Seriously, people, rioting is stupid. Get over it.

Today, as I was leaving my class and walking towards the bike rack near the entrance of my facultad, I noticed a group of guys with ski masks and handfuls of various things --leaflets, maltov cocktails, you know, nothing special -- approaching the same area. Uh-oh, I thought. Better hurry. I hurried up and got to my bike, fumbling nervously (terrified-ly?) to unlock it as I watched them setting up roadblocks with chunks of wood, broken glass and burning material.

I don't know how I got so lucky, but I seemed to be able to leave just as they were starting to set things up, and didn't end up actually having any problems. However, as I crossed the road directly in front of the campus I had to ride past a road block with plenty of cars stopped behind, and I watched as a taxi driver crossed over it. As he did so, one of the guys shot his window from VERY close range with a sling shot, probably breaking it although I didn't stick around to find out for sure. I was also almost hit by a bus as it ran a red light, trying to get past them in the other lane of traffic before everything was held up completely.

I feel like the people here who do this stuff might be the biggest idiots alive. I mean seriously, who ever thinks "Boy, I know of a great political cause. There's a huge social injustice that I'd like to change -- I think I'll light shit on fire, put innocent civilians in danger, inconvenience tons of people by shutting down major roads and distract the protectors of society from fighting real crime by throwing rocks at them." Yeah, genius brain, that's really going to want to make people support your cause.

To be honest, I was actually pretty much livid. That was about 12 hours ago, now, so I've definitely cooled down, but I have to say that I was not impressed. I feel like people complain a lot about citizen apathy in the United States, and I certainly think it exists. However, I also can understand what situation has created it. We've had such a stable and relatively trustworthy national government for so long that although people may have complaints, it's not like people feel their life will change for the worse if they don't do something about it.

Here, however, a completely different atmosphere exists. I feel like it's kind of "cool" and stylish to be able to act like you're politically minded and concerned with social justice and that sort of thing. At the same time, the methodology used to express this feeling or style of thinking is so completely ridiculous and ineffective that I feel it's actually more of a style than it is a real conviction. What's more, I don't understand how, in a country with such a recent and potent history of governmental problems and abuse, people still don't understand how much more effective and stabilizing it would be for them to work with the system instead of against it. Right now, the government is a good one; they need to take advantage of that fact and use it to their benefit, both in the short term of promoting whatever cause needs promoting and in the long term of maintain that stability.

However, it seems that this sort of logic is totally lost on their terrorist-style groups of students who want to draw attention to (a) their cause and (b) their own “uber-political” selves in the most radical way possible.

Anyways. I just wrote all of this because I happened to stumble upon a few pictures of the event on the internet tonight, and I thought I’d share them. Here ya go:


http://santiago.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/55182.php