Between 2009 and 2019, Chile experienced a series of anarchist-inspired bombings. Many of the perpetrators were not marginalized individuals: they were well-off young men with jobs and families who chose the bomb.

What happens to a man that leads him to one day assemble explosives in his apartment? This question lies at the heart of *Passenger in a Trance*, the new novel by Renato Garín (writer, communicator, and former congressman), and is the starting point for this conversation.

From the novel, the conversation expands to some of the most profound problems in contemporary Chile: the collapse of masculinity, Chilean anarchism and its intersection with internet forums and hooliganism, the erosion of the social contract, the Agrarian Reform and the end of the hacienda era in Chile, the demise of the Radical Party, the power of large economic groups and their shift toward China, the founding myth of Santiago, and the vote transformed into ironic consumption.

But this isn't a conversation about current events. It's a diagnosis of the exhaustion of a way of life.

In the final section, Garín reflects on cynicism as the dominant feature of Chilean public life, the end of academic and press freedom, and writing, in the age of artificial intelligence, as the last bastion of freedom.

A conversation about anarchism, elites, and the collapse of a country.

Interview conducted by Sebastián Flores Alvarado for Revista Entre Líneas.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction: Renato Garín and Passenger in a Trance*
00:48 Masculinity, Feminism, and the Digital World
03:03 Anarchism and Political Disenchantment
05:09 Forums, Digital Communities, and Radicalization
06:05 Hooliganism and the Social Uprising
09:17 Hackers, Insurrectionism, and Alfredo Bonanno
11:48 The Breakdown of the Chilean Social Pact
16:06 The History of Chile and Its Hidden Conflicts
19:14 Agrarian Reform, Elites, and Social Transformation
27:34 Birth Rate, Family, and Cultural Change
30:19 Populism and the Crisis of Representation
31:56 Portales, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Rise of China
34:04 Santiago and the Concentration of Power
37:03 The Return of the Caudillo
39:03 Consumption, Individualism, and Ways of Life
41:31 Political Cynicism and Institutional Exhaustion
46:07 Writing as the Last Bastion of Freedom

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