“It’s Not About 30 Pesos, It’s About 30 Years”

I have tried to start this post many times over the past week. I want to give a clear picture, an explanation, a justification to what is happening here in my beloved Chile. There are still so many questions, so many moving parts, so much in the unknown… hence my hesitation. Yet I want to have these reflections, memories for later, pieces of a social revolution to which we didn’t truly know the outcome of in the moment. I also hope that this account clarifies some questions that people on the outside may have, both about the physical happenings in Chile and my own personal experiences and reactions to these events.

I won’t go too deep into Chilean history for this, but there are some base things to know so as to grasp both the enormity and the importance of the social upheaval going on. Chile had a military dictatorship in place from 1973-1990. It was the most authoritarian dictatorship in Latin America in the 20th century (that is saying something) and due to this harsh authoritarian state, much of that generation is indued with a kind of social trauma that we in the United States cannot imagine: the military patrolling the streets constantly and the secret police arresting thousands of people to torture them for information – all fostering a constant sense of distrust and insecurity among the Chilean people.

Now, when the dictatorship ended, it did not fall in the way one would think: in revolution and violence but eventual victory for the opposition. On the contrary, Pinochet (the dictator during that time) carefully crafted the end of the dictatorship by creating a new constitution that laid out the path forward beyond him and his regime. Chile STILL has this constitution. Yes. The one put in place by their former dictator. During the years after the “return to democracy,” Chile’s economy grew steadily, slowly but surely establishing the country as one of the most stable in Latin America. However, there are a lot of indirect consequences as well from Pinochet’s dictatorship, such as the rampant neoliberalism that has created insane levels of inequality. To give a few facts: 33% of the entirety of wealth in Chile is concentrated in the hands of the 1% richest people in Chile; additionally, 50% of the working population receives 400 000 pesos (550 USD) or less per month in their salaries, while 0.01% of the population makes around 570 000 000 pesos (800 000 USD) per month. Chile has a high GDP of around 298 billion USD, but only because of the large concentration of wealth in the richest sector of the population. In addition to these extreme levels of inequality, Chile has struggled with the privatization of pensions, the university system, and even water (the only country in the world where this is the case).

In conjunction to the overall inequality present in Chilean society, the public education in Chile is – for the most part- not up to par with what a country of such economic progress should have. This eventually lead to the Chilean Student Movement (coming to a height from 2011-2013), in which students from all over the country took to the streets, neighborhoods and schools to protest the dismal quality of their education. These protests evolved into students playing an important role in Chile’s overall protest culture, which brings me to October 2019.

Due to all of the things that I previously mentioned, Chile has been building up to some sort of social revolution for quite a while. During my group trip to the Atacama Desert in the beginning of October, our program director informed us that the prices of the metro fares were going up 30 pesos that next week. We did not think much of this honestly, because 30 Chilean pesos is about 3 US cents and as foreigners with US dollars in our pockets, it would not affect us much. Fast forward to a week later. It is a Tuesday and I am taking my daily 45-minute metro ride from my house in northeastern Santiago to our campus in the southern part of the city, and I notice that some of the metro stations on my line are closed. This seems strange, but I just assumed that they were doing maintenance on them or something along those lines. Upon asking my friends if they knew anything, they informed me that many high school students were using their influence with the student protestor culture to protest the fare hike. I still did not think much of this because Chileans protest a lot, university departments go on strike, etc. I continued through the week but as Thursday and Friday approached, we began to notice a heightened presence of the police by the metro stations.

Friday October 18th, THE day: more metro stations are closed. I decide to go to a park with my friend Kelsey to read our books and relax in Santiago’s amazing springtime sunshine. We were on our way back to our houses to eat dinner at around 7pm when we start hearing the news: the WHOLE metro system is closed. The protests are becoming increasingly violent. Someone was shot by the police. A bus was lit on fire in the center of the city. Suddenly there were hundreds of Chileans walking all around our bus because they had been cut off from their commute home by the metro closure. In an hour, things had escalated. Big time. When I finally made it home, close to 9pm, I would commence the 48-hour period in which we were all glued to the TV watching fires being started, metro stations burned and riots in the city center. The whole country was shocked. In hindsight, all the dots can be connected to create this perfect storm of a social movement. Yet if you had asked me on that nondescript Tuesday whether I thought the whole country would descend into revolution in 3 days, I would have laughed: “Not in Chile!”

On Saturday morning (1am), the president declared a state of emergency, instated a “toque de queda,” a curfew, and deployed the Chilean military to the streets of the capital. It all happened so fast, no one knew what to do. My fellow GW program participants were constantly in contact with our program director who assured us to stay calm and that we were safe, but we knew that she had no answers for our multitude of questions. We spent the rest of the weekend in our houses, pretty much glued to the news.

Foreigners are legally not allowed to participate in the protests so I abstained from most of the more intense protesting… although I did attend one peaceful one close to my house, which was enlightening. The protests got progressively less violent and more peaceful throughout this last week, which is a good thing, however: there is constantly backlash against the Chilean news media related to the fact that they do not cover the violence that the police and military are perpetrating against the poorer communities of Santiago. Since there is ample evidence on social media of said violence, the critiques are valid, but are a product of the very society that they are protesting against. Vicious cycle.

I was terrified when the protests started that I would have to leave Chile. I had nightmares about leaving during that whole long, stressful weekend in my house. I was not ready to leave. It was not fair!! Luckily, our program director reassured us that she did not think we needed to be evacuated at all and that we should turn this into an out-of-classroom learning experience. I definitely have.

From watching the news, talking and living with Chileans, and living here during these tumultuous times, I find my perspective on protesting drastically altered. Before, if I was watching this happen from afar in the US, I know I would be so much more judgmental of how they use violence (on both sides) here to protest. Although I do not agree with the methods, I now can better understand the specific context: the government does not care. Accountability is basically a non-existent concept. I can grasp better now the need to use this means of protest to get what you need, if that is the only way the government will even look your way. For all of the US government’s flaws (and there are so, so many), at least we have some semblance of accountability. It is better than here, at least.

On Friday October 25th, Chile had the largest march ever in its history. Over a million people filled the streets of the city center. This number was bigger than when Salvador Allende (socialist president before the military coup) was elected and bigger than the crowd in the capital when the country was celebrating the return to democracy in 1990. This means that the movement is big: literally and figuratively. Now that these inequalities have been shouted into the void and brought into the light, there will be change. I am here and I can feel it. I want that so badly for the Chilean people whom I have grown so fond of. We are still taking things day by day here in Santiago but I believe in the power of the people that I have witnessed over the course of what feels like the longest week of my entire life. It won’t be easy, but it will change.

Last point before I go: no, I have not had school the past week (and this upcoming one as well). The main reason that we do not have school is that the majority of students get there on the metro, and the transportation system is only slowly being reinstated and repaired. It will definitely take months to get it running up to full capacity again, so I truly do not know what direction my studies are going right now. Next Monday marks the three week mark until we finish classes for good (hypothetically…), but I really have no idea what is going to happen. I will for sure get my credits (we have been assured of this), but as to whether I will ever go back to campus or if we will finish out the semester online, I could not tell you. As you say in Spanish, ¡Vamos a ver! (We shall see!)

Thanks for sticking around until the end of this post. A disclaimer: this is not even HALF of the information on Chile’s current situation. The post is not meant to be a comprehensive history and political evaluation of Chile right now, but rather my own personal take on what has been transpiring. I wanted to balance some historical background with current events and tie it all together with my personal experiences and thoughts. I really recommend doing more research if you are at all interested in this because I have truly just scratched the surface! Here is a good Washington Post article that expands on what I talked about throughout this post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/chile-is-the-latest-latin-american-country-to-erupt-in-violent-protest-heres-why/2019/10/21/6331d278-f382-11e9-b2d2-1f37c9d82dbb_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2wERp_Dop7QNQBixsU5G3BjLMYN6tNyGRameT3tR1OjU3HzR21653ifHg

As always, I love you all so much! I am quite safe, happy and very engaged academically and personally in the social revolution that I get the privilege to witness here in Chile. That is all for now (but if we are being realistic, there will probably be another post about this as it continues to develop). Love to all!