Sitting on the counter in his daughter’s grocery store in downtown Santiago, Hugo Toro recalled his reduction when, in 1973, Chile’s army overthrew the democratically elected authorities of socialist president Salvador Allende, putting in rightwing dictator Augusto Pinochet.

“Many individuals needed [the coup] to occur,” mentioned Toro, who remembers standing in lengthy strains for meals as retailers ran low amid financial havoc triggered by Allende’s insurance policies. “Folks had been shouting ‘coward’ at troopers on the street as a result of they weren’t stepping in.”

Forward of the fiftieth anniversary on September 11, Chile’s leftist president Gabriel Boric had hoped for a second of unity. He known as on events to signal a joint declaration condemning the coup and committing to democracy — what he labelled a “cheap and minimal consensus”.

His efforts have largely failed, exacerbating each the nation’s excessive polarisation and political paralysis. Proper and leftwing leaders have spent months buying and selling barbs over this darkish interval in Chile’s historical past.

Some 36 per cent of Chileans now say the army was proper to behave, in keeping with analysis agency Mori, up from 16 per cent in 2013. And whereas few defend the abuses of Pinochet’s regime, which murdered no less than 3,196 individuals and established greater than a thousand torture centres, conservative politicians more and more declare the coup was essential to stop Chile from changing into a Cuba-style dictatorship.

Final week, the rightwing Chile Vamos coalition introduced its personal declaration, committing to democracy, however describing the coup as “the end result” of a technique of “democratic breakdown”.

“They’re all feeding divisions which have existed for 50 years,” Toro mentioned. “It’s going to by no means finish.”

The stand-off displays wider political stagnation. The rise of hard-left and hard-right forces over the previous decade, together with disruptive mass protests in 2019 referred to as the “social explosion”, have divided lawmakers.

Congress, fragmented between 22 events, has struggled to move reforms to handle the inequality and insufficient public companies that sparked the unrest. Chile’s financial system is forecast to develop simply 0.2 per cent in 2023, the second-weakest development in Latin America, after Argentina.

“We’re in a state of paralysis,” mentioned Marta Lagos, director of pollster Latinobaómetro. “Individuals are profoundly sad.”

It’s a stark distinction with the political local weather from the top of the Pinochet regime in 1990 till round 2010, when a succession of centre-left governments dominated Chile. They tacitly agreed to not dramatically alter Pinochet’s financial mannequin, which prioritised privatised companies and an investor-friendly structure guaranteeing property rights.

In return, the appropriate collaborated on a really gradual growth of the state by social reforms. Chile’s financial system grew far quicker than the regional common, and tens of millions escaped poverty.

Jose Miguel Insulza, a senator for the centre-left Socialist social gathering who was a minister in a number of of these governments, mentioned they didn’t go far sufficient to deal with inequality.

“However in the present day, neither the left nor the appropriate appear desirous about making any long-term agreements,” he mentioned, including that the leftwing coalition “is led by younger individuals who got here to energy by denouncing the conciliatory nature of the previous administrations”.

Insulza mentioned the dearth of compromise might completely injury Chile’s export-led financial system. “The world likes Chile for one easy purpose — that it’s credible and predictable. The day it stops being predictable, it loses loads.”

In the meantime, Chile Vamos, dealing with a rising problem from far-right Republicanos, seems reluctant to make concessions to a authorities they understand as weak. The approval scores for Boric, sworn in 18 months in the past, have fallen under 30 per cent, dragged down by Chile’s worst crime wave in three a long time, a stalled financial system and a faltering challenge to rewrite the structure.

His unwieldy coalition, which stretches from the centre-left to the Communist social gathering, lacks a majority in congress. That has hamstrung two main planks of Boric’s agenda: a plan to maneuver a part of the pension system into state fingers, and a rise in Chile’s taxes, among the many lowest within the OECD, to fund social programmes.

Guillermo Ramírez, chief of the rightwing Unión Democrática Independiente within the decrease home, mentioned Boric spent his first yr in workplace “pursuing very maximalist reforms”. Whereas he was optimistic that congress would agree a restricted pension reform, a tax rise stays off the desk for UDI.

The coup anniversary has pushed political polarisation to theatrical extremes. In August, after the Communists known as for lawmakers to sentence a 1973 congressional declaration criticising Allende, which the left sees as having given the army the inexperienced gentle to intervene, rightwing lawmakers led by Ramírez as a substitute voted to have it learn aloud within the chamber.

It’s a miserable spectacle, mentioned former normal Ricardo Martínez Menanteau, who led Chile’s army till 2022. “We noticed 50 years in the past what occurs when politicians transfer to the extremes and might’t make compromises.”

Boric has struggled to unify politicians. In July, he bowed to strain to dismiss Patricio Fernández, an adviser on the declaration, after the author mentioned historians “can preserve discussing why [the coup] occurred.” For the coalition’s far-left flank, it felt an excessive amount of like a justification of the coup.

In August, when a former soldier died by suicide following his conviction for the extrajudicial execution of musician Victor Jara simply after the coup, Boric shocked even his leftist coalition companions when he mentioned some “die in a cowardly method with the intention to not face justice”.

“If Boric retains talking from a spot of ethical superiority, asking the remainder of us to fall according to his understanding of historical past, it’s unimaginable to maneuver ahead,” mentioned Rojo Edwards, a Republicanos senator.

Carmen Hertz, a Communist lawmaker who led efforts to take away Fernández, rejected the concept the coup will be seen as something aside from a criminal offense in opposition to humanity. “It’s like saying there are totally different views concerning the Holocaust,” Hertz mentioned.

Fernández, sitting in his cluttered Santiago dwelling, mentioned politicians have “missed the purpose” of the anniversary. “The dialogue shouldn’t be, ‘who do I like extra, Pinochet or Allende?’ That’s a twisted method of seeing this,” he mentioned. “This was a trauma, a horror.”

He and Boric had needed “to finish this polarisation” and “deal with discovering classes previously about easy methods to defend our democracy in future”, he added. “However we couldn’t do it. Possibly it’ll occur on the 51st anniversary.”