Since arriving in Chile over two years ago I have been tear gassed 6 times. Three of these have been in the last week. Tear gas was not something I had any experience with growing up in small town NZ, or even living in Melbourne Australia. I attended the odd protest for education or the environment, but there was never any threat of me being blasted by a water canon, or finishing my day with nose and throat burning and my face wet from my weeping eyes. Here in Chile I have never officially attended a protest, and yet I have been gassed six times. You would wonder how this could be?
Firstly, there are many more protests here than back in Oceania, and this year especially they are supported by thousands of people (two of last weeks protests yielded 30,000 and 40,000 people respectively). People here are angry, and want to be heard. And the police are all to keen to keep it all under control, in so much as they often seem to pre-empt the trouble by firing gas into the crowds before there are any real problems. This in its own right frustrates people, and they fight back. In the ensuing carnage normal people get caught up, hence I have been gassed 6 times. I am certainly not saying that the protesters have no role to play in this – there is a small percentage of the marchers who are very destructive. Walking down one of the pedestrian streets after one of last weeks manifestations I saw (through my streaming eyes) all the park benches in our local park destroyed, the glass recycling tank overturned and all the glass smashed and spread across the road as a sharp centimetre thick blanket, traffic lights not only torn from the pole, but the pole itself snapped in two, and the smouldering piles of whatever they had decided to burn in the middle of the street. It seems a little ironic to me that these protesters who are generally asking for better working conditions, or more money for education (both extremely valid points of conflict here) would want to cause what must be thousands of dollars worth of damage to highlight their plight.
The other part to this story is what exactly these people are protesting over. One part of the protests is about education, and in this respect it seems to me that they have every right to be upset. Chilean post – graduate education is the third or fourth most expensive education in the world (when compared to GDP and cost of living). The other big protests are about the approval of a project to build five hydroelectric dams on two rivers in Patagonia. I find these protests and this story more interesting.
Firstly, I would like to state that coming from NZ, I am quite used to hydrodams. It is the way that we generate the majority of our power. We use the lakes for recreation and irrigation, and apart from some problems with flow on the Waitaki river, as far as I have seen they haven’t caused any particularly negative effects for the regions. I was not old enough to understand the controversy surrounding the Clyde dam, but my parents tell me there was some (they had to move a whole town to make way for the flood waters). Now however, it is one of the best equipped towns of the area.
The proposal to build dams here in Chile has split the country, with the upper classes generally defending the project as progress, and the working class protesting against it vehemently as destruction. I have searched for literature on this project and it’s impact, but have turned up short. I have asked my friends who are against it what they are against and they invariably answer that it destroys the environment. However, when I ask how it does this or what the alternative is they tell me that that isn’t their problem. I find this strangely contradictory. The long and the short of it is that Chile needs energy to grow, not today, but in the future. That current energy sources are fossil fuels, nuclear or sustainable energy. I am sure that my friends don’t support either of the first two proposals, which leaves us with the sustainable sources, wind, water or sun. They argue that the dams represent a major destruction of the landscape, and they are probably right, but so do the other two alternatives. Wind farms are ugly, and Chile only has reliable wind along it’s prized coast – are they telling me they want hundreds of turbines as a backdrop to their summers on the beach? Or would they prefer to fill the Atacama Desert with large solar panels. I don’t understand.
Some people tell me that Chile doesn’t need any more energy. This is clearly putting their heads in the sand. Although government estimates may be top heavy, wouldn’t it be better (especially for the lower part of society) to have an abundance of energy and therefore choice, which may actually push the prices down, rather than an increased demand and diminished supply which is guaranteed to only allow those who can afford it to turn on the lights.
I think it is relatively clear where I stand on this issue, and until someone can provide some form of proof and education on this issue (which is sadly lacking in all forums) I will try and stay out of the tear gas, and quietly shake my head at the antics of those who believe in their cause.
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