Here is an exchange on my Facebook page between Rich and our friend, Joe, after I posted on the recent events in Santiago.
No school again tomorrow; this is our third consecutive school cancellation. There is a call for a general strike on both Wednesday and Thursday. Though a quip, is this the beginning of revolutionary change?.
We have had a number of Chilean friends to the house and, of course, have pressed them for their take on the situation. Our social buddy, Vicky, is in her fifties. She and her husband were teenagers in 1973. They remember the curfews, the tanks, and those that went “missing”. She was adamant today that there would be no going back to a dictatorship. When she saw the image of two tanks on Saturday night in the center of Santiago, she cried. She declared that for the first time since this protest has begun that she wanted to go out into the streets wearing white and carrying a flag, too.
“Look,” she told me. “Out there are only Chilean flags. There are no socialist or communist flags. This is a protest from the Chilean people.” She feels that Piñera’s comments are inflammatory. Nobody wants destruction. Of course looting and vandalism are acts of delinquency. He does not need to say this is a war. The majority to the Chilean people, she says, want a more affordable life. They want their government to show that they are going to do something to lower costs, provide higher quality products, and not steal from their citizens.
My neighbor, Gabi, shared with me that because of Pinochet, the military must tread carefully. They cannot retaliate; human rights violations will not be tolerated in Chile again. As a result, metro stations will burn. The soldiers have to wait. The military has to be seen as saving a situation as out of control and not cracking down on teenage protestors.
Our friends comment that young people are too young to feel afraid of the military. That is why they are the ones leading the protest. They are also easier to persuade to act. Last night downtown hundreds of people defied the curfew. The government cannot arrest all of them is the thinking They want the government’s attention that they have a right to be outside. They have a right to an affordable life in Chile, too.
Vicky explained that this is a system that has been unfair for a long time. Grocery stores in poor neighborhoods sell inferior food. Metro stations in certain neighborhoods are merely concrete. You will not see any decorative tiles. These residents pay their taxes. The military is not sending any soldiers into some neighborhoods to protect businesses from looters, vandalism, or delinquency. However, at a Jumbo (grocery store) in Lo Barnechea (a wealthy suburb), there are plenty of guards. At the protests in Los Condes (wealthy neighborhood), they are peacefully banging metal on pans in a cordoned off section of the streets. The military allows the protests, but does not allow vandalism. In other neighborhoods, looting is happening and metro stations are burning. Why should poorer people receive the message again and again that they do not deserve more?
While Max and Mia played with their friends Matthias and Felipe, their Chilean father, Christian, visited with me in our back patio, while watching for updates of his wife’s arrival in the airport. As we talked, Mia burst into our conversation. “The boys are not playing fair,” she said. He took her by the hand and said to the boys, “Play nicely with her, or we are going home,” There was not another issue. “See,” he said. “This is what a dictatorship does. They put an end to the disturbance.” Mia could also just do what the protesters do he suggested. She could just sweep the entire board onto the floor. If she cannot play in a fair game, then nobody gets to play. This is how the protesters feel. The overwhelming majority of the people in Santiago use public transportation. If the game is not fair, they might just wreck it for everybody. Our school depends on the labor of workers of guards, of maids. If they cannot get to work, then we our school does not open. This is a situation where protesters are saying nobody gets to play.
Christian explained that the real issue is the manner of privatization of certain sectors ie.. healthcare, transportation, and electric power. Take the roads for instance. He explains that the highways are privately owned. There are tolls on the roads that drivers pay to the private sector and not to the government. The government (I think he would say Liberal) has signed poor deals on behalf of the people. Perhaps because they are incompetent in comparison to savvy businessmen or perhaps because the money is not directly theirs; throw in some examples of kickbacks to other politicians and is there any wonder that people are pissed by the high prices? Food in grocery stores and retail items in malls are very expensive here because of added costs ie.. in transportation. Christian brings up another example of how Pinochet’s conservative government sold a public company (Soquimich) to his daughter’s husband for almost nothing. His son-in-law went from being a recent graduate with a degree in foresty to one of the richest men in Chile. Basically, there is a lack of trust for both sides of the political spectrum of government. A simplistic conclusion of his view from our conversation would be that Liberals make ineffective leaders. The make terrible deals on behalf of the people. Conservatives like Piñera or Pinochet do not care about the people, but the economy thrives. This has been the Chilean experience. This country, according to Christian, is not evolved enough to be socialist, so a solution lies in making reforms to the current system. This current conservative government may be forced to make social reform.
In all of my conversations, friends seem to share that the situation is not dire. The people are speaking, and the government has to listen. It is not like 1973. We woke up today and will wake up tomorrow with the President still the President. There are no missing people.There is no military coup. There have been no human rights violations.
This afternoon, we drove outside of our neighborhood to see if any restaurants or grocery stores might be open, as Monday was the last time that we have bought any food items. On that occasion, it took Rich four hours to get three bags of food at Jumbo. He could not locate a cart, so he had to carry all of his grocery items around the store. The store was mobbed and stopped accepting customers. The checkout line took over an hour. The store closed its doors at 3:00 pm for the day. The parking was obscene. Today, the streets were calm but all of the gas stations, malls, restaurants, and shops were closed; it was 5:00 pm. We are running low, so tomorrow we will have to try again a bit earlier. I imagine that tomorrow the kids will play in the Plaza. We will do some work from our laptops, play lots of games, and hopefully get some exercise in. I would like to plan a vacation in January with my parents. Vicky emphasizes that though this experience is a big deal to Chileans that we should try to go back to our normal lives. This seems like the toughest part to me. In order to propel change, it feels like the people need to keep the pressure on the government and continue to protest. At the same time, we all want peace, which would mean an end to the ongoing disturbances. Though I still feel like an outsider to the situation, I appreciate these conversations with my Chilean friends.
Living in Chile 