In our brief but significant republican history, Chile has been exposed to catastrophes and the fluctuations of an open economy, forces over which we often have no control. Faced with this uncertainty, our best response has been to build institutions, procedures, and agreements capable of weathering crises without destroying the foundations of coexistence. Mario Góngora expressed it in an eloquent formula: “In Chile, the State is the matrix of nationality.” That tradition, imperfect and often unequal, explains much of our resilience and the trust we have inspired in the world.
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Today, when economic uncertainty and the expansion of organized crime once again test our ability to protect the population, that tradition takes on a very concrete meaning. The woman who returns late from work, the threatened merchant, and the family living with a criminal gang in their neighborhood need much more than a promise of a tough hand: they need a State that arrives, stays, and regains control. The order they aspire to is not an authority freed from limits, but institutions capable of protecting them from both violence and arbitrariness.
The current Government came to power presenting as a disaster a reality that the indicators themselves contradicted: homicides, rural violence, and irregular income were decreasing thanks to new police, fiscal, and territorial capacities, while the economy maintained better growth expectations than today. It promised spectacular results without explaining how it would achieve them; five months later, the country accumulates two quarters of annual contraction, an unemployment rate of 9.4%, and a growth projection of barely 1.3%. The media indulgence with these figures does not hide the problem: those who seized power denying the evidence now need to build a new explanation for the failure to fulfill their promises.
In that scenario, a constitutional reform appears whose message acknowledges that state powers in security already have a basis in the current legal framework, but which does not incorporate prosecutors, financial analysts, specialized police, or additional penitentiary capacities. Its novelty consists of creating another state of emergency, concentrating presidential powers, restricting freedoms, intervening in communications, and depriving social benefits after a sentence has been served, without explaining which investigation failed due to lack of constitutional authorization or which neighborhood will be recovered thanks to these powers. Presenting an extreme version and then reducing its excesses may seem like moderation; but in reality, it tightens the noose and produces the instability it claims to combat.
The citizenry distinguishes better than the Government assumes: according to the Cadem survey, 51% consider the reform unnecessary because the State already has tools, and 58% reject the proposed state of emergency without parliamentary approval, while 88% support seizing assets associated with gangs and 78% back military collaboration with Carabineros in targeted operations. There is no contradiction in these responses, but a difference worth understanding: the population wants effective protection, not concentration of power.
Depriving social benefits also introduces an evident inequality. A disqualification from holding public office restricts access to power; withdrawing health, education, or social security affects material living conditions. The convicted person with assets can acquire them privately, while those dependent on the State will be more exposed to exclusion and, once their sentence is served, to returning to the criminal circuit. The promise of protection thus ends up turned into selective punishment.
Carlos Peña has warned that an electoral majority does not authorize removing limits on power, it exceeds the liberal discussion and reaches a Chilean tradition shared by different social classes and political positions: the expectation of institutions that provide stability, predictability, and common rules. Weakening them harms those who need protection in their neighborhoods, erodes the trust necessary to invest, and transforms democratic coexistence into an additional source of uncertainty.
The reform may be ineffective against crime and, at the same time, indispensable for the Government’s strategy: faced with the impossibility of showing radically different results, it needs to create adversaries, polarize, and present the opposition as the new obstacle to fulfilling promises it never could sustain. Thus, it reissues the procedure that brought it to power: replacing reality with antagonism, turning Congress, the courts, and its critics into a punching bag, and receiving back the necessary excuse to evade its responsibilities.
Preventing this maneuver requires supporting the pursuit of criminal assets, territorial recovery, police strengthening, penitentiary control, and victim protection, but also asking what investment, public works, and social policies will break the cycle of backwardness and criminal co-optation in neighborhoods. For each initiative, we must demand resources, responsible parties, deadlines, and indicators: which gang it dismantles, what money it recovers, and which neighborhood it allows to live in peace again.
It is not about safeguarding a Constitution for its own sake, but Chile’s capacity to face its crises without giving up the institutions that allow it to overcome them. Democratic patriotism consists of strengthening a State that protects, subjects all powers to common rules, and is accountable for its results. Security belongs to the citizenry and cannot become an excuse for a government to expand its authority and evade its responsibilities. Because changing the hand should mean recovering the peace of our neighborhoods, not weakening the rules that protect the entire country.
