CANMORE – Sitting in their condo overlooking the Three Sisters in Canmore, Marcelo Andres Fernandez Reyes and his wife Fernanda Lopez Salazar have been nervously watching the protests that have consumed their home country Chile since early October.
Protesters rallying against the country's extreme wealth inequality have consumed the capital city of Santiago and the government has deployed their military to put an end to the demonstrations.
The couple has family living in Santiago and said it has been scary learning what they are experiencing.
“They’re hearing guns, like shotguns, gas,” Fernandez Reyes said, adding they speak with them every day to ensure they are safe.
Salazar’s 53-year-old mother is still in Santiago.
“My mom told me they’re listening to helicopters near the apartment putting up [tear gas] bombs,” Salazar said.
The animosity between protesters and the government has intensified Fernandez Reyes said, with several metro lines and buildings burned in the turmoil.
In reaction to the unrest, Chile’s government under the direction of President Sebastián Piñera sent out its military to enforce an end to the rallies and imposed a curfew.
“I think he’s a dictator,” Fernandez Reyes said. “I think that was extreme. That’s provoking the people.”
It is the first time the military has been deployed against the people since the violent military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet ended in 1990.
“He [Piñera] did that to make people fear," he said, explaining he believes this choice was made to scare protesters into submission.
The demonstrations initially erupted after the government attempted to raise metro fairs for the second time this year, he said, and the protesting is the result of built-up resentment of the country's' wealth inequality.
The latest rise of 30 Chilean pesos (.054 cents Canadian) in the metro price comes after years of increases, said Pablo Policzer, political science associate professor at the University of Calgary and director of the Latin America Research Centre.
“It was the straw that broke the camel's back,” Policzer said. “It’s not the 30 pesos, it’s 30 years of very unfair [economics].”
Piñera has nixed the metro price increase, Fernandez Reyes added, but it is a meaningless gesture because the protests are about the unequal wealth distribution in the country.
Chile was once seen as a capitalist paradise, he said, but in his opinion, it is a broken system that has left workers exhausted and frustrated. The resulting inequity between Chile’s richest one per cent and the struggling working and middle-class citizens has created a deep divide.
Chile was the first country in the world to implement neo-liberal economic reforms in the mid-1970s.
“It’s been the poster-child,” Policzer said.
While there have been some changes to the policies since they were implemented, overall the basic structure of Chiles's political economy has remained static and similar to what it was under the dictatorship of Pinochet, he said.
These are not the first demonstrations to erupt in Chile against these policies and the country's systematic privatization of resources that include pensions, health care, education and more Policzer said, but they are the most serious.
“This latest wave, I would say is the most serious series of protests since the return to democracy in 1990.”
The demonstrations are fuelled by the rage felt by some in regards to the injustice of the distribution of wealth, Policzer said, explaining that looking at the socio-economic distribution in Chile, 80 per cent of people do not earn enough to cover their expenses each month.
“People at the top are making money … and they're keeping a good chunk of what they earn,” he said. “Everyone else is spending more then they own. That’s not a good recipe for democracy.”
Fernandez Reyes said in his view, the rallies show that there is still no democracy in Chile because Piñera and his government refuse to listen to the people.
The fighting is especially upsetting, Salazar added, because Piñera has framed the protesters and the military as “at war.”
“He has the military out in the streets, he has tanks and guns. People just have pots and pans,” she said. “How can we be at war if people are not with guns. It’s just him.”
Piñera has walked back his comments characterizing the rallies as a war, Policzer said, adding this was in part fuelled by pressure from his generals who have stated, “I’m not at war with anyone.”
It is not surprising the country has risen up in protest about the living conditions, Fernandez Reyes said.
“I’m proud of them because they are protesting for the basic things — they are not asking for something too difficult,” Salazar said. “They’re asking for good health care, good pensions.”
Fernandez Reyes believes there can only be two results from the protests — Chile will become a dictatorship, or there will be a change in the country.
"I hope it works,” he said. “If there’s a change in Chile that’s going to be a change in the world.”
If the people and their cries for change are ignored, he said he is concerned Chile could face a civil war.
Fernandez Reyes and his wife have been living in Canmore for six years, however, he was born in Canada.
The moved to Canada because it was nearly impossible to find a job that could support their family, he said.
Fernandez Reyes' family moved to Canada as refugees fleeing the Pinochet government in the late 1970s and he was born in Edmonton.
The family moved back to Chile in the early 1990s when Fernandez Reyes was six years old because they had hope Chile would be a changed country after Pinochet lost power.
However, 30 years later the country continues to feel the corruption established by Pinochet’s government.
“They didn’t change their laws. They kept the law of Pinochet,” Fernandez Reyes said. “The corruptions started going from there — It hasn’t stopped … It’s extreme capitalism they charge for everything."
There was a building resentment in Chile, Fernandez Reyes said, as many struggle to make ends meet while an elite portion of the country lived like royalty.
Chile is one example of people across the world pushing back against an economic system based on high-levels of inequality, Policzer said, comparing the protests in Chile to movements like Occupy Wall Street.
“It’s the 99 per cent versus the one per cent,” Policzer said.
However, Salazar added, the fault does not lay solely with Piñera, as the governments of the past 30 years also failed to address the inequality in the country.
Chileans want what Canada has, Fernandez Reyes said, good salaries, free education, free healthcare and other benefits.
“We want to have privilege for everyone — It has to be a balance,” Fernandez Reyes said. “This will be a beautiful thing for the wider world.”
