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News > Chile

Violent Gangs of Street Vendors Break Into Chilean Protests

  • Street vendors shooting at May 1st marchers

    Street vendors shooting at May 1st marchers | Photo: Twitter

Published 3 May 2022
Opinion

The workers' march that took place last week in Chile did not seem so different from the protests that traditionally take place on May 1 in the country: demonstrators advancing through the streets of Santiago, police repression and some isolated incidents.

By Francisco Bravo Atias

But this time, a different factor was added. In the capital's center, the demonstrators were ambushed by street vendors, who attacked with firearms. Four people were wounded, one of whom was hit in the head and is currently in life-threatening condition.

This serious incident triggered a police investigation. The first results revealed a complex reality: several street vendors decided to arm themselves and organize real mafias to control the territories and thus be able to sell their merchandise.

RELATED:
 Three People Wounded by Bullets on Labor Day in Chile

These groups act with "soldiers," men in charge of security who carry weapons to confront anyone who tries to impede the operation of their illegal fairs. It seems that this does not spare the demonstrators either, whose marches interfere with the free passage of their clients.

So far, the police have arrested three suspected shooters during the protest. The Prosecutor's Office said that they are members of the gang "Los Toldos Azules," a group of street vendors so-called because of the color of the tarpaulins they occupy in their commercial stalls.

THE MAFIAS

Anyone who lives or has passed through the Alameda, Santiago's main avenue, in the last two years knows the typical blue awnings that cloud the western part of the street at the height of the Estación Central neighborhood. And although it was known that the increase of street vendors in the center had meant an increase in crime in the area, it was in March of this year when it was confirmed for the first time that they were also involved in intervening in demonstrations.

On March 25, the media recorded several people armed with sticks, iron bars, and guns attacking minors during a student protest. A video on Twitter showed how several adults beat up a schoolboy, who ended up hospitalized with a severe fracture of the frontal region of his skull.

According to the mayor of Estación Central, Felipe Muñoz, the explosive growth of street vendors is directly linked to the wave of migrants who have entered the country through irregular passages in recent years. "Eighty percent of the people who carry out this type of activity are migrants," he told Chilevisión channel. Two of those arrested carrying firearms during the commemoration of Labor Day are migrant citizens, Yonaiker Fuenmayor, a 22-year-old Venezuelan, and Luis Flores, a 31-year-old Colombian. (Editor Note: Marcelo Naranjo, another shooter, is a Chilean national)

So far this year, there have been 628 police cases in the zone dominated by the ambulantes, of which three were homicides and two rapes, according to Carabineros figures.

UNPROTECTED JOURNALISM

Francisca Sandoval is a reporter for the independent media Señal 3 La Victoria. She was shot in the face on May 1 while working and today, she is between life and death in the Posta Central hospital in Santiago. That same day, three other journalists also suffered injuries.

Sandoval's relatives, his colleagues, his family members and journalists' groups were accused of a severe lack of protection towards the work of independent media, many of which were born or grew during the social outburst of 2019 to report from the street what the traditional media did not always show.

Fernando Galeas is director of the independent media Quilicura TV and, in conversation with Agencia Sputnik, denounced an abandonment of the institutions in front of their work. "We ask the State to put on its pants and protect the lives of its citizens."

"We (independent media journalists) know each other because we report on the street and we have to protect each other. For years we have had to deal with the difficulties of exercising our work because the State does not only unprotect us but they even repress us. Many of us have been imprisoned and beaten in barracks for trying to inform", he pointed out.

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