Ground zero of the social protests in Santiago de Chile has been empty since mid-March. The silence is impressive, barely interrupted by some buses, cars and motorcyclists in the days of quarantine by the covid-19 in some municipalities of the city. Plaza Italia or Plaza Dignidad - as it was renamed by some in honor of the demands of the citizens - was the place where everything happened since October 18, when the outbreak in Chile started.
"It is a symbol. The plaza became a memorial to the repression. The new Chile and what it demands are recounted on the walls of the neighborhood. There was not a day since October 18 that the protests stopped. Until the pandemic. " It is properly reported by Trinidad Lopetegui (Santiago de Chile, 1989), who from the beginning of the demonstrations observed day and night from the front line the evolution of this living square. Visual artist, he directs the contemporary art gallery CIMA, a space that became the eyes of revolts. Installed on the top floor of a building from the 1950s, it broadcast what was happening from the rooftop. "Citizens claim against an unsustainable neoliberal system that does not prioritize human beings," says the Chilean cultural manager. “It is a transversal movement that transcends the left and the right. We take it as a duty: to count everything without interventions, ”he recalls. First they used a phone, then the security cameras in the same gallery and, finally, a special device to transmit onstreaming . The televisions offered them money to use the space and record, but they refused. To exit from the offices to the 100-square-meter terrace - where the camera is installed - they had to protect themselves so as not to suck up the tear gas that rose to the 11th floor.
"The covid-19 has highlighted the importance of social demands such as public health"
Her YouTube channel has reached more than 18 million views, 89,000 subscribers, 11,750 viewers simultaneously. They have uploaded 382 videos. They are followed by users from all over the planet, but above all from Argentina, the United States, Spain, Peru and Mexico. “On one occasion, a neighbor of the neighborhood lost her mother in the middle of a demonstration and found her thanks to the transmission. We transform ourselves, without planning it, into a platform of public utility ”, he relates.
But what was once hubbub and movement — screams, chants, music, drums — with the pandemic all quiet became: "Now there is a desolate, tremendous, shocking silence," says Trinidad Lopetegui. It was a kind of slowdown that has put the country in a bipolar situation. In October, the proclamation was Chile woke up. Chile's economy suffered. But the covid-19 stopped the revolt in its tracks and the country seems to be living in a kind of limbo. Some protesters thought in early March that the pandemic was an invention of the powerful to stop the changes. But surprisingly, the Dignidad squad obeyed orders to stay home relatively quickly. "Most were aware and immediately saved," thinks the visual artist.
Chile is the Latin American country that has done the most tests of the covid-19: in mid-April it reached some 118,000 exams, with the capacity for about 8,000 daily in fifty public and private laboratories. The Government has based its strategy on a high number of tests and on “selective and dynamic” quarantines only in some municipalities, established according to the number of infections. Unlike other countries in the region, total confinement has not been chosen, despite pressure from local authorities. Since the first case of the disease was reported on March 3, the protests have stopped dead, in part because of a curfew and a state of emergency. The greatest fear in Chile continues to be the number of respirators, which the Administration has centralized from the public and private systems. A few days ago, the Ministry of Health reported that there were 538 available throughout the country, distributed by the central government according to regional requirements.
The first case of coronavirus was known on March 3 and the Government of Sebastián Piñera decreed a state of emergency emergency —with the military in the streets, as in the outbreak—, curfew, suspension of classes and commerce. It remains firm in its decision not to establish a total quarantine at the national level, but only in some areas, which are changing according to the contagion. Except for some cacerolazo organized in some neighborhood, in these weeks the protest has stopped almost completely, although in the last days of April some groups defied the authorities with still small-scale concentrations that were repressed. A few weeks ago, the same president took advantage of the stillness of the square and, in a harshly criticized gesture, got out of his car to photograph himself at the epicenter of the scene of the protests: "I did not commit any crime (...), no one owns that" place, Piñera explained later.
The big question in Chile is what will happen to social mobilization once the health emergency is overcome. Trinidad Lopetegui, who has the pulse of the street on his retina, believes that it will reemerge strongly: “The covid-19 has made evident the importance of social demands such as public health and great inequalities, sparking greater outrage and anger in the town, "he says.
From the top of the building, despite the silence, you can see the tracks of a crowd that is confined today. On the pavement it still reads: historical. It was the word that the women wrote in Plaza Italia on March 8, when about two million Chileans took to the streets to march, in a show of the power of the social movement that feminism has led. It was the last major gathering before the blackout, which the CIMA gallery continues to broadcast relentlessly.
SPECIAL: Coronavirus in Latin America
Pandemic with gangs in El Salvador
This is how the gangs monitor quarantine compliance.
Invisible in the Andes of Colombia
Tens of thousands of indigenous families report defenselessness in the face of the pandemic in the Andean country.
Buenos Aires: culture fades in the metropolis
The confinement has decreed a cultural blackout in one of the capitals most attached to the theaters and bookstores in the world.
Bolsonaro's questioned plan for Brazil
Caravans of cars ask for the lack of confidence between conspiracy echoes and the president defends that an economic crisis will be worse than the virus. The country's political polarization adapts to the health crisis.
Inmates without gasoline in Venezuela
The severe fuel shortage has made quarantine even more fierce under the Nicolás Maduro regime. Even workers in essential sectors have no way of getting around.
Fear of the Nicaraguan government
Doctors denounce the lack of government action and organize for when the worst comes.
Another invisible earthquake in Mexico
The story of a mother and her son shows the drama experienced by the 30 million Mexicans who subsist thanks to informal trade these days.
On the Mexico-US border: "Does anyone need a doctor?"
The Cuban exile community awaiting US asylum in northern Mexico forms a vulnerable group with many health workers ready to help.