Pinochet is DEAD!!!!

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Pinochet died yesterday. It was wierd because it was the same day that the group we traveled down here with left on their flight back to Cali. Alot of the streets were closed, and so we ended up being dropped off by the bus close to the hospital that he had died at. There were alot of people who had sighns and candles and were yelling things along the line of "Thank you, Pinochet!".

So we went into that crowd, just to look around. It was really disturbing being inside of a mob of people who support a mass murderer, mass torturer, who stole rule of their country and made the poor poorer. I cant even imagine supporting someone who used torture against innocent people. And the wierd thing was that there was both old and young people, around my age. There was also this guy with a camera in front of the mob as we walked into it. People were throwing stuff at him, and he had fallen onto the ground, and the police were running to help him. Then some guy tried to give me a candle, and I just shook my head, and we left. It was really sad and completely angering being in that crowd.

So after we left, we walked down Providencia all pissed off and slightly upset and joined the celebrating half.

Anyway, at the celebration last night, we all walked down the middle of the street chanting and dancing, and there ws a band moving around and people in costumes and masks and everyone was jumping around and dancing and yelling, and everytime a helicopter would fly low and look at us, everyone would flip it off. Everytime a honking car drove by, we would all wave our arms and shout louder. There was also lots of communists.

And then the whole huge crowd (much bigger than the Pinochet-loving crowd) walked down the main street to the statues where the police were. The police had an armored car, and full on shields and everything. And then people started throwing stuff at the police, and we saw these big white bombs that had been shot out of something emitting smoke and bouncing off the pavement toward all the police, and there was confetti falling from the high rises into the smoke, all illuminated by the street lights, and we could hear bottles crashing and rocks hitting the ground and see peoples outlines in the smoke, and there was alot of people chanting and throwing stuff. we were sitting on the base of another statue chanting with a bunch of people and watching.

But we didnt realize the smoke was tear gas until it started coming over to where we were sitting on the statue, and since we saw it coming, even though we thought it was only a smoke bomb, we decided it was best to be on our way, so we crossed the street, and started walking up to where our friend Rebecca was, a bit up, and then our noses and throats started burning, and we realized that it was tear gas after all, not just a smoke bomb someone had thrown at the police. So there was this jolt of adrenaline and we started running, and then all the people around us started running, and suddenly everyone was running. We ran to another monument thing with stairs in the park.

Later we gave a guy our water bottle, and he put it all in his eyeballs. They were so red and watery it was horrible to look at them. Tears were just streaming out of them like a river, it was insane. I felt bad for him, and there was all these ppl that had been in the smoke, it must have been so painfull for them. Later we talked with some guy, and he was happy about us not being European, for some reason, and we were the only gringas there, and that had been in that crowd.

Then we went to a restraunt and ordered 2 beers and a diet coke and rested.

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Comments

[mater]

hmmm
Why were the people throwing stuff I wonder?