The notoriety that income inequality has achieved in the Chilean political debate since the presidential election of 2006 can be explained as a response discursively produced by Chilean political elites to a sense of frustration of people’s expectations as a consequence of the unsatisfactory results reached after 21 years of the application of failed inequality-reducing policies. The discursive stratagems ranged from a recalling of the “authoritarian enclaves” inherited from Pinochet’s regime to the thesis that inequality can only be resolved by improving the quality of education. This latter stratagem became a technocratic mantra for the struggle against income inequality among Chilean political elites during the Bachelet administration and gave rise to the ideological exclusion of any political proposal that defended a more redistribution-oriented approach to the problem, an exclusion deeply rooted in the traumatic memory of those elites.
La notoriedad alcanzada por la desigualdad de los salarios chilenos en el debate político a partir de la elección presidencial de 2006 se puede ver como una respuesta discursiva por parte de las élites chilenas a la frustración de la ciudadanía dados los magros resultados de 21 años de políticas de balance fallidas. Las estratagemas discursivas han propuesto desde suspender los “enclaves autoritarios” heredados del régimen pinochetista hasta teorizar que la desigualdad sólo se puede resolver incrementando la calidad de la educación. Esta última estratagema se convirtió en un mantra tecnocrático contra la desigualdad entre las élites políticas durante la administración de Bachelet y dio lugar a la exclusión ideológica de cualquier propuesta política que defendiese un enfoque orientado hacia la redistribución, una exclusión muy arraigada en la memoria traumática de estas élites.
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