass the parliamentary opposition through extraordinary constitutional powers; to strengthen its economic agenda, injecting liquidity to small and medium companies through tax breaks and cheap credits; and to use funds from the social security system to partially pay for salaries and compensate for the limited relief packages, thus subsidizing capitals. As such, the pandemic developed as a continuation of the previous crisis, in which the government could further enforce economic policies that impoverished the Chilean working class while protecting the local capital, militarizing the public space to control the opposition.