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Some two hundred people were arrested and dozens injured when protests against social inequality in Chile turned into clashes and looting overnight, police said Wednesday.
In the capital Santiago, protesters set fire to a truck and assaulted two municipal buses, looting supermarkets, a pharmacy and a toy store, totaling 15 advertising premises.
Two dozen police and 18 civilians were injured in clashes 150 demonstrations that brought together some 2,300 protesters across the country, with 195 arrests, according to Deputy Interior Minister Manuel Monsalve.
The protests began Tuesday with barricades burned around Santiago on the anniversary of a social uprising that protesters say has yet to produce the desired social change.
Car traffic was disrupted, subway stations closed and schoolchildren were sent home early, with 25,000 police deployed across the country to keep the peace, adding 5,000 in the capital, where several hundred protesters took to the streets.
The protests took place precisely three years after mass opposition began to a 2019 subway fare hike that temporarily turned into a widespread clamor for better conditions and social equality.
The government suspended price increases, but protests continued and dozens of people were killed during months of clashes. Hundreds of people were injured.
The 2019 protests kicked off reforms that included the government’s acceptance of drafting a new charter to update the one inherited from Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship and perceived as pro-market.
In December, Chile elected leftist President Gabriel Boric, who supported the 2019 uprising and the constitution-drafting procedure that followed.
But last month, nearly two-thirds of the electorate rejected the proposed plan despite the new revolutionary climate, fearing parts of the document would go too far.
A constitutional provision to legalize abortion is a key stumbling block in the conservative Catholic majority country.
Boric, a former student leader, came here to force the deeply unequal country with a promise towards a greener, more egalitarian “welfare state. “
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