Hey everybody, let's RIOT!

Over the weekend, spring arrived. Hooray! Hooray! Especially since spring here is like a mild summer’s day on the Oregon coast…which is pretty much my favorite type of weather in the world. Sunshiny, warm, even a little bit hot if you’re doing anything terribly active, and a completely clear and wide open blue sky…mmmm. Me encanta. Tuesday morning I had class (fonologia espanol), and after that I had plans with a friend to visit Cerro San Cristobal, the tallest hill in the city and kind of a touristy-family parkish-cultural stuff area. The famous salsa class is located right at the bottom of the hill, so we were going to go spend a few hours enjoying the sun and seeing the sites of the Cerro before proceeding on to dance our little hearts out. Usually I ride my bike to school in the morning – it’s about 10 minutes riding or 30 minutes if I walk. However, since we were going to hop on a bus and head downtown from school instead of returning home I decided to walk.

As I walked by a private high school on the way to campus, I realized that where yesterday I had seen an ambulance, today was an armored-truck looking thing painted in the distinctive Carabineros (Police) green color and accompanied by several Carabineros outside of it. Hmm…I thought…I wonder if these two events are related…I hope not! As I strolled past the vehicle I couldn’t help but feel slightly amused by its construction. In retrospect, it seems like I should have taken a pictures. It was literally about the size of a tank, with sheets of metal plating welded on the outside, some oret of machinery which I didn’t pay any attention to on the top and –the best part- metal grating type material welded to protect all of the windows and lights. However, the metal grating was rather beat up and looked like it had probably been re-affixed after coming off (being pulled off?) a time or two in the past. It also gave me the distinct impression that a dedicated mob of people – which is the sort of thing this apparatus appeared to be designed for – probably wouldn’t need a terribly long time to remove it again. “Silly Chileans!” I thought “They wouldn’t last a minute after an Oakland Raiders game!”

The entire University campus –just like everything here….homes, restaurants, stores, anything that takes up a piece of land – is surrounded by a giant fence, with gates at each entrance. There are always guards at the entrance, but I’ve only ever seen them serve as information and a friendly face to say “Buenas tardes!” to upon arrival. This time, thought, the gates were shut and there were guards opening them for students coming in. They didn’t ask for an ID card or anything, just opened the gates as you approached and closed them behind you. “That’s strange,” I thought to myself “I wonder what the occasion is.” In hindsight, or with your outsider’s perspective, this may seem like a bit of a red flag, but honestly I’m so used to encountering seemingly new, inexplicable phenomena after being here for 5 weeks that I’ve learned to just take it in stride. Everything else on campus seemed perfectly normal – I did look around a bit cautiously at first- so I headed to class, which proceeded uneventfully.

When class was over, the Chilean next to me asked me if I usually eat lunch on campus. “Sometimes…” I replied, a bit confused why he was asking me this. “Well,” he responded, “you might not want to today.” Upon pressing him for an explanation, I learned that a protest was scheduled today on campus. In May of this year, the students in Santiago had some pretty major protests and strikes, asking for reform of the education system. Although at the time the government did end up making some of the concessions the students were fighting for, it was explained to me by my classmates that they haven’t been nearly as effective as what was promised and for this reason the students are going to keep trying. Fair enough, I thought.

We left the class, and I noticed that in the area of the entrance gate there seemed to be a rather big crowd gathered. With absolutely no intention of trying to leave through that gate, even though it is the closest one to my route home, I decided to stroll on over and see what was up. It became obvious that the majority of students were just watching the protest and not actually participating, and as I got closer I could clearly tell why. It turns out that when these students decide to protest over something as seemingly mature as a better education system, their methodology is to…get this…throw chunks of concrete at the armored truck I had seen earlier. Wow. Way to go, folks, that’s the road straight toward societal change. I never ended up getting terribly close, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t amount to any more than that on the students’ side.

The Carabineros, on the other hand, seemed to take a bit more of a “lets get down to business with this BS” approach. The truck, which probably should be called a “riot tank,” because that’s the best thing I can think of to describe it, was driving up and down the street in front of the students, who had barricaded themselves (or been barricaded by someone else) into the campus. As it drove by the crowd of students, it alternated SHOOTING A WATER CANNON with pelting students with a HIGH POWERED POTATO/BEAN BAG GUN. Wow, I thought, that’s pretty intense, really. The road in front of the campus had been blocked off, as had nearby cross-streets. I stood watching for a minute or two, eating an apple and marveling at the apparently extremity of this situation. After a bit of time had passed, and I was beginning to think about how I was going to have to re-plan my route home, the riot tank made another pass to the end of the street and this time paused before starting to move again. I watched it head our direction, and as it approached a cloud began to billow out of a pipe in the side. “Hmmm. That appears to be some sort of gas.” I wisely thought. “I wonder what type?” As this process of wondering began to pass through my mind, the crowd of people in front of me turned and began to run away.

Not being an idiot, I decided maybe it would serve me well to do the same, and I followed. When it looked like we had reached a point where everyone was calming down and no longer running, I paused again to re-evaluate my situation. I didn’t appear to be affected by whatever it was they had sprayed. Just then, I noticed two girls from my class coming down the stairs near me, and we started to talk about what was going on. We stood there chatting, quite some distance from the front gate, for about 5 minutes, when all of the sudden everyone around us was sneezing and our faces, noses, mouths and eyes started to simultaneously burn and water. Looks like time for another move back….

We ran away from the direction of the gates only to see that we were actually pretty lucky; people around us had apparently not been quite as hasty on the retreat from the initial attack, and were completely red in the faces, obviously in pain. To be honest, I was in pain, and I really had a very indirect and miniscule dosage. I can’t imagine getting a face full of that stuff…which, in case you are still wondering, was pepper spray.

Alright. I’d had about enough of this silly protest bull. I walked to the other side of campus, found a safer exit, and proceeded home. On my way there, I noticed that actually quite a few streets were blocked off near campus, and an entire armored bus full of police in riot gear was on standby a block away. Wow. However, I don’t think it ever reached a level of excitement any higher than what I saw, because when I talked to a friend who had class just an hour later on the same campus she hadn’t heard anything about it.

And that, my friends, is the tale of my experience with a real-life riot. It sounds kind of corny now, I have to admit, but at the time it was actually kind of exciting. Now I know why they always advise people –especially foreigners—to avoid riots. When someone tells you it can be dangerous, they’re not kidding!