Street Battles in Chile as Coup Anniversary Approaches

Street Battles in Chile as Coup Anniversary Approaches

By una Anarquista
Wednesday, September 7, 2005

On September 11th of 1973, General Augusto Pinochet installed himself as dictator after leading the US-supported military coup that overthrew the government of Chile.

As the 32nd anniversary of the coup approaches, masked rebels have taken to the streets around the universities of Santiago for the past two days, disrupting the capitalist order, just as they have done year after year. Combatants raised burning barricades and threw fire and paint bombs at armored police vehicles and officers in riot gear, while the authorities responded with their water cannons and tear gas. The rebels also spray-painted slogans in the area, including words in memory of Claudia López Benaiges, a young anarchist woman who died after she was shot by police while fighting on the barricades in Santiago during the raucous 1998 commemoration of the September 11th coup. The universities are used as a staging ground for confrontations because, according to social custom, they are sanctuaries from police intrusion.

Whether they call themselves democratic, nationalist, or socialist, capitalist states always claim to be based on the ideal of freedom. Chile, founded as a Spanish colony after hundreds of years of warfare and genocide against the indigenous Mapuche Nation, has been graced by governments using all three names. But the history of Chile indicates that no matter what code words are used, capitalism is always a system of rule by police control, the exploitation of labour, and the plunder of land through imperialist warfare. The primary weapon of capitalism is in fact psychological warfare, which is why many people are confused as to the nature of the system, as well as their own oppression.

The rebels in the streets in Santiago clearly understand that the struggle against capitalism must include physical confrontation with the armed forces of capitalist nation-states (the police and the military), and this is a lesson that can be applied from anywhere within the global economy.


Related Links:

http://www.hommodolars.cl

http://www.geocities.com/claudialopezbenaiges/