“We have not won anything”: Chile commemorates three years of massive social protests

Protests in the center of Santiago and a call from the president Gabriel Boric to the dialogue to advance the reforms marked this Tuesday the third anniversary of the social outburst that shook Chili with massive demonstrations demanding greater equality.

LOOK: Students and security forces clash in the center of Santiago de Chile

Some 2,300 people participated in the day of protests, a smaller call than in the two previous years, but there were harsh incidents in Santiago with the burning of a truck and the theft of two public transport buses to carry out robberies in shops during the night.

In the Coquimbo region (north) a mob stoned the regional government building.

“There have been about 50 arrests, 13 carabineros (uniformed police) injured and some 700 people went out to commit crimes” at the national level, declared the Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, in a report of the demonstrations.

Hundreds of people, mostly students, gathered in the vicinity of Plaza Baquedano in Santiago, epicenter of the mobilizations and renamed “Plaza de la Dignidad” three years ago.

On October 18, 2019, the increase in the subway fare in Santiago triggered student protests that led to strong clashes with the police.

It was the trigger for a violent social explosion throughout the country, the worst since the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), which quickly spread against the entire economic model.

Some of the protests against the government of the then president, the right-wing Sebastián Piñera, included arson attacks on the capital’s subway and looting of businesses.

The balance was about thirty dead and nearly 400 people with eye injuries due to actions by the security forces, who also reported that thousands of agents were injured.

The center of Santiago hosted the most massive of the 345 mobilizations that were registered between October 18, 2019 and March 20, 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic reached the country and stopped the social effervescence, according to a count by the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH).

– “We haven’t won anything” –

“We continue in the same, we have not won anything,” social worker Andrea Valdebenito, one of the protesters in Plaza Baquedano, told AFP.

The demonstrators interrupted traffic on the central Alameda Avenue, and caused the closure of several stations of the metropolitan railway.

Police deployed hundreds of riot police and used tear gas and water jets to disperse the protesters.

Public rubbish bins, stones and even the trunks of a small tree were used by the protesters to confront the police.

“It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years,” read a poster displayed by protesters, in relation to the increase in the value of the subway ticket.

Early on there were incendiary barricades in outlying areas of Santiago. Some 25,000 police officers were deployed nationwide.

The business closed earlier or did not open on this third anniversary of the “social outbreak”, which occurs a month and a half after 62% of the population rejected the proposal for a new Constitution that developed a Constitutional Convention for a year to respond to demands for greater social equity.

The change of the Constitution inherited from the dictatorship was the political solution to channel those protests. After the rejection of the first proposal, the political forces are now in dialogue to establish a new constitutional process.

“If the Constitution we have is maintained, people will continue to demonstrate,” says Lucas Pérez, a 23-year-old accountant, who was also demonstrating.

– Boric asks for dialogue –

Leftist President Gabriel Boric has called for a dialogue to finalize the reforms that sparked the protests three years ago.

He assured that “there have been efforts” but “we have not yet finalized the reforms that resolve the weakness of the social rights of Chilean men and women.”

“The outbreak was not an anti-capitalist revolution and neither, as they have wanted to install in recent days, was it a pure crime wave,” he said.

“It was an expression of pain and fractures in our society that politics, of which we are a part, has not been able to interpret or give answers,” added Boric, a former student leader who was a deputy in 2019 and supported the demonstrations.

The president also said that the “social outbreak was a fertile field for the expansion of destructive violent behavior, which has also left victims and consequences.”

And that violence, he added, “turned against the very causes of the outbreak by producing a growing wave of rejection in society, tired of seeing how vandalism destroys neighborhoods, commerce and heritage.”

The Chilean president, who took office on March 11, promised to build “dialogue bridges with political sectors that do not think the same as us” to advance in better public education, universal health and better pensions.

Source: Elcomercio

Ronald Payne

I, Ronald Payne, am a journalist and author who dedicated his life to telling the stories that need to be said. I have over 7 years of experience as a reporter and editor, covering everything from politics to business to crime.