Even if far away, like now, Noam Titelman (Jerusalem, 38 years old) is one of those who methodically observes Chilean politics, and perhaps a little more if the presidential and parliamentary elections are at the top. From the Canadian city of Calgary, at whose university he is now a researcher, he addresses the political moment in light of his areas of specialization – comparative politics, electoral behavior, Chilean progressivism – but also of the peculiarities that have shaped his experience.
Already in 2012, the same year in which the future president Gabriel Boric led the Federation of Students of the University of Chile (FECH), this graduate in Commercial Engineering and Letters was his counterpart at the FEUC, which brings together the students of the Catholic University. The following year, when Boric, Camila Vallejo, Giorgio Jackson, and others of his generation arrived in Congress, Titelman moved into the thinking space, creating the Network of Studies for Democratic Deepening (RED), and later went to study at the London School of Economics, where he specialized in social research methods.
Today he says he maintains his activism in the Frente Amplio, the coalition that in 2017 brought together a dispersed young left and which is now, reconverted, the party of President Boric. He clarifies, however, that this does not prevent him from publicly reflecting on his own or other communities, nor from carrying out analysis, research or surveys. Although he confesses that he is more careful now, because some time ago he got into trouble for criticizing the current government in an interview (“who the hell am I to criticize anyone”, he reflects today, with a bit of regret).
In a conversation with EL PAÍS, Titelman says that he tries to take a prudent distance from academic egocentrism and the drive opinionological. «There is an intermediate point», he states, relying on Edward Said, who spoke of the secular critic, «capable of recognizing himself in a space of the political field and, at the same time, willing to criticize that same field». But, with everything, there are apartments. It is not for nothing that he believes that his is “a position that can be uncomfortable for those who expect him to be a spokesperson, but also for those who expect him to stay out of contingent debates. Sometimes it is good to feel a little uncomfortable”.
The above may suggest that there will be carrots and sticks on their side, for now with their peers who are today in La Moneda, the same building where polls suggest that the right, traditional or extreme, will arrive in March.
“I have the impression that this is a good government and I believe it, sincerely, very far from the excessive expectations that there were at the beginning, but also very far from a certain catastrophic discourse that tries to say that everything is wrong,” the analyst says at the beginning. He then addresses the international situation of the left, both to make a diagnosis – “progressivism is in crisis in the world (…) in all its possible versions” – and to accuse: “On some occasions progressivism, or the left, have ended up learning the wrong lesson”.
What the author says about The new Chilean left (2023)? More than one thing. For example, “one lesson that can be learned from the discourses of the radical right is that sometimes certain positions are worth defending, even if they are unpopular.” As seen with José Antonio Kast and Johannes Kaiser, the thesis continues, “at a certain point people end up valorizing politicians who are willing to defend unpopular positions. And in these elections I have not yet seen that unpopular position that the left is willing to defend.”
Which center?
Having said the above, and regardless of how inappropriate left-wing populism seems to him as a response to right-wing populism (“electorally, it was a disaster”), Titelman seems to believe that there is a future for the left. Even in the immediate future, starting from the merits that the former Minister of Labor and communist activist Jeannette Jara recognizes in the favorite to win the first round this Sunday:
“One of his great advantages (during the campaign) was that, thanks to the fact that he was largely not pushed by the Communist Party leadership, he was forced out of his sounding board.”
Likewise, he inscribes Jara in that typology that registers three types of candidates: the statesman (like Ricardo Lagos), the neighbor (in the style of Bachelet, but also Jara) and the polemicist, or happy warrior. This last category – that of the rather feisty candidate, who goes to the front – could have been that of Evelyn Matthei, who showed strength in these areas, but it was not, given the various missteps and inconsistencies of the Chilean candidate Vamos, Amarillos and Democrats. Furthermore, Titelman believes that the former mayor of the municipality of Providencia “has ended up embodying a nostalgic candidacy.” However, he warns of a bigger problem for those who today claim to be the heir of two-time president Sebastián Piñera:
“The idea of having a candidate who represents two contradictory things at the same time can hardly be squared. And I think this has been the permanent curse of Matthei’s candidacy: one day he called for unity, he tried to present himself as the Chilean Angela Merkel, the candidate of moderation and coming together, and the next day he was the candidate of the “tormentor’s government” and the legalization of the death penalty, and trying to know what happened to the missing prisoners was a form of revenge.”
“The title of his candidacy (Matthei) has always been ‘we are the same as Kast’ and the downgrading was ‘but we bring governability because we have more experience’”, continues the researcher. “And one of their most important challenges will be to explain why they are different from the radical right. It’s not enough to simply point the finger and say, ‘they are the threat to democracy.'”
With the above, the problems that afflict the Republic today do not end, they would be more so. Among many other things something that could be called the mystery of the centerof that space that articulates agreements that radicals and Christian Democrats have made for decades, but which today does not seem to exist:
“I think one of the most complex phenomena in Chilean politics in the last decade has been the collapse of a center that has come to be associated with nostalgia. And it’s interesting, because in almost every election in recent years there has been a candidate who has said: ‘there is a huge mass of voters who identify with the center, the famous orphan voter of the center, for some inexplicable reason the politicians have not been able to identify with that center and it’s as easy as saying they are from the center to win the elections.’ elections’. And there is the idea that regardless of the election result, regardless of the poll result, there is an unshakable belief in a huge mass identified with the center, which is consistent neither with the election results nor with what the polls show.
So, flirting from the left or right with the supposed center could be a bad idea to say the least:
“In Chile, for example, there is a large majority that values responsibility, that does not believe in leaps of faith, or that even appreciates agreements or some form of moderation. But this is not the same thing as identifying with the political center and, moreover, it has nothing to do with this more nostalgic discourse that that center has come to embody, whether of the center-left or the center-right.”
This is what Titelman believes is one of the keys to these elections.
