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when Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, facing international pressure, calls for a referendum on his presidency
translated: when this dictator has served his purpose and wasn't useful anymore to the global puppeteers
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opposition leaders persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra (Gael García Bernal), to spearhead their campaign.
as can be seen in the trailer: the goal is to promote their vision of the future, they want to sell it to the viewers with carefully assembled promotional videos that naturally have little to do with reality, they are selling a dream (happiness) in a nice shiny package
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With scant resources and constant scrutiny by the despot's watchmen
this is probably exaggerated, they had support from international sources (see above), the advertising has struck the voter nerve somewhat accurately (professional foreign advisers regarding advertising techniques), and the dictator was way too mild regarding what he could do against them if he wanted to (which smells like a prearranged agreement)
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Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and free their country from oppression.
nothing audacious about it, the country was already heading in that direction for years, the question was merely when will the conditions be ripe (voter inclination) for a transition to occur, they just gave it a marketing/promotional nudge and took the glory/fame (56% vs 44%, without the campaign it might have been close to 50%)
naturally, they didn't really free the country, they merely helped to change the oppressor (and every oppressor has his own ways or tools of oppression - this is true in any regime, including the so-called democratic countries) - also, after a few years it becomes apparent that no government, regardless of how it got to power (forcefully or via election) is genuinely interested in working on behalf of their voters (or the country in general), their allegiance lies where there is power to be gained (or influence or financial gains or control or whathaveyou) as they already got their current position which is never enough - after that some new 'swindlers on the block' get to be elected and the story repeats itself, meaning: the current voters haven't learned their lesson yet or haven't learned from past mistakes made by their predecessors, thus they are bound to fall prey to the new governing swindlers all over again
or in other words, the 'old swindle' is dead, long live the 'new swindle', appropriately glorified by this (promotional) movie