Around 200 people were arrested and dozens injured when protests against social inequality in Chile sparked overnight clashes and looting, police said on Wednesday.
In the capital Santiago, protesters set fire to a truck and stole two city buses, also looting supermarkets, a pharmacy and a toy store – a total of 15 stores.
According to Deputy Interior Minister Manuel Monsalve, two dozen police officers and 18 civilians were injured in clashes at 150 demonstrations involving about 2,300 protesters across the country, with 195 people arrested.
The protests began on Tuesday with barricades burning around Santiago on the anniversary of a social uprising that protesters say has yet to bring the societal change they want.
Traffic was disrupted, subway stations closed and students sent home early, 25,000 police officers were deployed across the country to keep the peace – 5,000 of them in the capital, where several hundred demonstrators took to the streets.
The protests came exactly three years after a mass revolt against an increase in subway fares began in 2019, which quickly escalated into a general call for better conditions and social equality.
The government suspended price hikes, but protests continued and dozens were killed in months of clashes. Hundreds of people were injured.
The 2019 demonstrations have sparked reforms, including the government’s approval of drafting a new constitution to replace the one inherited from Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship and seen as pro-market.
In December, Chile elected leftist President Gabriel Boric, who supported the 2019 uprising and subsequent constitutional process.
But last month, despite the renewed revolutionary sentiment, nearly two-thirds of voters rejected the proposed draft, fearing parts of the document were too far-reaching.
A constitutional provision legalizing abortion was a key stumbling block in the conservative, majority-Catholic country.
Boric, a former student leader, took office with a promise to transform the deeply unequal country into a greener, more egalitarian “welfare state.”
