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Two churches have been burned in Santiago de Chile, to commemorate a year of the social outbreak of October 18, 2019, and a week of the most important electoral process of the last three decades: the plebiscite of October 25, which will define the fate of the 1980 Constitution in force. During the day, at least 25,000 people returned this Sunday to Plaza Italia, ground zero in the capital, according to official figures from the Carabineros. Although there were isolated incidents, such as the confrontation between two soccer braves and the attack on a building of a corporation dedicated to preventing work-related accidents – the Mutual de Seguridad – it was during the afternoon when the most serious events began.
In the southern part of the capital, in Puente Alto, a group of at least 300 hooded people attacked a Carabineros sub-station. They threw Molotov cocktails and other blunt items. In another Santiago commune, Padre Hurtado, protesters attacked the police station. In Coquimbo, about 500 kilometers north of Santiago, a group attacked Carabineros with blunt objects and set up barricades, according to the institution. Late at night, a barracks near the town of La Victoria, in the Pedro Aguirre Cerda district of the capital, was attacked, where officials were wounded.
The burned religious enclosures are in the Plaza Italia area: the San Francisco de Borja Carabineros Chapel, which has been continuously attacked in recent months, and the Asunción parish, a building of heritage value whose tower collapsed due to the flames, while groups of young people celebrated. In social networks circulates the image of a girl boasting of the destruction inside the temple. “Enough, enough violence. Let us not justify the unjustifiable, ”said the Archbishop of Santiago, Monsignor Celestino Aós tonight.
In different areas of the capital and in other cities of the country, there is looting of supermarkets and barricades when the night begins, although as the current curfew approaches – at 11 pm – violence seems to decrease.
In the run-up to this day, both the government of Sebastián Piñera and most of the political parties made calls to avoid vandalism. “We hope that people understand that we are in a completely different context, because there is a week left before a very important electoral event for our country and we are in a time of pandemic,” said the Government’s Undersecretary of the Interior, Juan Francisco Galli. He called for prudence and peaceful demonstrations.
Tonight, meanwhile, the Executive has reacted from the Palacio de La Moneda, where the president held a meeting with his main ministers and the general director of the Carabineros, Mario Rozas. After the meeting, the Minister of the Interior, Víctor Pérez, indicated that those who generated disorders were “minority groups” and that “they sought to carry out acts of violence, vandalism, against public and private property.” “We are going to confront violence with the weapons that democracy and the law have,” Pérez added.
For Rozas, who leads an institution in crisis and discredited –especially after the abuses in the social explosion–, “today it has become clear who the criminals are, who the vandals are”. He reported that about 44,000 carabinieri were deployed throughout the country and that there were detainees and wounded soldiers, although he did not specify the figures.
Mostly young people came to the Plaza Italia area during the day, although families and people of all ages were seen, including children and the elderly. There were batucadas, comparsas of feminist collectives –which have been the spearhead of the movement–, Mapuche and Chilean flags, live music, among other demonstrations. The thousands of citizens who took to the streets defied the measures in force due to the pandemic, which prevent meetings in public spaces of more than 50 people. In Chile, there are currently 14,183 active cases, in a health crisis that has left 13,635 deaths, considering only those confirmed.
The demonstration this Sunday was massive, like those that took place before the health crisis exploded in mid-March. On the 8th of that month, for International Women’s Day, about 1.2 million Chilean women marched peacefully in the capital, according to the organization’s calculations. It was the last major mobilization before the pandemic, whose first wave is still not controlled, with 1,759 new cases reported this Sunday.
The concentration took place days before a plebiscite agreed by almost all the political forces in Congress to try to give an institutional solution to the conflict. People began to arrive early to the Plaza Italia area, mostly with masks, although without social distance, due to the very nature of the protest. There were some protesters who distributed alcohol gel among the attendees. That there is a resurgence is one of the main fears in the face of a plebiscite that was already postponed once due to the pandemic and that will be carried out under complex security protocols, determined by the Electoral Service. According to what is established by the government authorities, those infected by covid-19 will not be able to vote next Sunday, nor will their close contacts.
The protest emerges outside of traditional structures such as political parties and unions. A sample of this disaffection occurred in the same area of Plaza Italia, when the mayor of the capital’s commune of Recoleta, the communist Daniel Jadue, was insulted and threatened, according to different videos this Sunday. According to various polls, Jadue is the best positioned left and center-left opposition figure ahead of the 2021 presidential election.
According to the Interior Minister, critical infrastructure, such as public transportation, was protected today. A year ago, the violent people burned 27 subway stations, affecting the mobilization of two million residents of the capital for months.
