October 31, 2019

By Jonathan Franklin

BuzzFlash Note: This is the third article chronicling the massive anti-austerity uprising in Chile. You can read the first article here and the second article here. This third article offers profiles of some of the protesters.

Four Voices, One Revolution: The Word on the Street in Chile

Antonia del Almendro, 25

The people are tired  They are tired of being criminalized. They are tired of all being treated like slaves, or that we all delinquents. If you don’t have an important last name or don’t have money you are nothing. Nothing. You have no value to any politician.

The first demand is to change the constitution. In Chile the constitution is the same constitution from the dictatorship. So that means the dictatorship never left Chile. We are the only country in Latin America that has the constitution from a dictatorship. So, what happens? We have the same laws that were implemented by the dictatorship. We have the same [economic] model that was implemented by the dictatorship. The same economy that was implemented by the dictatorship. And now? Today we are seeing that they violate human rights like a dictatorship.

The dictatorship implemented a model that has not been touched. That model? The only thing it brought was misfortune. For us all. We are the only country that has privatized water.  Private water! Water is a basic human right. It is incredible. It is incredible how they think we are stupid. What’s are they thinking? People awoke and are showing the government that we are not stupid. They won’t be sticking their finger down our threats ever again.

Melissa Medina, 25, makeup artist

 I am the mother of a six year old girl and now it is my time to protest. These are long term changes that I hope she will enjoy in twenty years. My mother fought in her time, my grandmother fought versus the dictatorship of 73 and I am 25 years old and we still haven’t gained anything! Health? Shitty wages! Shifts up to 12 hours! It takes me two hours to get home, I don’t see my daughter. When I get home, she is asleep.

Here [at the march] there are children, students, workers, parents, aunts, grandmothers. Grandmothers who scream! I mean, how can this be, at their age and still fighting. There is a massive abuse of power here. Look at us, what do we have, spoons? Pots and pans? And water with baking soda? [To combat effects of tear gas] so our eyes and skin are not damaged. And they have buckshot, teargas, lockups, police brutality, rapes, tortures so who is still winning and who is still losing? The fight has to go on, we have to continue.

 Maybe nothing positive comes out of this, and we win nothing. Ultimately those in power decide, but we did it. I don’t want to wait until I am fifty years old and say ‘Oh, I wasn’t brave.’ But I did it all. I ran from the police, I got buckshot in the leg.  I screamed, I fought, I raised my arms.  Next, it’s going to be my daughter’s turn.  I hope she doesn’t have to figh

 Maria Borgoño, 32

 The people who run the government are the same people who have monetary power, it is a perfect circle for them, they pass laws to make more money.  The rest of us become poorer. And during the protests the government has killed people, women have been raped, men have been raped.  Many have lost eyes while they protested peacefully, that should not happen.

Here, human rights are not respected. They have never returned to a point of respect since the dictatorship. We live under the eternal subjugation and abuse from high society and now it is time for that to end. It’s time for the  people to have a kind of life that motivates them to live. 

People are living with a lot of anguish. They are indebted to the banks, to the retail chains and then spend that money in the same retail chains in order to live. Not even are they going into debt for pleasure, they are going into debt to eat.

The older women work until they are seventy to receive a pension of less than 100,000 pesos. [106 GBP] The AFP [private pension scheme] is a joke. And it is even more unjust because the police forces and the military are not part of that scheme. They are lining their pockets with their pensions and all they do is attack the people.

Tammy Cabezas, 21

I came out because we are representing the trans. I am trans and the average life expectancy of a trans person in Chile is 35 years. The social demands that many are fighting for – like a decent pension – the trans can’t even reach that. There is a genocide against trans, in the streets you still hear homo-transphobic insults. We are protesting because without a sexual revolution there is no social revolution.

My goal is that Pinera is put in prison for all that he is done.  That Chadwick [former minister of the interior] is imprisoned for all he did. And that there is a law protecting trans and non-binary people That they listen to the people, a new constitution now. AC. The people know what they want and don’t want in Chile, the problem is the government.

I never imagined the protests would reach this size but I always wished it would. Things were bad. People were dying. There is a genocide against trans people. A genocide against the [native] mapuches [living in southern Chile]. People awoke that this was wrong and that you have to hit the streets and protest. In democracy, and in this moment the citizenry has the power. The government has to listen to us. The citizens are deciding what will happen,  we are a majority. It’s been beautiful and after thirty years of peaceful protest in which we were not taken into account, we began to put up barricades and in two days the metro fare was lowered, things began to change.

Jonathan Franklin is The Guardian reporter in Chile. He writes about Chile, crime and human rights. His latest book, 438 Days, chronicles the saga of two fisherman lost at sea for more than a year. He can be followed on Twitter at @FranklinBlog and on his website, JonathanFranklin.com

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