I would expect that most outsiders who don't follow Chilean politics so closely would

imagine that the reject campaign succeeded through suppressing the working class vote and

by ensuring very high turnout in wealthier neighbourhoods where opposition to the constitutional

process was of course strong.

But you described in your recent article for New Left Review that that is not at all how the vote played out and that in fact opposition was course strong. But you described in your recent article for New Left Review that

is not at all how the vote played out and that in fact opposition was very strong in working

class areas. Yes, this was not expected, not from the right or the left. And this was the

product of the force vote. So all the other elections that we had had before, since voting was declared

voluntary, were all around 50% turnout. But this time around it was declared a mandatory vote.

So there was around 86% of turnout this time around. So we had a lot of ignorance about

what was going to happen with that vote. And the problem was that nobody could predict.

And what happened is that the working classes that were forced to vote and through fines. So basically

they had to, if they didn't vote, they could be charged with a fine that was around a third

of the minimum wage. So this was a huge fine. And of course, working class people are persecuted

in this way, a very extractivist state going and having this fine.

So we were used to this before when the voting was mandatory.

So these people went out to vote in mass just to avoid the fines, and they voted in mass to reject.

And this was not only voting against the text, which is a very complex text.

Imagine there are 399 articles.

So they didn't really vote against the text itself because they didn't, there was no pedagogy,

there was no information about the draft.

But I think it is more about a rejection of the current government on the one hand.

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