Chile protests continue,demand deeper changes

Two weeks ago, you read in this space about how nationwide protests choked the capital of Ecuador, a small developing country in South America, pushing the country’s chief executive out of the presidential palace to set up office in an outlying city. Led by the indigenous people, the two-week protests ended after the government acceded to their demands to roll back austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund.

On Oct. 18, as the Ecuador protesters victoriously returned to their villages, the people of another South American country – Chile, member of the richest countries’ club, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – also rose up in protest.

It was the withdrawal of a 40-year fuel subsidy that outraged the Ecuadorans. In Chile, it was a 3.7 percent hike in subway train fares that triggered popular anger. Within days the protests had spread outside the capital, Santiago.  More issues came to the fore, mostly converging on inequality in income and economic opportunities.  A common chant: “Chile desperto (Chile is now awake!)”

President Sebastian Piñera, a billionaire center-right politician, declared a state of emergency. Ordering thousands of troops onto the streets of the capital, he said Chile was “at war” against “gangs of evil delinquents” bent on causing destruction.  Despite the rising number of arrests, deaths and injuries in clashes with soldiers and police, the protests grew bigger and bigger.   

Last Saturday, about a million people marched into the capital.  As the protesters, mostly youths, began to encircle the legislative building in Valparaiso, legislators and their staffs evacuated their offices.

Piñera initially took a softer tone, announcing a series of new social policies including a slight raise in the minimum wage, and apologizing for the “shortcomings” of his government.  The gesture made no impact. He then announced the firing of eight cabinet members, including the interior and finance ministers.  Instead, protesters outside the presidential palace called for his resignation.

“More than a change of faces, we need a change of policies,” said the opposition Socialist Party president Alvaro Elizalde.

Human rights groups rallied outside the Supreme Court building and demanded strict limits to the security forces’ crowd-control tactics.  In an open letter, 150 law professors condemned serious human rights violations across the country, calling for an “active and responsible dialogue, in good faith, to create pathways to solutions” of the demands raised by the people.

Chile’s former president Michelle Bachelet, now the United Nations’ human rights high commissioner, has dispatched a team to look into the situation. As of latest count, the Chile Human Rights Institute reported 3,535 protesters arrested, 1,132 injured taken to hospitals, 38 with gunshot injuries.  Press reports, however, cite at least 23 have died in violent clashes with security forces and 7,000 arrested.  

With the protests unabating, President Pinera cancelled Chile’s hosting of this year Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Nov. 16-17 and the global climate convention in early December.

Political and economic analysts, cited in the Guardian reports, blame the situation on the neoliberal economic model put in place by Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship starting in 1973. (Pinochet was installed in a US-backed coup against the socialist President Salvador Allende).  The model deregulated the economy and privatized the social security system, health care, and education.

The outcome: wide income inequality – the richest 1 percent of the population hold 33 percent of the country’s wealth; only 55 percent of workers are employed; 30 percent of formal labor contracts are short-term (lasting an average of 10 months). Many Chileans feel discriminated against and humiliated while struggling to access inadequate public services.       

Reading some of the protesters’ complaints as reported in the Guardian, one begins to feel like them:  

• Juan Angel, 60, a teacher: “I want change and I want it now. The cost of living keeps rising and our money is being badly distributed – in pensions, in healthcare and in education.  There is privilege for the armed forces, the priests, the politicians, the corporations.  And to change that, you have to change the [Pinochet] constitution… I’m not afraid. I have nothing to lose. I’m doing this for my granddaughter who is six months old.”

• Melissa Medina, 25, makeup artist: “My grandmother fought against the dictatorship; my mother fought in her time; I am the mother of a six-year-old girl and now it’s my turn to protest.  We want long-term changes that I hope she will enjoy in 20 years. We have shitty wages and 12-hour shifts. It takes me two hours to get back from work and when I get home I don’t see my daughter because she is asleep… Marching with us are children, students, workers, parents, aunts, grandmothers.  Grandmothers screaming for change! At their age, [they’re] still fighting!”

• Antonia del Almendro, 25, film maker: “The people are tired of being treated like slaves or criminals. If you don’t have an important last name or don’t have money, you are nothing.  The first demand is to change the constitution. We are the only country in Latin America that has the same constitution it had under a dictatorship – the same laws and economic model.”

•German David Requena Zeda, 18, student: “As a student it is very expensive to live in Santiago. My parents are from northern Chile, so I live here alone.  I’m fighting for a better education that costs less, a subway fare that is fair, and a life with more dignity.  Because what we earn now is not enough to survive on… I’m not afraid of the police, even though many people have been wounded, and others have been killed. I just don’t understand why they attack us with so much force.”

•  Maria Brogono, 32, art history student: “The people who run the government are the same people who have economic power, it is a perfect circle: they pass laws to make more money, and the rest of us become poorer… People are in debt to the banks and businesses, and then spend that money in the same businesses in order to live.”

But at least the Chileans did us one better by arresting the ex-dictator Pinochet and trying him for his crimes, although he died without being convicted. In our case, our leaders allowed the dictator Marcos to be flown to Hawaii by the Americans; then after his death allowed his body to be returned to the country – later buried as a “hero” courtesy of President Duterte.  His widow has been convicted twice over for small and big crimes. Yet she remains free with the Sandiganbayan, repeatedly blaming prosecutorial incompetence, allowing her to retain billlions in ill-gotten wealth.

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