Article on the dramatic consequences of the privatization of public basic services in times of trouble, situated on the post-chilean 2010´s earthquake.

1. Chile´s Earthquake Exposes Perversity of Capitalist´s Ethos
original by Marcelo Luis B. Santos, translated by author in Aug,30 th, 2010
(first published in electronic paper Correio da Cidadania with the title:
¨Terremoto no Chile expõe a perversidade da lógica do capital¨)
Saturday, February 27th 2010, 3h37 a.m., central coast, Chile. It just stopped shaking. After almost 3
minutes down on my knees by the doorway with my wife, we both believe the worst part is over
and we´re fine. Past the initial scare, there will come the so-called replicas (new quakes throughout
the next days, even months, due to the accommodation of tectonic plates as result of the main
earthquake). Some may come stronger, some may come easier, still, always less strong than the
initial. That had been an earthquake which epicenter climbed up to 8.8 on Richter scale. Lucky for
us, that epicenter had been about 500 km from the house where we were that night. We slept at the
front yard, somehow managing to admire the full moon setting in the Pacific, a natural beauty that
did not fit well with the catastrophe we had just felt and the fear that a Tsunami would reach us, a
couple of blocks away from the sea, fortunately some 40 meters up the hill.
Natural catastrophes may be read as great crises, with the twist that are crisis brought by forces not
controlled directly by mankind – or at least that´s how we learn in recent western civilization. Aside
the tragical consequences the world followed, some personally, others through the big media
coverage of the event, these kind of episodes have an important revealing power we cannot
underestimate, as crisis use to present.
When facing extreme situations, we´re called forcefully to deal with some sort of transparency from
the people around us, which reveals as contradictory behaviors as deep solidarity versus vandalism,
calmness versus despair, the most detached forms of collectiveness and altruistic organization
versus the most bizarre events triggered by unacceptable egoism. Thus we uncover hidden facets of
people we´ve known forever such as work buddies, friends, relatives and even consort. But it is also
an opportunity to appreciate the immediate and unmediated reaction of big corporations and society
´s organizations, particularly and mainly a nation´s government. Most actual western societies,
though, have all the fundamental social services – housing, electricity, water, food,
telecommunications, health, transportation – outsourced, subdued to the perverse logic of the public
concessions to private initiative. ¨Perverse¨ they are because even if (allegedly) under supervision of
government regulatory agencies, such concessionaires have as fundamental value the pursue of
profit, not social welfare, people happiness, children´s health. When things are calm, that doesn´t
appear to be a problem. The dilemmas and contradictions of that system do not flood visibly, but

2. when crisis come – such as the recent economic crisis or this earthquake we refer to – some of this
dirt quickly and strongly surface.
Let me give up some context on the event: what we had in February 27 th this year was the second
strongest earthquake of chilean history (or at least on the history of history...) which had
repercussions even in very distant places like Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires. Just to put things in
perspective, take the recent Haiti´s quake, it peaked ¨only¨ 7.0 while in Chile 8.8 was the figure, and
consider as well that Richter´s scale is logarithmic, so the amount of energy dismissed is not
measured in a linear way, but exponential.
From the old battery analog radio, already with a hot, blinding sun up, two testimonials keyframed
the journalistic drama that shaky day: from the president on duty and from her fellow elected
president. The first, Michelle Bachelet, socialist background, left-wing coalition was about to
forward presidency to elected Sebastián Piñera, entrepreneur, millionaire, right-wing coalition, TV
owner, sort of a chilean version of the polemic Berlusconi. Contradictions were hardly unexpected,
since they had two world vision highly antagonistic, parties with political statements allegedly
diametrically opposed – even though socialism in Chile is kind of very neo-liberal and conservative.
While Bachelet is a symbol of the resistance to the dictatorship years and of the socialist project in
contemporary Chile, suffocated by Pinochet and his damned inheritance, Piñera is one of the high
profile exponents of the oligarchy that dictated the rules that still run the country – and obviously
benefited from them, if not in a series of unproven other ways, at least economically. He was always
in the right place and at the right moment, but also with the right ¨friends¨ to make a few more
millions as Chile neoliberalized its society and privatized everything on the public sphere. To make
it even more exciting, the command shift was to happen only 13 days after the tragedy of nature, a
detail that made it even more sensitive that both teams had a sound coordination on the best interest
of the harmed. That was the scenario.
With no electricity or cell signal, but with the old faithful 70´s battery analog radio from my father-
in-law, we were able to listen carefully to the initial reaction of both the leaders, just enough to
forge the perspective to what was to come, specially the new governor. Piñera went on and told the
government in charge that he and his team were at their service. More than that, made a speech as
¨representative of the private corporations¨ asserting that the role of these in the labors of
reconstruction was fundamental – a tone and theme that was to be repeated over and over as a
neoliberal catastrophe mantra.

3. Bachelet, on her side, arrived really early to the emergency management agency, in her car, no
security, no press, no nothing, just the country president with some sense of the emergency she was
up against. Nevertheless, her first speech that morning revealed the saddest facet of the chilean state
that the so-called ¨socialists¨, for 20 years in power, couldn´t – or wouldn´t – change: the president
of Chile asked, using specifically the expression ¨please¨, that the concessionaires did their best to
reestablish the fundamental public services they managed, specifically naming electricity, water and
telecommunications. Asked... or begged? Hard to draw the line here.
Throughout the day it was revealed that besides the services above mentioned, there were severe
damage also in the transportation infrastructure – roads and bridges, airports and harbors mainly –
schools, hospitals. From favor to favor, the truth was crystal clear: Piñera was right. The country,
after all, was hostage to the private corporations, most transnational, that managed the ¨public¨
concessions. After all, according to neoliberal philosophy, the state is just one more client, whose
role is to pay, hire, not to regulate, supervise, don´t even mention the possibility to take affairs on
her own hands! Bottom line is that the country depends deeply on goodwill of corporations which,
even on these times of trouble, keep the same superficial marketer (nauseating) speech, speaking for
his ¨brand¨, the ¨quality of service¨, treating the citizen and government as ¨client¨. By the end of
the day the same thing over and over: energy, water, mobile and regular telecommunications,
internet, gas, air, terrestrial and fluvial transportation, construction, even the incarcerating system
echoed the same note while government asks them over and over for commitment as if that was a
favor or, to speak the capital language, as a tip.
After a few days the State admitted the ¨state of zonal catastrophe¨ as a legal move in order to
reestablish some civil organization in the most affected areas (regions VII and VIII, mid-south
Chile). That meant the region governors (called ¨intendente¨) would have great autonomy and,
amongst other things, some constitutional rights could be deprived according to the authority´s
criteria in order to resolve the exceptional situation. Some of these rights that could be revoked
were freedom of public gathering, freedom to come and go and freedom of speech, but there was
also, on the other hand, the right to private property, which allows the authorities to expropriate
temporarily food, hospitals, vehicles and other private properties to better serve the population in
need. In those cases it is always expected that the leaders establish a better criteria than that applied
on the first night that ruled that legal figure, during which, only in the city of Concepción, 55 people
were arrested for ¨disrespecting the curfew¨ and one person was killed. The case has not been
investigated so far, but I wouldn´t expect a just motivation for that kind of violence.

4. This reflexion in not applicable to Chile in the short term, since the new president, who´s just
started his mandate, is one of the richest entrepreneurs in the country – figured #437 in 2010´s
Forbes 500 World´s Billionaires – has already set the agenda: he will keep on privatizing chilean
copper – which is only partly national thanks to Allende in the 70´s, before the coup d´état – and
will pleasantly obey FMI and World Bank´s ¨suggestions¨. Besides, he´s the only stated latin-
american president that didn´t show any kind of commitment or at least enthusiasm for the new
UNASUR, organization interested in political and economical integration of south-american
countries, thought to bring a different perspective for the regional conflicts and projects that those
of the existing institutions. On the contrary, insisted in reassuring fictitious qualities of the polemic
OEA, supporting, and we conclude subordinating as well, to that organization.
A message to all neoliberal countries rises clearly: even for those not subjected to forces of nature
such as hurricanes or earthquakes, there are other forces of culture that may have an impact as
strong as those in the long run if we don´t deal with them. Maybe Chile´s and Haiti´s disgrace may
serve us as an alert and be useful to create some level os consciousness to the citizenry about the
fundamental role of the Government in providing basic, fundamental services that have nothing to
do with the logics of the free market neither with profit as their ultimate objective. These services
are all about well-being, state security, personal stability, citizenship enhancement. Profit goes way
the other way. It is imperative that the people, represented by its elected governors and not by a
dozen multimillionaire entrepreneurs, recover immediately control over its state, defining its destiny
and allocating its resources instead of passively accepting the rules of those that call you client
instead of citizen.