The Political and Administrative Sciences career invited the prominent doctor Camila Vergara to talk about inequality, oligarchy and corruption in Chile today.
With the intention of analyzing the contingent politics of the country, Camila Vergara, PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, conducted a master class called “Inequality, oligarchy and systemic corruption”, who reviewed the current political situation that Chilean society is going through. The lecture was aimed at the students of the last year of the Cipol career at ULagos and the entire university community.
The discussion is part of the Professional Practice course of the Political and Administrative Sciences career of the Universidad de Los Lagos, which in times of pandemic has been developed virtually with online classes and lectures. The lecture of the academic was carried out telematically and had more than 100 participants, which was reproduced by the social networks of the regional house of studies.
Camila Vergara is a journalist and historian from the Catholic University of Chile. She did her doctoral studies at the New School for Social Research and then at Columbia University, focusing on constitutional theory, the relationship between laws and freedom, and the chronic crisis of representativeness in liberal democratic models. His book “Systemic Corruption. Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic” was published in 2020 by Princeton University Press.
Vergara remarked that the current 1980 constitution is the codification of neoliberalism. “We can understand the 1980 constitution as the constitution of Pinochet and Ricardo Lagos. We can understand that constitution as a framework where neoliberalism is codified, it becomes law, it becomes basic rule, from there that rule is our society where it was forged and developed, but today it is being remade. Even when a series of modifications and reforms were made during the Lagos government, the same framework remained, the same material reality, the same distribution of power, the brutal inequality that the country has had until today”, said the doctor from Columbia University.
D. in Political Science, explained the process of the revolt generated last October 18. “The popular uprising of October 2019, comes as an uprising based on the systemic corruption that crossed the society in chile in recent years. It is not only individual, but it is the corruption of the whole system, but the system does not serve the majority but rather the most powerful. This causes the precariousness of the people, the lack of money, the increase of the debt, this makes the system explode, our order is like a pressure cooker, which allows a trickle-down economy upwards, not downwards, an extractive economy that benefits the popular masses, which benefits those at the top. This caused the system to take water and the mobilizations began a decade earlier to detonate on October 18, 2019”, said the doctor.
When asked by a student about the growth of the alternative left in the last elections, the historian commented that “during these 30 years we have been in democracy, the idea was that “joy is coming” and that joy never came. The people who were in charge in recent times were the Concertación and a couple of periods the right wing, in that framework, one is with social rights or not. One is with equality or not. The Concertación has been for reproducing the neoliberal system. The fact that we are not mediated by money, that is part of the repulsion that people have for it. Secondly, there is the increase of corruption on a large scale and that corruption has legitimized the institutions. Finally, voting for one or the other no longer makes a difference. There is a new emerging generation, one that comes from the social movements and from the territories, on the other hand there is the other that wants to be a political party like the People’s List. There is a visceral rejection of the traditional political parties”, concluded the political scientist.
Cipol at election time
The presentation given by Dr. Camila Vergara is part of Cipol’s Virtual Professional Practice course, directed by Professor César López, who led the discussion and highlighted the high participation of students in the course and the final objective of the master class.
“I find it a positive presentation from the current contingency. Where he detailed how the system itself has been corrupted from within. Through the same rules that the system itself has imposed. For the same reason, that generates a wide disaffection with the citizenship and from that phenomenon explains the irruption of the 18/O in our society. This is the relevance for Cipol students, with the idea that they have a vision of the political system, public administration and the state, considering that they will soon be inserted into the public scaffolding”, said the teacher.
Meanwhile, the director of the Political and Administrative Sciences career of the ULagos, Gerardo Gonzalez, emphasized the activities carried out by the direction that seek to motivate dialogue and civic-citizen reflection. “The Cipol career is promoting various talks of academic and civic interest, which seek to bring the student community and society contingent issues that generate reflection and encourage debate on the political contingency that the country and the region are experiencing. We celebrate that Dr. Camila Vergara, shares with us this master class on national contingent politics with this current topic for students and the community in general. We will continue with the mission of organizing new events that can contribute to the different visions presented by politics and society in these complex times”, concluded the doctor in Political Science.
