translated from Spanish: The country of Spain echoes the violations of HRDs in Chile with report “The broken looks of the revolts”

“The broken glances of the revolts in Chile”, this is the title a report by El País de España, where five Chileans told their testimony about how they lost the vision of one of their eyes product of the perdigal carabineros staff during protests in the context of the social outburst that began in October this year.
The country collects figures from the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH) and notes that to this day there have been 359 civilians with eye wounds, of which two have been completely blinded and 17 have lost full vision in one of their eyes.
“These two people have become the unfortunate symbol of the social upheaons in Chile that exploded two months ago,” says the Spanish medium.
Under this premise, the newspaper emphasizes that this situation was classified by the Chilean Society of Ophthalmology and the Medical College as “a visual health emergency never seen before in the country” and asked to suspend the use of pellets.
In addition, El País emphasizes that the authorities reported that the Balinese were composed of rubber, but a study by the University of Chile found that they contained only 20% rubber. And that on 19 November the police finally suspended the use of pellets pending further analysis in their composition, the results of which are not yet publicly known.
In the midst of this debate, they point out that the Government of Sebastián Piñera is trying to re-enlead the situation by pushing a process to change the current Constitution which, although it has undergone changes during these years, “has been inherited from the regime of Augusto Pinochet”, introduces El País.
“But political change will not bring its sight back to the Chileans who received one of those controversial pellets.”
Below are the testimonies collected by El País:
Maite Castillo, 23
From her student days she attended lawsuitmarchs for social rights, but on the afternoon of 20 October last she did not participate in any protest: she was riding a motorbike with her boyfriend on the Great Avenue ( an important road in her commune), where the suprancy of a sup was carried out ermarket. You couldn’t pass, because the vehicles came and went in all directions. “We parked to the front, at a gas station and stared. I got off the bike, took off my helmet and watched two carabinieri come. Because they were carrying shotguns, I insulted them. We made eye contact, stared at me, loaded his gun and shot me head-on.”
The pellet hit him in the orbit of his right eye: “I lost my vision, I see absolutely nothing in that eye,” he says. Since then, she’s been operated on twice, last time on Friday, because of an unhealed haemorrhage. In the meantime, he spends his days at home resting: “This will be a different Christmas. Sad for what happened to me, no doubt, but the people in this country for the first time are not focused on consumption, but on other fundamental issues, with greater empathy for the rest.” Last year, Castillo took out the degree of dental assistant and in 2020 wanted to start her dental studies. “But I have gone from being a healthy person to relying on others,” says this Chilean who lives with her father in the municipality of El Bosque, in the southern part of the capital, Santiago de Chile.
Ronald Barrales, 36
The father of an eight-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy, this self-employed worker dedicated to the manufacture of cleaning products participated in the protests of Plaza Italia, the zero zone of mobilizations in Santiago de Chile, since the beginning of the social outburst of 18 d October. He says he did so always peacefully, accompanied by relatives, “to express discontent with the way politicians have handled the country in recent decades.” It points, for example, to problems in education: for lack of money he had to quit engineering and his firstborn in 2020 will take his last year at the National Institute, Chile’s emblematic public lycée of excellence than the authorities of different signs politicianhaves have let die.
On November 11, Barrales went out to protest as usual, when he was left unaccompanied in the middle of a kind of carabinieri’s lock-up, unable to run or escape. A short distance away, full in the left eye, an object was struck: “I turned around and all I could do was run to the Red Cross field hospital, without allowing anyone to help me,” he says at his home in the municipality of Quinta Normal , in the north-central part of the capital, where he lives with his mother. In one of the operations he was extracted “a non-rubber pellet that lodged at the bottom of the eyeball, which speaks of the power of the impact.” Unable to work and affected, he slowly tries to learn to live with his new physical condition. Nevertheless, however, he has no regrets about taking part in the protest: “I was just raising my voice for the rights of my children and the rest of the people.”
Carlos Puebla, 47
After leaving work, he decided to go through the protests in Plaza Italia. He did not play in any organization or party and it was the first time he had attended the demonstrations. He says it was a peaceful rally, where there were children and the elderly, but that clashes with the police soon began, “who began to attack excessively and without respecting anything.” It was when a carabinero, he recounts, shot him with the riot shotgun about 15 meters away pointing at his face. “I felt something icy in my body, I tried to run, I fell to the ground and I was transferred to the Red Cross,” the man recalls. He received a pellet on his thigh, another on his head and a third in his right eye, whose vision he lost completely, as he was informed 48 hours later.
Carlos Puebla is the youngest son of a woman who had to take care of her five children alone. For lack of money, he couldn’t finish his school studies. Puebla has three children, aged 25, 14 and 13, and, until 24 October last year, worked as a construction worker in exchange for the minimum wage (about 360 euros per month). But on the day he attended the protest, he will mark the life of Puebla, who lives in Renca, a municipality in northern Santiago de Chile. “Wages are low and not achieving, health and education are precarious, pensions are a disgrace.”
Now he’s waiting for a prosthetic to be put on. “Life will never be the same, but I have two young children still needing me. I have to move on,” he muses. He knows that he probably won’t be able to continue the same trade and, suffering from severe headaches and dizziness, is often invaded by sadness: “Suddenly I go into depression.”
Eliacer Flores, 30
When the second day of curfew had been declared in Santiago on October 20th, he decided that he would leave his home in Quinta Normal, in the north-central area of Chile, to protest the state of emergency. Father of two children aged 13 years and 10 months, he went after eating to Piazza Italia, where he encountered a clash between protesters and police. Eliacer joined the civilian side, while protecting himself with a metal plate: “But I looked and the pellet came to me in my right eye,” he says.
“I felt the greatest physical pain I’ve ever felt in my life, an intense cold all over my body, a bee in my ears and a desire to pass out. Horrible. But the adrenaline and the fear of the carabinieri grabbing me, made me run and ask for help,” Flores says.
He’s had two operations, but completely lost sight of one eye. You’ll probably need to wear a prosthesis. He tried to return to work, but his fitness prevented him and doctors extended a new discharge. In these two months he has gone through different moods: “Rage, fear, sadness, anger. This country needs a complete restructuring of the system, based on corrupt politics, health, education and pensions that allow a decent future for our old ones,” Flores says. “In honor of the dead, the wounded and the violent we must continue to fight. What we have lost and what we have given cannot be left to nothing.”
Natalia Aravena, 25
When you try to drink water, you are unable to correctly calculate the depth and the liquid spreads out of the glass. If the terrain you’re walking on isn’t completely smooth and flat, you run the risk of tripping. The 25-year-old nurse, who barely reached a year of working life, tries to get used to her new physical condition with her days: on October 28, a tear bomb hit her right eye and lost both her eyesight and eyeball. That Monday he was to meet a friend in front of the government palace, La Moneda, where a rally had been called. He recounts that it all happened very quickly: he had barely been on the street for a few minutes when police began to disperse the protesters, before the demonstration even began. She was alone and saw a police vehicle and the officers a few feet away. “I turned around and was struck by the tear bomb in the eye,” he says at his home in Peñalolén, eastern Santiago, Chile, where he lives with his parents.
“I fell asleep the right half of my face, fortunately, because I felt no pain. From the forehead to the upper lip. The impact didn’t make me lose consciousness, it didn’t tear me apart the rest of my face or throw me to the ground, but I was stunned.” She has undergone two surgeries and has not been able to return to work. The young Chilean believes that “the government is very afraid of losing power” and criticizes the statements of the president, Sebastián Piñera, who pointed out at the beginning of the revolt that Chile was “at war” against a powerful enemy: “The mighty enemy is Me, who maimed me, that I am a nurse, that I am an ordinary person, without weapons?” he asks. “They want to make us believe that we want to destabilize the country, but Chile has long been destabilized by the immense inequality they don’t want to see.”

Original source in Spanish

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