March 15, the first week of the 2012 school year nearly over, the discontent possibly more so than last year.
In Chile, before organizing, it must first be approved by the government. If it is not, as seen in this case, the police force take full action to quell the masses immediately. It becomes a riot: rocks flying through the air, destruction, tear gas bombs, water canons and brute force.
In a country very divided by class, there stood a group of parents from both the rich and the poor comunas, a mother yelling that for once, they’re uniting. No matter Las Condes, no matter Puente Alto, they’re uniting for the sake of their children, the future of their country.
I approached Plaza Italia as if going into a march, where rioting comes long after the start. I missed that whole bit of it not being approved. So you can imagine my surprise as I’m photographing signs, milling around and BOOM, a tear gas bomb goes off and thousands try to disperse and I’m stuck, and I’m crying, skin burning, and then BOOM, I’m blasted with water, making the burning worse, running to safety, drying off my camera. And that is pretty much when I knew that this was going to be a very interesting day.
But in the name of documentation, I stuck around. The majority of the photos were shot while I was running…or literally shaking from fear…
So I was standing at what I considered to be a relatively safe distance from the heart of danger, when next thing you know BOOM, horses stampede the bridge, there’s nowhere to go, the horses are flipping out, I’m pressed up against a cement wall, screaming, the horses are flipping out, I imagine hoof-to-body contact, I’m shaking, the horses are flipping out.
They were literally that close, my finger on the shutter as I shuttered. There’s no cropping here, just horse. So finally, hoof-to-body impact free, I peeled myself from the concrete and shortly after, after much more tear gas, decided to call it a day. One lady yelled to me to please publish my photos and show the world what was happening at the end of their world. How did she know I was a foreigner?
(See, that’s some humor after all that terror…
…because in the end, you just have to kind of laugh about it…)
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