The consequence has been what one Chilean scholar calls an ‘unprecedented willingness by the Constitutional Court to strike down legislation deemed contrary to the constitution’ or to international human rights law. Today, the courts are increasingly involved in adjudicating matters of healthcare, tax policy and sexuality rights. Simultaneously, ‘helped logistically by a dense network of international nongovernmental organisations’, marginalised groups have been encouraged to channel their struggles through the courts on the assumption that, given its ‘rights-oriented’ ethos, the judiciary will be better able to support the marginalised and subaltern than the political process. In reality, the results of this process have been ‘very frustrating’ for the most marginalised groups, notably prisoners and indigenous people, as the courts have been unwilling to challenge widespread abuse in the prison system or the continued use of Pinochet-era counterterror laws against the Mapuche. Today, the neoliberal programme remains in place, while, in the name of human rights, Chile’s constitutional order restrains democracy and closes down the margin of freedom in ways that Guzmán could not have imagined.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 374