Politics of Expertise and Blame during COVID-19 Quarantine in Chile

This article analyzes how Chilean government officials and politicians rhetorically rely on expertise and assign blame for the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. We specifically focus on rhetoric surrounding decisions to implement and lift quarantines in Santiago from March through August 2020, which reveals significant discrepancies in how political ideology mediates rationalizations of individual and state responsibilities in times of a pandemic. While the Sebastián Piñera administration and other right-wing politicians emphasize individual responsibility and the government’s reactions to or policing of that responsibility, left-wing politicians and the medical community call for the state to more assertively direct a collective response based on specific metrics and expertise. This contention over the politics of blame and expertise reveals critical tensions in governing visions looming over Chile’s constitutional convention process.


Introduction
How do Chilean government officials and politicians rationalize their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic?Whose expertise and which data are relied on, and how are blame and responsibility assigned?In August 2020, public officials in Santiago allowed the Centro Comercial Asia Pacífico mall in the center of Santiago to reopen after 143 days of quarantine in the city.The mall's opening was part of phase two of the government's Plan Paso a Paso (Step-by-Step Plan) that allowed people in the Santiago and Estación Central districts of Chile's capital to leave the house during the week without requiring permissions.On reopening day, people slept overnight outside the mall, lines formed by 6 a.m., and officials closed the mall at 10:50 a.m. for lack of physical distancing.Right-wing mayor of Santiago Felipe Alessandri (Renovación Nacional) implied that the crowding was inevitable because "people did not quite understand,"1 and, if anything, the blame was on the stores for offering "hard to resist sales." 2The right-wing representative for Santiago's District 10, Luciano Cruz-Coke (Evolución Política), argued: "the people are the first ones responsible for maintaining self-protection measures and avoiding resurges, as happens in countries with more civic discipline.Phase two does not mean a return to normality, and reopening depends almost exclusively on individual responsibility." 3In stark contrast, left-wing representative of Santiago's District 10 Giorgio Jackson (Revolución Democrática) blamed the government, arguing that: it is not the people's fault-they have to go out to work to provide food for their families-the government and the health authorities have been indicating for weeks that numbers are positive and that it is time for reopening and reactivating the economy.If there was any lack of coordination or protocols that were not followed, it is the absolutely the responsibility of the authorities and not of those looking for work or out to find food in one of the worst crises we have experienced. 4  President Sebastián Piñera declared: "What happened yesterday, that absurd crowd, is something we will fight with all the force of the law," but he did not define which law would be applied or to whom. 5 MARLAS 4(3), 2021, DOI: 10.23870/marlas.329 In this article, we analyze politicians' rhetoric about quarantines in the Santiago Metropolitan Region, where 70% of Chile's cases had occurred at that time, and where officials implemented a string of quarantines and curfews to respond to the pandemic.We compare how government officials and politicians across the political spectrum justified quarantine policies and assigned blame and responsibility for the failures of quarantine policies.This analysis highlights that the rhetoric of the Piñera administration and other right-wing politicians blames individuals and calls for policing each person's obligations, redirecting any responsibility away from the government.Notably absent is a sustained reliance on medical or public health expertise to justify or legitimize their decision-making, despite expectations that Chile's history of technocratic governance, comparatively strong system of public health, and the late arrival of COVID-19 might position medical expertise to drive policymaking.Left-wing politicians, in contrast, criticize the government for not developing and directing a collective response based on specific metrics and the expertise of both medical and policy experts.This contention over the politics of expertise, blame, and responsibility in Chile is revealing of looming tensions in Chilean politics.

Analyzing Interactions between Medical and Political Authorities during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile
What might we expect of the relationship between Chilean politicians and scientific and medical experts during a pandemic?Scholars have extensively documented a common tension between policy-making and scientific, medical, and public health expertise (Weingart 1999;Greer et al. 2020).This tension is rooted in the current conceptualization of scientific and medical expertise as specialized, technical, and apolitical knowledge, perceived to be divorced from subjective or valuebased decision-making, and the increased reliance on, although not necessarily a responsibility to, these forms of knowledge in politics (Foucault 1977;Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva 2008;Smith 2013;Bertsou and Caramani 2020).Scholars describe the "simultaneous scientification of politics and the politicisation of science" (Weingart 1999), and the "medicalization of policy making" (Degerman 2020), as politicians rely on "hugging the experts" (Flinders 2020) to take advantage of assumptions about these technical forms of expertise to justify, legitimize, and pursue particular political ends.Certainly, because knowledge is socially and culturally constituted, embedded within systems and structures of power, and can be politicized for political ends, these political trends obscure more nuanced layers of decision-making and accountability for how technical expertise translates into policies (Poe 2020).In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this has raised repeated conversations about the impact of the pandemic on democratic futures (Degerman 2020;Flinders 2020;Pearse 2020).
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly revealed how governments understood and reacted to the interaction of medical and political authority.The public health crisis forced "high-stakes decisions under conditions of threat, uncertainty, and time pressure" (Lipscy 2020) and demanded the rapid integration and cooperation of medical and political expertise and authority.This convergence of pressures can "bring to light so much of what we might care to ignore" (Poe 2020), revealing variation in political leadership styles and effectiveness (Funk 2020;Glenn, Chaumont, and Villalobos Dintrans  MARLAS 4(3), 2021, DOI: 10.23870/marlas.3292020; Piscopo 2020), governmental extension of control over citizens (Kishi 2020; Lemus-Delgado 2020; Poe 2020), exacerbation of societal tensions and inequities between groups of different identities (Dionne and Turkmen 2020;Woods et al. 2020), and the potential for citizens to develop and assert popular sovereignty (Honig 2014;Poe 2020).
It would be reasonable to assume that Chile's policy response would rely on technical medical expertise, based on the country's extensive neoliberal reforms that restructured Chilean governance to rely on technocratic expertise (Silva 2008), a comparatively strong public health system, and relative time to prepare for COVID-19. 6And indeed, the government led with confidence in early communications; President Piñera asserted in March: "Chile is better prepared than Italy to face this situation" (Glenn, Chaumont, and Villalobos Dintrans 2020).
Yet, the Chilean government's COVID-19 responses are a dizzying, confusing patchwork of policies and numbers.7 Within the region, Chile was cited as having both one of the lowest per capita mortality rates (2.7% of confirmed cases) and the highest infection rate of 21,139 cases per million people by August 2020; by the end of August 2020, Chile had more than 409,000 positive COVID-19 cases and 11,000 deaths (Roser et al. 2020).But, there is a cloud of uncertainty around these numbers, because the government had shifted reporting metrics.Most publicly, the government stopped reporting recoveries in April after announcing it had been counting deceased persons within those numbers, as government officials claimed those people were no longer contagious.
Here, we analyze how politicians rhetorically framed quarantine policies during the first six months of the pandemic (March-August 2020) in Santiago.Quarantines played a key role in the government's response to the evolving pandemic.After the first documented case in early March, officials relied on temporary "strategic and dynamic quarantine," in which different districts of Santiago (comunas) enter and leave quarantine restrictions based on specific metrics of that district. 8These actions were authorized by, first, a March 6 th Ministry of Health legal order and, second, a March 18 th declaration by President Piñera of a state of constitutional exception due to the national catastrophe, allowing the government to limit freedom of movement and association (Villalobos Dintrans, Browne Salas, and Madero-Cabib 2020).The first documented cases were in the upper-class districts in Santiago; early quarantines there were intended to isolate parts of the urban area while preventing the economic costs of shutting down the entire city.Yet, these policies overlooked the extent to which residents in upper-class neighborhoods left for vacation homes usually located in coastal cities with limited public health infrastructure, as well as the fact that many who worked in MARLAS 4(3), 2021, DOI: 10.23870/marlas.329service and domestic labor in these districts commuted to work from more working class and densely populated parts of Santiago, where isolating positive cases and asking workers to stay home was unfeasible.Because of the uneven timelines, limited scope, and extensive distribution of permissions to leave the house, mobility was reduced by only 30%, far below experts' estimates that a 50% decrease in mobility was necessary to slow contagion.9 The government's relationship with the medical and scientific communities during the pandemic has been tenuous, at best.The government formed a working group of technical experts (Mesa Social Covid 19) in March, intended to integrate the expertise of leading medical and academic experts into decisions by local politicians and political officials.But this collaboration did not flow into decision-making.Members of the scientific community quit a Ministry of Science initiative to support research on the pandemic.They criticized the government's failure to provide the data needed to develop the models and predictions that the initiative was supposed to generate, publicly declaring: "Lack of Covid-19 data Chile: A situation we should worry about" (Millenium Institute Foundational Research on Data 2020).In July, the government announced plans to gradually lift quarantines in Santiago and claimed to have presented the plan to the working group.Izkia Siches, current president of the Chilean Medical Board and member of the working group, quickly tweeted that "the reopening plan has not been presented to the Mesa Social or the Chilean Medical Board.Sadly, the mistakes of the past keep being repeated."10Given these tensions, how do Chilean politicians justify their decision-making?What truths are claimed based on what knowledge and whose expertise?While most early research on COVID-19 politics explores policy, leadership, and public attitudes and behaviors, rhetoric about policy provides key insight into the logics of blame, responsibility, and expertise that motivate and are embedded within governing decisions and disagreement.The articulations of these claims through rhetoric create and contest claims about policy-making (Foucault 1991;Rose and Miller 1992;Rose 1999).Rochefort and Cobb (1994, 9) state that "if policy-making is a struggle over alternative realities, then language is the medium that reflects, advances, and interprets these alternatives."We analyze differences in this rhetoric between politicians who have degrees of decision-making or implementation authority in Santiago and focus on variation in what knowledge claims are made, whose expertise is relied on, and who is blamed when policies have suboptimal outcomes.

Political Rhetoric about Quarantines in Santiago
Chilean Health Minister Jaime Mañalich, a polarizing physician who also served as Health minister during Piñera's first administration, played a prominent role by communicating for the administration until his June 13 resignation.His language about quarantines emphasized how individual actions forced the government's decisions to declare or undo quarantines, justifying that "every day, more people are fined for violating curfew or going out without a permit." 11This language of individual responsibility was formalized into the #ElPróximoPuedesSerTú (You Could Be Next) social media campaign, building on Mañalich's prior calls for "corresponsabilidad" (coresponsibility).When he did invoke a sense of the collective, he did so by militarizing the pandemic to rally support around the "batalla de Santiago" (battle of Santiago) and working to delegitimize opposition.Throughout this language of individualizing responsibility, there are hints of disciplining, although not by the government: "When a neighbor does something incorrect, it has repercussions for me." 12añalich was replaced by Enrique Paris in June 2020, who quickly doubled down on skirting the government's responsibility: "Assigning all blame on the government is what the opposition does.It is not the government's fault, it is the virus's fault." 13Even when President Piñera broke the quarantine policy to go out and buy wine in June, Paris stated that "the President has the right and ability to move around, so this action does not go against any norm," and that he "has every right to buy cheese, a baguette, and a bottle of wine.It is not a sin." 14 While claiming that implementing a quarantine was a "populist solution," Paris did not offer an alternative regarding what standards or whose voices should drive the decision to implement a quarantine.As cases started to rise after a gradual return to the "new normal," Undersecretary of Healthcare Networks Arturo Zúñiga claimed that "there is no evidence of a correlation between the rise in cases and the government's actions." 15ight-wing politicians outside the Piñera administration individualized responsibility and blame while calling for more extreme policing of the quarantine and sometimes invoking class-based, moral, or religious blame.For example, former congressman and current head of the Partido Republicano José Antonio Kast argued that "pandemics are opportunities to get to know the best and the worst of people," 16 while current Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI) Senator Iván Moreira explained: "I believe that maybe what I say is politically incorrect, but I believe what is happening in the world, from a Christian point of view, is God's punishment." 17 Evelyn Matthei (UDI), former presidential candidate 11 "Mañalich por cuarentena en Gran Santiago."La Tercera, June 1, 2020.https://www.latercera.com/nacional/noticia/manalich-por-cuarentena-en-gran-santiago-dice-que-ve-luces-deesperanza-en-algunas-comunas-y-que-continuidad-de-la-medida-se-definira-elmiercoles/W453OGBBEBECDMM5ZVKTXI2A2M/.
and current mayor of Providencia in Santiago, called for individual responsibility: "I find it incredible that we have to monitor the compliance of measures that benefit our own lives....I find it the height of nonsense that people do not respect the rules."18Joaquín Lavin (UDI), former minister of Education and presidential candidate and current mayor of the upper-class neighborhood of Las Condes in Santiago, justified a second quarantine by noting the documented spread of positive cases in lower-class portions of the neighborhood: "If you look at the map, the virus has reached the most vulnerable districts, in the case of Las Condes, the zones where there is more government-subsidized housing; we are creating a special plan for those zones."19He and others called for more active policing of the quarantine, supporting efforts by mayors and the regional health secretary to allow municipal inspectors to "be able to enter a market, a private space, and check the use of masks, social distancing, if there are crowds.Even for loud noises, they will be able to enter a house, to check the number of people inside, whether there is a party going on." 20In many instances, this rhetoric also avoided discussion of government failures, with Jaime Bellolio (UDI) going as far as to declare in March, after outbreaks in China, Italy, and Spain: "Nobody in the world knew what was coming." 21Both the Piñera administration and right-wing politicians place a rhetorical focus on individual blame and responsibility for the progression of the pandemic.This emphasis on discipline mirrors Poe's (2020) argument that "the state must develop mechanisms whereby all members learn to police themselves, lest they become a danger.Coronavirus has proved a unique opportunity to remind citizens of the need for such policing."Those not in the current Piñera administration focus more on discipline and are quicker to assign blame to particular groups, echoing the observation that "placing blame during an outbreak by disciplining or isolating those seen as responsible can make mysterious diseases appear controllable" (Dionne and Turkmen 2020).
In stark contrast, left-wing Chilean politicians' rhetoric on quarantines focuses primarily on government responsibility.For example, Mayor of Peñalolén Carolina Leitao (Partido Demócrata Cristiano) called on the government to prioritize a social safety net: "There are many people who, with a lot of effort, managed to barely get out of poverty and now with the pandemic are returning to it and do not understand why they cannot access any benefits.We should progress towards the universality of benefits." 22Mayor of Recoleta Daniel Jadue (Partido Comunista de Chile) became a vocal critic of the uneven application of quarantine policies and of the government blaming citizens for the spread of the virus.On May 15, he rebuked the government "that now claims that part of the responsibility belongs to the people," 23 and redirected blame and responsibility to the government: "The government should apologize to Chile and take up the political responsibilities of those in charge of the pandemic." 24In June, he formalized this blame, suing Piñera, Mañalich, and other public health officials for unpremeditated homicide.Not only does he explicitly assign blame, but he calls attention to their avoidance of the scientific and public health community in their delayed decision-making around quarantine policies: the administration "adopted clearly delayed and erroneous decisions, in addition to denying and hiding information relevant to local authorities, actions that have prevented control of the contagion and provoked the death of thousands of Chileans and 135 residents in Recoleta." 25In contrast to right-wing politicians, the left has called for the democratization of decision-making and leadership around quarantine policies.

Conclusions
Concern is generated by language from the current administration and right-wing politicians that individualizes collective social problems without specifying whose expertise or which data motivate or rationalize the resulting policies.Considering that the Piñera administration has not governed with more than 30% approval since the October 2019 protests, 26 its failure to construct these justifications and to establish lines of collective responsibility is potentially revealing of a broader trend in Chilean governance to preserve and extend elite control at the expense of democratic accountabilities (Bauer 2021).Furthermore, this governing vision is carried out through policing.Bobadilla (2020) similarly observes efforts to enforce this particular façade of Chilean governance: "The virus accomplished in a matter of days what months of police repression, media manipulation, and disastrous internal policies had not achieved in Chile: it restored the image of the much talkedabout pax chilensis, that model of a proudly republican country, temperate, and developing." This rhetoric on quarantines is more concerning, considering that the pandemic comes at a pivotal moment in Chilean history.The October 2019 protests and subsequent constitutional convention process, with elections set for April 11, 2021, are situated to reimagine governance and citizenship, while the pandemic has exacerbated dramatic inequalities (Irarrázaval 2020; Vergara 2020) and escalated tensions over health, labor, social, education, retirement, and economic policy.While demands for innovative, reimagined governance and citizenship are gaining momentum, Chilean