okay, new question. A friend sent me a video link for a television news station in Chile. The background music was very stressful and agitated, as if priming the listener to feel tension, as if building up fear, and they were talking about break-ins when homeowners leave for the day or half day. THEN my friend told me that if you go away for the weekend and someone breaks into your home, if you do not call the polic within 18 hours of your initial absence, they cannot remove the squatters. THEN she told me about portonazos where people are stopped at gunpoint and their vehicles are stolen, THEN she told me that the police officer in her small town told her it was no longer safe at night to go for a walk (she lives in a pueblo of about 200 houses a half hour from Chillan). She said Colombian and Venezuelan gangs are taking over and the police are greatly outnumbered. Like in California, they are entering large stores like MultiHogar or ABCDN in crowds of 10 to 30 and ripping off the whole store. The gangs have firearms.
As I was watching the video clip she sent me from some news station, probably the Chilean version of Headline News in the US, 24/7 fear porn, with the stressful background music and the stressed out talking head and the stressed out reporter on the ground, I wondered if the scene was being set for some benevolent dictator to suddenly appear and bring âorderâ to the people and the country.
My husband is a lawyer. According to him the problem is how judges are trained. They are taught to have a very lenient mentality towards people accused of crimes. Most accused criminals are freed after the arraignment and only have to show up once a month at the FiscalĂa to sign. Even in the case of the shooting in Meiggs, two of the suspects were just given house arrest. I know one was not at the address he gave when the police went to check up on him. Itâs common for people let out like that to disappear and not show up for court dates.
You obviously donât read or watch the local news, but yeah, the tone of TV reporting here can verge on hysteria at times. However, violence is now so common that incidents often go unreported.
The idea that the scene is being deliberately set for a return to authoritarian rule is completely the inverse of what is actually happening. Chileans, or at least the 20% of them sympathetic to hard left ideology, engineered the current situation.
As for a dictator, the Chilean scene is remarkably lacking in suitably charismatic candidates. And the military are still being punished for their last intervention fifty years ago. But some reaction will have to occur sooner or (probably) much later.
Fidel Castro or Augusto Pinochet? Hopefully neither.
hlf2888, I have certainly seen more crime reporting on TV in Chile this year, by far. Have others seen the same? it could depend on random chance or what channel Iâve seen, as I havenât watched TV extensively.
The mainstream media seems to be a bit centrist and establishment and was a bit spooked by the rise of the far left in Chile, Itâs plausible that their rich owners are heavily focusing on crime as an early play ahead of the next round of elections in a few years. To try and get a centre or centre right candidate back in power. But total speculation on my part, I have no evidenceâŠ
It could also simply be that there isnât as much going on this year as there was in previous years or even if there is some of the same stuff - constitution, COVID etc - has got a bit repetitive. So crime stories are just starting to get to be a habit to fill a 24 hour news cycle that isnât really necessary.
Thanks gringalais, I think when I was younger I was more left-thinking, perhaps because I valued life less? I thought I was immortal and took many foolish chances. Now, with the wisdom of age, I treasure life and find myself aghast at news that a mass shooter here in Canada is being considered for parole after 25 years because longer would be cruel and inhumane. I think being murdered is cruel and inhumane.
That kind of judicial leniency is just the right fertilizer for the next crop of murderers. Almost as if a nation of mass shooters is being groomed here in Canada by the justice system. You are fortunate mass shootings are not yet a Chilean phenomenon.
No, donât see the local news. Am up here in Canada until autumn.
I donât see âred pill/blue pillâ . I think the true powers offer us politics as their form of entertainment, so I stand by my statement of the stage being set.
Yes, some reaction will have to occur. Sooner, I hope.
thanks Mendoza. Agree with your second paragraph but not sure the resolution will wait for another election cycle.
Not sure with third paragraph of not enough going on because the stories I am hearing from friends and their neighbors are not from the news, but from personal experience. In fact feargle recently posted âhowever, violence is now so common that incidents often go unreported.â
But we are all going to believe what we prefer to believe.
It is just the spiral to disintegration that is sad. Shootings during the middle of the day, drive-by shootings, kidnappings, bodies dismembered and burned, stuff that was hardly heard of even just a few years ago in Chile is becoming too common and normalized.
That such crimes are becoming normalized is the most worrying of all of this. My husband and I were discussing the same recently. We didnât see those things before.
In a speech yesterday, Boric commented that there has been a rise in crime. I think the words he used were incrementa (rise/increase) of delincuencia/violencia.
But stats for non-violent crimes I found elsewhere show no increase, up to and including 2020
But so far none of this includes 2022 or even 2021
I read a report in La Tercera interviewing prisoners in jail and some government official comments which confirm the view of an increase in violent crime and guns in Chile
There is some stats suggesting a rise in crime from 2020 to 2021 or 2021 to 2022 but itÂŽs hard to separate out the effects of the pandemic, and they donÂŽt include the needed pre-pandemic baseline
Overall there is no firm evidence about whether crime has increased or not but it seems likely that it probably has , at least a little, at least in certain categories
Thanks Jamie, Maybe the criminals in Chile are imitating the criminals in California (throngs robbing department stores with immunity). It seems to be lucrative for the criminals. And maybe the lawmakers in Chile are imitating the inneffective criminal justice policies of California⊠but if so, I cannot figure out why.
Official figures are BS. Crime goes underreported here for:
Fear of reprisals, especially in the Macrozona Sur, where some areas are also now completely outside governmental control.
Lack of confidence in the Justice system means that many crimes are not reported.
Lack of proactivity by Carabineros, who have had their authority seriously undermined and these days seem to prefer staying inside their cuarteles where they are less likely to be attacked.
The fiscalia is performance-driven, ie bono-driven and simply wonât act in âdifficultâ or low-value cases, or where their actions would conflict with current government policy. Hence, the ârevolving doorâ justice system. The judges generally do what the fiscal recommends. And the system is deeply corrupt.
Much violent crime is low-profile drugs-related and only becomes visible when innocent parties are accidentally involved.
The disastrous reforma procesal penal raised the age of legal responsibility to 18, which is why so many serious crimes are now committed by âminorsâ, who mostly go unpunished.
I invite anyone to walk around Santiago Centro, EstaciĂłn Central, areas like Cal y Canto Metro, Barrio Mieggs, Mercado Central in the same carefree manner they may have done back in 2019 or before dawn to dusk. I dare you to do it for seven days straight going about your business like normal, cash in pocket, hitting the ATM, sipping on your coffee or drink at the outdoor cafe or bar, talking on your phone, etc.
Iâll pass on that offer! I remember when we lived in La Reina, we used to sometimes go to Lastarria to eat and check out some of the stores, or meet friends who lived in Barrio Brazil for dinner near their apartment. We didnât feel unsafe.
I have only had the misfortune to have had to pass through downtown a few times since the estallido (maybe 4-5 times). It has become so filthy and sketchy. I can only imagine what tourists must think!
