Late Sunday, Chile’s electoral commission was reporting that nearly 15 million people—including Cifuentes and Figueroa—had turned out, 78 percent of whom had voted to begin the process of replacing the dictatorship-era 1980 constitution, a symbol of the brutal Pinochet years.

A new constitution would seek to redress imbalances in Chile that have seen it become one of the world’s most unequal countries, with power concentrated deeply with the ruling elite mainly based in Santiago.

Owing to its ties to Pinochet, the constitution had become a focal point of the anger.

With Piñera's approval rating tumbling towards a nadir—it would reach a historic low of 6 percent in January, the lowest for any president since Chile’s return to democracy—he brokered a deal with party leaders last November to hold a plebiscite on writing the country’s first democratically drafted constitution.

For the proponents of the model, the constitution was the cornerstone of Chile’s growth and stability since the return to democracy in 1990.

However, Chile will now draft the first constitution of any country with equal participation of women, after a bill was approved in March guaranteeing gender parity.

“The social movement wasn’t necessarily asking for a new constitution — that demand coalesced later — but even though it might be a necessary symbolic step to replace the Pinochet constitution, it’s also a long way from being sufficient to address all of the problems we have in this country.”

While the vote gave a significant mandate to the rewriting of the constitution, the process is also likely to be fraught, given the divisions within Chile’s political class and society at large

Liam Miller is a freelance journalist based in Chile

John Bartlett is a British freelance journalist based in Santiago, Chile