JAVIER ESPINOSA
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@ javierespinosa2
Santiago of Chile
Updated Saturday, November 16, 2019 - 20:06
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- Chile. The historical agreement on the Constitution fails to stop the protests
- Opinion. Violence as a constituent
Daniela Caimanque supervised the transfer to the truck of her belongings first thing in the morning. The two operators had already placed their bicycle, television and several cardboard boxes. Chairs, shelves and the rest of their belongings were stacked inside the building. "We have been living here for ten years but now it is super dangerous. We moved to Providencia (a northern neighborhood of the capital). During the last fire my husband got stuck at home and I could not enter, I had to go to my sister's house "explained the 39-year-old engineer.
The house that occupied Caimanque is located in a side street of the Alameda Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins, one of the main crossings of the Chilean capital -Santiago- and also the epicenter, next to the Plaza Italia, of protests that do not seem having stopped despite the political agreement reached to reform the constitution inherited from the dictatorship.
The residence is located in the immediate vicinity of the Mercure Hotel, which was devastated on October 28 next to the Integramédica facilities, one of the most significant private firms of the criticized Chilean health system, designed by the military regime.
Caimanque, in fact, recognizes that it supports the demonstrations against a system that "has aggravated inequalities" and has delivered a large part of basic services such as health, education or water supply - the latter is something unprecedented throughout the planet - to the private sector, generated a growing discontent among the less favored classes that cannot benefit from the benefits from which the country's elite benefits. Not surprisingly, the latest OECD report recalled that Chile was among the most dissatisfied developed countries with its educational system (in position 29 of 35) or health (in the penultimate).
"These demonstrations had to occur. The problem is that it has resulted in violence that has no justification," Daniela argued.
The walls of the Alameda and the area around Plaza Italia are an exponent of the many claims that the Chilean population accumulates and that the most radical ones translate into assaults against buildings to which they grant a political symbolism such as those of Integramédica , the branches of the public entity Banco Estado and many other businesses such as pharmacies, controlled by an oligopoly dominated by three large chains.
More than 150 pharmacies destroyed
According to Health Minister Jaime Mañalich , more than 150 pharmacies were destroyed in the first days of the revolt that began on October 18. "Here the rich live a great life and the rest, all of us, are suffocated, full of debts and we never know how we will reach the end of the month. Pharmacies? They are getting rich at our expense. They set very high prices for medicines," explained Alfonso Vidal , a father of two children present in the crowd that had swirled in Plaza Italia on Friday.
To try to curb the wrath of the exalted, some medicine dispensaries in this area have placed explanatory sheets on their facades where they claim that they "do not belong" to any chain. "We are a neighborhood pharmacy," said one.
A few meters away, the owners of the Cerro Huelen hardware store had written a long dissertation on the origin of their owners for the same purpose. "This is a family place of two retirees. Partners, we are with your cause. We are a couple of retirees who are obliged to continue working since our pensions do not reach us. Please do not destroy our dream and move on with your Cause, which is also ours ", was read in the letter.
Under this dynamic, the center of Santiago seems to have installed itself in a bipolar behavior that alternates a precarious normality in the mornings, where it is usual to see the carabineros regulating the road traffic in Plaza Italia or the traditional cafes of the area full of customers, and the succession of clashes that begin to generalize after mid-afternoon. Two realities that were captured on Friday with the image of the white canvases and the banner with the word "Peace" that hung a group of young people from the statue of Manuel Baquedano early in the day, and the violent clashes that were recorded in the same place after 17:00 and they concluded with a dead protester.
Argentina's ambassador to Chile, José Octavio Bordón , who had to be evacuated last Tuesday from this district, said that "the entire downtown area is no man's land." "There are burning hotels, pharmacies, two churches and a broken university," said the diplomat.
As summed up the graffiti that was observed in the monument to Manuel Rodríguez, "the people fight, Santiago burns".
"Looting is unacceptable"
The social outbreak has caused dozens of hotels, museums, banks and all kinds of businesses in the area to have "fortified" by covering their frontispieces with metal plates that give a certain aspect to a district that used to be the commercial reference point of the capital. At noon this Saturday, two employees of one of the many locksmith companies that have had to multiply these days to seal doors and access, placed one of those plates to close the entrance to one of the pharmacies of the Doctor Simi chain. "They have assaulted it twice. After the first attack we placed iron slats to reinforce the metal door, but they managed to open a hole. To burst this iron they would need a blowtorch, " said the expert, who declined to identify himself.
At the same time, taking advantage of the morning truce, Nicolás Estay and a group of more than a dozen volunteers from the International Christian Church removed the remains of burned barricades that remained occupying the road in several surrounding streets. "We coordinate with the mayor's office and they tell us where to go. We are disciples of Jesus and we want to help the community," he said. For the 23-year-old, popular mobilizations are "based on injustice," but Daniela Caimanque agreed that "looting" is "unacceptable."
"They are the work of people who do not have God, who share that lack of faith with many members of the Government," he said.
As in Hong Kong, Chilean mutineers have adopted different symbols ranging from Pikachu to a young Spiderman dressed whose presence in Plaza Italia became a viral image in the country.
But none has reached the emblematic character of a dog nicknamed the "black matapacos", a dog that appears portrayed in murals and posters with a red scarf knotted around the neck - which has been erected to an altar on the outskirts of the Gabriela Cultural Center Mistral-, which links the current mobilizations to the massive protests that the local university students carried out in 2011, the largest in the democratic era to date and that were also created by the disgust of tens of thousands of students before an educational system outlined by Augusto Pinochet's regime.
At that time, the "black raccoon" (pacos is the nickname of the local police) reached an enormous notoriety when the kids who faced the uniformed discovered that this animal accompanied them in the marches and only barked -according to their version- the agents. "Innate revolutionary, father of 32 children (recognized) and husband of six ladies, friend of the people and the worst nightmare of the police," says the Facebook page that his followers have dedicated.
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