The Government of President Sebastián Piñera decreed this Saturday a state of emergency and military deployment in four provinces of the Antofagasta and Arica regions, in the extreme north of the country, after two days of roadblocks and trucker strikes against irregular migration .
“The state of exception is going to be decreed in four provinces in the border sectors: Arica, Parincota, Tamarugal and El Loa, in the border sector,” explained Interior Minister Rodrigo Delgado during an official visit to the Antofagasta region. .
In these provinces and other areas of northern Chile there has been a strong migration crisis for months with the massive arrival of undocumented people and the holding of anti-migration strikes, transportation strikes and xenophobic attacks.
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Located just three hours from the border with Bolivia, Iquique woke up this Saturday blocked again by dozens of truckers who, along with a good part of the residents, blame the increase in insecurity and violence on the hundreds of migrants. rivers that come down daily from the altiplano.
Early on Saturday, the remains of the incendiary barricades and the barriers erected by truckers on Friday were still visible, hours after a new act of violence attributed to three people, two of them foreigners, who remain detained, was spread.
According to the first report from the Carabineros body, a 22-year-old driver would have died when he fell at a level crossing after getting off his truck and arguing with the three suspects who would have stoned his vehicle.
The news led hundreds of colleagues to cut off access to the city of Iquique, and the routes that extend both to the border with Bolivia, where today hundreds of migrants could be seen descending on foot due to lack of vehicles, and to the city of Antofagasta, located 400 kilometers away and where xenophobic sentiment also spreads.
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According to data from the Tarapacá Prosecutor’s Office, homicides have experienced an increase of 183% in the area in recent months, coinciding with the massive arrival of migrants after the outgoing president, Sebastián Piñera, declared that Chile was a safe country.
A statement that the opposition called irresponsible and that according to local and international analysts would be the origin of the current migration and security crisis, which threatens to become the first major obstacle for his successor, President-elect Gabriel Boric, three weeks of his investiture.
The mobilizations, which began two weeks ago, had even begun to impact the local economy, with shortages in the supply of some products, such as gasoline, and with dozens of people trapped, unable to leave the city by road or by air. city, enveloped in thick black smoke from burning tires.
“We are not against immigration. We have always lived with Peruvians and Bolivians, but we have never seen this before. We are against crime and we want to live in peace,” he explained today to Eph the leader of the taxi drivers’ union, Joaquín Besares, with blackened hands after moving the tires that cut off access and exit to the city.
“The Piñera government is the biggest circus we’ve ever had. We’re asking for a state of emergency now to control the situation,” Besares added in front of a kilometric row of vehicles stranded on the highway unable to enter Iquique.
The state of exception is a Chilean constitutional tool where, by presidential initiative in the first instance, military forces assume control of roads and patrol in a certain area.
“Carabineros can’t keep up. Here we have hired killers, kidnappings, shootings. We don’t want one of our children to be killed. Iquique is in disgust,” Alto Hospicio neighborhood leader Paula Scarafi, a of the promoters of the mobilization that until now has an indefinite character.
Despite the fact that the carriers blocked all entrances to the city with barricades and trucks, in a coordinated action that was replicated throughout the north of the country, Eph found that Carabineros did not dissuade those responsible to restore traffic, because they did not have the order of the Executive, according to what the uniformed officers present told this agency off the microphone.
Since February of last year, Chile has experienced an unprecedented irregular migration crisis on its northern border, particularly in the town of Colchane, on the border with Bolivia, a town of just over 1,300 inhabitants located in the Andean highlands, at more than 3,600 meters above sea level. Tall.
The harshness of its climate, with a scorching sun during the day and temperatures that drop below zero degrees at night, has caused the death of dozens of migrants who have ventured to reach Chile in recent months.
Today, and as Efe was able to verify on their route to Colchane, dozens had decided to continue their journey on foot despite the blockade and the situation in Iquique, where insecurity and xenophobia have triggered tension.
