The party and the fury of Baquedano: The celebrations in ground zero

There were still several hours for the results of the plebiscite, but the Plaza Baquedano sector already seemed to work with its own rules.

—To the gate for toad conchetumare.

It was 18:00. There were already clashes between protesters and Carabineros and, perhaps for the same reason, a sense of suspicion among all those who did not see part of the world that gathered there to wait for the results of the Approval. He passed a few meters further, where a group of young people ran from the Alameda towards Santiago Bueras. They were going to a guy in his forties, stocky, with short hair, standing under a blue awning, yelling at him:

“That jerk is Paco.”

The mob, of about ten people, came asking for explanations. What had happened, they said, was that a girl had accused him. And being a policeman in that place and at that hour, especially in civilian clothes, was audacious. That is why the group demanded explanations. The guy took out his card, showed his license. He said he was not a policeman, but a taxi driver.

—All taxi drivers are faces A woman from the mob yelled at him.

Another woman, around 40, approaches the taxi driver to support him. He tells the mob that the girl who accused him, a minor with two friends, was “all drugged” and that “maybe she’s psychoed and that’s why she said that.”

The girl in question was a few meters away. She was thin, her face was dirty. He laughed with his friends when they saw all this. But that was not enough to claim the taxi driver’s innocence: after a few minutes he had to leave.

The mob celebrated there. Behind them, a woman passed by selling Corona beer for a thousand pesos. All the aesthetics of those previous hours could be summed up in that: party and fury. There were twenty-somethings improvising a hip hop of the Approve in front of the GAM, singing mechanically With everything but pah what, and also a rescuer walked through Merced saying, in front of the large number of beer vendors, “Don’t drink and fight”.

Although towards the Alameda the scene was less festive. There were already several hundred people facing the Carabineros, who were defending themselves with their water launchers. And that, to a protester at the height of Irene Morales, did not seem to them.

“They’re fighting back, pureblood packs.”

The sounds of the party began to subside. What sounded now were the shouts against the police and a cyclist who, at the height of the German Fountain, beat his drum as if it were a beat of war. The dynamics in the Plaza Baquedano trench was a constant repetition of the game of cat and mouse: the water-throwing car passed, fired its jet, the protesters retreated and then returned with more enthusiasm. They stayed that way for a long time, until a skunk flanked the protesters on the west side of the Alameda. A boy saw it and wanted to warn:

“Looooooonaaaaaa!”

That pushed all the public towards the Forest Park. It was too long before the screaming came back from the Alameda.

“Paco and the mother-shell!”

The tear gas fired by the skunk allowed the security forces to regain control of the square. But that wouldn’t last long. There was real anger in the protesters. Visceral anger on their faces as they ran towards the police and threw stones at him. And that anger also turned into a lack of respect for their authority and a zero fear of facing them. A few minutes before 7:00 p.m. a mass of hooded men rushed into the square, forcing the police vehicles to withdraw.

The feeling of victory was immediate. The crowd shouted “Bueeeeena, goats: we recover the square.” But not everyone was happy.

-What is this?

A hooded man approaches.

“What is this notebook?”

Must not be over 23 years old.

“What do you write down?” Show me!

Ground zero has its rules: being there taking notes can turn a citizen into a suspect. In someone who, from one minute to another, has to be able to justify their presence there. Or else, take the consequences.

–Eris paco? tell me poh. ¿Eris paco?

The statue of General Baquedano had three colors that afternoon. He started the day in black and, after the assault on the square, he was left with fluorescent green stains, until he finished all painted red. An advance party was mounted above the statue. They had cloths and flags – one from the town of La Victoria, in fact. But most of all, they had telephones. On top of the horse, photos were taken, videos were recorded and one even answered a call, while the oval was populated and the songs began against any of the three figures that from time to time the crowd remembered that afternoon: Carabineros de Chile, Sebastián Piñera and Augusto Pinochet.

Conquering the square also gave the possibility of filling it with any of the causes that fit under the umbrella of Approval. And here, as in the gallery of a stadium, everyone wants to show their rag or their slogan. There were flags with the motto of Venceremos, the figure of the Matapacos dog and one with the face of the Joker. There were posters that demanded the end of Sename, that the revolution be feminist and, also, scratches that demanded justice for Cristian Valdebenito: a protester who died last March, when he was hit by a tear gas in this same sector during a protest.

All this is mixed with sales such as key rings and flags and posters, because resistance can also become a souvenir.

With no police officers on the horizon, the Plaza Baquedano functioned as a kind of stage where each one sought a fraction of prominence. As if without an authority present, each small group could appropriate the space for a moment. There were the rescuers who came to be photographed in the monument, the groups that covered the square with a gigantic Mapuche flag or the dance corps that appeared to one side, to make an artistic intervention. It was like a circus with different acts, where sometimes firecrackers and fireworks could appear that exploded in the sky or something more sophisticated, like a guy holding a burning torch, who captured the cameras of the telephones when he achieved flares by spitting alcohol on it. to the fire.

It wasn’t the only place where something was burning. There were small groups by Vicuña Mackenna burning bouquets and sticks, and another in Ramón Corvalán lighting a desk and chairs.

The music started at 7:55 p.m.

At that time, from the fifth floor of the building in Merced where Telepizza is located, a group installed some speakers in an apartment and Radio Plaza Dignidad began to play, with The dance of those left over. Throughout the night it was a soundtrack with songs that spoke about homicidal pacos, about returning the bullets received and about a united people. Although, more than something homogeneous, what united all that Baquedano show was that feeling of a pagan party. From, for example, shouting and clapping when a group burned a giant replica of the Constitution and clapping when seeing that Delight Lab projected the word RENACE on the Telefónica building. But there was no verticality, no visible leader. There were no cameras on the ground broadcasting this live for the channels or politicians dissolved by the crowd.

Not even when someone tried to speak from the fifth floor of the Merced building was there much attention. Someone there with a microphone spoke about having recovered the Plaza de la Dignidad and that the fight was not over. Down, more than an audience waiting to be lectured, what there were were hundreds of transmissions on Instagram live. The resistance, then, was an individual content, but shared by streaming.

There was not even a great announcement by loudspeaker of the result. Each group had to find out by their own means the 78.25% of the Approval before the 21.75% of the Rejection.

For a group of twenty-somethings in feminist scarves, for example, it went like this:

“Hey, group hug.” We already won!

After that they made a round singing The right to live in peace, in the middle of a party that lasted after 1:00. Although at that time, the celebration was more like what you see at the end of a New Year’s party. Merced was converted into a collective urinal and in front of the Plaza Italia a group of three transporters danced The United People, while hooded people lit barricades by Vicuña Mackenna and the Pío Nono Bridge. There were still screams. There were still people shouting that what had happened was historical and the sound of empty beer cans hitting the floor, turning into a kind of crust on the pavement. Although all that changed at 1:30, when the curfew ran half an hour ago.

“The pacos are coming!”

From Providencia, Vicuña Mackenna and Merced, beacons of a dozen vehicles from the Public Order Control unit could be seen, ready to retake control of Baquedano. Water spray trucks sprayed the statue and not long after the plaza was empty. People fled through the Parque Forestal, running, by bike and by motorcycle. But not all of them were able to escape unscathed: a Carabineros picket was waiting with their lumas. A boy who started out there, barely dodged the blow.

—No, daddy, you don’t even hit me.

Ground zero, even when it is guarded by the Carabineros, has its rules: being there taking notes can turn a journalist into a suspect. In someone who, from one minute to the next, cannot justify their presence there. And for the same reason, he deserves to be hit on the arm.

“Hey, I’m working,” I told him.

The second blow was to the thigh.

“I’m a journalist,” I insisted.

The policeman, who was now camped for two more, only said one thing:

“Start now, asshole.”