In 2019 the first Concert for Humanity was presented at the Estación Mapocho cultural center in Santiago, Chile. The event was designed as a cultural celebration of unity in response to the significant rise of immigration to the Latin- American country, particularly from neighboring regions. The inaugural concert featured Beethoven's Ninth Symphony performed by an orchestra and choir composed of the country's migrants. The event was repeated again in 2020, this time with a performance of Mahler's Second Symphony. According to the conductor, Alejandra Urrutia, the decision to program Mahler was easy. “Two days after the first Concierto por La Hermandad (Concert for Our Humanity) last year, we met with [the organizers] in a café and started planning this year's concert. Mahler! It has to be Gustav Mahler!” In the context of Chile's Estallido social, a period of civil unrest marked by mass demonstrations, the selection came to have even more significance according to Urrutia. “[Everyone] living here in Chile … can see the transformation all around us, in fact it's hard not to. But this day at least, we have the opportunity to experience the transcendence…the rebirth, to feel what is to come through the other side because of our united humanity.”

The famous final chorus of Beethoven's Ninth, espousing the ideals of universal brotherhood, has served many political movements and commemorated various historic moments since its composition in 1824. Played as part of a concert celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall and still used as the melody for the anthem of Europe, representing the European Union, the work has been framed numerous times in terms of political ideologies, particularly their power to bind members of groups. The unhesitating choice of Mahler's Second Symphony by the Chilean committee implies an analogy with Beethoven's Ninth clearly felt in Santiago. To be sure, the composer's first chorale offers an easily recognizable message of fraternity, struggle, and the ability to overcome adversity, delivered by a chorus of human voices in the final movement. However, the political climate out of which the Concert for Humanity arose makes the selection even more fitting.

Contemporary issues in the Western world bear a striking resemblance to those of fin-de-siècle Vienna.