Three dead in Chile protest violence
● State of emergency declared as anger over socioeconomic conditions boils over
Three people died in a fire in a supermarket that was being ransacked in the Chilean capital early on Sunday, as protests sparked by anger over social and economic conditions rocked one of Latin America’s most stable countries.
Santiago mayor Karla Rubilar said two people had burnt to death in the blaze and another had died in hospital, after the huge store controlled by US retail chain Walmart was looted.
They were the first deaths in two days of violent unrest in which protesters have set buses on fire, burnt metro stations and clashed with riot police in the city of seven-million people
despite a curfew imposed overnight.
Soldiers were deployed in the streets for the first time since Chile returned to democracy in 1990, following the right-wing Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.
The protests were triggered by an unpopular hike in metro fares, which President Sebastian Pinera announced on Saturday he was suspending.
Pinera appealed to people taking to the streets, saying “there are good reasons to do so”, but calling on them to demonstrate peacefully.
“Nobody has the right to act with brutal criminal violence,” he said.
But clashes later erupted in Plaza Italia, ground zero of Friday’s violence, and outside the presidential palace.
Protesters again set buses on fire in downtown Santiago, leading to the suspension of services.
“We’re sick and tired, enough already,” Javiera Alarcon, a 29-year-old sociologist protesting in front of the presidential palace, which was surrounded by police and military vehicles, said.
“We’re tired of them screwing around with us. Politicians only do what they want to do, and turn their backs on reality.”
A video showed security forces blasting a crowd with water cannon, and riot police wrestling protesters into vans.
Dozens of protesters torched a building belonging to Chile’s oldest newspaper, El Mercurio, in Valparaiso city on Saturday evening, while elsewhere in the port city a metro station, supermarkets and other stores were burnt.
Pinera announced on Saturday he was suspending the fare hike, after the entire metro system was shut down the previous day with protesters burning and vandalising dozens of stations.
The Santiago Metro, at 140km, is the largest and most modern in South America and a source of great pride for Chileans.
People awoke on Saturday to a ravaged city as burnt-out buses, bikes and garbage littered streets.
Demonstrators shouted “enough with abuse”, while the hashtag #ChileDesperto Chile awake made the rounds on social media.
Pinera’s conservative government has been caught flatfooted by the worst social upheaval in decades.
It declared the state of emergency late on Friday and ordered hundreds of troops onto the streets.
People were infuriated by a photo of Pinera eating pizza in a restaurant with his family while the city burnt.
Throughout Friday, rampaging protesters clashed with riot police in several parts of the capital while the headquarters of the Enel Chile power company and a Banco Chile branch were set on fire and heavily damaged.
The state of emergency is initially set for 15 days.