Barges of the Paraná river (photo: wikipedia)

Uruguay plans to offer South America’s only two-landlocked countries access to the sea in exchange for rail infrastructure, according to Uruguay’s Ambassador to Bolivia Carlos Flanagan.

Flanagan announced yesterday the Uruguayan government will offer a port to Bolivia in Rocha, located on the Atlantic Coast near the border with Brazil, in exchange for hardwood sleepers used to reform railway infrastructure in the country.

The proposal is part of a plan to consolidate the Hidrovía Paraná-Paraguay, a waterway transport system via the Paraná and Paraguay rivers that facilitates exports from the Atlantic Ocean.

The port in Rocha will have a 32m deep wharf, which can be used by the largest cargo ships according to Flanagan. The Ambassador also argued that the waterway is the “most cost-effective” transport method in the region.

Uruguay’s Minister of Public Works Enrique Pintado, who also plans to visit Paraguay, the other nation that was proposed this integration pact, will present the project in La Paz, Flanagan said. ”We do not have a specific date… but it will obviously be one of the priorities in 2014,” he added.

This year Uruguay commenced a program to restore its domestic railway system.

“Between the ’80s and ’90s, when the neoliberal model was applied in countries [in the region] it produced the dismantling of our railways; therefore, if we talk about connectivity, one of the tasks is the reconstruction of railways, and Paraguay and Bolivia are major producers of hardwood to manufacture sleepers,” Flanagan said.

The government in Bolivia has not commented on the proposal but Presidents José Mujica and Evo Morales met in July this year to discuss joint plans related to bilateral cooperation.

In the past Bolivia has been given use of river ports at Villeta in Paraguay, Rosario in Argentina, and Nueva Palmira in Uruguay but did not build port infrastructure to consolidate an outlet to the Atlantic ocean.

Bolivia lost its coastal territory and access to the sea in a war with Chile 134 years ago. In April this year Bolivia filed a lawsuit before the International Court of Justice in The Hague seeking a ruling that forces Chile to negotiate the firm historical claim.

Bolivians have also been pinning their hopes on Peru to regain access to the Pacific under the Ilo Agreement, which will allow Bolivia to conduct industrial, commercial, and tourist activities from the Peruvian port of Ilo. In September it was approved by a Congressional Committee in Lima but is yet to be ratified by Congress. A Bolivian delegation travelled to Peru to request Congress address the issue last month.

After Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections in Chile, former president Michelle Bachelet is one step closer to a second term in office, decisively finishing first in Chile’s presidential election. Bachelet, who obtained nearly 47% of the vote, failed to reach the absolute majority needed to win in the first round of voting and will face second-place and ruling party candidate Evelyn Matthei in a runoff on 15th December.

Since Bachelet left office in 2010, the country’s economy has continued to grow under the management of conservative businessman Sebastian Piñera, with an annual growth rate of 5.5% bolstered by high domestic investment and contained inflation. Unemployment, which has hovered around 6% throughout the past year, hit a six-year low in March.

Michelle Bachelet casts her vote Sunday (Photo: María C. Lagos – Télam)

However, demands that new wealth be distributed more fairly – Chile has the greatest economic inequality amongst OECD developed countries – have resulted in dismal approval ratings for Piñera, the lowest of any president since Chile’s return to democracy in 1988. Massive public demonstrations, in particular the student uprising of 2011, have marked Piñera’s term and fractured his right-wing Alianza por Chile coalition.

Bachelet has worked to take advantage of the new political force found in Chile’s student movement. Her core campaign promises – reforming the Pinochet-era constitution and a revamping of the education system paid for by increased corporate taxes – were crafted to directly appeal to the protesters and the 70% of Chileans who sympathise with them.

However, Bachelet is faced with a Chilean youth that has become increasingly disillusioned with institutional politics and their movement has rejected accepted forms of achieving change. Although Chile’s first female president left her first term with high approval ratings and is smoothly riding popular discontent back to the presidency, Bachelet is not guaranteed an easy term if she wins. Changes in Chilean attitudes towards politics and a dissatisfied youth movement necessitate some adept political manoeuvring by Bachelet if she wants to carry out her promises of constitutional reform and avoid the same level of mass demonstrations that characterised her predecessor’s administration.

Nueva Mayoría takes aim at Constitutional Reform

In Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Bachelet’s centre-left Nueva Mayoría coalition, a rebranding of the Concertación bloc, captured 21 seats in the senate and 67 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The conservative Alianza por Chile saw wins from 16 new senators and 49 deputies. Nueva Mayoría now holds a 58% legislative majority in parliament and is five seats away in the Senate and ten seats away in the house of deputies from achieving the quorums necessary to make widely demanded reforms to Chile’s dictatorship-era constitution.

The constitution, designed to impede change and promote compromise, is massively unpopular and seen by some as Chile’s last roadblock in its transition to democracy. A 2012 poll by the Latin America Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) found that over 50% of respondents agreed with the idea of constitutional reform, with an additional 20% saying they strongly agreed. Only 4% of those polled openly disagreed with constitutional reform.

Although Bachelet nearly doubled the number of votes that went to rival Alianza candidate, Matthei, she faces the right’s veto power in a parliament essentially shared between the two camps. This is because Chile’s binomial electoral system, a vestige of the Pinochet dictatorship, allocates members of parliament equally to the first and second majority coalitions, known varyingly as pacts or blocs.

Due to the binomial system, Alianza typically secures around 50% of congressional seats despite receiving only 40% of votes. The result is a parliamentary landscape that makes Bachelet’s aims at deep reforms much easier said than done. Add in an increasing public disbelief – especially among the youth – in the effectiveness of politics, and it is easy to predict that it will be difficult for Bachelet to avoid the level of public demonstrations Chile has seen in recent years.

While election day results indicate that Bachelet has wide support, voter turnout in Chile’s first non-obligatory presidential election was alarmingly low, with 6.6m voters out of a potential 13m going to the polls. While some voters may have stayed home because polls predicted an easy Bachelet victory, the low number indicates that many are apathetic toward the national government as a means of structural change.

Camila Vallejo (Photo by Marcos S. González Valdés, on Flickr)

One sector of the population that shares this apathy is the large number of student activists and organisers famous for the massive student protests of 2011, which galvanised Chile’s youth and were seen as an indictment of president Sebastian Piñera’s neoliberal-modelled government, leading to a plummet in his approval rating and a number of cabinet shake ups.

Some student leaders have embraced the route of parliamentary politics, as evidenced by the election of four of the movement’s best-known leaders to positions in parliament on Sunday. Communist Party members Camila Vallejo and Karol Cariola both won seats as deputies, as did Independent student leaders Gabriel Boric and Giorgio Jackson. Vallejo gained international acclaim in 2011 when, as president of the Students Federation of the University of Chile (FECH), she spearheaded some of Chile’s largest protests since the country’s return to democracy. Vallejo became a sort of folkloric figurehead of a new wave of revolutionary sentiment and action expressed by the youth of Latin America.

However, Vallejo and her fellow leaders’ progression to parliament represents a vision not shared by the rest of the student movement, as seen in the lack of support for Chile’s dominant centre-leftist majority and for political parties in general.

The Penguins Grow Up 

Sanndy Infante Reyes was just 14 years old when, in 2006, she began marching with other secondary students against what she described as the “general discontent” evoked by the Chilean educational system. The marches, which became known as the ‘Penguin Revolution’ for the way their school uniforms made marchers look like marching penguins, were the largest student demonstrations in three decades and Bachelet’s first real political crisis as president.

The principal demand of this initial student mobilisation was the repeal of the Organic Constitutional Act of Teaching (LOCE), a law signed by Pinochet a day before leaving office in 1990. The law, which Infante says allowed education “to be transformed into a luxury good,” significantly scaled back state involvement in the school system, creating sharp disparities between public and private schools.

In 2011, Sanndy took to the streets once again with thousands of her fellow university students to demand equality in education.

While Bachelet’s promise to make higher education free within six years captures student demands for quality, equal education, it might be too little too late, according to Infante, who says that Bachelet “definitely” is not an option for students.

“Student petitions from 2006, such as the demand for free education, fell on deaf ears during Bachelet’s government, and now she is promising education reform in her campaign for re-election,” says Infante, who also calls the General Teaching Law, Bachelet’s reform of LOCE, “little more than a name change.”

Sanndy Infante is joined by her mother at a march on 14th July 2011 (Photo courtesy of Sanndy Infante)

A Crisis of Legitimacy Amongst Chile’s Youth

Juan Pablo Luna is a political scientist at the Catholic University of Chile and has researched the student movement’s relationship to national politics. He argues that the 2011 protests articulated a “crisis of legitimacy” for the dominant economic and political models.

According to Luna, “Chile now has a syndrome that has been common in the region: a profound alienation between society and parties and a growing devaluation of elections and representative institutions.”

In 2010, a LAPOP poll found that a meagre 11% of Chile’s population claimed affiliation with a party, down 15% from when the student protests began four years earlier. Chile is unique amongst its neighbours in this trend.

“El pueblo unido avanza sin partido” has become a popular rally cry heard in recent student marches. Translated to mean “The people united advance without a party”, it reflects the heightened irrelevance toward institutional political processes.

“I don’t believe you need to be involved in a political party in order to create political change,” says Infante, who herself has turned down invitations to join parties and organisations from both the left and the right. 

Sebastian Bravo, who, like Sanndy, became involved in the student movement in 2006, is another young activist and student at the Catholic University of Chile who has shunned political parties as a necessary vehicle for social change.

“A political party which completely shares my socio-political fundamentals does not exist,” Sebastian says. “However, my tendencies tend to relate to the left – and not with my country’s false left, the Concertación, but with the wider Latin American left.”

A Generation Without Fear

Bravo says his generation possesses a “different perception of reality than that of previous generations moulded by Pinochet’s dictatorship”. He also says the student movement organises “without the fear of public spaces and without the conformism of previous generations oppressed by Pinochet”.

Protesters face tear gas at students’ protest in 2011 (photo: Sanndy Infante)

Last week, leaders in the movement further rejected conventional tactics of political engagement when FECH elected anarchist Melissa Sepúlveda as its newest president.

Heading into Sunday’s election, the medical student and now one of the movement’s chief spokespersons announced she would not be voting, telling Chilean newspaper El Mercurio that her vote “did not matter” and that voting would be an “empty exercise.”

“I don’t vote because the Chilean institutional system today prevents a presidential or congressional position from being an agent of transformation. There is no possibility for transformation to happen via the electoral process.”

Sepúlveda also confirmed she would not have voted for Jackson or Vallejo. “I don’t believe possibilities for transformation are in Congress. I understand their political ambition, but I do not share it,” she said.

Sebastian Bravo echoed Sepúlveda’s views on voting and seeking change through the political establishment.

“A large percentage of students who have participated in the movement and now feel unrepresented by politicians, such as Bachelet, or the political model, have decided to not vote or to seek out alternatives to the institution, such as assembly-based social movements.”

Bachelet and her Nueva Mayoría must find a way to incorporate these students back into the political process if they hope to stay relevant. The first steps will be to achieve significant reforms to the constitution and make headway in Bachelet’s campaign promises of education reform. If this does not happen during the next four years, Chile’s centre-left and left face an unpredictable future without the support of the country’s youth.

Click here to find out what Argentines think about their neighbours’ election.

Michelle Bachelet casts her vote Sunday (Photo: María C. Lagos – Télam)

Former president Michelle Bachelet decisively finished first in Chile’s presidential election on Sunday, but failed to reach the absolute majority needed to avoid a runoff. Bachelet, who obtained nearly 47% of the vote, will face second-place and ruling party candidate Evelyn Matthei in a runoff on 15th December.

Matthei, who finished with 25% of the votes, faced an uphill battle after entering the race late in July as the replacement candidate for the Independent Democratic Union party following the abrupt withdrawal of Pablo Longueira for health reasons, himself a replacement for his party’s original candidate, Laurence Golborne.

Legislative elections were also held Sunday. Bachelet’s centre-left Nueva Mayoría coalition captured 21 seats in the senate and 67 seats in the Chamber of deputies. The conservative Alianza por Chile saw wins from 16 new senators and 49 deputies. Nueva Mayoría now holds a legislative majority in the Senate and also leads Alianza in the house of deputies.

However, Chile’s Pinochet-era constitution requires a number of different quorums in order to pass various reforms, complicating the success of Bachelet’s campaign promises, which include a revamping of the country’s constitution as well as education and health reform paid for by higher corporate taxes.

The two candidates represent two conflicting legacies in Chile’s history. As children, their families were friends and neighbours. After the 1973 military coup, Matthei’s father, a military general, went to work for the Pinochet dictatorship. Bachelet’s father, a friend and supporter of deposed president Salvador Allende, was detained and tortured under Pinochet before dying in prison. Bachelet herself was detained and tortured at the age of 24, before being exiled to Australia.

The divorced mother of three served as Chile’s first female president from 2005 to 2010, but was barred by the constitution from running for immediate reelection. After leaving the presidential palace in Santiago with high popularity, the paediatrician served for two years as the inaugural executive director of UN Women before announcing her bid for reelection.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a multilateral free trade agreement currently being negotiated between 12 countries. The negotiations started in 2006 and involved only four countries – Chile, Brunei, New Zealand, and Singapore – with the aim of reducing tariff and non-tariff trade barriers and increasing trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region. However, with the growing economic importance of the Asia Pacific region as a motor for economic growth, eight new members have since joined the agreement: Peru, Mexico, the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, and Malaysia. If signed, the TPP will become  the largest international trade agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995, encompassing 800 million people, a third of world trade and 40% of the global economy.

TPP countries. In dark green: currently in negotiations; in light green: announced interest (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Countries enter free trade agreements because of their potential to raise living standards, giving poorer countries access to overseas markets and attracting foreign investment that will reduce prices, create jobs, and increase tax revenue. In his book ‘Making Globalization Work’, renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz states that China’s economic growth, based on exports, has lifted 700 million people out of poverty. However, far too often free trade agreements are controlled by developed countries and, more particularly, by special interest groups within these countries, which impose their agendas on less economically developed member nations.

The TPP is an example of increasingly prevalent, far-reaching agreements, which not only address conditions for trade, but also put other topics on the table, such as intellectual property and investment protection. Although leaders of the countries involved are pushing for a deal to be signed by the end of the year, the TPP has sparked fierce protests from a number of groups that accuse governments of putting corporate interests before citizens’ rights, damaging human rights and the environment, and signing away countries’ sovereignty.

Secrecy

The TPP negotiations are taking place behind closed doors and this secrecy is one of the greatest sources of discontent for groups opposing the agreement. No details of the agreement have been published and the only information in the public domain has been leaked.

Even in participating countries, such as the US, Chile, and Peru, Congresses have complained of being kept in the dark about the contents of the TPP and excluded from the negotiations. In spite of this secrecy, according to US news programme ‘Democracy Now’, more than 600 corporate advisors, including representatives of the controversial seed company Monsanto, have had access to the TPP agreement.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch (photo courtesy of Public Citizen)

In an interview with ‘Democracy Now‘, Lori Wallach, director of US-based advocacy group Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, which monitors the WTO and other trade agreements, revealed that until last June, despite having constitutional authority over US trade, members of the US Congress were denied access to the draft text. Only after a written protest were members of Congress allowed sight of particular chapters, under restricted conditions. “They had no help to understand the technical language. They couldn’t take detailed notes and they were not supposed to talk about what they saw,” says Wallach.

The Congresses of Peru and Chile have also expressed their concerns about the secretive manner in which TPP negotiations are being carried out. After a public outcry, in August 2013 the Chilean Senate unanimously approved a motion for President Sebastián Piñera to hold a “public, technical, and genuine debate about the implications of the TPP for Chile’s economy and international relations.”

Inspired by Chile and spurred on by the concerned and concerted voices of citizens and organisations involved in ‘No negociable’, a public campaign against the TPP, a delegation from the Peruvian Congress presented a similar motion in August.

There are several theories about why the TPP negotiations are being kept under wraps. Some groups opposed to the TPP have suggested that after negotiations on the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas, known as ALCA in Spanish) broke down in 2005, negotiators have tried to make TPP negotiations run more smoothly. By making the TPP text far less accessible than that for the FTAA, they hope to reduce scrutiny and avoid the public backlash that the FTAA agreement received.

From a US perspective, Wallach contends that corporate players are keen to keep the text of the TPP secret because it places their interests above those of the public and because it includes some provisions that have previously been considered and rejected by US Congress. She believes that negotiators hope to slip such provisions past a poorly informed Congress via the TPP. “The binding provision is that each country shall ensure the conformity of domestic laws, regulations, and procedures,” says Wallach, “so every country would be required to change its domestic laws to comply with these rules.” According to Wallach, SOPA, the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy Act which addressed copyright laws and internet censorship, is an example a law that failed in the US Congress because of mass public opposition but which is now bundled into the TPP.

Leaked Chapters

Because the TPP text remains unpublished, little of its content is known outside the negotiations. However, a few chapters of the TPP have been leaked and these have raised concerns among opposition groups. According to Wallach, of the 29 chapters in the TPP only five concern issues traditionally addressed in trade agreements, such as the elimination of tariffs. Other chapters address issues such as food safety, internet freedom, the cost of medicine, financial regulation and the environment.

According to the website ‘Expose the TPP’, the TPP includes the controversial ‘Investor State System’, which opponents have branded, “a tool which undermines democracy”. Under the Investor State System, where investors and corporations believe individual or corporate investments are being threatened, they can take countries to International courts without first passing through national justice systems.

In many cases, this mechanism has undermined national legislation concerning health, safety, and the environment. For example, it was using the Investor State System provided for in the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement that Renco Group Inc, a US holding company, took the Peruvian government to court for US$800m, claiming violations of the US-Peru FTA. The case was initiated in response to the Peruvian Government’s closure of the holding’s highly polluting metal smelter in the city of La Oroya, which did not meet national environmental standards. La Oroya is said to be one of the ten most polluted cities in the world.

Protestors against the TPP in the US (photo courtesy of Public Citizen)

Furthermore, there are fears that the TPP would give increased powers to banks and provide for the rollback of banking regulations introduced after the global financial crisis.

Those who oppose the TPP have also criticised the chapter on intellectual property. Through an extension of monopoly drug patents included in the agreement, pharmaceutical companies would be granted new rights and powers to increase the price of medicines and limit access to affordable generic drugs. In developing countries, these new powers could affect access to vital HIV, cancer, and tuberculosis drugs. The agreement would also empower foreign pharmaceutical corporations to challenge national patent and drug-pricing arrangements in international courts.

The Intellectual Property chapter also proposes to extend the length of the copyright period for books, films, and music. If incorporated into the TPP, this measure could limit affordable access of these materials in schools, for example. A draft of the chapter, leaked yesterday by Wikileaks, revealed that Mexico has proposed an extension of copyright from 70 years after the death of the creator to 100 years. Although this increase may seem insignificant, it highlights the way in which intellectual property measures of this kind can been seen as incompatible with promoting free trade. In relation to this, Stiglitz argues that trade agreements are supposed to liberalise the movement of goods and services between countries instead of, in this case, closing them down.

As well as concerns over the non-trade measures included in the TPP, fundamental concerns over the impact of a liberalised trade market remain. For example, protestors in the US worry that the TPP will make it easier to move US jobs offshore, to countries with lower production costs. And in other countries, such as Mexico, there is continuing concern that farmers will be unable to compete with heavily subsidised US agricultural products.

TPP Beneficiaries

With the TPP surrounded by so much controversy, it is interesting to consider who may benefit from the agreement.

According to Friends of the Earth activist Bill Warren, large multi-national corporations in all TPP countries have much to gain from ratification of the TPP. “Now that the WTO trade agreements have come to a standstill, the United States is trying to draw up an agreement for a global economy which is even more favourable for corporations and less respectful of democratic institutions, fair trade, and human rights,” Warren contends.

Leaders of TPP member states and prospective member states at a TPP summit in 2010 (photo: Wikipedia)

An article published in the East Asian Forum analysing the implications of the TPP for the East Asian region, argues that the US’ main reason for joining the talks is to increase its influence in Asia and, at the same time, contain China’s growing influence in the region. Since the US does not yet have bilateral agreements with Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, or Brunei, the TPP would provide an opportunity to shift the power relationship in Asia in favour of the US. Some suggest that excluding China from what will be the largest Free Trade Zone, could eventually force it to join the TPP and, thus, to incorporate the TPP’s US-dominated trade system into its national laws.

However, for other countries, such as Chile and Peru, which already have bilateral agreements with many of the TPP countries including the United States, incentives for joining the agreement are less obvious. The incorporation into the agreement of Vietnam and other developing nations that present similar investment opportunities could result in Chile and Peru losing the preferential treatment afforded to them through their existing bilateral agreements.

Marcos Robledo, a Chilean expert in international relations, stated in an interview with newspaper Diario Financiero that Chile must recognise that in China and Asia, “the TPP is considered to be a hostile initiative towards China.” He warned that membership of the TPP could damage Chile’s export trade to China, which, currently, is one of the biggest importers of Chilean copper and agricultural products.

A Modified TPP: Recognising Differences Between Nations 

Anti-TPP demonstration in the US (photo: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom)

In an article published in the Peruvian paper Caretas, Rodrigo Contreras, former Chilean TPP negotiator who stepped down in 2012 because of disagreements with the negotiation process, said that, if well-negotiated, the TPP had the potential to bring benefits to Latin American nations.

He described, for example, the benefits of Latin American countries working together with partner countries in Asia. “Our countries have similar goals and in some areas we share the same interests as Asian countries,” says Contreras, “which would give us a stronger negotiation stance when dealing with the bigger countries in the TPP.” However, he expressed his regret that the current TPP failed to reflect the interests and needs of Latin American countries. “The TPP can be a good idea,” he says, “but it must be transformed to provide real opportunities for our economy. We must reject a model designed to suit the priorities of high-income countries, which are very different to those of the other participating countries.”

In a similar vein, other partnership countries have come forward to challenge aspects of the TPP. In an article published in the Network for Justice in Global Investment, Kevin Gallagher, a specialist in trade and investment policy, explains that following the example of TPP countries Chile and Malaysia, which successfully regulated cross-border finances in the 1990s, other nations have rejected the TTP clause limiting countries’ capacity to adopt measures to prevent financial speculation. Instead, they have proposed revisions that safeguard cross-border financial regulations. And, earlier this year, seven TPP countries, led by Chile and New Zealand, proposed a more flexible alternative to the pharmaceutical intellectual property model proposed by the US.

With growing awareness within the TPP countries that this agreement has the potential to undermine many aspects of life that they now take for granted, such as internet freedom and the supremacy of national laws, the form that the final draft of the TPP will take is still unclear. It remains to be seen whether developing countries will be able to challenge the power that big corporate interests allegedly weild over the negotiations and achieve a TPP that reflects their needs. Similarly, we do not know the extent to which lobby groups and political allignment will influence the lawmakers’ decision to pass a free trade agreement without analysing fully the implications of the agreement for their nation.

In a political climate in which nations seem intent on defending their right to surveillance, claiming it is in the interest of their people’s security, it is worrying that such significant negotiations should be allowed to take place behind closed doors.

Do Argentines think free trade agreements are a good idea? Click here to find out.

Lead image: anti-TPP protest in the US, courtesy of Caelie Frampton on Flickr.

President Piñera speaks at official ceremony. This week, Piñera hopes to resolve municipal strikes which have continued for over three weeks. (Photo courtesy of Chilean government)

Municipal workers, led by mayors across the country, continue their strike ahead of Chile’s presidential, congressional, and regional council elections on 17th November.

The Chilean Association of Municipalities (ACM), the main umbrella organisation for the country’s mayors, has affirmed that the elections will take place normally in line with the municipalities’ constitutional and legal responsibilities.

“Our municipal officials are democratic, they understand that this is a matter of the nation and that there is a responsibility of the municipalities and mayors to make sure these elections are conducted successfully,” the president of the mayor’s guild, Santiago Rebolledo, said in a statement released Sunday.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, President Sebastián Piñera called the strikes, now in their fourth week, “unjustified”. Piñera, who hopes protests will not define the end of his term the way they have much of the rest of it, called it “unacceptable to fill the cities with garbage, to deny the distribution of water to the most vulnerable sectors of the population, or to commit acts of violence or occupations.”

Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections will be the first to be voluntary, making it even more vital for municipal logistics to be sorted out in time. While authorities are unsure of levels of voter participation, Gonzalo Müller, a political scientist at the Universidad de Desarollo, told news site Emol that he expects a turnout of 50-53%.

“If the centre-right or independent bases do not show up to vote on Sunday, it will be easier for Bachelet to win in the first round,” said Müller, referring to the absolute majority frontrunner Michelle Bachelet needs to avoid a runoff.

Bachelet warned supporters Sunday against letting their guard down in the final days before the election. Chile’s first female president, is running for her second term on a platform of tax and education reform and the proposition of a new constitution.

Pascua-Lama Plan Map (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Canadian corporation Barrick Gold announced today it is temporarily suspending construction activity on its controversial US$8.5bn Pascua-Lama project over the Chile-Argentina border.

During a press conference delivering their third quarter financial results, the gold mining giant stated the move allows the company to protect capital and cut its spending guidance for 2014 by US$1bn. Chief Executive Jamie Sokalsky confirmed the project will proceed at an “appropriate time” and within a “phased approach”.

Head of Barrick in Argentina, Guillermo Caló, confirmed the decision was economic stating: “The temporary halt in operations is due to a economic variables… We must evaluate the necessary investment needed in order to complete construction works on Pascua-Lama.”

The billion dollar project has faced numerous challenges in recent years. Most notably, the company went over budget as it had underestimated the challenges associated in developing the project. Furthermore, Chilean regulators demanded Barrick fix their water management system as it was not up to match with the gold mining companies environmental permit. After a series of legal actions, Chilean court ratified a tribunal decision to suspend construction of the mining project until an adequate water management system was in place.

Additionally, Barrick has faced legal action from indigenous communities that want the project shut down due to the effects on the environment and surrounding communities. The company’s mining methods can cause leaking of untreated waste materials in local water supplies, acid drainage, and a reduction in air quality. The gold mining process involves breaking up mountainous rocks with dynamite, with the ore then treated with water and chemicals to separate the minerals and metals. This produces a large amount of waste material which is often stored in artificial lakes or treated to be able to circulate water systems.

The halt in operations comes as Barrick’s Chilean workers voted to strike after four unions representing the company’s workers on the Chilean side rejected a wage offer from the company.

Last week, the trade union stated: “Barrick’s poor management of the Pascua-Lama project includes the way it has managed relations with its own employees… [The company's] workers have been treated in a patronising and abusive way during the wage negotiations process, which resulted in the dismal of workers protected by union laws.”

Barrick’s ongoing financial troubles has seen the company sell off non-core assets, although they still hold a significant long-term debt of US$15bn.

Guillermo Teillier (Photo: courtesy of Wikipedia)

Three widows of Chilean military personnel killed in 1986 are suing Communist Party leader, Guillermo Teillier, for his part in their deaths.

Speaking to La Tercera, a Cuban newspaper, in April, Teillier confessed that he had approved the 1986 attack on then-dictator General Pinochet. Teillier also confessed to other attempts made on Pinochet’s life throughout the 1980s, all carried out by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (MRPF).

Lawyer Raúl Meza, who will represent the widows in the case, said: “As complainants, we want this extra-judicial confession to be ratified before a court.”

Speaking to Chilean radio station Bio Bio, the widow of Pablo Silva Pizarro said: “We want justice and equality before the law, that’s all we want.”

While Lidia Valenzuela, the widow of Cardenio Hernández, said she was seeking justice for her three daughters.

The 7th September 1986 attack failed to kill Pinochet, but killed five people, including Miguel Guerrero Guzmán, Gerardo Rebolledo Cisternas and Roberto Rosales Martínez. It injured a further 11. Those killed were escorting Pinochet.

Meza clarified that Teillier is being sued for “authorised terrorist homicide” and described the attack as “treacherous, premeditated and planned for a long time by the terrorist organization MRPF”.

Responding to the accusation, Teillier said the attack was “nothing more than a reaction” against atrocities committed by Pinochet. During Pinochet’s 17-year reign, an estimated 3000 people were killed or disappeared, with a further 30,000 tortured.

The case comes just under a month before national elections, adding to political tensions building in the country.

Michelle Bachelet (photo: Agência Brasil)

Thirty days out from Chile’s presidential election and campaigning has officially begun, with a poll placing former president Michelle Bachelet well ahead of the pack.

Chile has been in election-mode for weeks, but at midnight on Friday the legal period commenced which allows candidates to freely advertise until 14th of November through press, radio, flyers and online. The Bachelet campaign wasted no time, holding an official launch at midnight in Plaza Baquedano in Santiago in front of hundreds of supporters.

According to a survey conducted by Universidad Diego Portales (UDP) and released on Thursday, Bachelet, Chile’s first female president from 2006 to 2010, is the favourite in all the scenarios considered.

If the elections were held this Sunday, Bachelet would receive 37.7% of the vote, well ahead of President Sebastian Pinera’s former labour minister Evelyn Matthei on 12.3%.

Independent candidate Franco Parisi would recieve 10.6% of the vote, followed by leader of the Partido Progresista Marco Enríquez-Ominami with 7%, and the Partido Humanista candidate, Marcel Claude, with 3.8%.

The rest of the candidates received less then 1%, while 15.9% said they would not vote at all. A further 11.2% were undecided.

The 17th November election will be the first time voting is not compulsory in Chile.

Even under the scenario ‘maximum voter participation’, surveying those people who definitely intended to vote – 66.6% of the respondents – Bachelet would win 44% of the vote, indicating the vote would lead to a run-off election between the two frontrunners. A candidate needs more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff, which is considered unlikely with nine presidential candidates.

Under the scenario ‘maximum voter participation’ the positions remained unchanged with Matthei second on 14.3%, Franco Parisi 11.3%, Marco Enríquez-Ominami 6.7% and Marcel Claude 4.9%.

The survey was conducted face to face, based on a probability sample of 1,300 cases, representing 73.6% of the Chilean population, with a sampling error of 2.72 percent and a confidence level of 95 percent.

Penitenciario Cordillera (Photo: Wikimedia commons)

The Chilean government says it is standing by its decision to close a prison housing dictatorship-era military officials, convicted of crimes against humanity, despite the suicide of an inmate.

Former General Odlanier Mena Salinas – one the 10 inmates due to be moved from Penitenciario Cordillera in Santiago – shot himself at his home on Saturday. The 87-year-old was sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 for his role in the deaths of three opponents to the Pinochet dictatorship.

The former chief spy had been allowed to spend weekends at his home since 2011 and was due to be transferred to a different prison after Chilean President Sebastián Piñera announced last Thursday the military prison – built in 2004 – would be closed.

“The decision, despite this tragic death, will not be altered and will be carried out at the opportune moment,” said Piñera in a brief declaration from La Moneda.

He also expressed his condolences to the Mena family, including son Hernán Mena Taboada, Chile’s ambassador to Nicaragua.

The decision to close the facility was sparked by growing public animosity towards the favourable conditions inside the prison. Local media recently reported the prison, located on an army base, has private bathroons, BBQs and tennis courts.

The president said it was a matter of “equality before the law.”

The prisoners will be transferred to Punta Peuco, another prison for human rights offenders 35kms north of Santiago. It currently houses 44 inmates, detained by 66 guards. Piñera has made no mention of the exact time or day the transfer will take place.

Penitenciario Cordillera’s 10 inmates  – including Manuel Contreras, former chief of Pinochet’s notorious secret police, who is serving combined sentences of more than 100 years for kidnappings and murders- had 35 guards.

The decision to close the facility is supported by opposition candidate and former president Michelle Bachelet, who was herself held during the dictatorship.

According to reports from Chilean news site, El Mercurio, Mena left a note saying due to his age he could not “accept the conditions of being detained in another prison.”

His lawyer told press Mena was in a fragile state and killed himself because he was “terribly affected by the relocation.”

On Monday, Bolivian customs officials confirmed that 153 trucks carrying Bolivian goods remained stranded at the Chilean border due to that country’s “excessive” customs control. Upwards of 500 trucks have been stopped over the past week, facing queues of ten kilometres as well as a lack of adequate bathroom facilities and food, according to Bolivia’s foreign affairs ministry.

Marlene Ardaya, President of Bolivian Customs, travelled to the border on Sunday to attempt to resolve the situation, but was told that current border controls would be evaluated later this week. Ardaya blamed the delays on a Chilean road safety program.

Following complaints by Bolivian customs agents as well as the Bolivian Carrier Association, Bolivia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry released an official statement on Sunday condemning the “failure of Chilean officials to prevent serious economic and social damages to the Bolivian export sector.”

Bolivia’s presidential secretary, Juan Ramón Quintana, said in a press release Sunday that the refusal of entry “is a confirmation of the obstacles we face, and particularly of the failure of the Treaty of 1904.”

Chile, Bolivia, and Peru signed the ‘Treaty of Peace and Friendship’ two decades after Bolivia lost its access to the coast as a result of Chile’s victory in the War of the Pacific in 1884. The ‘Treaty of Peace and Friendship’ guarantees Bolivia customs-free access to ports in northern Chile, though relations between the two countries remain far from free of tension.

The Peruvian Congress is currently debating a bill that would give Bolivia permanent access to the Pacific Ocean through the Peruvian port of Ilo, providing the landlocked country an alternative to exporting from Chilean ports.

In the meantime, Bolivian officials continue to seek a solution from Chile, which has not responded with an official explanation for the congestion at the border.

“We regret that the Chilean government has not moved to resolve these types of problems,” said Quintana, “They have hurt Bolivia’s economy and compounded the historical and unquantifiable damage which was done when Bolivia lost sovereign access to the Pacific.”