Two dead and 450 detainees leave riots two years after the social unrest in Chile

Two dead, 56 injured and 450 detainees left the violent disturbances that occurred on Monday in parallel with peaceful demonstrations called for the commemoration of the two years of the social unrest in Chile, the Chilean Police reported Tuesday.

A man was killed by gunshot wounds during an attempted robbery in a business premises, while the second fatality was a woman who died after falling from a motorcycle, both in Santiago.

The Chilean capital concentrated most of the disturbances registered at the national level with barricades, attacks on a police station and looting of shops and public offices, according to a police report.

Authorities arrested 450 people across the country, 279 of them in Santiago, while 11 civilians and 45 policemen were injured. “The figures are very high,” said Marcelo Araya, director of Order and Security of the Carabineros de Chile.

More than 50 demonstrations were called nationwide to commemorate the two years of the social outbreak of October 18, 2019 in Chile, triggered by a student protest over the rise in the price of the Santiago Metro ticket, and which led to massive demonstrations in those whose participants called for greater social justice.

The protests during the southern spring of 2019 left 34 dead and more than 400 eye injuries during the more than four months that they lasted, until the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020.

The undersecretary of the Interior, Juan Francisco Galli, attributed the violent excesses on Monday to the opposition candidates for the presidential elections on November 21, the leftist Gabriel Boric and the centrist Yasna Provoste, for supporting and proposing pardons to protesters who are imprisoned. and those who “looted, destroyed everything and threw Molotov cocktails” during the Chilean revolt two years ago, he said.

“Those who are ultimately responsible for this violence are those who installed in our country a feeling of impunity, that there were no consequences of committing acts of violence”, Galli added.

The violent riots contrasted with the more than 10,000 people who gathered in Plaza Italia – baptized during the uprising as Plaza Dignidad – to demonstrate peacefully, and “who had a fairly positive behavior,” said Araya.

The demonstration in Plaza Italia lasted almost four hours, without major incidents and with little presence of special police forces.

The commemoration took place on the same day that the Constituent Convention, born out of the clamor of social revolt, began to address the substantive issues that will be incorporated into the articles of the new Magna Carta after 100 days dedicated to setting its internal regulations.