Category Chile

Entries 7 Total

Déjà vu indeed

Jan 31, ’12 11:05 PM

Piñera's government is very unpopular and has been dogged by protests. But has it really been that bad? (Photo by Nicolás, via Wikimedia Commons.)

By all accounts, 2011 was a chaotic year for Chilean politics. Rallies against a hydroelectric dam project and demonstrations for comprehensive education reform rocked the country for most of the year. Literally millions of people marched in the largest protests since the Pinochet years. There was even a cacerolazo!

Smaller incidents have inflamed the left against the coalition of center-right President Piñera as well, like a move to re-brand the Pinochet dictatorship in the school curriculum as a “military regime.” The feelings of a large number of left-leaning Chileans are pretty well represented by this clever video adaptation of Zambayonny’s trova-ish tune Deja Vu:

But are things really all that bad?

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Chile takes Sundance

Jan 30, ’12 11:57 PM

Latin America may have gotten swept at the Oscars this year, but it – or at least Chile – did OK at Sundance. Two Chilean films won awards: Violeta se fue a los cielos, which has been making the rounds rather loudly for awhile now, and one I’d never heard of, Joven & Alocada.

The latter is the first film by Marialy Rivas, both co-written and directed. It won the World Cinema Screenwriting Award, and I have to say from just the trailer that it looks like a pretty fair choice:

Interesting how the experience of growing up in an anti-erotic religious home is so pan-cultural. Although her anti-erotic upbringing looks like it was way, way more fun than mine, so maybe never mind. Looking forward to seeing this one.

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Guest post: Popular!

Jan 27, ’12 3:00 PM
Let's see this guy get 75% approval.

Let's see Bieber get 75% approval.

Otto writes: Every few months, reliable Mexican polling company Mitofsky puts together its Poll of Polls on the popularity of Heads of State in The Americas, then publishes its findings. That’s what they did scant hours ago and here’s how things look for the continental bigwigs at the moment, colour-coded chart and all. We even do a table if that big graphic is too messy and big for you.

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A bone to pick with HRW

Jan 24, ’12 1:12 AM

The habitual brutality of Chile's carabineros during student protests was almost entirely left out of Human Rights Watch's 2011 annual report.

I’m sure the good people over at Human Rights Watch are very busy, and they already had plenty of horrifying material for their 2012 World Report. But it would have been nice to see them give more of a nod to the police abuses during this year’s massive student protests in Chile. The section on Chile saves a scant two paragraphs for police brutality, and really less than one sentence for the generalized abuses seen during the protests.  Says HRW:

Cases of excessive use of force by police when dealing with detainees during demonstrations and Mapuche land occupations continue to be reported. In August 2011 a carabinero (uniformed policeman) shot and killed a 16-year-old student, Manuel Gutiérrez Reynoso, who had been watching a demonstration from a Santiago footbridge during a national strike. A police general—who had brushed aside accusations that the police were responsible for the incident—was fired, together with the alleged culprit and several other junior officers. A military prosecutor was investigating the case at the end of September. (Emphasis mine)

Truly, the Mapuches continue to get the very short end of the stick. A more-or-less representative video made the rounds recently showing a carabinero take a whack at a woman with the butt of a tactical shotgun while her children looked on:

But why almost nothing on the police violence during the student protests that rocked the country for much of the year?

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Trust me, I’m Chilean

Jan 17, ’12 2:41 PM
fear and a hand

Fear the Hand: Chileans are the least trusting people in the OECD. Photo: Steven Bodzin

I arrived at the Santiago Municipal Theater with great anticipation. The grand French neoclassical wedding cake — complete with gaudy white icing — had just recently been repaired after suffering more than its share of cracks and crumbles in the 2010 earthquake. I had also never seen the ballet version of Romeo and Juliet. Sure, we had cheap seats, but no big deal — I’m shameless about walking down and squatting unclaimed real estate in the orchestra level during intermission. I’ve done it at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, at Carnegie Hall in New York, and at smaller venues around the world. It’s one of those petty crimes that actually works well for everyone — theater owners don’t like empty seats up front.

When we arrived at the grand entrance, a harried security guard pointed us off to the right, to the door at the box office, where a separate queue was entering the building. Odd, I thought, but no big deal. At that door, though, they sent us further to the right — around the corner, out of view of the lovely plaza, to a busy downtown street. From there, entered a scuffed metal door and climbed a dingy staircase to a lobby with a threadbare carpet.

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Argentines & Chileans agree: Let’s hate the Jews

Jan 12, ’12 4:36 PM
Israeli Fire Truck in Santiago

Israel-sponsored fire truck in Santiago, Chile. Jews are blamed for arson, by Chileans who won't even pay for their own firefighters. Image taken without permission, click to go to original story.

Chile Hoy, a rather bland news aggregator of good news about, yes, Chile, had a headline that I figured would be some environmental story. “La Patagonia argentina y chilena en peligro,” or to put it another way, “Argentina’s and Chile’s Patagonia in danger.” Coal? Fires? Industrial fisheries?

Nope: it’s the Jews. So, you thought that the New Years forest fire in Torres del Paine National Park was an accident, caused (perhaps) by a hapless Israeli tourist who improperly burned his toilet paper? No no no: it was just another volley in an ongoing race war, run by my own Hebrew tribesmen. Who knew? I had a bar mitzvah, but somehow I never get invited to these things. The first paragraph gives a taste:

While we watch the disaster that’s been made of our world, that “future” it could be that such a “future” is right around the corner. Led by the International Zionist Movement, this silent takeover of Patagonia has progressed dramatically in recent years; not through war and invasion, but through territorial acquisitions, economic infiltration, Israeli fifth columns, global media support and geopolitical positioning.

The author, notable non-Mapuche Adrian Salbuchi, doesn’t seem to get the humor in a white Argentine warning Chileans about the “takeover” of land that was for centuries claimed by Argentina, continuously occupied by independent indigenous groups, and at one point even under the supposed dominion of a Frenchman.

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Piñera: Jinxed?

Jan 9, ’12 1:51 PM

Something has to explain Chilean President Sebastian Piñera’s thus-far rather rough presidency, and it couldn’t simply be that he is a confused leader of a fractious right-wing coalition who appoints fascist underlings out of touch with reality. Mayhaps he is cursed? Jinxed? Hexed? Or, as Chileans put it, yeta?

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