Día del Joven Combatiente - My last day in Chile.

I had the great fortune of both witnessing and leaving Santiago on the Day of the Young Combatant. I saw the beginnings of an annual conflict that threatens to destroy parts of the city year after year, and I still have trouble trying to explain the strangeness of this event to those who weren’t there.

So, for anyone interested, read and watch.

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(March 29, 2007) Over four thousand police will be in Santiago’s streets Thursday, because both police and government officials worry that violence could flair on the annual Day of the Young Combatant.

Originally created to honor two young brothers killed by General Pinochet’s forces, the day has since been used as an excuse by university students and various leftist groups in Chile to stage very violent protests.

Santiago’s chief of police, Jorge Acuña, cancelled a planned trip to Europe to be in town on the potentially dangerous day.

After Chile’s widespread student protests last May, several university professors told The Santiago Times that they were worried that student violence has accelerated its schedule this year. Many fear that international armed movements are infiltrating Chile to encourage the protests.

Chile’s Pinochet-era Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Brigade, which violently opposed the Pinochet dictatorship, has recently been looking to re-activate its activity in the country. The group recently held a convention for all Latin American “revolutionary movements” in Santiago, to which Colombia’s FARC was an invited guest.

The recent Transantiago situation has also created general discontent in Santiago, especially among the city’s poorest residents and youth, and authorities are worried that the frustration with the transit overhaul could lead to increased violence.

Local media reported that four low powered bombs were set off Wednesday night in the neighborhoods of Maipú, Cerillos, Providencia, and Santiago Centro. No injuries were reported, but the windows were blown out of several cars.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the perpetrators of the crimes had not been caught, but pamphlets promoting Thursday protests were found at the scene.

Around 50 hooded protestors launched Molotov cocktails at police in Santiago’s borough of Nuñoa on Wednesday afternoon at the UMCE and University of Chile campuses. UMCE’s rector ordered his university closed until Monday.

“Our forces are ready, as they have always been, to restore order if that becomes necessary,” said Acuña. “Every thing has already been planned for, both in Santiago and in the rest of the country.”

But the protests at universities are legally complicated. Police, by law, are not allowed to enter university campuses without the permission of the school’s rector. And the rectors usually face strong pressure from their left-wing professors to keep the police out.

While The Santiago Times urges all readers to be careful today, Thursday, the protests must be understood in the Chilean context. Chile is a historically divided county, both politically and economically. The creation of the governing Concertación coalition has given political power to Chile’s moderate left, but ceded economic power to Chile’s right. More radical left political parties have been excluded from the political process for more than 30 years – 17 years during the Pinochet dictatorship, and 17 years during the nation’s transition to democracy.

But because the Concertación has counted on the Communist Party and other far-left parties to win the last two presidential elections, its leaders have shown themselves reluctant to clamp down on most leftist protests and, for example, over the last five years have waited weeks and even months to permit police action against those striking at universities.

As occurs on the September 11 anniversary of Pinochet’s coup against President Salvador Allende, violence that sometimes erupts in the country can be best described as a cultural phenomenon. It’s usually back to business the following day.

By Nathan Crooks (editor@santiagotimes.cl)