Chile's New Constitution: the Surprising Results Volume 40 Number 5 Women Against Military Madness Fall 2022 By Michael Livingston On Sunday, September 4, 2022, the movement for social change in Chile suffered a massive setback. The new constitution, submitted to a national referendum, was rejected by 62 percent of the voters, with 86 percent of eligible voters casting a ballot. The new constitution was defeated in all 16 regions of the country (divisions similar to states in the U.S.), and in 338 of the 346 communes, which are similar to our counties within each state. The road to rejection started on October 18, 2019, when mass protests broke out in the entire country. The protests focused on three crucial problems faced by Chileans: education, pensions, and healthcare. The root problem, however, was the political-economic system enshrined in the Chilean constitution, a constitution that was written by the dictator General Augusto Pinochet before he was forced from power in 1990. Under Pinochet, the capitalist elite was given free rein in Chile, following the economic philosophy of U.S. economist Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys (named for the University of Chicago, where most of these Chileans had gone to graduate school). The More