A New Chile is possible: CHDI Solidarity Network of Chileans Abroad joins the Popular Constituent Assembly

Lanzamiento de la APC en Plaza Dignidad

Today, November 15th 2020, a year after the majority of the political parties signed an agreement behind closed doors without representatives of the social movement that had demanded changes into the chilean social-economic models. Chile Despertó Internacional, is an organization of Chileans around the world, will join and participate in the process of the Popular Constituent Assembly, a space in which different civil society organizations Read more

IT’S NO LONGER ENOUGH TO VOTE! The Campaign by Chilean Communities Abroad denouncing their Exclusion from the Electoral Process

Wednesday, June 10th, 2020

Source: Cabildo Berlín Chile

The awareness of the significance of civic participation abroad has been growing and with it a sensitivity about the restrictions imposed on it for those living outside of Chile. We have started to feel like people with second class civil rights, because we’ve been marginalized from the right to choose or to be chosen as constituents. Thus, the campaign: “It’s no longer enough to vote!” by ChDI was born.

BY:

  • Sebastian Boye (Mannheim, Alemania)
  •      Marisol Torres (CDMX, México)
  •      Betzabeth Marín-Nanco (España, Barcelona)
  • Trad. Zainab Ebrahimi (NY, Estados Unidos)

Do those of us living abroad have the right to participate in the electoral process? For those of us living outside of Chile, this question has been making its rounds in conversations with friends and family, but also in organizations and collectives we have formed in cities around the globe. Usually, the answer is “Yes, we want to participate. We have the right, because we also dream of a different Chile, we can return to one day!”. However, the prospect of being able to participate in the electoral process has clear obstacles and limits. Read more

Water in dispute: Chilean private property over the basis of life

On World Water Day, ChDI offers an article on the current state of property and future directions for equitable and sustainable use.

 

Sunday March 22, 2020

Alejandra Parra Muñoz[i]

 

We are water. Around 65% of the human body is made up of water. Everything we eat requires water for its development. The sea jellyfish is 99% water, while that fish is 65-80% water.  The water content in plants is about 70%. In other words, water is not only vital for humans, it is vital for all living things on the planet.

Although three-quarters of the planet is covered by water, only 2% of is fresh water. From this 2%, a smaller percentage is available for human consumption. However, there has been an abundance of fresh water on the planet for tens of thousands of years. The existence of a stable climate, large extensions of forests, and a synergetic relationship between humanity and the environment, have led to the maintenance of these beneficial conditions for the life development. But since the industrial revolution half of the forests have been cut down and the atmosphere has been modified resulting that climate has undergone enormous changes. Today, seasons are blurred; the rains have been compressed in Read more

ChDI at COP25. In everything or nothing!

All it took was for the government of Chile, 12 days after the beginning of the popular uprising, to communicate its inability to hold the COP25 in Chile and the decision of the UN, the next day, to move the event to Madrid so that Chileans from Chile Despertó Internacional (ChDI) living in Europe could begin the preparations to have presence at COP25 that took place during the first week of December 2019 in the capital of Spain.

February 13, 2020

 Dani (Barcelona) & Leo (Berlín)

Background

The Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an annual meeting where government representatives of the participating States try to generate agreements and channel efforts to mitigate the effects of human action on climate change, mainly to set quotas for reducing CO2 emissions.

Parallel to the COP, as a social response, the Social Summit for Climate (SSC) is held, convened by groups such as: Fridays for Future, Climate Alliance, Extinction Rebellion, among others. During a week, several talks and workshops are held around six main axes 1) planetary limits and climate emergency, 2) economic and financial power, 3) social, environmental and economic justice, 4) political systems and institutionality, 5) intersectionality and 6) alternative actions. Read more

ONE HUNDRED DAYS OF ACTIVISM IN THE CHILEAN COMMUNITIES ABROAD

October 18, 2019 was Chile’s transversal awakening, but not only there; it was also the awakening of Chilean communities living abroad in 150 cities, in more than 30 countries around the world.

January 31, 2020

By Betzabeth Marín Nanco

It seems that it was a couple of days ago when we were watching CNN Chile that exceptionally released its signal outside the country. There, President Sebastián Piñera declared a State of Emergency to counteract the increasingly justified and well-attended street demonstrations against the injustices that the neoliberal experiment had generated. In Piñera’s words, the mobilizations were led by “a powerful, implacable enemy who respects nothing and no one and is willing to use violence and crime without any limits” How can we forget these words? More than a hundred days have passed and they are becoming more and more absurd.

Image of the Documentary Chile in Flames

The idea of the powerful enemy was the Government’s initial justification for sending the Military into the streets along with the Carabineros. Those of us who live abroad saw the images of Pinochet’s dictatorship come to mind. We imagined the military and police repression and the terrible consequences this would have on our people. The impotence of being far away did not take long to arrive, in front of our eyes we saw the beatings, the wounds, the mutilations, the illegal detentions, the abuses against girls, boys, children…

That helplessness, and then fear, led us to organize ourselves, to coordinate ourselves from that very day in what we would later call: the international territory. In Barcelona and Copenhagen we immediately thought that if this situation escalated – to a dictatorship, why not say so – international coordination and solidarity would be fundamental.

Read more