• Crisis.Chile, on a war footing a month after the crisis broke out

The group that integrates Nancy López, 26, has placed huge banners on the facade of the central University of Chile that summarizes her ideology. "That Chile decides: constituent plebiscite now," says one of them. Another advances the intention of the students to join the National Unemployment planned for this Monday : "General strike so that (President Sebastián) Piñera falls."

Young people occupied the headquarters of the university campus - located in the Alameda de Santiago de Chile - last Thursday inspired by the growing activism of a large sector of the population that does not consider sufficient the possible reform of the constitution agreed by the legislators or the promise to adopt urgent social measures and demands the resignation of the head of state.

The so-called Social Unit Bureau - which brings together dozens of popular movements and unions - has called for a new general strike for this Monday and Tuesday throughout the country.

The last action of this type occurred on the 12th and the day resulted in such serious incidents that President Sebastián Piñera himself acknowledged in a speech that he was about to re-decree the state of emergency and take the military to the street .

"We voted to occupy this space on Monday because impunity continues and the greatest of them is that Piñera continues in her post. We want Piñera to leave," said López, seconded by several of the kids who have settled in the compound. The seizure of the building is added to the one already maintained for weeks by the students of the adjacent National Institute, another prestigious teaching institution founded in the 19th century and through which several former presidents of the country have passed. "This is a strategic point and was also taken for months during the 2011 protests," adds the Philosophy student.

Although they still constitute an isolated event, the determination of López and his colleagues, and that of the pupils of the National Institute recovers the memory of the huge student mobilizations of 2011, which analysts consider the most precedent antecedent of the current crisis since they were motivated for similar claims.

Identity Sign

The occupation of schools became for months one of the hallmarks of that crisis, which like the current one sometimes resulted in serious street altercations. The entrenched students at the Central University say that in a way they are also inspired by the occupation of the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong that was registered during the last days.

"We are not going to allow the police to enter. Hong Kong is a role model," argues Isabel Villalobos , another of the university students, recalling how the boys from the former British colony opposed the eviction by resorting to Molotov cocktails and bows with arrows .

The symbolism that Hong Kong protests have acquired among the protesters in Chile is not only limited to the action that has been organized around the capital's University.

Young people who come to Plaza Italia daily - the capital's epicenter of claims - do not hesitate to recognize that they have copied tactics such as the use of laser pointers or the system they use to deactivate tear gas canisters , for which they have deployed teams of kids equipped with gloves - which prevent burning hands - that recover the device and put it in a plastic container filled with liquid that neutralizes its effects, emulating the images that came from the Chinese metropolis.

Protesters have come to shoot down a drone with the massive use of dozens of lasers in unison and were accused of trying to blind a security forces helicopter in the same way.

This Friday the local activists had established a human chain in the vicinity of the Plaza Italia to move bricks with which to build barricades, a procedure that perfected the "frontline" hongkoneses - so they are nicknamed -, who came to develop a whole sign language that allowed them to request umbrellas or helmets from the rear with a simple gesture, which immediately began to channel those supplies carried from hand to hand.

Gap with the political class

The position of the students camped at the University of Chile confirms the deep gap that has been generated between the political class represented in Parliament and broad layers of the population. A circumstance that not only threatens to spread the crisis - the one in 2011 lasted months - but is causing a situation of growing instability in the streets of many cities in the country, where protests are sometimes overshadowed by acts of vandalism or mere criminality such as business looting or burning of all types of buildings.

On Friday, for example, a group of individuals set fire to a part of the facilities of the San Pablo de Coquimbo Hospital, a town located north of Santiago. "These acts of violence cannot be called social demand, so we cannot advance in those demands that people have peacefully expressed," said one of those responsible for that region, Lucia Pinto , in statements to the local press.

In Valparaíso , the official figures speak of the destruction of 75 commercial stores, public and private institutions and even a kindergarten only during the day of last Thursday. That same day the firefighters themselves trying to put out the fire of a shopping center located in a neighborhood north of the Chilean capital were stoned by exalted groups.

The assaults were reproduced Friday night in capital suburbs such as those of Quilicura or Maipú. The top political leader of this last enclave, Cathy Barriga , demanded that the executive reinforce the presence of security forces in those districts. "One of the obligations of the government is to protect public order and that is not being fulfilled. I have no words for what we are living," he said.

"We all want a change but there is a group of vandals that what they want is to generate chaos. If this continues, they will lead us to the catastrophe," concluded Alejandra Silva , a young woman who traveled downtown Santiago on Saturday morning, attending to a stage full of debris and offal.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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