Up to 1 million people rally in Santiago’s streets as protests paralyse Chile

SANTIAGO, Oct 26, 2019, Reuters, AP. Up to a million people — more than 5 per cent of Chile’s population — protested in Santiago on Friday, but the rally turned violent after dark. Chile’s Congress was evacuated after demonstrators forced their way past security. President Sebastian Pinera said he had heard the protester’s demands “loud and clear,” reported the ABC News.

One of the biggest protests to engulf Chile’s capital Santiago over the last week turned violent on Friday night, with police firing tear gas and water canons.

As many as one million Chilean protesters flooded the city in the afternoon in a peaceful march, waving national flags, dancing, banging pots with wooden spoons and bearing placards demanding political, economic and social reforms.

Traffic already hobbled by truck and taxi drivers protesting road tolls ground to a standstill as crowds shut down major avenues and public transport closed early ahead of marches that built throughout the afternoon.

But as darkness fell and many of the protesters left for the day ahead of an 11:00pm military curfew, violence erupted, with police firing tear gas and water cannons at demonstrators who had converged on a public square.

Two protesters could be seen hurling flaming molotov cocktails that exploded near a security force vehicle spraying protesters with gas.

The police then moved up the boulevard from Plaza Italia, firing more water canons to disperse the crowd.

Earlier that morning in the port city of Valparaiso, Chile’s congress was evacuated after angry protesters tried to force their way into the building’s grounds, overwhelming security forces.

Police fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators who had gathered on the perimeter as lawmakers and administrative staff rushed out of the legislative building.

At least 18 people — including a child — have died in the turmoil that has swept the country since last Friday, with five people killed at the hands of the armed forces.

Biggest demonstration since Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship

Santiago Governor Karla Rubilar said a million people marched in the capital on Friday — more than 5 per cent of the country’s population.

Protesters elsewhere took to the streets in every major Chilean city.

“Today is a historic day,” Ms Rubilar wrote on Twitter.

“The Metropolitan Region is host to a peaceful march of almost one million people who represent a dream for a new Chile.”

Some local commentators estimated the Santiago rally tallied well over the million mark, describing it as the largest single march since the dying dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1990.

As crowds of colourful demonstrators stretched along Santiago’s thoroughfares as far as the eye could see, the noise of pots and pans being clanged with spoons — a clamour that has become the soundtrack for the popular uprising — was ear-splitting.

“The people, united, will never be defeated,” the crowds chanted over the din.

Beatriz Demur, a 42-year-old yoga teacher from the suburb of Barrio Brazil, joined a stream of demonstrators shuffling toward Plaza Italia with her daughter Tabatha, 22.

“We want Chile to be a better place,” said Ms Demur.

“The most powerful have privatised everything. It’s been that way for 30 years.”

Eyeing the crowds packing the square, her daughter said: “I have waited for this a long time … It’s not scary, it’s exciting. It means change”.

Anali Parra, 26, a street hawker, was with her daughter Catalina, 9, and five-month-old son Gideon Jesus, his buggy decked in streamers and an indigenous Mapuche flag.

“This isn’t going to go away,” Parra said. “[Chilean leader] Pinera should just go now.”

While much of wealthy east Santiago has remained calm under evening lockdown, the poorer side of the city has seen widespread vandalism and looting.

Inequality main thread in widespread protests

Chile’s unrest is the latest in a flare-up of protests in South America and around the world — from Beirut to Barcelona and Hong Kong — each with local triggers but also sharing underlying anger at social disparities and ruling elites.

Protests in Chile that started over a hike in public transport fares last Friday boiled into riots, arson and looting that have killed at least 18 people, injured hundreds, resulted in more than 7,000 arrests and caused more than $US1.4 billion ($2 billion) of losses to Chilean businesses.

Chile’s military has taken over security in Santiago, a city of six million people now under a state of emergency with night-time curfews as 20,000 soldiers patrol the streets.

Clotilde Soto, a retired teacher aged 82, said she had taken to the streets because she did not want to die without seeing change for the better in her country.

“Above all we need better salaries and better pensions,” she said.

Chile’s centre-right President Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire businessman, trounced the opposition in the most recent 2017 election, dealing the centre-left ruling coalition its biggest loss since the country’s return to democracy in 1990.

But as protests ignited this week, Mr Pinera scrapped previous plans and promised instead to boost the minimum wage and pensions, ditch fare hikes on public transportation, overturn a recent hike in electricity rates and fix the country’s ailing health care system.

A cut-out depicting Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera burns on the pavement during anti-government protests in Valparaiso

Mr Pinera told the nation on Thursday he had heard the demands of Chileans “loud and clear”.

“We’ve all heard the message. We’ve all changed,” Mr Pinera said on Twitter late on Friday night following the peak of the rallies.

“Today’s joyful and peaceful march, in which Chileans have asked for a more just and unified Chile, opens hopeful paths into the future.”

An online poll conducted by local company Activa Research of 2,090 people between October 22 and 23 found 83 per cent of respondents said they supported the goals of the demonstrators, but 72.5 per cent opposed violence as a method of protest.

The principal causes of the protests were low salaries, high utility prices, poor pensions and economic inequality, it said.