SANTIAGO, Chile — Since she started living with her female partner nine years ago, Claudia Amigo says she has rarely faced prejudice. Her employer, a finance company, didn’t discriminate against her, nor did her daughter’s public school. And she’s never had any problems within her community in downtown Santiago.
“The only discrimination we face is that the state doesn’t give our child the right to legally have two mothers and doesn’t allow us to get married,” says Amigo.
But this could change. In September 2016, President Michelle Bachelet announced that her government would introduce a bill allowing same-sex marriage early this year. It’s the most recent of several steps Bachelet has taken to adjust laws to Chile’s new social demands and fast-paced cultural changes. She´s not alone: In early January, senator Alejandro Guillier, the first progressive candidate officially nominated for the presidential primaries of July 2017, made it clear in his nomination speech that making that law a reality was one of his priorities.
Until recently, Chilean legislators governed in line with a conservative elite with a dominant hold on political power. But today, they no longer represent the opinion of most Chileans. The consolidation of democracy, economic growth, globalization, along with the decline of religion and the surge of politically active youth are key factors in the country’s transition toward a more progressive society, experts say.
Chile is commonly considered a culturally conservative nation, and in some ways it is: 58 percent of its population identifies as Catholic, only 48 percent of women are in the workforce, divorce was allowed only as recently as 2004, and the country is one of only six nations to forbid abortion in all circumstances.
Yet, Chile also has the highest number of children born out of wedlock of countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It also is one of the few Latin American countries to have elected a woman — a divorced atheist — president. Twice.
“Chile passed from being a mainly conservative country to being more liberal,” says Roberto Izikson, a political scientist at Cadem, a well-known polling company. “That happened progressively and it hasn’t stopped.”
Izikson uses statistics to make his point: Last August, Cadem polls showed 72 percent of Chileans support the bill, currently in the senate, that would allow abortion in three specific cases: a threat to the mother’s life, an unviable fetus or rape.
Likewise, 56 percent of Chileans said they were in favor of gay marriage. That’s good news for people like Amigo, who says that civil unions, approved in 2015, are not the way she and her partner wanted “to express (their) love.”
Another indicator of Chileans’ new open-mindedness, says Izikson, is that 61 percent of them agree with euthanasia.
Christian Welzel, vice president of World Values Survey, a research project that has been exploring people’s values internationally since 1981, has noted a similar trend. Although Latin America is not very liberal, Chile, along with Uruguay, is “the front-runner of very progressive cultural changes,” he says.
According to Welzel, Chile is ahead of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru in “accepting divorce” and among the three “most progressive South American countries in its tolerance of homosexuality and abortion.”
That cultural shift is due to several factors, experts say. Chile used to be more isolated, poorer and less educated. Today there is a broader middle class, with better access to information. Perhaps most importantly, the public’s politics seem to be less influenced by the Catholic Church.
The middle class “is a group educated in non-religious public schools, so they have a much more secular vision of society,” says Ana María Stuven, a professor of history at the Pontificia Universidad Católica.
In Chile’s history, “religion and power have been intrinsically tied,” she says. And despite the separation of church and state in 1925, the Catholic hierarchy maintained a strong influence on politics.
“The Catholic Church and conservative organizations had many economic and political resources at its disposal, such as universities, think tanks, media ownership, and used them to promote a very conservative family and sexuality agenda,” says Merike Blofield, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami and author of “The Politics of Moral Sin: Abortion and Divorce in Spain, Argentina and Chile.”
The Catholic elite’s power, however, took a strong blow the past decade, when several sex abuse cases by high profile priests came to light. This, added to the global transition toward more individualistic societies and the deep distrust Chileans have in their institutions, led to the rise of more liberal views, political scientists say.
Polls show that 10 years ago, 44 percent of Chileans trusted the Catholic Church, whereas only 22 percent currently do, explains Francisca Alessandri, researcher at the Center of Public Policies of the Pontificia Universidad Católica and coordinator of the ” Encuesta Bicentenario” (Bicentennial Survey), which has been measuring cultural indicators yearly since 2010.
“People don’t want to act upon pre-established norms anymore,” she says. “So they say, ‘I don’t go to church, I pray at home. I don’t necessarily get married, I live with my partner.'”
Others attribute the change to a rise in political activism that started with widespread student protests to request free education in 2011. That social movement, says Izikson from Cadem polling company, went far beyond showing students´ dissatisfaction.
“That year is a symbol of the changes occurring now,” he says. “That’s when students, but also parents and grandparents, protested. And it was not only about education, it was about Chile showing its general discontent.”
At that moment, he says, support for same-sex marriage and abortion started rising in the polls.
While Amigo believes there is still much to achieve in Chile, she feels like the country has come a long way already.
“Ten years ago nobody even talked about LGTBI issues or there was disrespect,” she says. “Chile has definitely opened up.”
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