The day I was tear-gassed

I know that my last post wasn’t very entertaining or exciting, but now you get to read about how I became an anarchist, got tear-gassed, and my mom threatened to make me come home! Just kidding. Well, I’m not an anarchist but the rest is true.


Last month, against my parent’s wishes [woops], I went to an education protest here in Santiago. The fight for free public education is a really big issue here and for the past year both the high school and university students have been holding marches protesting the education system. Chile has an extremely unequal distribution of wealth, which contributes to education because the students who come from wealthy families have a much higher advantage of receiving a better education because they can afford it [sound similar to anyone??]. Last year students took over the universities and many high schools for up to 8 months. I help teach english at an all girl high school near where I live and my supervisor told me that the girls at my high school participated and made all of the school faculty leave. Many girls even lived at the school starting in June and ending in December. This happened all over the city. Marches were also held in the streets of Santiago and carabineros [the police] used tear gas and water sprayers to try to combat the massive protests. Although they begin peacefully with people singing, dancing, playing drums, etc. the marches often become riots with people hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails and the carabineros resorting to tear gas.

The protests are either authorized or unauthorized, meaning that the government either approves or disapproves of them. The one that I attended last month was unauthorized so rather than being a peaceful march, it was a violent riot. But it wasn’t initially my intent to even be there. Here’s briefly what happened: I left my apartment at 11:30am knowing that there was going to be a protest at noon nearby where I lived. I figured that I was leaving with plenty of time and was going to go to school. When I got onto the main street [my place is on a little side street], I was greeted by carabineros in riot gear on every corner, armored cars and trucks driving down the street, and people running and covering their mouths with handkerchiefs to try to keep out the tear gas.  

I instantly realized that the situation was already

dangerous and tried to hurry to the metro only 2 blocks away in my flip flops and with my large school bag [obviously I was very unprepared]. The metro stop was closed! I briskly walked to the next metro stop and it was shut as well. I was basically trapped and started freaking out so I found a pharmacy where I could recharge my phone and call someone [my phone was out of money so I couldn’t text or call]. I immediately called my friend Julian and he told me a safe place to go so he could meet me. He totally calmed me down and I felt so much better once I wasn’t alone anymore. We met up with a bunch of other  people from our program and decided to go out and take some photos of what was going on since we were witnessing Chilean history. Let me say that Berkeley protests right now are nothing compared to this. At one point we were standing at a very safe distance just taking photos of a huge tank thing spraying high-pressure water at students on the other side of the bridge into Bellavista and all of a sudden one of the trucks went into reverse and tons of police got out and started shooting tear gas in our direction. We ran as fast as we could, but got it hard. I found Rachael and clung to her shoulder as we tried to continue moving away. I couldn’t open my eyes for more than a millisecond, my nose was running like a faucet, and I was choking and coughing. I had brought cut up limes with me in case this happened because someone told me that they help with the effects of tear gas. I took the limes with me because that same person also said that I would get tear-gassed even just trying to get home [obviously, I figured out that I live in the lion’s den of the protests]. I shoved a lime in my mouth, but it didn’t seem to do anything. When Rae and I could finally see again we looked around and we were the only people standing on the sidewalk. Everyone else was gone. Then we heard our friend Gabriel calling to us from the other side of the street and went to join him and found the rest of our friends.

After getting tear-gassed we were all a little shaken up and took refuge in a park where there were a lot of students sitting down and being peaceful-looking. But when a carabinero truck drove by they all sprang into action throwing rocks and such until the truck stopped. The police piled out of the truck and ran down a different street [yay! We were afraid they were going to tear-gas us again and that we would have to make a run for it]. Once the students realized that there weren’t any police left in the truck they swarmed it and attacked until the driver was forced to leave. A few minutes later the carabineros returned holding a student they were planning on arresting, and discovered that their truck was gone. Then the students once again swarmed the police, freeing the one who was going to be arrested, and the carabineros started firing off tear-gas to clear the area.

Rachael and I decided to try to go to my apartment after that and on the way we found a group of students dancing and chanting in the street right by where I live. We stood and watched them for a minute taking pictures and then kept walking until a boy came up to us, made a gun reloading motion with his hands, and yelled in English, “Nooo!!!! Go back they are going to shoot!!!” My first reaction was “Dang it they always know I’m an extranjera [foreigner]!” but then I realized “Oh crap! We’re about to be tear-gassed again!” so we had to run away. It actually took some strategy getting back to my place because I literally live in the war zone.

The high pressure water cannon

Rachael and I being hardcore after getting tear-gassed

Here are a couple photos from the protest that my friend Miki took from his apartment window:

A burning bench is in the middle of the street and those are carabineros all on horseback

After the riot had calmed down I thought it would be cool
to get a photo with a couple of the students.

So that's what happened last month. This past Wednesday there was another protest, but this one was authorized. When I left my apartment that day [readily prepared with my lemons and bandana in case of tear-gas] I was surprised not to see police in riot gear and armored cars driving down the street. Everything was actually totally normal. However, I did notice a difference when I walked to the metro station and found the street to be completely packed with people carrying banners, chanting, dancing, and playing drums. The atmosphere was energetic and happy and I didn’t feel threatened at all. The march began at Plaza Italia, which is right by where I live, and went all the way to the metro stop Puente Cal y Canto, which is 5 stops away. I had to promise my parents that I wouldn’t go to any of the other protests [they are reasonably worried about my safety] so I had to sit this one out, but from what my friends said it was completely different from the first one. There was even a stage at the end with a band playing and everyone was jumping up and down and singing and having a great time. They left when it ended at 2pm because there could be potential riots after that. Thanks for the photos, Mer!

As you can see the education protests here are a really big deal and they have a lot of support [there was 80,000 people estimated at the one on Wednesday]. Props to the Chileans for rallying together to fight for free public education.  


If you're interested in learning more about it, here's an article by the New York Times about one of the student leaders of the protests, Camila Vallejo, and just an overall picture of what's been going on. It's kind of long, but I think it gives a lot of good information to Americans about the education crisis here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/camila-vallejo-the-worlds-most-glamorous-revolutionary.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share

Until next time--chao!