Student Protests & Tear Gas

Okay Mom (and all the other adults who read this) you aren't going to like this, and I know I'm going to get chastised for this but here goes:


So we had heard last night that there would be some protests going on today near where we have class. So after class a few of us were wandering around the plaza and there were tons of Carabineros* (the Chilean police) but not a lot else going on. (*In Chile the police are military, not civilian, so the uniforms they are wearing in the pictures are pretty standard- minus the riot gear; thus why we weren't too freaked out initially.) So then one of the girls I was with gets a call that two boys in our group were hanging out in the park and they got tear-gassed and sprayed with a water cannon! So, naturally, I headed towards the park to check it out and I ended up meeting up with those guys. I knew that it was actually pretty serious when I started passing people in gas masks and saw that businesses were closing their doors and barring the windows.
Anyway.. long story short it was CRAZY and AWESOME! We ended up right in the thick of things and it was great. (To the adults: obviously we were careful, we made sure to stay in the back of the pack or across the street. We obviously weren't chanting or throwing stuff, and we had our escape routes planned, and also our "we're just lost and confused Americans, please save us" faces ready, just in case.) But I figure my pictures/videos can explain better than I can, so here you go:

This is from the Plaza, at this point we were confused because there were lots of police and no protesters. This was the tame part.

That is the water-spraying tank thing. Formidable, no?

Stole this from my friend, but this is the view from where we were standing.

And some videos:

So this is students getting sprayed by the water cannons. That truck eventually chased them down that road.

This is them dispersing tear gas. It happened a few times but I quickly learned to stop recording and just run because.. turns out that stuff really does hurt!! (It was pretty windy today so that made it worse.)

So anyway, no one worry because it was awesome and I'm fine.. (my contacts are probably ruined but other than that...) and now I've seen first hand how the Chilean police overreact to these protests (although the students definitely don't help the situation.)

Oh and I almost forgot the best part. In class today we were giving presentations about Chilean society, and my theme was "How the student movement for education was going". And I'm pretty sure I said, verbatim, that "it was much more calm now days, clearly since there aren't protests in the streets or violent clashes with the Carabineros. For the most part the students have turned to negotiating with politicians." So I am probably going to get an 'F' on that.. the internet totally led me astray!