Lacrimogenas

I was walking up Arturo Prat towards Alameda, making my way towards the Universidad de Chile metro station, minding my own business.  The walk from my apartment to the metro takes me somewhere between seven and ten minutes, depending on how far I stretch my steps, but since it was a holiday and I wasn’t in a rush I ambled, slowing down to enjoy the stretch of sun between the perpetually closed Mall Chino! and Muebles Mundo, the furniture store that collides with the sidewalk as end tables and TV cabinets and long wooden benches spill out its doors. 

I was listening to my ipod and I was happy, and I didn’t pay much to the small fire burning in the middle of the street a block or two south of Alameda.  After all, there’s always a fire burning in the middle of the street somewhere nearby—I’ve gotten so used to it that the smell, that peculiar mix of smoking cardboard and singed asphalt, no longer gives me reason to pause.

I was half a block away from Alameda, less than a minute from the metro, when the carabineros’ van flew past me, racing towards Alameda with its siren whining.  Really? I thought.  After all, it was Columbus Day, a national feriado—no one had work or school, and here it isn’t a holiday controversial enough to protest.  It would have been a good day for an asado.

 

When they’re managing riots, the “vans” the carabineros drive are more of a mix between tour buses and tanks, dark green and splattered with paint, heavy grates over the headlights.  You can’t see in through the windshields, and missile-shaped devices for spraying tear gas and chemical-laden water over the crowds swivel on the roofs. 

The van-bus-tank flew around the corner, and moments later they came running from the opposite direction, twenty or so students with their scarves tied over their mouths.  They paused halfway down the street, right in front of me, turning to confront the van-bus-tank that had followed them and sending glass coke light and Cristal bottles smashing into the grated windows.  I ran past them to the cluster of non-students behind the newsstand that was steps from the corner.  There were six of us non-students: me, the man who owned the newsstand, two younger men eating completos, avocado and mayonnaise laden hotdogs, a dark haired woman who clutched her daughter’s hand tightly, and a middle aged woman arguing with the newsstand owner over a chocolate bar.  “No,” she said, pushing the candy back into his hands, “no Super Ocho normal—Super Ocho con mani.”

We all jumped at the pop of a smoke bomb exploding.  Then, for almost a minute, it was quiet.  The van-bus-tank took off down Alameda and left the students lingering in the middle of Arturo Prat, looking almost disappointed. 

“El metro esta abierto?” I asked the woman with the chocolate bar—the kind with peanuts—if the subway was open.

“Por supuesta,” she said.  Of course.

It was only steps away, just across tiny Arturo Prat, but as soon as I reached the steps that descend underground I saw the gates that had been pulled across them, closing off the entrance, and in that same moment that whine of the carabineros’ siren sounded again, and the van-bus-tank came barreling down the middle of Alameda, and the students rushed towards it, which also happened to be towards me, and they threw their bottles and burning juice boxes and I didn’t want to be mistaken for a student but I was already running when the carabineros began to spray the chemical water, and looking up I could see it arching right over me, gleaming in the sun. 

I ran all the way to the next metro station.  It’s only three blocks away, and I could hear the water hitting the sidewalk as I hurried underground, feel my heart beating in my legs.  My eyes burned just a little, stung by an edge of tear gas.

Later that night, when he walked me home from the metro I told him about my brush with riots, using my arms to trace the arc of the water that had danced above my head.  He could tell that I was just as excited as I was scared and so he laughed, pointing at the piles of burnt juice boxes and charred soda cans and asking me why I hadn’t expected something. 

“Because there’s always a fire or two in the middle of the street,” I said, and he laughed again as if it wasn’t true.  As if by now I should know better than to leave my apartment without a scarf to tie around my mouth, just in case.  As if I should always keep a lemon in my purse, pre-sliced and sealed in a ziplock bag.  Maybe I should.

"Democracy smells like tear gas"

Found this in Valparaiso, and I'm starting to think it's true.