LASI 2023 Haunting social issues: Crisis, continuity and demands for change in Latin America

ARICA/CHILE, DECEMBER 12th – 16th

LASI Summer School is organized in a joint effort by Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR), the Millennium Institute for Violence and Democracy (VioDemos),  Anthropology Department of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile  and Universidad de Tarapacá, Chile and is supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation.

LASI is a Research Summer School directed at graduate students and young researchers. LASI offers graduate students from Latin America and abroad the opportunity to come together for a week to receive specialized instruction and supervision from internationally renowned senior social scientists. LASI focuses on relevant social issues in Latin America, which are analyzed from a global, interdisciplinary, and compared perspective.

LASI 2023 will focus on what we term Haunting social issues: Crisis, continuity and demands for in Latin America.

Recent years have been particularly tumultuous in many Latin American countries. The pandemic has had a devasting impact, not only in terms of the lives lost but also in terms of the social, economic and health related effects. Furthermore, before and after the pandemic several countries have underwent periods social unrest, protests, and demands for change. 

Chile, the host country of LASI, is no exception. In 2023, Chile commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 1973 military coup that violently ended Allende´s Unidad Popular government and initiated a 17 years long dictatorship. This violent event continues to cast long shadow of unresolved social, economic, and political tensions in the country. In 1989 the country initiated a democratic transition that has been widely celebrated due to its relatively peaceful and, importantly, ordered process, growing economy and, relatively stable democratic institutions. Yet, the mayor protests in 2019 also revealed deep frustrations among the population, demanding social rights and equality, a resurge of gender, identity-based and notably indigenous demands of autonomy, along with a strong anti-elite discourse. 

As it has been the case in other countries, the crisis exposed by the protests led to a constitutional assembly characterized by equal representation of men and women, including indigenous representatives. After a significant delay during the COVID-19 pandemic, the electorate overwhelmingly voted for  “independent” representatives of social movements and left-wing parties who promised to finally lay behind the 1980 constitution imposed by the dictatorship. However, the crisis has not been resolved, and the proposal for a new constitution was widely rejected by the population; largely due to fears of expanded rights for indigenous people, as indicated by opinion polls. Currently, a second constitutional process is underway, this time around dominated by extreme right-wing candidates, and it unfolds in a context where most people appear concerned with the migration crisis and crime & security. 

While these contingencies perhaps appear confusing, the issues raised during the protests and the apparently contradictory processes from one “extreme” to another are not entirely new, neither in Chile nor in the region: The pressing social and political issues that jeopardize people’s well-being and threaten contemporary democratic coexistence are not exactly new to Latin American societies. Although the specificities and theoretical terminology used to describe them may change, the region has arguably been haunted by the persistence of the same social issues for decades: concerns with climate change and the social impact of extractive economies, for instance, can be traced back to the ongoing concern with the region’s dependent position on resource extraction in the global economy and its impact on communities and indigenous people. 

Similarly, it can be argued  that questions regarding plurinationalism and interculturalism represent contemporary ways in which scholars and policymakers have approached the longstanding issues of diversity, demands for indigenous autonomy, and coexistence within the nation-state in the region. Likewise, Latin America has been among the most violent in the world for decades, and scholars have consistently endeavored to examine the relationship between social or criminal violence and processes such as urbanization, segregation, and poverty. They also seek to contextualize these forms of violence in relation to historical and current manifestations of state violence and authoritarianism.

In summary, while global contingencies bring forth new topics and social movements advocate for novel concerns and agendas, such as gender equality and identity-based demands, it is important to examine how these issues connect to larger historical trends in the hemisphere and globally. We need to explore what has changed and which elements have remained constant over time. Additionally, it is crucial to understand how the continent’s evolving geopolitical position in relation to emerging global powers, like China, introduces new realities alongside the ongoing influence of the United States. Moreover, we must consider how regional concerns, including the ones mentioned earlier, intersect with broader global processes. By examining these dynamics, we can gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between local, regional, and global factors in shaping the region’s present and future.

The focus on crisis, continuity, and change becomes particularly relevant when aiming to provide empirically grounded knowledge and relevant analysis of the pressing contemporary issues that afflict the continent. To elaborate on explanatory frameworks of the cycle from the “socialism of the 21st Century” to the current resurgence of authoritarianism and neo-fascism, it is essential to consider relevant questions and examine global and historical contexts that help us comprehend the current scenario. Understanding what has changed and identifying continuities from the authoritarian legacies of the 1970s, for example, is crucial in this regard.

Similar inquiries can be made about other persistent social issues. The persistence of populist politics and its relationship to contemporary democratic state formation and “alternative” forms of political participation is a significant area of exploration. Additionally, given the enduring challenges of poverty and increasing inequality, it remains pertinent to investigate how strategies of social mobility and survival practices among the poor unfold in the contemporary era of neoliberalism.