MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Violent incidents and power cuts in Chile recall the 11 September 1973 military coup

Rodrigo Ubilla reported 350 ‘outbreaks of violence’ and power cuts to 130.000 homes

Chile’s Sunday September 11 demonstrations to recall the military coup of 1973 turned violent and left one adolescent with a gun wound, power cuts, dozens of arrests and 350 “outbreaks of violence” in the capital Santiago according to the Carabineros (militarized police) report.

Deputy Interior Secretary Rodrigo Ubilla said that during Saturday night and the following Sunday night a total 280 people were arrested, of which 182 in Santiago’s metropolitan region and 98 in the rest of the country. Forty members of the police forces also were reported to have suffered injuries during the incidents.

Ubilla said that the injured teenager (15) is in hospital with a bullet wound in the chest, plus four other civilians who remain under medical observation.

“In the Santiago metropolitan region we had a non-calm night (Sunday) with 350 outbreaks of violence identified consisting of barricades, street cuts and over 130.000 homes left with no power in 18 neighbourhoods”, pointed out Ubilla.

The Chilean top official said that besides all the damage to property what really surprised was how “mob groups, some organized, some anarchic committed brutal attacks on Carabineros with a situation where we have over forty members of the force injured”.

This includes a sergeant who was struck on the eye with a stone, with risk of loss of sight, and a Lieutenant who received 46 shot gun pellet injuries in an arm and leg, and another Special Forces member who also suffered a similar attack in his legs.

Besides “an estimated 130.000 homes were left without power in 18 neighbourhoods” as vandals tore down lines, columns and destroyed transformers indicated Ubilla.

“It is time we the Chilean civil society emphatically and jointly condemn these acts of violence and abuse. The country can’t stand any longer this kind of hooliganism”, underlined Deputy Interior Secretary Ubilla.

On 11 September 1973 the Chilean military in an organized coup ousted elected Socialist president Salvador Allende, opening the way for a vicious regime under General Augusto Pinochet that lasted until 1990 and left thousands killed, disappeared and tortured.

Every year since the return of democracy in 1990 there have been violent incidents on September 11.