After thirty years
Experiences and accounts of democracy and social rights in Chile

“It's not thirty pesos, it's thirty years,” was one of the most repeated phrases during the weeks of the social outbreak. A thirty-peso increase in public transportation fares was the pretext for the largest cycle of protests since the return to democracy in 1990. For many protest participants, the thirty years correspond to a period of unfulfilled promises, where the expectations evoked by democracy in terms of equality and social mobility were not met. Distrust in politics, particularly in the role of parties and economic and socio-cultural elites, who are perceived as distant from the daily reality of the vast majority, appears as a fundamental motivation of the social outbreak.