Chileans Take to the Streets on Day 50 of the Mobilizations

 by Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project

 Santiago de Chile—Yesterday, 6 December was the global climate march. People marched around the world demanding action on climate change to prevent the irreparable decline of the Earth’s life support systems to the point where the anthropocene-driven mass-extinction already taking place includes human beings as well.

The Santiago climate march bloc was led by the Cumbre de los Pueblos or People’s Summit, organized by the Observatorio Latin Americano de Conflictos Ambientales (OLCA) and other groups. The Cumbre brought together activists, campesinos, Indigenous peoples and others from across Chile and around the world to discuss the root issues of climate change and the destructive impacts of neoliberal market-driven false solutions being promoted by industry and the UN.

The Cumbre was originally organized in two parts to offer an alternative, first to the APEC summit planned for mid-November in Santiago; then the COP25 Climate Summit planned for 2-14 December here. In mid-October, however, the ground shook here in Chile and the pent up rage and frustration of the people was unleashed.  The streets and plazas were taken over by jovenes (youth) and others demanding an end to the repressive constitutional laws and neoliberal policies ushered in under the Pinochet Dictatorship; policies that gave away the ancestral land of Mapuches and campesinos to timber companies for timber plantations, and privatized basic social services ultimately leading Chile to have the greatest income disparity in Latin America.

APEC was chased away first, and then Chile canceled the climate COP. Chile’s former colonial ruler, Spain, stepped up and saved the day, offering to host the climate summit at the last minute, and allowing Chile to retain the COP Presidency. This allowed Chile to avoid having a global audience for the mass mobilizations in its cities, as well as the rampant human rights abuses denounced by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Carabineros, the national police in Chile, have been accused of rape and torture and have caused nearly 300 eye injuries by firing shotgun shells filled with rubber-coated metal pellets directly at protesters’ faces.

The negotiations at COP25 in Madrid ignore human rights and eviscerate climate science in debates over “natural climate solutions” designed to pave the way for business as usual by using the entirety of the natural world as one giant pool of carbon and biodiversity offsets. In Chile, however, the uprising is showing a real way forward through the creation of a popular “constitutional assembly” that will include everyone.

So the #climatemarch in Santiago was about more than “climate action.” It was about diving deep into the economic and political roots of the crisis, challenging and denouncing the false solutions, and joining with a burgeoning popular movement devoted to making real change. This movement is creating a people’s way forward that encompasses the rights of Indigenous Peoples, an end to free-market ravaging of the environment and an just economic and political pathway forward.