A Brief History
On October 18, 2019, a recent hike in subway fares served as the tipping point for disaffected citizens of Santiago, Chile, upset about a variety of social issues they had been protesting for the previous couple weeks turning into a full-scale set of riots and battles with authorities that claimed 36 lives, 11,564 injuries, and 28,000 people arrested.
Digging Deeper
We have previously discussed many riots over all sorts of seemingly minor causes, although few such social battles have matched the scale of the Chile Riots of 2019 to 2020. The massive protests caused Chileans to vote a year later to rewrite their constitution.
Incredibly, it was probably the Covid-19 pandemic that provided the impetus for the protests to finally subside, although protests of a lesser scale continued into 2021. By September of 2022, Chilean voters rejected the new constitution, though the rewriting process continued, ending the social crisis termed “octubrismo.”
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Have you ever been in a riot?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Fodor’s Travel Guide: Fodor’s Essential Chile. Fodor’s Travel, 2022.
Rector, John. The History of Chile. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2005.
