Chile's unrest rooted in frustration with social, economic inequality

Chile's crisis that has rocked the Latin American country over the past month has roots in the frustration of the Chileans with social and economic inequality, transportation fare hikes were the “last straw that broke the camel’s back,” says a political analyst from New York.

Danny Shaw, professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies, made the remark during a Friday edition of Press TV’s The Debate program while commenting on Chile's unabating unrest, which began last month in protest to a government plan to increase subway fares, and has now transformed into a nation-wide uprising for change.

Chile is grappling with its worst social crisis in decades, one that shows little sign of dying down despite President Sebastian Pinera announcing a raft of measures aimed at placating protesters.

Demonstrators have demanded that the 69-year-old right-wing leader step down.

“The Chilean people are sending a resounding message that they don’t want to tweak the system, they want to overthrow the system of neoliberalism, of capitalist, imperialist pillage,” Shaw told Press TV on Friday.

The political analyst said the wave of protests had not only rocked Chile but also swept across many Latin American countries, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, stressing that, “We see a huge leftward turn across Latin America.”

Drawing an analogy between Pinera and his American counterpart, Donald Trump, Shaw accused the Chilean president of corruption and attributed the protests to the “unequal” system, which he heads and sits atop.

“It’s important who is at the top of this social pyramid. It’s Sebastian Pinera and the other filthy rich in Santiago across Chile. Pinera’s worth some 3 billion dollars, a number very close to [what] Trump is worth and that’s where the economic and social problems emanate from, such a deeply, unequal system,” Shaw said.

Lajos Szaszdi, a political commentator and Latin America expert, was the other panelist invited to The Debate program, who rebuked the unfair economic and political system in Chile.

Szaszdi said the unrest was “because of the great inequality that the Chilean economy wheel has organically and structurally.”

“It’s a country that is very rich in resources, in trade, minerals, agriculture but they haven’t been able to distribute, to try to make it easier for lower classes to climb up the ladder and to have social mobility upwards and then the worse of course was the trigger for the social explosion that the government of Pinera decided to increase the fare for the metro system and the people couldn’t cope,” the political commentator added.

Protesters are angry about low salaries and pensions, poor public healthcare and education, and a yawning gap between rich and poor, in Latin America's wealthiest country on a per capita basis.

Half of all Chilean workers earn $550 a month or less, according to the National Statistics Institute. A 2018 government study showed that the income of the richest was 13.6 times greater than that of the poorest.

The unrest began last month with protests against a rise in the price of transport tickets and other austerity measures, which descended into vandalism, looting, and clashes between demonstrators and the police.

The president announced a cabinet shake-up plan last Sunday after about one million Chileans flooded the streets of the capital, the largest rally since the outbreak of the unrest.

At least 17 people have so far been killed and hundreds injured during the protests, which have caused over $1.4 billion of losses to Chilean businesses. Police have also made more than 7,000 arrests over the past few days.

Chile's image took a hit on Wednesday when the government said it was pulling out of hosting the APEC economic summit in November, as well as the December COP climate conference.

It said it had no choice but to abandon the summits for security reasons.