The Chilean citizenry voted over the weekend in favor of independent candidates to rewrite the constitution.

For the first time, voters were invited to have their say on who rewrites their country’s constitution. There will be 155 delegates working on the rewrite in a group called the Constitutional Convention. Most delegates voted in are independent. Seventeen of the 155 seats were reserved for indigenous communities after the Chilean Senate unanimously approved a bill to reserve such seats in December of last year.

Chilean President Sebastián Piñera commented that the vote gave Chileans the chance to create a “fair, inclusive, prosperous and sustainable country.” With Parliament’s support, he had delayed the vote several times in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The vote comes after protests that pervaded the country between 2019 and 2021. The protesters were speaking out against economic inequality in the country, which elevates wealthy persons and disadvantages the poor. Economic development had been promised by Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile from 1973 until 1990, when he introduced the country’s constitution, which remains in force as a relic of the time.

The protesters advocated for a new constitution to better accommodate the working class in the economy and indigenous communities in law-making who have historically been under-represented in politics. The recent moves of reserving seats and holding the election on the Constitutional Convention illustrate the success of their activism, a tangible example of exercising freedom of expression and association to manifest real change.