Polls show that many Chileans think the country’s democracy is rigged in favour of a small elite. They have a point
lines, modern trains and 136 stations, the Santiago metro is in many ways a model public service in a region where such things are lacking. It carries 2.7m passengers a day in a city of 7m, and has persuaded part of the middle class to leave their cars at home. But in a paroxysm of rage that began on October 18th protesters set fire to stations and trains, leaving only one line operating.
The immediate trigger in Chile was a modest 3.7% rise in the metro’s peak-hour fares, but discontent has been growing there for more than a decade. Since 1989 the country’s restored democracy has maintained the broad outline of the free-market policies installed by Pinochet’s dictatorship. Those policies have brought economic success. The poverty rate has fallen from over 40% in 1990 to under 10% today. The middle classes now form a majority.
Mr Piñera, a billionaire who was president from 2010 to 2014, is part of that elite. He was re-elected in 2017 because in his first term the economy grew faster than under his successor, Michelle Bachelet, a Socialist. “Better times are coming,” he promised. Voters are still waiting, partly because Chile’s open economy is harmed by President Donald Trump’s trade war with China.
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