XXI Century Chilean Wire Theory Solutions - Soluciones Chilenas de Siglo XXI con Teoría del Alambrito



Abstract Spanish

Comenzando el Siglo XXI, no existe duda que Chile ha devenido en un país excepcional. Lo anterior, es particularmente interesante dentro del contexto de Sud América por la historia política y económica, que ha resultado en un periodo de crecimiento sostenido y superávit fiscal, después de dejar atrás 17 años de dictadura de derecha, neo-liberal; y continuando posteriormente con casi 17 años de democracia, bajo la conducción de la coalición de centro-izquierda (Concertación), con políticas de inspiración en la democracia cristiana y la izquierda renovada. El aspecto más sobresaliente es que, como resultado de estos dos periodos políticos de absoluto contraste, existe actualmente un consenso, más allá de las diferencias entre derechas e izquierdas, que: Chile enfrenta este nuevo siglo con increíbles recursos y posibilidades para superar la extrema desigualdad y discriminación social en las áreas de educación, salud y protección social; así como tiene incuestionables posibilidades de superar otros problemas cruciales en las áreas de infraestructura, transporte, generación de energía, protección ambiental y sobretodo la gravísima brecha tecnológica que afecta al país. Con todo, los chilenos continúan siendo una sociedad que se caracteriza uniformemente por aplicar soluciones parche para confrontar problemas. En efecto, aún reconociendo que no es la única sociedad en el mundo que aplica este tipo de soluciones alternativas con medios precarios, los chilenos de todas las generaciones poseen un conocimiento único para aplicar lo que han elevado a la categoría de "Teoría del Alambrito". Como consecuencia, en vez de apuntar a sistemas de soluciones estructructurales y durables, la tendencia es a no salir del círculo vicioso y a todos los niveles se continuan diseñando alternativas elusivas o evasivas para confrontar muchas áreas críticas.

Abstract French

À l’aube du XXIème siècle, il ne fait aucun doute que le Chili est devenu un pays exceptionnel. Ce pays se distingue au sein de l’Amérique du Sud par son histoire politique et économique, qui l’a amené à une extraordinaire période de croissance stable et à un solde positif des finances publiques, fruit de la politique appuyée par une coalition formée par les partis politiques de gauche et démocrates-chrétiens pendant près de 17 ans, qui a succédé à 17 ans de grave dictature néolibérale et droitière. L’aspect le plus remarquable de la situation chilienne est le consensus incroyable qui résulte de ces deux périodes politiques très contrastées : le Chili aborde le XXIème siècle avec des ressources inconcevables et de réelles chances de surmonter l’extrême injustice sociale et les discriminations qui subsistent dans l’éducation, la santé et la sécurité sociale; il existe ainsi des possibilités incomparables de résoudre les problèmes cruciaux d’infrastructure, de transports, de production d’énergie, de protection de l’environnement et surtout le fossé technologique. Quoi qu’il en soit, les Chiliens restent une société qu’on peut décrire comme appliquant systématiquement face aux problèmes des solutions biaisés. En effet, les Chiliens ont développé un savoir-faire unique en matière de mise en place des bouts de ficelle, qui a été consacrée aux niveaux nationaux à la catégorie de Théorie de Ficelle (« Teoria del Alambrito »). En conséquence, au lieu de recourir à un système de solutions cohérentes et solides, les Chiliens se montrent incapables de rompre le cercle vicieux et ils continuent de faire des pas de cotés pour faire face à des problèmes cruciaux.

Text English

Starting the XXI century, there is no doubt that Chile has become an exceptional country. This land is peculiar within the context of South America, for its political and economical history, which have led to an outstanding period of steady growth and outstanding treasury surplus, achieved after leaving behind 17 years of neo-liberal, right-wing supported, dictatorship; and afterwards followed by almost unchallenged 17 years of democratic, cristiandemocrat-left supported coalition. The most remarkable aspect is that as a result of this two contrasting political periods, there is an incredible consensus, beyond political colors, that: Chile faces this new century with unconceivable resources and chances to overcome the extreme social inequities and discriminations in education, health and social welfare; as well as possibilities to defeat other crucial problems in the area of infrastructure, transportation, energy generation, environmental protection and the utmost critical technological gap. However, Chileans remain a society which can be uniformly described as consistently applying "quick and dirty bypass solutions" when facing problems. In fact, allthough this is not the only society in the world which applies this type of alternative solutions with modest means, Chilean generations are embedded with a unique know-how applying the so-called national " Wire Solution Theory" (Teoria del Alambrito). As a consequence, instead of heading to comprehensive and enduring systems of solutions, Chileans demonstrate not able to break the evil cycle and continue to apply sidestep escapes to confront critical areas.

Is there a contribution behind the “Wire Solution Theory” that Chileans offer to the world?

Chilean society as a whole, this is independent of the educational and social backgrounds and whether confronted to domestic or complex action, can be characterized as having a regular conduct pattern towards problem-solving. This behavior needs to be studied more profoundly from an anthropological, sociological and psychological point of view, as part of the Chilean cultural heritage. Nevertheless, a priori, it can be stated that as cultural reaction, when most Chilean people confront problems they tend to opt between two short-handed practical options. The first one follows a very straightforward conduct premise, which calls to inaction and sounds very similar to the well known: “if it ain't broke, don't fix it”. The second one is a very common Chilean conduct premise, which calls for action, but points to a sidestep or quick and dirty bypass solution, very similar to a: “it’s slightly dodgy, but a quick fix”.

Under the first conduct pattern (“if it ain't broke, don't fix it”) real efforts to improve systems that work causing major problems to Chilean society under present circumstances are for the most time left aside. The aforementioned, under the premise that structural changes may have high costs of transaction between social actors and at the end even bring about increased detrimental effects. In other words, for most decision-making, Chileans prefer no to pay profound attention (hacer oidos sordos) if a process, activity or situation presents negative outcomes and continues to function defectively. In this case, Chilean pragmatism tells that no preventive measures must be promptly taken until a system crash occurs. This thinking method has been basically the cause of major protests faced by the actual regime after years of well-known structural problems in the area of public education and public health. Consequentially, only after massive protests by public health workers a Commission to implement changes was set up, with uncertain results. The same was the case to the unprecedented students upheaval, which followed short after the Presidential rendering of accounts in March 2006 and terminated in a complete disruption of the governmental capacity to handle the situation with the demission of the Ministry of Education. In this case, again a multilateral Education Commission was installed to analyze and propose remedies. Despite the quarrels occurred inside the Commission, a report was handed with basic conclusions, pointing to the feeling that the public educational system needs structural transformations in order to face the challenges. Notwithstanding, the results of the analysis are again uncertain, since a fundamental part of the proposed measures must translate into a new Constitutional Organic Law to be passed in Parliament. Thus, most probable, in the short term the second conduct pattern explained below will be adopted.

Under the second conduct pattern (“it’s slightly dodgy, but a quick fix”) most actions taken to repair, restore or rearticulate the failure of processes, activities or situations seek to implement circumventing, bypassing and sidestepping solutions, which evade, elude, avoid or get around the problems. The core of the solutions attained applying the Chilean Theory of the Wire is analog to “implementing cosmetic measures” (soluciones de maquillaje), bug fix solutions (soluciones de parche) which have a provisory or temporary character in the short term, as opposed to real and effective measures for the future.



In essence, most Chilean people are grown up under the idiosyncrasy of consistently applying by pass avoiding alternatives when facing problems. The phenomenon is practically described in the way people have the unconventional conduct to create, enhance, install and apply a “dodgy wire” (el alambrito) for repairing or fixing their household equipments, meanwhile a better and more durable concrete solution is decided to be implemented. This is the typical case of practical alternatives attained by Chileans at the domestic level, but it seems to be also echoed at higher complex levels, reaching inclusively the branches of power, where some problems simply fail to be adequately solved with a long lasting horizon. For the last 34 years, this can be exemplified in many cases where a profound analysis and reform has been avoided, such as: a) the lack of comprehensive action that allows a complete judicial investigation, equitable reparation and final conviction of the authors of crimes commited during the years of dictatorship, whose outcome is a recent sentence of the Interamerican Court of Justice expelled against the enforcement of the Amnesty law applied by the chilean Supreme Court of Justice to close human right violations cases; b) the lack of sound national environmental policies, whose most palpable sign (apart from the major pollution scandals from national mining quells exploited by Codelco and water pollution from private company Celco) is the extreme air pollution in Santiago and other cities in winter time; c) the lack of sound national resources policies for the protection and rational exploitation of water, minerals, fishstock and woodstock with several scandals at the level of Conaf, the national forestry protection agency; d) the lack of sound energy generating policies with the recent concerns with the gas and electricity supplies partly dependent on neighboring countries and no clear energy renovation policy; e) the lack of correct Indian policies, whose palpable sign are the constant frictions and attacks to private property in the southern territories and scandals involving indigenous people and Conadi, the indigenous national commission; f) the lack of sound policies in the area of subsidies and housing for poor people, with the construction of very small houses of very bad quality, located in marginal sectors of the cities; g) the lack of sound reforms to the entire criminal system, which have brought a collapse in the prisons system; h) the lack of sound reforms to the civil, labor procedure systems and even serious problems of unconstitutionality in tax collection procedures; i) the necessary changes to the procedures of collection of social security and pension payments; j) the urgent changes to the pension system, in order to avoid a general pension collapse with poor retired people; k) the lack of necessary changes in the diplomatic career and the work and coordination of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the foreign representations of Chile; l) the lack of sound immigration policies in order to deter the massive quantity of legal and illegal immigrants with increased unemployment, marginalization and discrimination of people coming from southamerican countries; m) the lack of sound policies and coordination of the national security intelligence units between army, police, detectives and frontier guards in order to minimize the entrance of citizens involved with transportation of drugs and weapons and the immigration of paramilitary groups now reported to be acting in Chile; n) the lack of sound national innovation policies, whose palpable sign is the extremely poor performance of the country in R & D public and private investment.

Today, these examples evidence the fact that the conduct pattern aforementioned crosses all types of activities and processes generating rather negative results in the long term. It is true that the new government has tried to install a more participative social dialog opening special commissions to study and propose new systems. Although, these bodies have brought a good starting point for debate, up to know no sound public policies in critical areas described have been implemented. Consequently, it seems to be the moment to call the attention of the authorities and request them to actively start dismantling past measures that had a provisory or temporary character by pointing to real and effective solutions for the future in all critical areas. In other words, Chileans ought to start fixing once for all the fairly dodgy wires that were believed to cover all negative externalities in a short and medium term.

Is anyhow the “Wire Solution Theory" a shortcut to happiness?

One may fairly ask despite the aforementioned criticism if the conduct pattern of Chileans under the Wire Solution Theory leads them in practice to a happier outcome or a better life quality standard. The answer seems not to be affirmative. Chilean statistics show an increasing level of no conformism, protest and disapproval of many political decisions affecting their lives. This attitude has been exacerbated by the fact of the enormous surplus of Chilean treasury, most of which by political decision is being saved for macroeconomic reasons (respect for the rule of structural surplus). Notwithstanding the 2006 budged contains a large increase in public spending amounting to 8,9 %, focalized in social programs directed to the lower quintiles. However, Chilean population seems to be showing dislike in the way politicians are effectively dealing with structural problems affecting the country in all areas, for the lack of serious attempt to formulate and negotiate a package of effective measures that will affect present and future generations. Also, controversial situations and scandals such as: a) parliamentarians not regularly attending legislative sessions and attempting to raise their benefits; b) politicians involved in complicated judicial cases of corruption; c) and, to a certain extent, political ineffectiveness to confront problems; help to form a perception that most public policies are shortsighted and designed under the direction of Political Parties directives, compromising ideas, rather than being formulated for wellbeing of the country’s population. By the same token, the attempt of the government to enact 36 measures before the first 100 days of mandate is resulting in deficient formulation of regulatory and legislative proposals made by the executive under pressure, to fulfill the proposed law-making agenda. This attitude could only contribute to jeopardize the functioning of critical systems that will fall under the scope of regulations and legislation adopted lacking a good technical design.

At the level of the normal people, the panorama has also been underlined in several reactions posted in the media after the release of the Map of Happiness presented some months ago, where the country was listed in the number 71 out of 178. However this Map is totally unreliable, it allows to monitor some evidence, by examining the commentaries and letters posted in some Newspapers, under the question of: how happy Chileans really feel? As a consequence, it may be inferred from answers that the issue is very controversial. In reality it seems that for some population the country is not particularly embodied with a feeling of wellness or well-being, based on clear public policy guiding principles. In support, it is well know to health authorities that statistics show a high level of psychological problems (stress, depression, bipolar mental diseases), the rate of suicide of Chilean population has radically incremented in the last 34 years and criminals acting with extreme violence against property and persons in all social levels are augmenting, surpassing the resources of the new judicial criminal procedures.



What other systems of solutions do we know?

Just as a matter of general overview it is interesting to consider how other systems of solutions are also possible in order to face a decision-making process towards problem solving. The most common ones cited by literature are: Brainstorming, Trial-and-Error, Lateral Thinking, Deductive- Inductive Thinking, Research and Examination, Reverse Assumptions, Analogies, Reduction to Absurd, Hypothesis, Incubation, Cause Analysis and others. In the final lines of this commentary I will make a case for Innovation, as one of the possibilities to overcome problems in Chile.

For the last 50 years it has been clearly recognized that knowledge in all its forms plays a fundamental role to humankind. Today, societies that are able to create and manage a good level of knowledge are performing better. Basically, people with more knowledge get better-paid jobs, firms get better economic and financial results and the whole nation increases its wealth and wellbeing, with less social discrimination and inequity. The strategic role of knowledge can only be enhanced with investment in R & D (tangible and intangible assets), training skills and education at all levels. It is crucial to understand that the only rational tactic to overcome economic underdevelopment of a nation is to overcome the intellectual underdevelopment of it’s inhabitants. To achieve this, countries like Chile must construct a National Innovation System where central emphasis is put on growth with innovation, where knowledge-creating policies are introduced as an underlying basic guiding public policy principle.

It would be of utmost importance for Chile and its society that all efforts of reforms in all critical areas would have a knowledge creating focus. Therefore, it is a fundamental task for the present government to propose the legal basis in order to induce persons to engage in knowledge creating activities, which will open the minds for innovation and finally cause technical changes in systems that are not working properly in the country. On its own, innovation implies designing solutions that aim at creating new knowledge, so that problems arising in the future could be handled with a broader adjustment perspective. For this purpose the starting point is an urgent educational reform that changes the very basic cycle of teaching and learning.

Consequently, a very first problem to be solved in the Chilean educational system is the mutation of the passive student (recipient of information for learning) into a more active student (researcher of information for learning) in all signatures. This change in the way education is delivered to students must be accompanied by also a radical change from an individual process of learning, into a team oriented process of learning, where students are engaged into research activities in groups, with tasks to be assigned and results be measured accordingly. However, this reform entails a major intervention both at the level of student education and teachers skills (pedagogy careers).

A second problem to be solved with urgency is the necessity of a fully bilingual education in order to enhance the poor communication of the population. This may only be achieved with the obligation to learn a second language (latin rooted i.e. French – Italian – Portuguese) first to improve the use of Spanish by the population, as mandatory during the first 8 years of obligatory basic study. This should complement English as technical instrumental language to be attained during 12 years of basic education and until the whole of the University level. This language policy should be accompanied with interesting incentives such as the possibility of at least 6 months of school and university exchange programs in a country where the language can be trained; with governmental aid subject to performance requirements.

A third basic problem to be solved is access to information at basic school level. Measures in order to create modern public libraries for the population to have access to information should be a fundamental priority. Also, in order to help the learning process and the receptivity to sources of information in other languages other simple measures could be adopted; such as abolishing the dubbing of foreign programs in television and radio and introducing subtitles with a very high standard of Spanish, in order to expand vocabulary and grammatical and syntaxes abilities of all the population.

A fourth urgent problem is the establishment of a national system where university students are able to elect their signatures according to a system of credits, so that the learning process can bring into the career, experiences from being exposed to other areas of knowledge. The inflexibility of the university curriculum in most of the private and public universities of the country does not help students to fulfill their learning capabilities and is totally contrary to the fact that presently many problems must be solved with a multidisciplinary approach, where points of views coming from social and natural sciences must be reconciled.



The doors of wisdom are not easy to open when basic needs are not covered and people live under extreme economic conditions. We have seen during the last Chilean governments a good effort to take poor people out of the line of extreme economic poverty. The actual government is now injecting additional resources in welfare programs, thanks to the Copper bonanza, to reduce social discrimination and inequity. Now, it is also time to start making an effort to take an important part of the population out of the line of intellectual underdevelopment, by giving real chances to benefit from knowledge-creating systems. The only way to level the field of playing and have chances to compete in the world´s knowledge-based economy is to invest the surplus resources in implementing solutions under the guiding principle of innovation, in order to enter into a cycle of virtue, with increased social intellectual development . If that is not done urgently, a large majority of Chileans will continue to strive against present-day problems with their customary fairly dodgy wires…