Chile: New constitution sells “like water”

In Chile, the text of the new constitution is selling “like water.” A little more than a month before the referendum “for” or “against” the new constitution, many Chileans are looking for the “little blue book” and its 388 legal articles.

As a result, publishers are reprinting the text by the hundreds, much to the delight of street vendors. Manuel offers the new constitution at a price of about US$2 in a pedestrian zone in the center of the capital, Santiago.

He sells 80 to 100 copies per day. “It’s a good business, very profitable,” he says. Although they can download the text online for free, Chileans prefer the printed version “to make annotations, underline passages, or reread it.

In a brief five-minute interval, four people stop to buy the publication. “The information in the media was not clear. I want to read the new constitution to understand it better, share the content with my family and go to the polls well informed,” explains buyer Iris.

Felipe, on the other hand, is from a rural town in southern Santiago. “They don’t sell the new Constitution there, so my friends ask me to buy it for them when I come here, and I give it to them then,” he explains.

In just one month, “LOM Publishing” sold 70,000 copies of the new constitution. “In this powerful campaign of the right against the Convention, they have used almost all means [not to approve the new constitutional text], and among these means, unfortunately, is the publication of false texts. This is precisely why it is important to make sure [when buying or consulting a copy] that it is the original,” explains Paulo Slachevsky, director of “LOM.”

To combat these forgeries, the Chilean government has now distributed the official version of the new constitution free of charge.

In the referendum, Chileans will decide whether to replace the current constitution, which dictator Augusto Pinochet promulgated in 1980.

The referendum is set for Sunday, September 4, and will be the first process with compulsory voting since voluntary voting was introduced in the country in 2012.

According to a poll conducted by the consulting firm “Cadem” in the last half of June, 47% of likely voters believe that “Reject” will be the outcome of the referendum, while 44% indicate “Approve” as the outcome of the vote.

Since April, the polls have shown an advantage for the “Reject” option of the new constitution.

With information from Latina Press