Hundreds shot and beaten as Chile takes to the streets | Hacker News Reader

Hundreds shot and beaten as Chile takes to the streets

theguardian.com

96 pointsAndrewBissell43 comments

I read this article and got the impression that the "19 dead" figure would be military killing protesters. So I thought that this was another heavy-handed putdown of relatively peaceful protests.

But Wikipedia's breakdown [1] is quite different. By my count, 15 deaths don't involve the military at all. These deaths are from protest-related fires, looting-related shootings, and a citizen? who drove into a crowd of protesters and killed two people. 5 more deaths were direct results of military activity, so the apparent number is 20.

However, I can't judge the Wikipedia sources because many of them come from Spanish-language news sources. And, as the original article says, the government is actively impeding accurate statistics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Chilean_protests#Deaths

This is pretty much it, as we’ve seen and heard from the media and the INDH (National Institute of Human Rights)

I think at this point we can agree that a subway price hike leading to tanks in the street a mere week later is not the true issue. Something about privatized pension companies taking way more than what would be their fair share is the likely culprit.

https://protectpensions.org/2016/08/23/chile-failure-privati...

It's supposed to be about cost of living, increase in energy prices, etc. Not sure if the pension system is related. But pension systems have always been dubious in my mind. 401Ks + social security have seemed to be the best of both worlds.

No+AFP (No more AFP) is a common graffiti in Chile, and also a common protest banner during the past week. Measures regarding an increase in pensions were also among the promises of the president on Monday 10/21.

You’re linking to a left-wing organization. But you’re ignoring the fact that, just two years ago, a decisive majority of Chilean voters (55-45) voted in the center-right, pro-market party and Presidential candidate: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/17/chileans-cast-...

> Months of campaigning exposed deepening rifts among the country’s once bedrock centre left, an opening former president Piñera leveraged to rally more centrist voters around his proposals to cut corporate taxes, double economic growth and eliminate poverty in the world’s top copper producer.

The current President ran on corporate tax cuts and won. The majority obviously did not do so under the belief that Piñera was going to nationalize the pension system. The protestors evidently are mad about that.

Voter participation was 50%. Decisive indeed.

That’s not atypical for elections in Switzerland, Japan, or the US. That doesn’t invalidate the outcome of elections.

> just two years ago, a decisive majority of Chilean voters (55-45) voted in the center-right, pro-market party and Presidential candidate

Sounds similar to Frances Emmanuel Macron. Yellow vests are still at it, almost full year of riots in the heart of Europe and nothing changed.

The culprit is unequal distribution of wealth. The working class is affected by low minimum wage, limited access to healthcare, cost of education, and broken social security (AFP).

"The latest protests follow grievances over the cost of living, specifically the costs of healthcare, education and public services. Unsatisfied by partial reforms following widespread education protests in 2011, the metro fare rise has proved the spark that has awoken Chile’s formidable student body, according to psychiatrist and writer Marco Antonio de la Parra.

“Over the past decade, the Chilean state has lost touch with these problems,” he said. “The places that have been targeted tonight are deeply symbolic: transport and energy represent the success of the state and the model it upholds.”

On top of social discontent, anger has also been directed at the Carabineros national police force, once one of the country’s most respected institutions but whose reputation has been eroded by corruption scandals and a reputation for brutality, whose heavy-handed repression of protests has also come under the spotlight."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/19/chile-protests...

"over the past decade"... don't they have elections to solve these issues instead of acting like monkeys? Or is this the usual case of a minority making a mess because they don't like what the majority of the country has chosen?

Because it's an organized strike by the extremist-left wing in order to take over the goverment. They never win elections, so they organize chaos.

I see. I was suspecting something like this. I hope the government can resist this and democracy is preserved.

When I see articles like this I ask myself some questions:

Have I ever been to Chile? No.

Do I know any Chileans? One.

Do I know Spanish? Probably less than the average Chilean gradeschooler.

Have I ever read any form of media, even entertainment, coming out of Chile? No.

Given the above, how can I ever verify that the media reports I see on HN and elsewhere are anywhere close to reality? Chances are the actual reality there is completely different from what I'm reading in ways I can't even imagine. I think before we make comments on Chile's or any other distant country's situation we should all consider that maybe we do not have sufficient information to have a valid opinion. Otherwise you're probably just regurgitating the narrative your media is pushing.

It seems like there are dozens of massive anti-government protests all over the world right now.

Was there a time where that wasn’t the case? It’s a genuine question. It could be that such situation has always been relatively common but that nowadays it is way easier to learn about it without explicitly looking for it. because of speed of information and the fact that everybody has a camera and platforms where to share their voice.

I mean social media is not new and don’t recall a time in the last 15 years or so when it seemed like there were so many happening simultaneously

Events I personally remember from the past ~10 years:

- arabic spring, ~2011, ~6 countries (from memory: morocco, egypt, tunisia, yemen, lybia, syria), all in the same year

- major greek protests (I believe 2009 or 2010, may be earlier)

- ukranian revolution (~2014 IIRC)

- major protests in Turkey around 2013

- big protests in the US (Ferguson was around 2014 I think?)

- massive protests in Spain in 2017

- protests in Thailand before and after the military coup of 2014

A quick google search gives me a list of "crisis situations in Europe since 2000" with some dates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_situations_and_unrest_i... . That's only for the small part of the world I'm the more familiar with.

Key word is simultaneously.

Sure, check a bit the dates I mentioned. If you look for big civilian protests worldwide in let's say 2011 or 2014 you will se a lot of things happening during the same year. Of course it depends what you consider to be simultaneous or not. My point is that it isnt clear to me that the current situation is unique. I feel that we are pretty bad at remembering the zeitgeist from the past. But I only have a limited knowledge of protests and conflicts around the world, I m sure that I missed a lot of things happening.

Algorithmic echo chambers are a new development.

Social media is not new.

Yes but be careful with what's reported on the internet. There are no massive protests going on in Brazil right now despite Amnesty International tweeting about it:

https://twitter.com/amnesty/status/1187687335892271105

archived: http://archive.md/VZ450

edit: Some people disagree but wont post their rationale. You're invited to point out reports of massive protests in Brazil right now. Because there's none.

Honestly, I held HN to a higher standard than just silent downvotes.

> Honestly, I held HN to a higher standard than just silent downvotes.

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[0]

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I had the feeling this would be the only reply.

Chilean here, AMA.

From your perspective, is the Guardian’s article accurate? Is there any bias? What are the main issues?

The Wikipedia article on the protests [1] makes the run-up to the huge march on October 25 seem pretty chaotic. In particular, the deaths and fires from looting, as well as the destruction of public transit stations, makes the declaration of emergency look like a reasonable response, even if the subsequent shooting of protesters looks less reasonable.

So my question is, just how much chaos has there been, and where do you think the situation lies on the spectrum between "peaceful protests receive disproportionately violate suppression" and "military does its best to control chaos"?

And if I can ask one more, what do you think the general reason is? The claimed main reason, a ~5% increase in public transit fares, seems implausible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Chilean_protests

As someone living in a middle/lower class neighbourhood, I would say that there's been some chaos. I myself saw two train stations being burned and a supermarket being looted in front of me. However, as someone who's been to these peaceful protests since October 18, I think that the treatment the government and police have given to these protests is one of the big catalysts for the chaos and violence. Peaceful payment evasion protests started on October 14 and the government just decided to treat protestors as criminals, sending police's special forces units to train stations, where violent encounters between officers and protestors (at this point most protestors were 13-17 years old as the movement started with secondary students) which would infuriate people and on Thursday of that same week protestors started to destroy charging devices and opened gates to closed stations. From that point violence only would escalate.

I think that both police and military forces have shown a disproportionately violent response.

Last INDH (National Institute of Human Rights) report [1] says there have been 3193 detainees, 1092 injured in hospitals, and 88 lawsuits, of which 17 are for sexual harassment (including rape).

It might sound "reasonable" for some to declare emergency state and send military forces to the streets, but it's the first time that something like this happened since the dictatorship. Police officers are throwing teargas to kids and the elderly in the protests. There's also a big number of injuries that will never get to be informed.

About the reasons, I would say inequality. The increase in train fares is nothing more than a detonator. There's no organization leading the movement, so the demands are scattered (pensions, health, social contract, neoliberalism, concessioned highways, etc).

[1] https://twitter.com/inddhh/status/1188525375577645057

We have had a vacation planned to go there late November. Do you feel this is still a safe place to travel? We are mainly looking at Valparaiso and Santiago. It seems most of the protests are in these two places. Are most restaurants and stores still open? Are ATM machines still accessible?

Interesting how a story is told can influence perspective: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50197673

Equally, you can read one side from one perspective and ends up fueling it in that direction or read it from another perspective and be more focused upon the resolution and maybe fuel that tangent.

Just interesting how news is portrayed and how it can emotionally drive social media ,which can only fuel the angst over solving it. At least, that is one aspect I've become more mindful of over time.

There is important context about Chile that people need to understand. Chile is by far the freest economy in Latin America: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking. Chile also has the highest per capita income: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_American_count.... And it has the highest human development index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_American_countri...

Unsurprisingly, many people don’t want to rock that boat. The current center-right government was elected in 2017 by a decisive majority. (The President won 55-45 in the run off election).

The protests in Chile are largely socialists and labor movement that are trying to get policies passed they couldn’t get through the democratic process.

About 33% of that GDP is controlled by the richest 1% according to The World Bank [1].

Yes, Chile's HDI is quite high for a Latin American country. The problem is, in the same city (Santiago) you've got communes with HDIs above Norway's (Vitacura, Las Condes, and Providencia got HDIs above 0.953) and then there are communes less than an hour away that got an HDI lower than Panama's (San Ramón HDI is 0.786) [2][3][4].

By OECD's data, Chile is the third country with the highest income inequality amongst OECD members [5].

[1] http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/496131468228282235...

[2] Calculated with INE's data (2017) https://imgur.com/GKMcGw9

[3] http://reportescomunales.bcn.cl/2012/index.php/Categor%C3%AD...

[4] http://www.desarrollosocialyfamilia.gob.cl/informacion-socia...

[5] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm

Panama has the fifth highest HDI in Latin America. And you can bet that the HDI in poorer regions of Panama are much lower than that of poorer regions in Chile.

But besides that, these trade offs are for Chile’s voters to resolve. Those voters decided that sticking with markets, even in the face of higher inequality, was the way to go.

Yes, probably Panama's poorest regions are poorer than Chile's. However, is important to take into account that Panama's GDP is not even half of Chile's and Gini Index of Panama and Chile is almost the same [1].

Anyways, yes, that's something that voters should resolve. Sadly, there's a big discontent towards the political class in Chile (against both left and right-wing) and last elections had low participation (around 50%).

[1] http://documentos.bancomundial.org/curated/es/24225147670682...

How typical: we Americans have to learn about this from foreign media because our media is obsessed about Trump.

It has been very widely covered in US news since the protests / riots began.

CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, WSJ, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News, NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today. All have had regular coverage of it.

6 days ago, USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/10/21/chile-p...

6 days ago, NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/world/americas/chile-prot...

6 days ago, Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/21/chile-prote...

6 days ago, CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/21/chile-protests-president-ext...

6 days ago, WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/protests-in-chile-leave-three-d...

And so on.

Nothing on the homepage of the NY Times today, above or below the fold. NY Times and other outlets did report on it, as you show in your links, but attention has lapsed. It feels like it deserves more focus as it could be a harbinger of more widespread unrest.

Says a lot about the NYTimes. I usually use aggregators like Google News, Reddit, HN, etc, and heard about this over a week ago.

The "more widespread unrest" is already here - there's ongoing civil disorder in Chile, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Iraq, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Kurdistan, Palestine, and Catalonia; ongoing civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Mali, DRC, Sudan; and endemic violence and state failure in Mexico and Central America. India is a potential flashpoint that could go up in smoke at any time (they have a demographic bulge that usually results in civil unrest, and I've read many young people there believe Gandhi "should've been more violent"), while the U.S. and U.K. both face potentially destabilizing internal conflicts. If the U.S. goes up in flames the whole world likely will, as we've been a deterring force for many regional conflicts.

I think the OP might have a point. Most of these pieces barely make it to the front page. Just take a look at the number of comments on the links you shared: the USA Today story has only 1 comment and the WaPo has 46 comments. Compare this with a typical Trump impeachment story which gets thousands of comments. So either the coverage is not good, or the audience of these papers don't care much about what's going on in the rest of the world.

As a reality check, see how many of these you've heard about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ongoing_protests

The media is obsessed about Trump because those stories bring money and is more relevant to American media and audiences, Chilean protests don't fetch the same amount of dollars or American attention.

Money is the only thing behind the media's coverage? I think that's a touch naive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com