How did the Autonomist Movement (AM) come into being?

Those of us who founded AM wanted to create a political body that would allow us, in an organised way, to support the many different struggles Chileans are engaged in — state education, pensions, women’s rights and decentralisation among them.

As a movement, it’s open to everyone and its main goal is to join together with other political and social forces and create the widest possible coalition to achieve our aim of creating a new society in Chile.

There has been a striking revival of left ideas among Chilean youth. Is that happening among the working class too?

The political regime in Chile has excluded vast sectors of society from decision-making and continues to do so.

People have very little or no control over their lives and the sense of dissatisfaction has become more acute in the last decade when it was the young who led some of the most important demonstrations calling for system change. They have retained some of the ideas of a just country the Chilean left tried to built before the Pinochet dictatorship.

What kind of relationship does AM have with the “traditional” left and how do you see things moving forward?

It’s highly fragmented, a legacy we in AM are tackling. We want to be part of a process of left realignment in which we’ll be able, as new actors on the political stage, to reinvigorate the its strategic vision and present itself as the alternative leadership of society.

The marriage between business and traditional political parties is a terrible consequence of the dictatorship. It’s not acceptable that those who govern in Chile are financed by the rich, as if they were their employees. An example is the financing of parties in government by the firm of Pinochet’s son-in-law.

This is very difficult to overcome. Large numbers of people, who’ve traditionally been excluded from the political process, take no interest in it or find a way to engage in it after the fracturing of social cohesion during the dictatorship and the years under various governments that followed.

Our autonomist movement in Valparaiso is but one of many where AM is active, from Orca in the north to Punta Arenas in the south, very near the Antarctic. In Valparaiso, we’ve been battling alongside comrades from their time as students for many years now. Recently, we’ve engaged with other struggles like those of the schoolteachers, for a change in the pensions system and changes to local government.

The political movements that originated in student struggles have been somewhat distanced from building relations with social forces that did not share our distinctive left identity. The decision in Valparaiso to act within a broad coalition was key.

It put on the table what unites rather than divides us — the desire to take the reins of local government from the corrupt and use it as a tool for the betterment of people’s life in this port.

The population saw that our intentions were sincere and wanted to be part of this process of recovering sovereignty over our lives.

Who exactly voted for AM in Valparaiso?

The vote was more for a broad people’s movement than for AM. We got the support of many young people, groups unhappy with the behaviour and corruption of the traditional parties and community and neighbourhood organisations tired of being seen as electoral cannon fodder to be bought off. We’re particularly happy that many went to the ballot box for the first time since the vote to oust Pinochet. But we’re worried about the low participation among the popular sectors and it’s there that much work needs to be done.

In terms of that work, are there models of participation and empowerment today that impact on your strategy?

Although we know we need to come up with ready-made solutions, the challenge before us is enormous. We’ve been looking at the experience of Podemos in Spain and local governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil and Recollect and Providence in Chile. The most significant are those that empower local communities in decision-making.

In Chile, mayors have ample powers to take many decisions on their own. But the municipal council also has powers to vet some mayoral decisions, so there is plenty of political work to be done. But we have faith in the wider social movement playing a part.

Touching on every aspect of the city’s life, economy and culture, your programme of renewal is impressive. How will you finance it all?

Valparaiso has the potential to be a rich city but it has a debt of billions of pesos, a major challenge. The specialists who’ve helped develop our programme have also costed it and identified source of financing.

We’ll now share it with the electorate to work out priorities. There is much goodwill from many sectors and we will be also looking at voluntary work. It is very beautiful what is taking place.

Our chief concern is wastage at the council and a redirection of its spending, in consultation with the electorate, is needed. But structural changes require time and wider co-operation.

Where are the challenges to those changes coming from?

It is for us to decide what we want from all those institutions unhappy with the new political situation. Much work is needed to transform problems into solutions.

What worries us most is the conservative media offensive waiting for us to make the slightest mistake, seize upon it and make our task that more difficult. We will have to engage with social movements and alternative media to be able to popularise our work.

It is important not to loose sight of what we were elected to do. There is a political struggle facing the people and we have to ensure that they take the lead in the project we’ve launched. A hard road lies ahead and there aren’t enough of us yet, we need more people to get involved. And one term of office isn’t enough to achieve what we’re aiming for.

Do you have any message to our readers?

Like any port city, the development of Valparaiso has been influenced by foreign cultures and immigrants who’ve made it their home. So it’s important for us to speak to the media abroad and people in other countries and get the broadest possible support. We need to popularise what we’re trying to achieve in Valparaiso and anyone supporting that is welcome aboard and we hope to be giving you good news as we advance an alternative way of life, different to the one imposed on us by the current system.

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