The pride of resisting copying the streets of Chile | D …

From Santiago

The mountain range is tinged at sunset, as if it was blushing when the minutes began to fall towards the curfew. She seems to want to shame La Alameda, she seems to be looking for the thousands of protesters who overflow from the central avenue of Santiago de Chile, beaming with pride to stand in the street in front of the assault cars, forces of police and army exhibited. long guns, glasses that wipe their faces and tear gas to intimidate those who are not afraid because they organize. There were assemblies all day in universities, at the door of ministries, in the street, in student centers, in the unions. At the same time it is discussed that the street is taken, the collective care is organized while the fear is challenged. A 48-hour general strike is declared at the same time as the strike is going on in several ways, at the same time, always in the street.

Closed public schools, the private ones at your discretion. Universities have been closed by decision of their authorities to prevent them from becoming mousetrap, now that the "state of emergency" allowed the armed forces to enter their cloisters to repress or arrest teachers, non-teachers and students. Streets taken since noon for five days. In Concepción, one of the cities most affected by the crackdown, an e-party was launched yesterday afternoon against curfew. The cueca was danced in the popular neighborhoods of southern Santiago. Pans rang everywhere and bicycles controlled public transport.

Although some unions have already organized days of unemployment – the ports of Valparaiso, for example -, the Single Central Workers and Workers (CUT) as well as the social unit of articulation in which d & # 39; Other social organizations involved declared a 48-hour strike that begins today. and which is preparing a massive mobilization of Place of Italy at Los Heroes train station from 10:30 am The revolt agitates Chile, which can not finish saying its deaths and deaths. The National Prosecutor's Office gave identification of 7 of the 15 that it recognizes, 8 additional bodies were found burned in a factory and supermarket. In addition, in the metropolitan area, there are three official complaints of sexual abuse by uniformed detainees. Forced nudity seems to be a recurrent practice of repressive forces.

Santiago is not only bloody and yet, the street is not abandoned. The walls say that fear has changed. It's a vibration that shakes more than earthquakes and a sharper demand for meltwater that comes down from the high peaks: drop the cannons.

Camilo Piñeros, a Grade 6 medical student, is involved in the self-organization of health professionals and students who care for the wounded who know they will arrive because they have already been counted by the hundreds since last Friday. "We are divided into macro-regions: east, west, north and south, we locate places of first aid material collection and we are connected – with e, yes, here is the rule among the students – by Whatsapp." Now that the moment is approaching, when the guns have the government 's permission to fire, they are waiting calmly because they know how to react in case of emergency.

In Plaza Italia, the nerve center of Santiago, there are young and old, workers in the formal and informal sector, union leaders, housewives, teachers of all levels, students, artists, parents and girls. Countless feminist green scarves and the same yellows, who say "No + AFP" – denounce the looting of private retirement. There is, above all, a rebellion that does not calm with bullets, nor the dead who cry together, nor with the gases that do not stop causing itching in the throat. The decision is accurate and was taken in assembly and in the street itself without any organic approach: this will stop only when militias and "pacos" (carabineros) will not leave the street. He is painted on every wall of this huge city and goes from mouth to mouth. With guns on the street, there is nothing to talk about with the institutions and a lot to mobilize to shake them up.

"I came with my 9 year old daughter because she was scared. Fear of militia, afraid of gas, with nightmares. There are five days of mobilization and I brought her so that she was not afraid. Because the people who are fighting are not scared and that they are happy about their whistling, "says Camila, a nurse and who yesterday attended a meeting in front of the Ministry of Health that is holding her own. is continued with the mobilization of professionals and students from the sector to Plaza Italia. Beside him, four students of the last year of obstetrics wearing the white apron that they wear in their closets, no one has more than 24; they are all indebted, according to their calculations, until 2040. But now they want to talk about something else, they want to talk about the collapse of the health system. "80% of the population uses public health, but the investment is not enough to cover 30%. Hospitals can not collapse now with Herids because Hospitals have long since collapsed. We have to hospitalize in the corridors, there are no specialists; where there should be 20 professionals, there are 10 … It's structural violence, it's not the famous 30 pesos, it's all about. about 45 years of neoliberal economic policies that direct our money to the private sector and then escape it. " This is the description made by Iara, Camila, Paula and Evelyn of the functioning of the administrators of the pension fund, a slow looting of the entire population "to then receive a very small pension", insists Iara.

Popular escape

There are 17 minutes left for the curfew and from the high streets, we call them here "Posh" because that's where the houses are spacious and cars – like debts – hundreds of bicycles come down on Providencia Avenue. "Avoid," say the posters that are attached to the handlebars. This is a key word that is also painted on the walls and in what's left of the glass bus stops – "the pickups" – on La Alameda. This is what high school students started doing more than a week ago, avoiding the metro climb by jumping over the windlasses. Nail direct action who blew up this "awakened Chile!" who keeps singing.

And escaping is the first act of freedom imagined by those who embark on the expropriation of their time and knowledge for more than half the duration of their studies in this country. You must have a lot of money from a technical, tertiary, or professional career without taking out a Government Guarantee Loan that pays for your education and will be returned to you when the first salaries start to be collected. "I am a physical education teacher, I received in 2014, I had to ask 6 million to study, I will end up paying 20 €, as I go, it will be in 2036." Although Alvaro Barrientos wants to advance payments from his CAE, he can hardly survive on a daily basis without incurring other debts. He is seated on a square in the municipality of Providencia, although the militarization of the city that continues for five nights is approaching, there is an open microphone and a group playing, hundreds of people in the grass, children who play with the pans of the protests and a feeling that does not resemble fury at all but rather another word that also comes from the poster of graffiti: dignity.

Vonni Basualdo, a young student in mathematical education, sitting on the same square as he occupied because "neighbors" also organized by WhatsApp after being on the street to retrieve it, he nods. "It's against the precariousness of life and in favor of dignity. This is not finished. That the soldiers will disappear and that it will be difficult, because people are more and more informed, they know that there are structural problems: education, health, AFP and we do not want patches anymore.

Assemblies of the Institute

Javiera Manzi is a spokeswoman for the 8M feminist coordinator, a member of the transnational strike organization that changed on March 8th since 2017. Yesterday, she was the protagonist of two assemblies, the first, of the coordinator. The second, in the Federation of Students of Chile, brought together more than 60 social organizations, unions, mapuche, feminists, territorial. There, as in every assembly of those organized by sectors or by territories, the evaluations of the actions and the imagination of the things to come have been put in common. "Violence expresses in a different way the body and dissent of our women, our struggle is anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal and we want our demands to be in the forefront. We have dones the first feminist strike this year and it was the most massive mobilization since the dictatorship. Meeting with other organizations is a necessity now because it is not the moment to close but to open. The assemblies are the teachers of an authority that we have created together and we want to continue traveling, "he explains, wavering between the end of an activity, the sound of the melters and another assembly of its neighborhood that also waits.

What happens after these mobilizations, this insurrection that does not seem to be able to calm down with measures or "patches", as the students tell the result of the mobilizations of 2011 for the reform of education? "We need a Constituent Assembly because the current Constitution is a neoliberal trap, a legal framework that hampers the reforms we need in Chile," said law student Benjamín Núñez, just after the "law enforcement". tripartite assembly of the University of Chile attended by officials. students, non-teachers and workers and honorary workers – an equivalent of the monotributists – who, in the UdeCH, are over 10,000. "But this can not be an assembly with representatives of political parties, it must be a great open political discussion, an open public meeting so that everyone can design the territory we want "

The movement in the street is self-convened but it is not acceptable, it sounds pots but the words are not lacking; It's urgent but it has the time it takes to end everyday life and put a corner of disobedience on it. The deadlines set by the street they are expressed on the walls and with this poetry of revolt he says: "Until it is worth living".