September 9, 2022, 9:57 PM
September 9, 2022, 9:57 PM
Several hundred young students demonstrated this Friday in the center of Santiago de Chile five days after the overwhelming rejection of the proposed new Constitution last Sunday.
High school students mobilized a new day, as they have been doing since Monday in the center of the Chilean capital, in the iconic Plaza Italiaepicenter of the massive social protests of October 2019.
Meanwhile, the political groups with parliamentary representation began a process to continue the constituent path with the aim of drafting a new Magna Carta proposal, although the far-right Republican Party and part of the right have distanced themselves from that idea despite initially supporting it.
“Social awareness should not be lost, critical thinking should not be lost, and these goats (boys) are showing it. They are teaching us adults how it should be and that is why I come here to give them all my support,” he said. AFP Nelson Maureira, 50 years old and a computer engineer.
Between the repression of the water-jet cars and a large contingent of riot police deployed, Maureira showed a poster: “The right and the ‘Rejection’ (of the constitutional proposal) finished deceiving you,” he indicated in relation to the campaign against the proposed new Constitution.
“Here those who face and fight are the young people, the students, that we really want a change. But not the parents who stay at home and don’t speak out,” Catalina Vásquez, a 20-year-old university student, told AFP before riot police forced her to leave the square.
The student protests once again took center stage in the streets of the capital after the triumph of the rejection of the constitutional proposal by 61% of the votes in compulsory suffrage elections with a participation of 85.8% of the 15 million citizens called to the polls.
“It was super difficult to accept that the ‘Rejection’ won on Sunday,” Alejandra Pérez, 37, a supermarket manager, who was demonstrating with her 18-year-old daughter, told AFP.
Throughout the day, the students had carried out punctual evasions in the accesses to several Metro stops, a form of protest that they also carried out before the social outbreak of October 18, 2019.
