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Chaos reigned in central Santiago Thursday afternoon as Carabinero special forces and hundreds of “encapuchados” (hooded vandals) fought a guerrilla war on the second of a two-day demonstrationfor education reform.
Thousands of Chilean students and their supporters were trapped in the alleyways behind the Universidad de Chile’s engineering campus as they tried to flee the violence.
Amidst the pandemonium, some tried to hold their ground and continue to protest peacefully.
Bands played to enthusiastic crowds in the narrow streets, even as bottles and stones thrown by encapuchados flew past their heads and teargas made the air around them almost unbreathable.
“What we are trying to say is that the street is a public space for everyone,” said a young girl with a bass drum strapped to her back in the traditional Chilean “chinchinero” style, “and that violence is not the only way to protest.
“We are pacifists,” she said as groups of encapuchados, numbering into the hundreds, roamed the alleys, lighting fires and pelting police vans with stones.
At times police were forced to retreat under a hail of stones, glass bottles and paint bombs, but then backup forces would arrive and the encapuchados would be forced to retreat under heavy bombardment with water cannons and tear gas.
As has often been the case at Chile’s student protests of 2011, the day could be divided into two distinct events.
At the beginning -- as two separate marches wound their way through the city toward the meeting point -- the march was more of a street party than a political rally for free university education.
The crowd was diverse in age, numbered into the tens of thousands and was littered with bands, dance groups, colourful banners and effigies.
“We want to open the eyes of the people so they can see that this movement involves not only students, but also teachers, school officials and the entire society,” Rosalbina Muetis, a primary school history teacher told The Santiago Times.
People watched on from their balconies above the march, some of them banging on pots and pans in a traditional Chilean protest.
Under sweltering heat on what was the first genuinely hot day of spring, marchers began to cry out for water from the people above them.
Many obliged and threw buckets of water from the twenty-something-story buildings onto the crowd that danced in gratitude below.
Others looked on from the sideline with less enthusiasm, as business owners worried about possible damage to their stores and the graffiti that prevailed on the busy city streets.
“It’s their right [to demonstrate] and hopefully they achieve something,” said one store owner, “but it’s terrible for my business and it will inevitably end in violence.”
While not good for traditional enterprise, the march was a boon for an army of street vendors and entrepreneurs that sold cold drinks, soy hamburgers, flags, shirts and badges with slogans and lemons for the tear gas.
One creative vendor hovered around conflict zones at the end of the day selling “anti-fascist water” to those doused with tear gas.
Aside from businesses, commuters were also heavily impacted by the resulting congestion and horns resounded through the streets of Santiago for most of the day.
Although it must have been a tough day to be a taxi driver, not all were opposed to the protest.
Dinson Espinosa’s cab was trapped in traffic, just feet from a procession of marchers that went for over an hour.
“Never have I seen a movement so big,” said Espinosa, clearly impressed.
Espinosa -- a Cuban immigrant who came to Chile 16 years ago when he married a local -- described his country as a “natural prison” sandwiched between an entrenched and undemocratic government and U.S trade embargoes.
“Cuba is a country that is really poor and without natural resources” he said, “but education is free there. So I can’t understand why a country as rich as Chile, with as many resources as it has, can say that they can’t fund education for the middle class and the most poor.”
Free university education for all Chileans is a primary demand of the student movement, as is the transfer of government subsidies from private institutions to public universities.
When the two marches finally converged at around midday, there was a brief performance of bands and speeches, broken up early by the conflict that ensued.
The first signs of violence came when fans of two of Chile’s biggest soccer clubs, Colo Colo and Universidad de Chile, engaged in a fight.
Students -- led by a protester dressed like a police officer but sporting a wolf mask and watergun -- tried to break up the fight by forcing themselves between the two groups of soccer fans.
Musicians and dancers then filled the gap and began playing and dancing, but within minutes Carabineros began dispersing the crowd.
In perhaps the most dramatic stand-off of the day, a single elderly woman armed with only a Chilean flag held off an armoured police vehicle and water-cannon as she was pelted with tear gas.
“I am Chilean, I am a patriot, and they cannot damage this flag, it’s prohibited,” she told The Santiago Times. “But they do, they shoot water at us, they shoot tear gas just as they did to me, and I’m only here with my flag.”
The woman, a primary school teacher named Louisa Espinoza, was clear on which side was to blame for the violence.
“They are the aggressive ones, they are the ones that seek violence,” she said, pointing at the Carabineros. The young people are only defending themselves against aggression.”
“They are oppressing the people, when they should be looking at what is causing this movement, social inequality and poverty,” she said. “That’s what they should be concerned with, but they are only concerned with repression.”
Amidst the pandemonium, some tried to hold their ground and continue to protest peacefully.
Bands played to enthusiastic crowds in the narrow streets, even as bottles and stones thrown by encapuchados flew past their heads and teargas made the air around them almost unbreathable.
“What we are trying to say is that the street is a public space for everyone,” said a young girl with a bass drum strapped to her back in the traditional Chilean “chinchinero” style, “and that violence is not the only way to protest.
“We are pacifists,” she said as groups of encapuchados, numbering into the hundreds, roamed the alleys, lighting fires and pelting police vans with stones.
At times police were forced to retreat under a hail of stones, glass bottles and paint bombs, but then backup forces would arrive and the encapuchados would be forced to retreat under heavy bombardment with water cannons and tear gas.
As has often been the case at Chile’s student protests of 2011, the day could be divided into two distinct events.
At the beginning -- as two separate marches wound their way through the city toward the meeting point -- the march was more of a street party than a political rally for free university education.
The crowd was diverse in age, numbered into the tens of thousands and was littered with bands, dance groups, colourful banners and effigies.
“We want to open the eyes of the people so they can see that this movement involves not only students, but also teachers, school officials and the entire society,” Rosalbina Muetis, a primary school history teacher told The Santiago Times.
People watched on from their balconies above the march, some of them banging on pots and pans in a traditional Chilean protest.
Under sweltering heat on what was the first genuinely hot day of spring, marchers began to cry out for water from the people above them.
Many obliged and threw buckets of water from the twenty-something-story buildings onto the crowd that danced in gratitude below.
Others looked on from the sideline with less enthusiasm, as business owners worried about possible damage to their stores and the graffiti that prevailed on the busy city streets.
“It’s their right [to demonstrate] and hopefully they achieve something,” said one store owner, “but it’s terrible for my business and it will inevitably end in violence.”
While not good for traditional enterprise, the march was a boon for an army of street vendors and entrepreneurs that sold cold drinks, soy hamburgers, flags, shirts and badges with slogans and lemons for the tear gas.
One creative vendor hovered around conflict zones at the end of the day selling “anti-fascist water” to those doused with tear gas.
Aside from businesses, commuters were also heavily impacted by the resulting congestion and horns resounded through the streets of Santiago for most of the day.
Although it must have been a tough day to be a taxi driver, not all were opposed to the protest.
Dinson Espinosa’s cab was trapped in traffic, just feet from a procession of marchers that went for over an hour.
“Never have I seen a movement so big,” said Espinosa, clearly impressed.
Espinosa -- a Cuban immigrant who came to Chile 16 years ago when he married a local -- described his country as a “natural prison” sandwiched between an entrenched and undemocratic government and U.S trade embargoes.
“Cuba is a country that is really poor and without natural resources” he said, “but education is free there. So I can’t understand why a country as rich as Chile, with as many resources as it has, can say that they can’t fund education for the middle class and the most poor.”
Free university education for all Chileans is a primary demand of the student movement, as is the transfer of government subsidies from private institutions to public universities.
When the two marches finally converged at around midday, there was a brief performance of bands and speeches, broken up early by the conflict that ensued.
The first signs of violence came when fans of two of Chile’s biggest soccer clubs, Colo Colo and Universidad de Chile, engaged in a fight.
Students -- led by a protester dressed like a police officer but sporting a wolf mask and watergun -- tried to break up the fight by forcing themselves between the two groups of soccer fans.
Musicians and dancers then filled the gap and began playing and dancing, but within minutes Carabineros began dispersing the crowd.
In perhaps the most dramatic stand-off of the day, a single elderly woman armed with only a Chilean flag held off an armoured police vehicle and water-cannon as she was pelted with tear gas.
“I am Chilean, I am a patriot, and they cannot damage this flag, it’s prohibited,” she told The Santiago Times. “But they do, they shoot water at us, they shoot tear gas just as they did to me, and I’m only here with my flag.”
The woman, a primary school teacher named Louisa Espinoza, was clear on which side was to blame for the violence.
“They are the aggressive ones, they are the ones that seek violence,” she said, pointing at the Carabineros. The young people are only defending themselves against aggression.”
“They are oppressing the people, when they should be looking at what is causing this movement, social inequality and poverty,” she said. “That’s what they should be concerned with, but they are only concerned with repression.”
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