International Women’s Day in Santiago, Chile

Noted on March 19, 2009 by Natanya in

Video post by Simon Boas, IE3 intern at the Santiago Times in Santiago, Chile. Footage from International Women's Day.

International Women’s Day March: Santiago, Chile

Amnesty International organized an International Women’s Day march, as they do every year on March 8, in Santiago. Although it was relatively calm, the police had blocked off a lane of traffic on one of Santiago’s main streets for the march. A lot of middle fingers stuck out of car windows as they crept past the march through the congested streets. I can’t say whether this was anger directed against what the march stood for (women’s rights, freedom from violence and discrimination), anger directed at the groups present in the march (i.e. Chile’s communist party, “pro-abortion” groups–rather than “pro-choice), or just frustration at being stuck in traffic.

It seemed that the majority of groups marching were there to promote their own agendas regardless of the what the march was meant to represent. Those that stood out–those that were the largest and most noticeable–were the Communist Youth (JJCC) and the Palestinians chanting “Israel es asesino del pueblo palestino” (”Israel is the murderer of the Palestinian people”).

The concert at the end was an absolute joke. The band was your typical young male rock group that kept calling on the crowd, which they adressed as “mujercitos” (dimunitive of mujer, the word for women) to ” jump! jump!” Maybe I’m just jaded, but the concert seemed to diminish the severity of the issues that the march showcased and was generally inappropriate.

See for yourself: