POPULISM COMES TO CHILE.

AuthorWolfe, Liz

WHEN THE CHILEAN government announced on October 4 that it was hiking subway fares by roughly 4 cents in the capital city of Santiago, high school students started jumping turnstiles en masse. Adults soon joined in, sparking protests that have injured more than 2,500 and killed 20.

Protesters have set subway stations on fire. They have looted grocery stores. And some have even raided La Asuncion, a Catholic church, dragging pews and statues of Christ into the streets and incinerating them. Many protesters are using cacerolazo, or the banging of pots and pans, a form of protest spawned in 1971 by food shortages during President Salvador Allende's administration.

The fare hike--since rescinded--kicked off the protests, but the movement is animated by deeper populist forces. Chile's economy has grown significantly in the past few decades and fewer Chileans now live in poverty than ever before. But protesters say the cost of living is too high and wealth is distributed too unequally. In June, for example, the price of electricity rose by 10 percent. Many poor Chileans say health care and education are prohibitively expensive and that pensions for the elderly are too meager. (Chile lacks the state subsidies that other Latin American countries provide to reduce the cost of living.)

Protesters are calling on President Sebastian Pinera to resign and demanding an end to Chile's "neoliberal"...

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