Case study #11 Democracy in Crisis through the looking glass called a camera lens

The first of Guzman's trilogy "The Battle for Chile" opens in 1973, 6 months before the Golpe Estado, with an election in which the Confederation of Democracy won the majority of seats in both houses against Allende's Popular Unity coalition. This continuing minority defeat is called a victory in that Allende's party gained a couple of seats but the fraud allegation of between 200-300 thousand newly registered voters unaccounted for is not questioned. Before the election result, one person interviewed in Plaza Baquedano said it was a choice between Marxism and Freedom. Another said that the opposition will win. The interviewer asked all the Right of Centre Citizens if they believed in elections? Of the Allende supporters, the interviewer calls them all compañero and asks who will win? They all answer Socialism and the fight. He doesn't ask them if they believe in elections, the constitution, or any other institutions of democracy.

When we were in Plaza Baquedano the week before the Presidential second-round election, December 2021, campaigning for the Right-wing Presidential Candidate J A Kast we were stoned, in the biblical sense, by Boric supporters who encircled us as a critical mass of cyclists - totally sustainable. No one had to ask them if they believed in democracy because they knew the game. The same Plaza Baquedano was where the urban insurrection had been based, where they forced drivers to get out of their cars and dance in support if they wanted to pass, burnt churches and closed the main Metro station entrance forever. December 2021, was the first time the Right had campaigned in Plaza Baquedano since 1973. All earlier attempts were run out of the city centre by Left-wing fascism, arson, looting and assault posing as legitimate protest.

for social justice as it burnt and looted and assaulted.