1 We are not even sure that we ourselves understand what is happening in our land. Yet we nevertheless feel an extraordinary sense of hope. We still don’t have the words to describe the helter-skelter, heart-stopping highs and lows of it all. But all the same I’m going to try to tell the story of these dramatic hopes.

Election night / Shocks

2 On the evening of December 19, 2021, we were all glued to our computers, TVs, smartphones, whatever screens we could get our hands on, in the company of our friends, our families, or on our own. Hope, panic, and belief raced through our bodies. The media’s coverage of the events had a rather tired feel to it; they got the analysis all wrong and diverted our attention away from what really mattered; a new—or rediscovered—political emotion was gripping us. We were all following, moment by moment, the twists and turns of the second round of this historic presidential election, which would eventually put Gabriel Boric—a 35-year-old former student activist and young deputy from the south of Chile—at the heart of a new coalition government (a “gobierno” that I’ll now call a CObierno). As we watched the media coverage, we were filled with a heady mix of hope and fear.

3 Fear that all the recent citizen progress might be undone—progress made possible as much by the protests of recent years as by the resurgence of micro-struggles and the centuries-old practices that preceded them, and by the spectacular revelations about the nefarious effects of anarcho-capitalist extractivism, whose inefficiency was becoming increasingly obvious as it continued to expand. Fear of the step backward that the absurd—yet not impossible—victory of the opposing candidate would have represented, which would have been just as historic as a victory for Boric, but in the opposite sense (history operating on a horizontal plane, with this change of perspective being one of the difficulties we faced in trying to picture for ourselves the extraordinary time we were living through). Just as a Constitutional Convention was seeking to put in place a form of live democracy, the prospect of a right-wing president, still advocating Pinochet-style politics and questioning a woman’s right to vote, spelled irreparable disaster.

4 As for hope, it was linked to changes in the political landscape and a change of faces within politics, made increasingly visible by various protests, by students in 2006 and 2011, by feminists in 2018, and by indigenous groups from October 2019 onward. These changes were also reflected in the multinational, multilingual, gender-balanced assembly charged with drafting the new constitution, though this was just the tip of the iceberg. They were full of hope, not just because of the political demands these movements gave voice to, but also because of the poetic forms of expression they introduced into our political discourse.

5 In July 2021, in an article for Multitudes, I spoke of the joys of the incredibly democratic assembly that had been established at the time in—and with—the productive chaos of political counterprogramming. The article ended with the image of a landowner watching all the upheavals taking place across his changing land and feeling all the terror a child might feel upon stumbling into a dark, mysterious, unfamiliar forest. By December 2021, our imaginary landowner had taken a different form—blond, heteronormal, smartly dressed—as a channel for that self-same feeling of bewilderment. To him, and the dying (but not quite defunct) world he called home, this forest, at once primeval and futuristic, was a hiding place for monsters threatening the freedoms “won” by the regime in which we had been immersed for so long—a regime as libertarian economically (with all the disasters that brings) as it was conservative morally (with all the different disasters that brings)—but that was now fast disappearing.

6 This was the explanation that frightened child gave to himself (and to us) for the paradigm shifts we were experiencing. And it was this reductive narrative that allowed him to muster millions of votes through a campaign that fed into what we may refer to as sad affects (fear of change; fury against communist monsters; condemnation of drug-trafficking migrants and indoctrinated women; cynicism toward politically inexperienced, doped-up youngsters or naïve students). In addition to all that, a few unfortunate—and similarly simplistic—remarks from one or two hardliners on the self-satisfied Left added a touch of spice to the first round of the election, which saw the sour-faced yet smartly dressed candidate come out on top. Given all the dances, the multilingual assemblies, and the—successful!—attempts at hetero-autonomous organization in the preceding months, this result seemed absurd, to say the least, and left us in a complete daze. We were in a state of shock—and it was this shock that haunted us on that evening of December 19.

Between election rounds / Considerations

7 The two weeks that followed the first round were perhaps the most politically engaged in our country’s recent history—and also the most emotionally charged. The day after the first round, the young president of the Medical College of Chile, Izkia Siches—originally from the desert region in the far north of the country and the mother of a seven-month-old baby—resigned from her post to take charge of Gabriel Boric’s campaign, all while breastfeeding her baby. Boric himself came from the far south of the country, surrounded by wild seas. The announcement was a moment of media magic that created a space for more direct, cross-cutting emotional attachment to the campaign. Leaving behind the typical mindsets characteristic of Left and Right, women of whatever background felt an electric current suddenly race through their hearts.

8 The campaign kicked off with a massive, but modest, “bus of hope” set to travel the length of the country from north to south, taking in rural communities and big cities along the way. The young politician Karol Cariola, another ex-comrade from the student protest scene, then followed this first step with an initiative known as “one million doors,” which involved thousands of women (and a few men too) visiting members of the public on their doorsteps to share their coalition’s proposals, reaching into the remotest corners of a silent land that was just now beginning to make itself heard. In the days that followed, more of these colorful, multilingual, fast-paced initiatives started to spread spontaneously in what seemed more akin to contact improvisation dance than an organized program. The dances, writings, and street songs of 2019—key features of the movement—now merged against a dreamlike backdrop.

9 The atmosphere and general ambiance perceived during these road campaigns was indeed more like some oneiric montage, formless and shifting—reflecting the extreme landscapes through which they traveled. The campaigns combined old and new, traditional techniques with ultramodern ones, bringing together geeks, academics, and peasants. These enchanting caravans were led almost exclusively by women—girls, mothers, sisters, girlfriends. And even if they sometimes encountered difficulties trying to establish common ground between their own democratic enthusiasm and attitudes shaped long ago by rather different narratives, their attentive work out on the campaign trail nonetheless served to forge sisterly bonds that would eventually go on to have a significant impact. Over the medium term, it seems that the frightening prospect of uninhibited patriarchal fascism started to weigh more heavily in the collective consciousness of women, the majority of whom went on to vote for Izkia, Karol, Camila, Carolina, María, Cecilia, Elisa, etc.

10 In parallel with the rise of these women’s movements and constituent movements, innovative alliances were starting to be formed among the political parties on the traditional Left too. While the buses were out on the road covering the length and breadth of the land, meetings were being held on various platforms—online and face-to-face—in an attempt to put aside our differences and come together, united in our common aspirations and shared goals. A metaphysical effort (which took priority over all else) and actions focused on the post-election period came together in this dizzying present, in which people from different backgrounds and different generations were united, allowing their differences to be temporarily cast aside in pursuit of a common cause, or a “common sense”—in every sense of the word, in terms of value, feeling, direction, and everything else.

11 Hands, voices (hoarse after two weeks of campaigning), minds, campaign trail dogs, social media posts, family discussions, WhatsApp groups exchanging funny or panic-stricken memes, and even a few journalists abandoning their “neutrality,” so many forms of direct democracy, worked together over those two weeks (with dedication, but still with a sense of joy) to try to counter the opposition’s far better-funded campaign based on fear and lies. Throughout this period, we saw no violence on the streets, no direct riposte to the fake news, no “counter-appeals,” no media spats. The team behind the man who would eventually be elected president, and all those groups united in common cause, in which women played a vital role, concentrated their efforts on drawing attention to what really mattered.

12 By the end of that long evening of December 19, we felt a real mixture of emotions: we were both relieved and ecstatic. Gabriel Boric and his CObierno in waiting were elected with the highest number of votes, and the highest turnout, in Chile’s history, and we had our youngest-ever president, and the first to come from so far south. It will never be possible to find the words to describe the sense of collective excitement felt in the moment as we experienced political life in its true sense. The speech Gabriel gave that night pierced us like a poetic arrow from a bygone era, collapsing time and opening up a whole new horizon of possibility: together we could create a shared history combining trees, cats, doubts, girls, jokes, our ancestors, feathers.

13 These things are always much more complex, but there was one thing at least that emerged clearly from the results of this election: for a large swathe of the population, fear of regression ultimately triumphed over fear of progression. The success of the momentum we managed to achieve in the period between the two election rounds does indeed appear to have been due in part to the fundamental ethical consensus we were able to build: our shared hope for a fairer future, for a more equitable distribution of wealth, and for an idealism that would be more realistic than the retrograde nightmare of a return to the days of anarcho-extractivism—even if this nightmare remains a cherished dream for certain people whom we will still need to convince (the asambleístas’ [1] experience of compromise could play a key role here).

(Inter-)changes of imaginaries

14 We now knew that our shared future would consist of a fight between the fantasy (still latent) of reverting back to the bad old days and a leap forward for new generations whose primary concern was to find a way of uniting a diverse population all living in the same territory, but within different—if not directly opposing—worlds, cultures, reference systems, and dreams. The duty to be considerate—of others, of difficulties, of our weaknesses and our strengths—became all the more pressing after that evening. We knew—or hoped we knew—that the renewed power of our convictions and the strengthening bond between “us,” however joyful that was, must not lead us to ignore those we live alongside, in tune with, in spite of, or within the limits of our differences. Ensuring that this diversity of ideological ecosystems could blossom without any resistance would have been nothing short of a miracle, but a religious spirit of a different kind did in fact appear to spread, thanks notably to the work of the Constitutional Convention and a host of other initiatives elsewhere on the planet.

15 The hurdles standing in the way of a miracle included not just the more obvious adversaries, but also those on the Left who had not yet grasped the fact that the time of the vertical structures of old-style communism and of binary oppositions between Left and Right, nature and culture, men and women, friend and foe was now past and that we were facing a turbulent time when those things were all beginning to be framed, handled, and spoken of differently. Instead of the vertical structures offered by traditional left-wing ideologies—which continue to advocate the need for a central power to impose order on all the chaos—the new generation of political minds has brought with it an alternative, where responsibilities are spread horizontally, along the lines of those bio-systems that, in their lawlessness, follow a law of ordered chaos.

16 The attention paid to life’s natural rhythms, to caring for living beings, and to the politics of “tenderness” (as our friend and president of the Constituent Assembly, Elisa Loncón, put it) is linked to approaches more generally adopted by women and the most vulnerable among us throughout the history of the logical, modern, rationalist, extractivist West. The illumination that these feminine ways bring does not claim to dispel the darkness—and indeed that is one of its special features. Nor does it cast away shadows. On the contrary, these inclusive lights take an interest in the shadows, precisely because they have a memory of being on the margins themselves, a practical, down-to-earth wisdom, and an understanding of fragility—a “loser’s insight.” This, incidentally, is also the reason why the women and men of this CObierno appeal to the notion of tenderness and why they have had the courage to reintroduce a vocabulary of common sense, sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical, that is able to speak to our “deepest” anxieties with that combination of carefreeness and seriousness that only children are capable of. They speak with extraordinary transparency, sharing their doubts and challenges with an authenticity that resituates the debate and places us, as humans on this planet, in a more modest position, one closer to reality.

17 This feminine imprint—which is not embodied by women alone, however—encompasses the whole spirit and style of the CObierno, which, if anything, more closely resembles what can be observed in Finland than in countries nearer the equator (which, incidentally, might help to give us a more “rounded” vision of the planet and enrich our imaginaries). In contrast to the model of competition and meritocracy, in which “victories” won in “battles” are supposed to bring us “happiness,” the more cooperative style of politics promoted by the Boric coalition shows us that when we’re invited to cooperate for the good of everyone, we automatically feel more fulfilled and less alone in these battles, which thus turn into shared hopes. To progress in this way from the logic of competition—between persons or specific forms of knowledge—to that of cooperation has the effect of changing the conversation and, with it, the manner, the form, and the style of power, leading, among other things, to an ecology of language and new uses for these old words.

18 Those on the Left who are sometimes resistant to the CObierno’s conciliatory, unifying approach may take steps in our direction by grasping that a balance is needed between non-compliance and listening—something far more difficult than just issuing commands—and that heteronomy can be experienced not as submission to others but as acquiescence to our shared existence, and consideration of our collective fragilities. It is therefore possible for more expansive notions of friendship to spread via our experiences with gentleness.

19 As Elisa and Jaime, joint presidents of the Constitutional Convention, left their temporary mandate, they gave each other a warm hug, called each other “querida” (dear), and addressed their colleagues as “beloved constituent comrades.” If it’s true that constituted power has tried to prevent constituent power from embracing (e)motion, then the introduction of this kind of vocabulary into the corridors of power is itself something revolutionary. The experience that these asambleístas already had of compromise certainly paved the way for a fundamental change in the way this political generation communicates—the first such generation to govern over parents having experienced the meritocratic, competitive injunctions of ultra-neoliberalism. The asambleístas’ experience changed us all by operating on the language of power in order to lay the groundwork for a redistribution of power (economic, social, and political).

20 The leaders of the elected CObierno do not present themselves as leaders but as artisans—among many others—in an egalitarian underground movement. While one of the problems of power in general is the belief that those who embody it are the true actors and not just players taking part in a collective gam(bl)e, the CObierno generation is suspicious of the stories people tell and is starting to tell other stories in other ways.

21 Izkia Siches chose to run the campaign while looking after her baby. And the first thing to be announced after the election was the appointment of a “First Dog of the Republic” (not a “First Lady”). When everyone arrived for the very first gathering of the coalition, which brought together traditional parties, associations, and members of movements of various kinds, they arrived with their babies or dogs, with backpacks, sandals and shorts, and messy hair. They used a self-recorded video to share a few images of this meeting with the media. Gabriel Boric’s very first interview as president-elect was with a child who was waiting for him at the door (“so I can listen to this young person’s concerns and vision for the country”). Later, he began his speech in front of La Moneda palace with the words, “let me just put my glasses on.” These low-key signals are powerful and important. The coalition members may all be the children of capitalism and its derivatives, but they also know how to counter it with little acts of sabotage full of humanity and humor, but also with a fierce determination to listen to what people in the wider community have to say.

22 We therefore ought to warmly welcome these new generations for whom power is more a matter of carefully reading the Zeitgeist than of embodying a persona. The beauty of their form of address, their carefree manner coupled with respect for their elders, their warmth, the “speeches” given by the First Dog of the Republic, the new president’s appeal “not to idealize anyone, starting with me,” their disarming gestures of authenticity—all these things have accelerated a renewal of political imaginaries that were struggling to make progress relying on theory and logic alone.

23 In the face of all the fake news that has sought to wipe them from history, these coalitions, rather than responding with “truths” of their own, are proposing a rethink of what truth itself might really mean, i.e., a truth built instead on presence, a way of being that dissolves the very essence of the fake. An authenticity that allows us, moreover, to express our collective doubts and that affirms the need for joint participation. In this way, we proclaim our fragility to be a force that pushes us to build our futures collectively with joint responsibility.

24 The beauty of what we’re experiencing just now—both with our friends in government and with the brave members of the Constitutional Convention—is not about trying to replace one vertical structure with another, but about putting our relationships on a radically different, more horizontal footing, from our deepest earthly roots to the farthest corners of our cosmic, metaphysical dreams: seeking, in conjunction with all those voices that have never been heard before, and with all those communities eclipsed by centralization, to envisage what would be needed to secure a viable, livable biodiversity, supporting a life lived in harmony with, not “despite,” our differences. A poetic-political yin-yang experimenting bravely with forms of collaboration that are capable of uniting past and future, because the dawn needs the dusk. If these experiments attentive to different movements—and to every faint murmur in the community—allow us to discover a rhythm of change, we will perhaps have taken our first steps toward a (differently) shared world.

25 It may be that the only way we can bring together our humanities is on the metaphysical level, in the original sense of the word. Through something that is beyond what we can perceive with our senses but that is, at the same time, a connected, sensitive heart. Because we can’t get out of this on our own. Hope, the word mysteriously resurfaces like some ancient precious rock from outer space. “Let’s parliament our pain,” says Elisa Loncón: “our wounds can only be healed together.”