After 41 Days, Crisis in Chile Does not Subside

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Violence in Chile has reached unprecedented levels, and the political world is not reaching a consensus that will lead to a solution after 41 days of crisis.

After the call for a general strike made by the Social Unit – which coordinates 200 trade union, popular, student and health professional organizations -, several violent groups took over several cities in the country on Tuesday night.

There were at least 99 outbreaks of serious incidents and at least 915 people were arrested, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior, in one of the most violent days since the outbreak of protests on October 18th.

President Sebastián Piñera, with a 12 percent popularity rating and no solid political base, is trying against the clock to seal a congressional agreement on public safety, toughening penalties for crimes like looting and allowing the armed forces to protect vital infrastructures, such as energy or health services, thus releasing “hundreds of Carabineros (Chilean police) to do their job of protecting public order and security”.

“The time has come to say enough,” said Piñera on Wednesday evening at the Moneda Palace. “The time has come for us all to resolutely unite in our commitments and willingness to fight violence,” he added. But the solutions that the political class has offered so far, such as social measures and a new constitution, do not seem sufficient to stop the violence. Excluding those arrested during the curfew, between the beginning of the crisis and last Monday 18,552 people have been detained, of whom at least 1,156 are under pre-trial detention.

The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the deaths of 26 demonstrators, five of whom involved state agents. The National Human Rights Institute, an independent and public body, reported 2,808 injured citizens who required hospitalization. Piñera said 2,210 carabineros and police officers were injured – including 57 shot and 45 burned by Molotov cocktails – and 188 police stations and 971 police vehicles were attacked.

While part of the political world seeks some degree of understanding, bearing the lack of representativeness, the population is experiencing difficult days, particularly in suburban and popular municipalities, scourged by a yet immeasurable destruction. “It seems that a bomb has been dropped or that everything has been devastated by a hurricane,” says a 60-year-old Chilean who, like many citizens, takes photos with his cell phone at the epicenter of protests, Baquedano Square, in Santiago.

A few blocks away, on Vicuña Mackenna Avenue, a man organizes traffic in exchange for a few coins in the absence of traffic lights or police. The pavement is shattered, hundreds of shops are closed, and the entrance to the Baquedano subway station, a crucial link in the network, is unrecognizable even for the Chileans who were born in the city.

The images are echoed in different cities from north to south of the country. In the port of San Antonio, demonstrators burned down the headquarters of the Líder, a local newspaper, on Tuesday night, which on Wednesday morning came out with the headline: “Terrible Day!”. In Antofagasta, the mining capital in northern Chile, the lack of control allowed criminals to set up barbecues to roast meat from the flames of barricades, in the middle of the public highway. In downtown La Serena, the birthplace of the poet Gabriela Mistral, a hotel with tourists was looted and then set on fire.

In Santiago, several highways were blocked on Wednesday, while protests on streets and avenues forced the closure of subway stations, a network that even before the crisis carried 2.8 million passengers a day. The complexity of the Chilean situation has a central ingredient: the denunciations of human rights violations by state agents, which have prompted 500 legal actions by the National Institute of Human Rights (NHRI).

Last week, Amnesty International pointed out “widespread attacks against the population,” in a report that has been criticized by the government and the armed forces. “It is not true that during the period in which the state of exception was in force, the Armed Forces acted with the intention of injuring demonstrators to discourage protests,” said the military. The humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), for its part, denounced that members of the Chilean uniformed police, the Carabineros, have committed “serious violations of human rights”.

The carabineros have been banned from using riot control weapons until the composition of projectiles has been conclusively clarified – since a study by the University of Chile has denied that they are rubber bullets, as the police have stated for weeks. “We are being overcome. Opponents with barricades, hurling rocks, everything. Resisting only with our body and shields. We retreated. I have injured carabineros, damaged vehicles, Molotov cocktails, I have no gas, I can’t shoot a shotgun, to hell with it. We are not forced to do the impossible,” said a police chief while a loot was taking place at the Quilpué shopping mall, 120 kilometers from Santiago, according to an audio broadcast by Radio Cooperativa.

Source: El País