Constitution of Chile

The Constitution of Chile, formally the Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile of 1980, was approved in a September 1980 referendum held under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, a vote conducted without electoral registers and reported at 69 percent approval amid hundreds of allegations of fraud. It took provisional effect on 11 March 1981 and full effect on 11 March 1990, coinciding with the return of electoral democracy, and has since been amended nearly seventy times, most substantially in 2005 under President Ricardo Lagos, which removed authoritarian-era provisions including lifetime senators and the armed forces' constitutional guardianship role; proposed replacements were rejected by referendum in September 2022 and December 2023, leaving the 1980 document in force.