Last year, Socialist Michelle Bachelet reclaimed Chile’s presidency after four years of center-right rule and restored power to the Concertación coalition that had governed the country since re-democratization. For progressives, and even some radicals, her election makes possible heretofore elusive popular reforms. They claim that a recent movement upsurge has supplied the necessary steam to complete the transition to democracy that Chile’s center-left has thus far been unable to accomplish.

With the backing of the Pinochetist Alianza at historic lows and an expanded reform bloc, now christened New Majority (NM), and bolstered by the rise of a new generation of young Communists who headed massive 2011–12 student mobilizations, the prospects for pushing through changes beneficial to workers, students, and the rural and urban poor appear well founded.

There is no question that Chile’s workers and poor are better positioned today than they were just ten, to say nothing of twenty, years ago. Indeed, popular forces enjoy the most auspicious balance of power since the 1973 coup that stamped out Chile’s democratic road to socialism. And Bachelet did shepherd through a series of reforms in her first year, including higher education legislation that attracted international attention.