It was a day yesterday

I think I will remember yesterday (Sunday December 10) for a while. It's not often that you get to observe people celebrating the death of their former dictator.

I spent much of yesterday just enjoying the parks of Santiago, since I didn't have much else that I really wanted to do, and I had an evening flight to Lima. At around 1:30 I was in Parque Bustamante, which is south of Plaza Italia. From there I headed through Plaza Italia to Parque Forestal, which is northwest of the plaza, and near the hostel where I had been staying, and my bag was waiting for me.

Let me wind the time back a bit further. I had also been in the Parque Cerro Santa Lucia earlier, where I had been accosted by students doing fundraising, and trying to raise awareness of the high costs of tuition, and apparently graduation. Small student protests have also been a fairly regular feature of the landscape in Santiago, which has a large number of academic institutions.

Back to Parque Forestal. Around 2:30, I start hearing cars honking in rhythmic ways I have learned to associate with protest or other political activity. I figure the students are at it again. I am sitting 2 modest blocks away from the Plaza Italia.

Around 3:30, I decide to return to the hostel, which is on a quiet street, to have some relative peace before I embark on the travels of the evening. On the way there, I meet (on the street) the girl who's been minding the hostel. She tells me that Pinochet died (2:15 local time, 12:15 for you East Coasters), and a crowd was gathering at the Plaza Italia, and that we should stay away, it could be dangerous.

Crowds, dangerous? Whodathunkit?

We go into the hostel. Local TV coverage is on the scene, reporting on that and other aspects of the event. After I while, I decided (cursing the camera thieves) that I might as well be nearer the scene. I find a safe place to watch, as police with riot gear deploy, mainly to help traffic continue to flow through what is one of Santiago's main traffic intersections. In the hour or so I was there, the crowd grew from a few hundred to well over a thousand. While I could not understand all of the chants, I think they were mostly celebrating Pinochet's death, not his life.

Sidebar: There are very mixed feelings about Pinochet amongst Chilenos. Most will say that his human rights abuses were wrong, but they have been generally supportive of his economic policies (lifted almost straight from the ideas of the recently-deceased Milton Friedman) which made Chile the strongest economy in South America today.

I finally left the proceedings around 5 PM since I did have a date with an airplane. On watching news on arrival at the hotel in Lima, I see that they did eventually break out the water cannon, although CNN's video coverage really doesn't show much good footage.

Coming home tomorrow!