Protestas!

Remember all that talk about the students protesting the shitty education system here? Well today I woke up, came downstairs to use the internet, and while in the lobby heard tons of police and emergency vehicles, sirens wailing, pulling up outside my building. I was going to go meet a friend for lunch, and when I went outside there were about 15 police cars, guanacos (giant tanks that spray water hoses at roudy people), and ambulances. As I walked towards the metro, I could feel tear gas in the air as it scratched at my eyes and throat. Once Mauri and I found each other in the chaos, we walked up the street and watched as a giant cloud of smoke, from tear gas and other fires, wafted up in front of the main building of la Universidad de Chile. Today there was a march in the morning, and it ended up turning violent (like many of them do), but this one continued through the day. Protests, authorized and unauthorized, are ocurring today throughout the country: in Santiago, Valparaíso, Concepción, Copiapó. Violence has continued throughout the day, and from what I've been reading, the police have not been acting appropriately, and many people have been injured and imprisoned for their actions. One websited says that around 1pm today, a police officer dropped a tear gas bomb in the metro, making it hard for people to breathe. As my apartment is sandwiched between the la Moneda Palace (house of government) and la universidad de Chile's main campus, Mauri and I were forced to walk into the neighborhood, away from the drama. After eating, we walked back towards the main road, right across from La U de Chile. We were on the other side from where most of the drama tends to take place, but as we were walking, students started to run towards us, away from the advancing guanaco. I don't know why they started moving the guanaco towards the students (it didn't seem like they were actually doing anything) but all of a sudden we were in the middle of running students and an advancing tank. Mauri and I ran in the opposite direction, out of the reach of the hoses just before they started spraying water violently at the students. Being in the middle of this has been amazing and sort of horrifying. It's crazy that the government has been acting this way, and resorting to such extreme messures to deal with education reform. Today president Piñera's rating fell to only 26%. (Check out this website: http://www.elciudadano.cl/2011/08/04/santiago-amanecio-con-barricadas-y-el-centro-esta-sitiado/ ) It's been amazing, however, to see the students organize together and fight for their rights to a just education. Needless to say, today I did not follow my plans of going out to the university to study after lunch.