“The left is losing the round in the cultural battle”

Jorge Arrate (82) is no longer a member of the Socialist Party, however, his career makes him a knowledgeable and authoritative voice of the Chilean left. He was former Secretary General and Labor Minister in the Government of Eduardo Frei, but before that, he was part of the Government of Salvador Allende, Minister of Mining among some positions, and, after the dictatorship, he was Minister of Education under Patricio Aylwin. Today, a little further away from politics, he warns: “We are in a moment in which the left is losing the round in the cultural battle.”

In an interview with Sábado magazine, the historic socialist comments that he is currently enjoying politics more, Well, he no longer aspires to any position, but in any case it participates in reflections and in some spaces, such as, for example, that which intends transform the Frente Amplio into a single party.

Thus, he commented in the aforementioned media that he recognizes that there have been errors by the Government, however, he accuses that “this Government has been treated with the tip of the toe, between the total control of the media in Chile, because except for some digital ones, the control is total, plus the morning news, plus the control of television, have harassed the Boric Government.”

Arrate acknowledges the President’s sensitivity “to the most unfortunate” and his leadership capacity, and de-dramatizes his past as a deputy: “It was a bit exaggerated (…) In the Piñera Government the country was on the verge of going to hell” .

Regarding Piñera, Arrate affirms that “something that has been said now and my impression is that it was like that, is that he had no hard feelings.” Apart from highlighting the good humor of the now deceased former President, he seeks to explain that his impression is that “Piñera is a right-wing Christian Democrat who had no space in the DC. Therefore, as an independent, he sought the support of the right to be Senator for Santiago.” Arrate credits him for having voted No and participating in those events.

Now, “Sebastián Piñera’s big problem,” says the former socialist, “was that he exercised two jobs that, in my opinion, are not compatible: dedicating himself to politics and trying to make a lot of money in business.” Arrate notes that this is not against the law and he is not in favor of prohibiting it either, but that criticism, he says, is “based on my judgment.”

Going through the analysis of presidential figures, the former minister distances José Antonio Kast from Milei: “José Antonio Kast is not shameless. He has a conception more comparable to Franco or Olivera Salazar, from Portugal, with an authoritarian tendency to impose ways of life, and that seems like a danger to me.”

There, he stops at the fact that “I cannot attribute to him what I call the impudence of a Trump or a Milei,” he maintains, and adds that “politics is greatly nourished by these figures who turn impudence into political capital.” ”.

In short, he believes that “today individualism is leading, that is why we have to wage a great cultural and political battle”, however, this is the moment in which the left is losing the round: “I think it will be a long time to recover what it “It was the left, which was a movement that linked the political, the social and the cultural.”

Arrate exemplifies this: “That legacy from Recabarren that wherever he went, to a nitrate mine for example, he founded a nucleus of his party, a union, a newspaper and a philharmonic that was a kind of cultural center. That is the knot that the left developed that culminated in Allende. But that knot was broken.”

This break is attributed by Arrate to the dictatorship: “The dictatorship generated this strange animal that is Chile today (…) And on the left that unbreakable bond between politics, society and culture was broken.”