Recent public discourse in Chile has converged on two pressing issues: the rise of school-based violence and the structural collapse of the political center. Commentators argue that both phenomena require long-term strategies rather than immediate, reactive responses.
Raúl Perry, program manager at the Fundación San Carlos de Maipo, warned that current reactions to student violence—such as school knife incidents and online threats—are insufficient. “When an adolescent arrives at a school with a knife or feels comfortable writing messages with threats to the school community, it is a sign that we have already lost an important battle,” Perry stated.
He criticized the current public response, which prioritizes emergency measures over systemic prevention. According to Perry, the scientific community has identified the causes of adolescent anxiety, depression, and substance abuse for over 50 years. He advocates for two specific interventions: strengthening parenting skills and implementing a socio-emotional curriculum in schools to teach conflict resolution from an early age.
“Unfortunately, prevention remains the ‘poor relative’ of public policies, as if we did not believe in it as a scientific discipline,” Perry said. He compared the potential of these programs to the scientific effort required for space exploration, asserting that society can achieve peace if it treats prevention with the same rigor.
The decline of the political center
Parallel to these social concerns, analyst Cristofer Díaz Carrión identified a fundamental shift in the nation's political architecture. He argued that the current political environment is defined by the disappearance of the traditional center, which previously balanced competing ideologies.
“When the political center ceases to exist, a scenario is configured that redefines the traditional balance of forces,” Díaz Carrión noted. He observed that while the right wing currently enjoys a perceived advantage, many observers mistakenly equate this with a simple majority in Congress, missing the larger structural change.
According to Díaz Carrión, the real opportunity lies in the vacuum left by the center, which allows for the creation of broader coalitions. He challenged political actors to move beyond emergency offerings and instead develop a proposal that interprets the needs of the citizenry in a more durable fashion.
“The challenge, then, is not only to capture support through emergency offers, but to consolidate a political proposal that manages to interpret the citizenship in a more profound and lasting way,” said Díaz Carrión. Both perspectives emphasize that current institutional and social volatility will not be resolved by short-term political or punitive tactics.
