ONE HUNDRED DAYS OF ACTIVISM IN THE CHILEAN COMMUNITIES ABROAD
October 18, 2019 was Chile’s transversal awakening, but not only there; it was also the awakening of Chilean communities living abroad in 150 cities, in more than 30 countries around the world.
January 31, 2020
By Betzabeth Marín Nanco
It seems that it was a couple of days ago when we were watching CNN Chile that exceptionally released its signal outside the country. There, President Sebastián Piñera declared a State of Emergency to counteract the increasingly justified and well-attended street demonstrations against the injustices that the neoliberal experiment had generated. In Piñera’s words, the mobilizations were led by “a powerful, implacable enemy who respects nothing and no one and is willing to use violence and crime without any limits” How can we forget these words? More than a hundred days have passed and they are becoming more and more absurd.
Image of the Documentary Chile in Flames
The idea of the powerful enemy was the Government’s initial justification for sending the Military into the streets along with the Carabineros. Those of us who live abroad saw the images of Pinochet’s dictatorship come to mind. We imagined the military and police repression and the terrible consequences this would have on our people. The impotence of being far away did not take long to arrive, in front of our eyes we saw the beatings, the wounds, the mutilations, the illegal detentions, the abuses against girls, boys, children…
That helplessness, and then fear, led us to organize ourselves, to coordinate ourselves from that very day in what we would later call: the international territory. In Barcelona and Copenhagen we immediately thought that if this situation escalated – to a dictatorship, why not say so – international coordination and solidarity would be fundamental.