Abstract

Abstract: Since October 2019, Chile has experienced the highest levels of social mobilisation and political reform in decades. The core demands made by these movements appear to be centred on human issues (inequality, education, healthcare, pensions) while paying little attention to other animals, plants and their environments. By drawing on forty-one interviews and seven months of participant observation, this talk identifies several ways in which human collectives have sought to expand the scope of the uprising and constituent process to include more-than-human entities and processes. In many instances, the more-than-human is relevant to the uprising for human-centred reasons – because it has an impact on human interests and wellbeing. In others, the interests of other-than-human beings have been defended by diverse human collectives. The most visible of these latter processes is the ongoing campaign, often linked to Indigenous views and values, to include the so-called rights of nature in the new Constitution; I question the conceptual coherence and intercultural justice of this proposal, and suggest an alternative based on the collective right of humans to defend the more-than-human. Throughout the presentation, I consider how differences in the values of the various social and political actors tend to follow the contours of their geographies, identities and ethnicities. With this in mind, I end by analysing the opportunities offered by the constituent process to decolonize Chilean institutions and turn Chile into a plurinational country.