CHILE

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Context: President Gabriel Boric vowed to continue working to reform the political landscape after Chileans emphatically rejected a proposed new Constitution to replace the one adopted during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

Details:

• The proposed Constitution aimed to build a more welfare-based society, boost Indigenous rights and legalize abortion.
• In October 2019, protests sprung up mostly in the capital led by students initially angered by a proposed metro fare hike. Those demonstrations spiraled into wider discontent with the country’s neoliberal economic system as well as growing inequality.
• Among the chief concerns of opponents was the prominence given to the country’s Indigenous peoples, who make up close to 13% of the 19 million-strong population
• Proposals to enshrine reproductive rights and protect the environment as well as natural resources such as water, which some say is exploited by private mining companies, had also garnered much attention.
• The new Constitution would have overhauled Chile’s government, replacing the Senate with a less powerful “chamber of regions,” and requiring women to hold at least half of positions in public institutions.

About Chile:

• Chile is officially known as the Republic of Chile. Its capital is Santiago.
• It is a South American country occupying a narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west.
• It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the south.
• The Atacama desert is one of the driest places in the world and touches Chile in its northern side and is a source of sodium nitrate fertilizer.
• Chuquicamata is the World’s largest copper town of Chile.
• Chile is India’s window to Latin America and to the Pacific Alliance.
• Chile is the fifth largest trading partner of India in the Latin American region.
• India- Chile signed the Preferential Trade Agreement in 2017 to enhance the trade.
• The bilateral trade is growing and stood at USD 2.8 billion in 2017-18.

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