Reasons for protesting are numerous. There is a proposed project for a hydroelectric damn in Patagonia for a new source of energy that everyone's pissed about (see what i did there with "dam"?). Students aren't happy about paying a lot for education. so they're carrying on with a huge student protest as well as a "paro" which just means you dont go to school. (this is something we should get goin' in the US. but maybe with less tear gas). The high school students are pissed cause the college kids are pissed so they their hung desks on the fences around school. Middle school students aren't tall enough yet to put their desks on fences, but they're still pissed, so they just threw their chairs out the window. Earth got pissed so it blew up a volcano in Puyehue. I'm probably the only one protesting fanny-packs (which are inexplicably popular here) but i feel it's an equally worthy cause compared to nature preservation and social education.
If Earth was as pissed about fanny-packs as I am, people would probably read my "USE YOUR POCKETS" sign.
To give you an idea of how these protests go, I'll quickly recount my experience.
So i'm casually sitting in history class at UC, thinking about things of an academic nature, like who would win in a battle between Master Splinter from the Ninja Turtles and Yoda. I think i was in the middle of drawing Scar the evil lion from the Lion King and his army of hyenas fighting The Huns from Mulan when a kid from our class strolls in a cool hour late, turns in his paper and with this quirky smile because he knew he had all of our attention, strides to the blackboard and with one hand and smacks a piece of paper on the board that says "PARO EMPIEZA A LAS 1300. PROTESTA A LA PLAZA ITALIA EL JUEVES" which evidently meant we weren't coming to school tomorrow. Admiring his work for a moment, he nodded and then walked out of class. At which point the professor laughed. and walked out of class as well.
When I woke up thursday, i had a text message from a friend who wanted to go to the protest. I quickly called back and said id meet them there. Protest starts at 10am. i start walking over at 12 and call them. As im on the phone, my cell phone tells me that im out of money so instead of saying quickly "where are you?" i panic and yell "ILL CALL YOU BACK". for those of you who don't know, calling someone back when your cellphone doesnt work is impossible. another thing that is impossible is finding two people in a crowd of 100,000, when the only piece of information you have on their location is "look for a red flag".
....really dude?
So while you play where's waldo looking for Alanna in the picture (no she's not actually in it. actually she could be, i have no idea, i never found her), I'm going to continue with the story.
As I arrived I was immediately abosrbed by 100,000 people, yelling things like "free education" "Education is a right, not a business" things like that. It seemed everyone was there, students, teachers, old people and really really young people. It seems that a protest is a good reason to skip anything. The people that showed up late must've skipped the pre-protest briefing session because they just yelled "Fuck you Piñera!" or "Cops are faggots!" at least they were enthusiastic.....
I wandered around for quite awhile with the fading hope of finding my friends. I had been warned about protests being dangerous but it didn't seem like a lot was going on so i stuck around. Until about 2pm, when this started happening:
I was standing sort of in the middle of the carabineros and the spirited youth that were throwing bottles. Really not a good place to be. 'Cause, to be honest, the carabineros didn't really care that I wasn't throwin stuff. another bad choice in wardrobe was wearing a kuffia, which made me look like all the others kids throwing stuff. (Thanks Deb for the gift. It does however tend to get me in trouble with the police...) Anywho, I ran over to the nearest building, which really wasnt that far from the fireworks. It did, however, conveniently have a fence with a plastic cover. This must happen often if they thought the plastic shield was necessary. It was like a splash zone. The carabineros would spray the students. Some of them would throw molotovs. One kid tried to throw a street sign, complete with lamp post. It landed about 3 feet in front of him but it mustve been a valiant effort getting that thing out of the ground. We applauded.
After reading parts of this and watching the video youre probably imagining a somewhat chaotic event. Now imagine among all of this chaos, between pacos spraying acid water on students and students throwing rocks and bottles, you look in the middle of the mist and see....Some fat guy dressed as Santa Claus. Just standing there. getting wet. Let's revisit the list of reasons for protesting.
1. Education.
2. Hydrosen in Patagonia.
3. Fanny Packs.
No where among that list is there anyone asking for a wage increase for elves. But apparently Santa felt his interests under-represented. Or maybe he just literally has nothing to do between the holidays.
Interested in the action, I hopped up on a wall. I was literally looking down on the top of the vehicle I affectionately named the Aquazoid. Cool thing about being on top of the aquazoid is that you dont get wet from the acid water that its spraying non-descriminantly at everyone. Not cool thing about pacos (police) is that they throw tear gas bombs. As i was engulfed in white smoke coughing up what felt like acid and remembering that this was the point when my brother had decided to see how many push-ups he could do in basic training, I decided to see how many feet i could fall without dying and i jumped off the wall. Apparently the answer is 8. (feet. not push-ups.) and altho my chin hurt from slamming into my knees, my eyes hurt worse because i was then warmly welcomed by a caressing blast of acid water. Thanks guys. Just trying to get home. I stumbled down a side street coughing up my lungs and feeling relatively successful about my level of participation. When i got home, the protest was on the news and i told my chilean family what happened. As i recounted my experience in a shrill voice of disbelief and excitement, they looked at me with increasingly less interest. Apparently these things happen all the time. They asked if i threw a rock. I said no, but i did get teargassed, trying to regain cool points. apparently you're not cool until you throw a rock.
This begs the question, how many people would be willing to throw a rock for education in America? we pay more than 10x a year what other 1st world countries pay for their education. I'm not saying education isn't valuable, but I don't know why people are okay with paying $50,000 a year to take intro classes. In countries around the world, students are protesting high tuition costs that are 1/3 of what we pay for a semester, while in the US we just sit back and take it. You don't have to throw any rocks, just something to think about.
