Chile’s fiery anger fueled by fears of poverty in old age
SANTIAGO, (Reuters) - As over a million people streamed through Santiago’s streets in a series of protest marches last week, one elderly couple stood out from the largely youthful crowd.
Amid the debris, tear gas and pot-banging youths, Norma Carrasco, 68, and husband Hernan Figueroa, 78, were protesting a grievance at the heart of swelling public anger in the South American nation: a pension system that has left many retired workers with scarce funds to get by.
Carrasco’s plight is key to understanding the potent violence that has seen buildings and buses burned, shut down the Santiago metro system, and forced President Sebastian Pinera to axe a third of his cabinet and cancel two major global summits.
On the city streets that same anger runs deep - even among the young, far from the age of pension payouts. Wages, living costs, healthcare and pensions dominate: the young have seen their grandparents struggle and do not want the same fate.
“For Chrissake, it’s enough. People are tired of all this, saturated. We need good salaries, pensions for our old folk,” said Octavio Solis, 43, a security guard, as he queued for unemployment benefit in Santiago. “It’s painful.”
The pension system, introduced decades ago under Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship, has been heralded as a model of privatization, imitated by other countries. But Chile’s retirees - once promised over 70% of their final salaries - often end up unable to meet the stringent requirements for paying into the scheme.
During recent marches, elderly protesters were feted by young members of the crowd, who carried banners highlighting the plight of pensioners. In one viral video, a young man wearing a hood and gas mask took the hands of an elderly woman to perform an impromptu dance.
In Carrasco’s case, she worked from childhood as a seamstress but now lives on just 100,000 Chilean pesos ($138) a month. Her husband of 50 years was also a textile worker and gets a slightly higher 140,000 pesos.