Some might find the results of Chile’s recent presidential and congressional elections discouraging. In many ways, the vote resembled an American election: general disgust with the political class depressed turnout to under 50 percent, the ballot stifled energy for continued mass mobilizations, and key sectors of the Left chose a lesser-evil strategy in hopes of blocking the hard right’s return to power.

The parallels to the United States are not mere coincidence. They reflect declining popular militancy as well as elite domination of politics. The analogy, however, ends there.

The results were momentous. For the first time in nearly fifty years, genuine left, popular forces reestablished themselves on the electoral landscape, threatening the power of the bipartisan duopoly that has dominated Chile’s post-Pinochet democracy.