Violence in Valparaíso | International Women’s Day 2020
The past few days had been sun-drenched drives in the back of pickup trucks and early morning skinny dips - but the weightlessness and sense of freedom I’d felt hitchhiking north through Chilean Patagonia dissipated when we arrived late mid-week in Santiago. The plaza and surrounding streets were almost pitch black but even in the darkness and the gloom the atmosphere was still churning; we had arrived to a capital en fuego.
“Be back by 6 pm,” the receptionist at the hostel had told us the next morning.
“That’s when it begins and the carabineros do not care if you’re a tourista.”
The following evening we were walking back to our hostel when I realised we hadn’t made it back in time. The people were already gathering, and the tear gas hung in the air like electricity in a lightning storm; the air was thick with it like thunder anticipating a storm, and although subtle at first it wasn’t long before the heavy fog settled on our clothes and filled our lungs with fire. Within minutes, I felt as if my insides were burning and blistering.
Running half blind through Plaza Dignidad hand in hand with my partner as the tear gas tore through us, I couldn’t help but notice the small children in gas masks running in and out of the trees; their parents were dancing and smoking not far away, also unfazed. Street vendors sold empanadas, bandanas and gas masks, and drank beer in the early evening sunshine. Musicians sat in clusters, playing guitar and singing softly together. The battle was just beginning, and despite the celebration, the tension in the air was thicker than any tear gas. It was a humid evening, and the sweat ran down my back in rivers.
By the time we made it to the hostel more and more people had gathered in the plaza and in the streets below. They sang protest songs and banged wooden spoons on pots and pans. As the city darkened and the streetlights sprung to life, the people cried Chile despertó.
A few weeks earlier in Argentina, we had hitched a ride with a Chilean truck driver, near the border. He drove us for several hours, speaking of his love for Donald Trump and his gun collection with the passion and intensity of an adulterer in a dramatic telenovela. In rough Spanish, I told him we were heading for the city and perhaps a little further north to Valparaíso, to which he exploded in a barely contained bundle of fury.
“Socialistas y feministas” he exclaimed, counting on his fingers all the reasons we shouldn’t head for Santiago.
According to his Twitter feed, the protestors were being paid by foreign left-wing governments to cause trouble. Yet as I strode through Plaza Dignidad it was clear the protestors were not violent people. His supposed paid socialist army was having a fiesta.
These were my thoughts as the tear gas clung to the air and to our clothes and picked at our eyes like vultures. The people cried and cried and banged their pots and pans together, and as we watched from the hostel roof my fascination turned to horror as the carabineros de Chile came rushing round the corner with batons raised. Behind them in tow came a great tank and as the people ran the tank opened fire, spraying a high-pressure concoction of water and chemicals formulated to burn and itch even worse than the tear gas. The people screamed and fell down and picked each other up and ran some more as waves of carabineros descended upon the people with a violent fury I had never witnessed in person. Shots rang out, echoing off the tall buildings, and the tear gas and the rubber bullets rained down.
Powerless to stop the advance, all I could do from the hostel roof was cry.
Weeks later volunteering at a bed and breakfast in Valparaíso, a city just north of Santiago, I was still in shock at the violence perpetuated by an establishment that had supposedly shed its authoritarian values. When the owners and their daughter invited me to the International Women’s Day March I jumped at the chance, then later expressed apprehension when I remembered the horrendous pop of the tear gas and the way the carabineros had chased the crowds with batons raised as they away ran in terror.
“Sometimes in life, fear is necessary” the father had replied. Pointing to my Doc Martens, he asked if I had any other shoes.
“Can you run in those?” he asked.
The day of the International Women’s Day March was the kind of baking Latin American heat that cooks you from the inside out. As we wound down through the tight streets, the daughter talked about the state of Chile, the social disparity between rich and poor, and the lack of rights for women and the LGBTQ+ community. For the privileged few in Chile, the hike in metro fares last October has been just that. But for the rest of Chile, it wasn’t just 30 pesos.
It was 30 years.
Augusto Pinochet’s regime had ended three decades earlier yet the ripples of his violence are still being felt in Chile. Overthrowing a democratically elected president in 1973, the general quickly worked to establish a vicious and senseless dictatorship, enforced by the military junta. Public gatherings of more than four people were banned and elections ceased. The people were silenced, as the new regime implemented a system that grew the economy at the expense of the working classes and the poor. Despite the restoration of democracy in 1988, it wasn’t until October of this year that Chile finally had the opportunity to vote in favour of changing Pinochet’s constitution.
The protests had begun last October when thousands of high school students began jumping the turnstiles at metro stations in an attempt to challenge the fare hike. In response, the carabineros were sent into the metro stations with batons to put a stop to the protests. The people watched the carabineros descend upon Chile’s children and decided they had had enough. Chile Despertó. Chile woke up.
Between October and March, over two hundred people lost an eye to rubber bullets at the hands of the carabineros. Right in the centre of the city on just about every corner, protestors and locals alike have sprayed red paint onto the eyes of statues to represent that loss. Winding through the city streets in Valparaíso and Santiago, graffiti remained splattered across every building - ranging from ACAB (all cops are bastards) and fuck AFP, referring to Chile’s private pension system, to more specific jabs at the president like Piñera renuncia and por un años sin Piñera.
“Not everybody supports what’s happening,” the daughter had told me when I had mentioned the Chilean truck driver.
“Pinochet built the Carretera Austral after all.”
The father dropped us off not far from Sotomayor and through the heat and the haze, we began to walk in the direction of the plaza.
“Is that normal? Your dad dropping you and your mum off at protests I mean,” I asked.
“Yes, and sometimes he comes with us,” she laughed.
A throng of women was already marching towards the plaza talking excitedly between each other and singing protest songs.
As we gathered to form a single march heading for the plaza, the woman began to jump on the spot - others hopped back and forth chanting in Spanish.
“Quickly!” the daughter yelled, elbowing me.
“If you don’t jump you are a cop!”
She laughed, and I began to jump, skip and hop with the other women. The atmosphere was intoxicating, and whatever fear I had felt earlier was dissipating quicker than any tear gas in the air.
I heard the drums before I saw the crowd. As we rounded the corner to the plaza an enormous mass of women were waiting. The crowds were packed in closely together but that wasn’t preventing thousands and thousands of even more women from descending from every which alley to join the throng. Everywhere I looked more and more women and girls of all ages were appearing. The crowds were swelling, and unlike Santiago, there was no anger yet - it was a celebration.
To my left, a little girl sitting upon her mother’s shoulders poked her tongue out at me. Just in front of her, a young woman was proudly waving a Mapuche flag, just as the owner of the bed and breakfast was behind me. Homemade signs as diverse as the women welding them were brandishing demands and Feminist slogans.
La nueva Chile Serà Feminisua o no serà. Tranquila hermana acà esta manada. Sin permiso tu no tocas. Resistencia feminina.
Others had crudely drawn caricatures of Piñera. I also spotted a few paper mâché uteruses, but the overall message was clear.
Resistencia. Resistencia. Resistencia.
There was no violence, only joy and elation. I was in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language and knew virtually no one, but somehow I wasn’t alone. Every which direction I looked there were smiles and laughter and chanting. Shoulder to shoulder, we were united. There was no pushing and shoving or fighting, and when the bomberos pulled out of the station the crowd parted and danced around the truck, hooting and cheering as the firefighters tooted back in support.
“The bomberos are 100% voluntary in Chile,” the daughter yelled over the din.
“They’re the only emergency service who openly support us.”
As the heat bore down, the women continued to sing.
“I am a slut, I am a whore - but I’ll never be a cop!” the daughter translated and we laughed together as the singing got louder and louder.
It was about then the singing reached its peak, and the elation spilt over. The crowd began to move still shoulder to shoulder, turning away from the Comandancia Armada de Chile at the front of the plaza and splitting across two blocks to march east.
Behind us, the mother swung her Mapuche flag high above her head. As we walked along the street and rounded a corner, chanting our protest songs, a line of carabineros seemed to materialise to our right. I had never seen them so close before.
The mother immediately stepped out from the crowd, covered her left eye with her hand to symbolise those that had lost eyes to the rubber bullets and began to yell. 5ft tall, Mapuche flag in one hand she cried out in Spanish while the carabineros watched on.
“What is she doing?” I gasped. The daughter just laughed.
“Don’t worry she always does this. One time we have several canisters of tear gas thrown at us at once.”
“She has serious balls,” I laughed.
“Yes she is the best,” and the daughter smiled proudly.
Ahead of us, a crowd of men stood on the steps of a monument watching over us.
“They will protect us but not participate in the march,” the daughter explained, turning away from her mother who was still taunting the carabineros.
“Today is for the women.”
And we continued on as the sun beat down.
Yet as suddenly as we began to move the march ground to a halt and a cautious silence fell over the crowd. Ahead of us sat one of those dreadful tanks I’d seen in Santiago; a line of carabineros stood silent on either side. I felt that same tension in the air, as thick as thunder, but this time I could feel it coursing through the surrounding women. I wasn’t just a witness but a participant.
The sky seemed to darken and I felt the march grow restless; around us the smiles and laughter had turned to a grim silence - the anger was deafening, and rising.
Yet the carabineros stood steadfast; most were still, a few were dancing on the balls of their feet anticipating the fight. Beneath their helmets, I could sense there must be people somewhere behind the visors, but the uniforms made it impossible to tell. The carabineros do not wear lightweight shoes for running; they wear boots for kicking in teeth.
The tank came to life as quickly as the silence broke, and a cascade of liquid shot out towards the front line. A single can of tear gas sailed through the air and the peace was shattered. Our singing turned to screams as the tear gas rained down, cannoning into the air like fireworks on Chinese New Year. The cries of the women could have raised demons.
The anger swelled and spilt over as the crowds rose and fell and rose and fell like waves in an endless ocean. Black smoke filled the air as someone lit a small rubbish fire to our left, and soon the clouds of smoke from the tear gas and the fire seemed to envelop us all.
Slowly but surely the carabineros began to advance batons high in the air as the tank unleashed another wave of tyranny upon the crowd - but unlike the crowds in Santiago, the women were unrelenting. There was no fear here.
The mother turned to her daughter and yelled something in Spanish, and just like that we were gone. As we ran from the battle the cries of the crowd faded and vanished with the pop hiss of a rubber bullet firing until all I could hear was the faint sizzle of the tear gas, a ringing in my ears and the rhythmic thump of our feet pounding on the pavement in unison.