Virtual Opening 30 July 2020
In 1973, the US helped bring the dictator Augusto Pinochet to Chile with the overthrow of the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. The violent regime ushered in a neoliberal economic experiment where all public services in the country were privatized and vast expanses of land were stolen from Mapuche people and others and handed to rich elites and large corporations.
In October 2019 a national uprising began. It was started by students due to a small hike in subway fares, and rapidly expanded to include the entire country rising up against the unjust neoliberal economic system there.
I was there with a team to document the uprising in November and December 2019 in Santiago, Temuco and at reclaimed indigenous Mapuche communities Quilape López and Liempi Colipi. A statement frequently heard during our stay in Chile was, “This is where neoliberalism was born and this is where it will die.”
During the uprising, thousands of people were detained, with more than thirty killed.
More than 400 people suffered serious injuries to their eyes, due to Carabineros (Chilean National Police) firing shotguns filled with rubber coated metal pellets into protester faces. I witnessed many cases of the Carabineros using excessive violence. Besides the targeting of eyes, there were sexual attacks on women prisoners, and excessive use of teargas. Water cannons spiked with a caustic substance were used to target street medics helping the injured. On one of my last days there, Human Rights Day, I watched police water cannons target the Red Cross tent in Plaza de la Dignidad, the center of the Santiago and the focal point of the protests in the country’s Capitol.
In the streets around the Plaza was mixture of tear gas and marijuana smoke. Defiance was seen everywhere. Streets were clogged with masked protesters. In green spaces people rested, played music, sang and danced. On Friday afternoons, thousands of protesters walked or marched to the Plaza de la Dignidad. The gatherings often progressed into what felt like a fiesta with street fighting on the side–where militancy, music and art met and complemented each other.
The uprising was not about traditional electoral politics. It was about diving deep into the roots of the economic, social and ecological crises in Chile, challenging and denouncing false solutions, and joining together across barriers to make real systemic change. While the mass-protests have ended, the movement is just getting started. Despite the COVID quarantines, it continued its work to create a people’s way forward that encompasses the rights of Indigenous Peoples, an end to free-market ravaging of the environment and a new just economic and political system.
This exhibit was scheduled to open 3 April 2020 in Buffalo, NY’s “¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art” but was postponed indefinitely due to Covid.
In August of 2019 it opened virtually.
