La medida “es simple y profunda: asegurar el orden público, asegurar la tranquilidad de los habitantes de la ciudad de Santiago, proteger los bienes tanto públicos como privados”. El Presidente Sebastián Piñera, a las 00:15 del sábado 19 de octubre –cuando ya ardía una veintena de estaciones de Metro– anunciaba el último recurso que tiene un gobierno para controlar la seguridad pública: sacar los militares a la calle. Y fracasó. En la siguiente semana fueron saqueados 196 supermercados, bodegas y otros comercios menores, solo en la Región Metropolitana, según cifras del OS9 de Carabineros. A nivel nacional el número aumenta a 326.
The state of emergency established when the second of the nine days of demonstrations and excesses that have treaded the country, exposed more crudely than ever abandonment by the State - participating in the matter of police control - of the peripheral areas of Santiago.On the morning of that same Saturday, looting began that in most cases they lasted hours before a military patrol, a picket of police or a PDI vehicle appeared.Even trucks and trucks were loaded by the mobs before the null police and military presence.
The crudest evidence of the level reached.The circumstances and causes of these deaths are still investigated.
Ciper gathered testimonies - neighbors, police, firefighters and municipal officials - in five places where the looting not only lasted hours, but also repeated up to four times in the following days.And where the fires - which also rebuilt up to three occasions - charged the death of nine people in total: the leader of Avenida Lo Blanco with Ochagavía (San Bernardo, two dead);the Construmart del Paradero 31 de Santa Rosa (La Pintana, two dead);Kayser's winery (Renca, five dead);a local wholesaler (La Pintana) and the leader of Miraflores Avenue (Renca).
The testimonies of the neighbors of all these sectors coincide at one point: permanent police deprotection, which worsened with the state of emergency, and the empire of bands that impose their law.It is not the first time that this reality is exposed.Already in 2009 and 2012 Ciper published extensive reports on the abandonment of the State in 83 populations of the capital (see “Live and/or die in an occupied area of Santiago” and “The domain of the narco in the most vulnerable populations of Santiago”).The same graduated a special TVN report report in September of this year and a chapter of the “in its own trap” program of Channel 13, issued in 2015, where a journalistic team was under fire of criminal gangs for hours in Quilicura withoutPolice responded to their calls for help.
In the tour made by Ciper we find neighbors who organized to prevent new looting.They did it for fear that the fires would spread to their homes and because these large shopping centers are the only point, in kilometers around, where they find ATMs, Servipag and Pharmacies, among other essential services.If the "yellow vests" that distinguished them these days were put on, it was to replace the public security that the State did not provide them.
The testimonies indicate that in the mobs that swept these premises there were no shouts of political slogans or anarchist scratches.With modesty, they recognize that the majority of those who intervened were neighbors who saw the opportunity to get an easy and unexpected gain.A phenomenon that Ciper had already portrayed in the days after the earthquake of 27/F (see the reports "looters: occasion thieves" and "Post earthquake looters II: the horde that never reached the houses").
This is the story of five looting and nine deaths.
Renca leader and kayser: 24 called 133
First listened to the barking.It was around 20:45 on Saturday 19, the curfew approached, and his dog's scandal alerted him.He went to look and saw a car, with several men, parked outside his house.He saw weapons.Warned his neighbors.Illuminated only by car spotlights, some groups appeared in the street that in minutes became crowd.They went to the leading supermarket of Miraflores Avenue, in the New Renca sector.
The looting lasted hours.The neighbors insistently called Carabineros.The cell phone counts 24 calls that night.No one arrived.
At that time, in the sub -commission Lo Velásquez - in Brazil Avenue, about three minutes by car - the riots grew.The nearly 40 uniformed men who were there could not leave.Outside, fires and barricades.About 70 people shouted and threw stones and bottles.A carabinero told Ciper: "We had no reaction capacity (to go to the leader's looted), because we had to defend unity".Another commented that the "Chief asked for help from the military on Saturday, but that day they didn't arrive".The seventh police station in Renca, about five kilometers from the leader, was in a similar situation.In both enclosures I reproduced the phone again and again.WhatsApp messages also stopped.The neighbors warn what happened in the leader.But there was no ability to answer.
The mayor of Renca, Claudio Castro (DC), told Ciper that he asked the seventh police station to go to the place, but they told him that there was not enough staff: “At 9:00 p.m., there were already looting in different places of thecommune, including the leader.The carabineros thought it was going to be calmer.I also requested support from the government, but they did not answer me.We have a carabinero every thousand inhabitants and less police vehicles than quadrants ”.
Near midnight, a sub -commission patrol passed through the supermarket.He saw the mob.He threw a tear to the premises and continued on his way.It did not serve much.That night, neither Carabineros nor the army nor the PDI came to contain the mass they took up to refrigerators.The looting continued until after two in the morning.
The mob returned before 09:00.The neighbors woke up for the screams and the outbreak of the fence when they forced it by hooking it to a vehicle.The dough had returned in cars and trucks.What was a two -track street was now used as one of six, including the sidewalks.The looting extended to the underwear of the Kayser company, a few meters from the leader.
Around noon the noise on the street was deafening.“There were about 500 cars outside, I don't exaggerate, it was impressive.A crowd.Occupied each possible space.You could not pass and the cars collided with each other.We called 133, to the quadrant plan.And nothing, ”says one of the residents of the La Hacienda condominium, which is just behind Kayser's winery."It was chaotic, they stole between them.A group was filling a truck and another arrived and stole it.Others took out a Kayser truck and took him to the leader to load him, but they couldn't ”.
The neighbors continued to call Carabineros."We all knew they were going to loot.Here we are the poorest and did not put any shelter anywhere in the west sector.We are exhausted.This could have been avoided with four military ".Several people in the neighborhood were enraged to see how Carabineros and Military made great deployments in other communes."Cuicas communes," says one."And we calling how hueones," adds another.
A young man from the condominium had lunch with his family when he felt a smell of smoke.
"The leader will not be burning ..." he told his brother, worried.
When they looked out, they saw that it was Kayser's winery from which flames came out.It was 15:10.
Fire faced, the looters began to return to the supermarket.Attached to Kayser's wall is the house of the agricultural caregiver Los Girasoles.The neighbors saw with anguish how the watchman climbed to the roof of his home and, with a hose, wet what he could to prevent him from reaching the flames.
They ran to help him.They began to get things out, try to despair off the fire.The cans sealed from the cement base of Kayser's winery swelled.The building seemed to inflamate.
- This egg will explode!
- It will collapse!
The winery, they say several people in the neighborhood, looked like a ball.The flames came out more and more force.
- Call the fire department!Call the Pacos!
Half an hour lasted the anguishing task of the neighbors, until cars from different companies arrived (Renca, Santiago and Central Station).It was the first help they received.Dozens of firefighters began working, using the water of a single cistern, and the neighbors helped with the hoses of their houses, because in the sector there are no taps.
The fights between those who turned off the fire began, fearing that their houses would be burned, and those who continued to enter and leave the leader, dodging the volunteers in between chaos.
Some people went to the sub -commission car, to shout that please be, that Kayser's winery was burning.
At 16.13, while firefighters kept trying the fire, about six military arrived and began to help clear the place so that a crane could pass.Then, to control that no one entered the winery.Almost 19 hours had passed since the looting began on the previous night and a contingent appeared to put order.
Yoshua Osorio (17).The young man was found dead inside Kayser's winery, in Renca.
They had to look among the rubble if there was a dead.There were five: three minors and two adults.Of these, four are already identified: Manuel Jesús Muga Cardemil (59), Andrés Felipe Ponce Ponce (38), Yoshua Patricio Osorio Arias (17) and Julián Marcelo Pérez Sánchez (51).The circumstances in which they died are not yet clear.Their families suspect that they were attacked before they died trapped by the flames, which were locked.But Ciper could not confirm those versions.
From the sub -policy two carabineros arrived with antibalas and helmet vest."There was just a spear, they were chasing him, but they escaped them," says a neighbor.
The hours were eternal, it was hard to breathe.The fire did not love.Everything creaks, and the screams were heard from everywhere.There were still people who kept looting the supermarket.There were less and less things left, so the dough went to Montserrat and the coca cola bottlingman who are crossing Miraflores.There, PDI officials - who had just arrived - scared them.
The fire in the Kayser was controlling when, at 17:57, smoke began to the supermarket.
The volunteers, who at that point have already had more than two hours of work, saw with fright how the black smoke column grew.They reacted quickly.In a matter of minutes, dozens of neighbors and firefighters, five carabineros and some PDI carried hoses and helped as they could.Of the military, nothing.
Then everything happened very fast.At 18:39, the Santiago Fire Company touched the siren to alert: the collapse was imminent, it had to be evacuated.Twenty minutes later you could hardly be seen between the thick smoke of the gigantic flame structure.
By 19:30, the supermarket mole had already collapsed on itself.Two hours later, the fire took off.Some remains still crepited when everyone, except the neighbors, began to retire.One asked a carabinero why they had not arrived before, when looting, fires and five people could still be avoided.
- We don't supply - he replied.
A Renca police officer explained it to Ciper:
- What do five carabineros do against 400, 500 people?We are very few, and we had to distribute throughout the commune.
The neighbors quickly understood that they were alone.They organized.They cut the street with the same truck that the looters had tried to use in the supermarket.With sticks, iron and a drone, they put together a precarious defense.Applications went down to communicate with each other and, on the days that followed that irrespirable weekend, the group of coordinated families grew: from the tip to the Montijo.Since then, thieves have returned to the supermarket, to the winery and have tried to get to steal their homes.Carabineros go sometimes, when they can.
The neighbors understand that the endowment is not enough.And they say it has never been.Even more they still had when the military arrived and soon they left.“On Saturday we had, hopefully, five military.And they told us that they were going to have to go, that we took care of each other, ”a man lamented, while cleaning the street.
At night they make barricades and fires to close the step to looters who insist on getting the leader and Kayser, although there is nothing left in those shells.In the morning they turn off and clean the remains of the fires, and they will work.At night, they return to the street because they fear new looting that end in fires that affect their houses.
On Wednesday 23 in the afternoon they arrested with police.At night they caught others in the same.On Thursday, leader workers appeared, who blocked the perimeter, welding the bars.
The neighbors do not feel safe, and bothers them to distrust the people from their own neighborhoods:
- Before all this happened we were also alone.We are still the same.Here we are all indebted and tired.The discontent of all of us is because of inequality - a young man says, while the neighbors continue to turn off the fire of the previous night.
Leader of the White: "Insufficient endowment"
In the leader of the intersection of the white with Ochagavía (San Bernardo), the only thing that is standing are three ATMs.Everything else was converted into ashes or melted metal.It is Tuesday, October 22 and three days have passed since a mob raged him, a little less since a fire consumed how little he was inside and just a few hours since a second incident swept everything else.Almost everything, really, because a young man looks at the ATMs and wonders out loud if they will have money.He appears and says yes, because they are not burst, but burned.
The doubt is dangerous: according to the preliminary information that firefighters lifted, an alleged attempt to open those ATMs, using a gas ball, triggered the fire on Saturday night October 19.
The commander of the Fire Department of San Bernardo, Marcos Echeverría, recalls that the first alert call received him a few minutes after 22:00 on Saturday, and that he possibly came from the residents of the Tepual Villa or the Los Almendros condominium,located in front and next of the leader, respectively.
- When the first cars arrived, there was a lot of smoke and very aggressive fire in the southern part of the supermarket, where the easy combustion material abounded.In addition, we were told that inside there were four people locked up, who allegedly had been participating in the looting that began that afternoon - tells Ciper.
The intensity of the fire and the imminent danger it represented for the surrounding houses, moved to the complete endowment of the two fire companies of San Bernardo and reinforcements that arrived from other communes, such as Recoleta.According to the calculation of Echeverría, there were around 130 volunteers in total.
Wiki how: how to decolonise your classroom to make it more inclusive-https: // t.CO/V530BSOUN
— Institut Iresmo Tue Apr 23 07:19:15 +0000 2019
ATMs inside the looted leader in San Bernardo.
The commander explains that the central tasks were two: control the flames and perform the search work as fast as possible.He says that it was not easy, because, in addition to the size of the property, there were no close taps with sufficient water pressure.
"The presence of aljibes trucks was elementary," adds.
Once they managed to decrease the temperature, they entered and found an injured.This is José Manríquez Cordero (28), who was immediately transferred to a health center and that is admitted to El Pino hospital with 75% of his burned body and at vital risk.
A few minutes later, at 00:56 on Sunday, they found the bodies of two more people where there used to be a sales room.They died calcined.Paula Lorca Zamora (44) and Alicia Cofré Peñailillo (42), became the first names that appeared in the official list of deaths since the curfew was decreed in the Metropolitan Region.
They were said to be homeless, but the information that the municipality handles indicates that they were villagers close to the leader, both with family.
From the fourth person who supposedly was locked in the fire, there was not a single track."Fortunately it never existed," says Echeverría.
After turning off the fire, the last firefighters left at six o'clock on Sunday, although part of the contingent had to return in the early hours of Tuesday due to an aggressive regrowth.That is why the floor is pasty and the steaming roof.And that is why about twenty people are determined to get the last thing left of what was once the hall of spirits.His gondolas were destroyed, but, inexplicably, some pack of beers resisted the flames.Blackened, chicharrean for how hot they are.
"I take them the same, they are useful," says a man in his 60s who keeps them in the suitcase of a Chevrolet Corsa.
On Saturday 19, the leader of the white- one of the largest supermarkets in San Bernardo- closed its doors between 17:00 and 18:00.After the advertisement of the curfew, the presumption of the neighbors was that it would be filled with police or military, because they were certain that it would be one of the first looting spotlights.
The first, they say, was far from being fulfilled.They barely saw three patrols.But the second did happen.
At 19:00, when it was not enough yet, there were already hundreds of people who entered the supermarket and left with noodles, meat, appliances, clothing, crockery and pet food.What did not get into the bags of the cars and trucks, was thrown into the courtyards of the houses, although some neighbors rejected the merchandise and threw it back to the street.
According to a chronological count of the Municipality of San Bernardo, the looting to the leader was preceded by 21 events that also demanded police presence, such as the stoning that suffered its own town hall and two Metrotren stations, the robberies that affected banks around thePlaza de Armas, barricades, damaged traffic lights, and looting other supermarkets and hardware stores.
"During Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday morning, we do not have enough police endowment to face the different disturbances," says the municipal administrator of San Bernardo, Felipe Quintanilla.The Corporation, in addition, had to coordinate its work without the mayor Nora Cuevas, who was using its legal holidays in Verna (Switzerland).Could return to the country just on Tuesday 22.
Quintanilla tells Ciper that, to deal with all these facts simultaneously, the capacity of police officers was usually available to the commune: the 14th and 62nd Police Station.
Outdoor of the supermarket after the fire
"While these incidents occurred, the municipality contacted the police permanently, and her response was that they were absolutely exceeded, responding as they could," says Quintanilla, who details that following this situation, the municipality asked the Interior Minister, AndrésChadwick, who had a command in the commune of San Bernardo and not in Santiago.
While there was no formal response, Quintanilla considers that the government attended its call and for something sent more police and military contingent.Otherwise, he tells the administrator, there was no how to protect the 41 municipal schools, the 14 kindergartens, the 11 health centers and the two public hospitals.
"We didn't want to even make a call to militarize the commune, but unfortunately we lacked the support that merited a situation like that," he explains.
Once the fire unleashed, the municipal administrator ensures that another problem arose: the safe -conduct for officials who had to meet the emergency.Until that time, the only ones who had the document were firefighters and ambulances.All civil protection and support teams of the municipality had to wait.
For this reason, Quintanilla says: “The riots that occurred between Friday and Saturday morning, clearly respond to the lack of capacity and provision of order and security forces in the commune.There were simply how to address them ".
Ciper requested an interview at the Maipo de San Bernardo Prefecture, where a sergeant just said that "now we do supply", although seconds before this intervention, a group of people claimed for the lack of protection in a wholesale supermarket.
Part of the reinforcements that Carabineros has received since the weekend, come from the institution's non -commissioned officer.According to one of them, on condition of reserving their identity, since their arrival they have fulfilled shifts of up to 12 hours, so they are exhausted.In the few minutes they have a rest, they sit on the bus parked in front of the 14th police station, steps from the commune square of the commune.The military force, meanwhile, protects Metotren's stations, some supermarkets and malls.
But there are some areas in which neither of the two institutions are present, according to the neighbors.One of them is the Acacias, an industrial and residential sector located towards the west of the commune.There they tell Ciper that on Sunday night a group of people approached the wineries in the area and looted grocery stores and meats.
"They went through the town inviting us to loot, but we said no.After that they arrived with trucks and shooting towards the houses of the neighbors, and even threatened to get into them.Carabineros were called and reinforcements were requested, but they did not arrive.We had to organize among us - a young woman who witnessed the facts with her family tells.
The community decided to light barricades in the accesses of the town to prevent the passage of the assailants.The situation could be maintained under control without police or military help, but the next night, when the neighbors again set fires, they were repressed by police officers who confused them with protesters.
—A helicopter (from carabineros) went down more and more, until 15 minutes later many carabineros firing like crazy and pulling tear pumps.Some fell into the courtyards of our neighbors - a resident tells.
A young woman from the villa - who asked for reservation of her identity - summarizes the abandonment situation as follows: “This is a residential sector, where many children and older adults live, but the carabineros are not arriving.They are not seen in the streets ".
Construmart and Central Wholesale: Looting without end
It should not be surprised that in Paradero 31 de Santa Rosa the chaos was unleashed on Saturday, October 19.The map that the Undersecretary of Crime Prevention elaborates shows that this sector of La Pintana brings together a good part of what the same document calls "incivilities" (violation of the norms), registered in the commune.
While television broadcast the protests and looting, the neighbors of the Pintana took the opportunity.The morning of Saturday 19 entered the premises of Construmart (construction products) and Central Wholesale (which supplies small trade with groceries and drinks).According to neighbors neither the carabineros nor the military avoided that action.More than 24 hours later a violent fire razed both stores and ended the life of two men.A figure that could grow.
The fires were simultaneous.On Sunday, October 20, at 17:21 the Firefighters received the alert at the Construmart.Only five minutes later came the notice that the wholesaler, located 200 meters north, also burned.The Fire Investigator of the Form Corps of La Granja, San Ramón and La Pintana, Cristián Garay, gives clues of the intentionality of the accidents:
- In the Construmart they found accelerators (fuels), but we do not know whether because someone threw them or are typical of the premises that sells construction materials.The same goes for the wholesaler: we also have accelerators, but here there were generators to oil or benzina.The strange thing is that there were so many fire points when the fires began, and that they were simultaneous.
The fire commander of the same company, Mauricio Herrera, will say after there is no doubt that both fires were intentional.The culprits need to be found, if there are, but also clear the possible existence of corpses under the debris of the Central Wholesale Central.While firefighters turned off that fire, the neighbors asked them about relatives who did not find.Other witnesses told them that they had seen a person on fire who could not rescue.
Several days later the stench made them check the place with two specialist dogs.Both marked the same point: an area buried by the structure that collapsed.Until Friday 25 they had not received the help from Walmart, the company that owns the supermarket, to use heavy machinery that allows the unknowing.
The concentration maps of crimes prepared by the Ministry of Interior mark red to the populations of La Pintana that surround the buildings of Construmart and Central Wholesaler.There are a good part of the homicides, the violations of the weapons law, drug trafficking and domestic violence, in addition to other “incivilities” that are denounced in the commune.
Crime and poverty.The figures delivered by the Municipality to Ciper are clear.The multidimensional poverty index in the commune reaches 42.4%, compared to 15.01% averaged by the Metropolitan Region.4.08% of its inhabitants do not have access to basic services and 24.8% of households are overcrowded.The simce results of its schools are 20 average points than those of the rest of the region.And 46% of its population only reached eighth basic.
43 hours have passed since the fire was unleashed in the Construmart.It is 11:00 on Tuesday, October 22 and in the premises already destroyed a fire focus is still active.There are firefighters trying to turn off the flames, but they look tired: "We don't stop from Sunday," says one.They claim that people host them.They are demoralized: "There is no lack of the funny one that sets the fire again".
In parallel people get what they can from the premises that began to be looted three days before.Tables, beams, brass and ceramics, are the loot.Those who seem to be a mother and a daughter do not want to talk.They are sitting on a roma of tiles, selecting those that can still be useful.“I don't know anything, it's the first time I come.They warned me and came fast because then the Pacos arrive, ”says the older.And he adds, as apologizing to his eyes: "You have to take advantage".
Three other men run inside the shed that has almost all its structure on the ground, look, choose, coordinate.The urgency is guessed in their tense movements.Near the focus of the fire.At any time the iron that is stopped can yield.But it doesn't happen.
Outside an older man does want to talk about looting: “Look, there is no stick, low salaries and things go up.Then the glass was overflowing, po.I think people are asking for the right thing, would you live with $ 300 thousand as a family?Now, the AFP, give money to banks and banks pass it to people and if in three months they do not pay them, they take away the house ... and it is the same money of one.People pierced ".
A group of six carabineros from the 41st police station arrives and shoots a couple of pellets in the air.The few neighbors who were in the remaining of the Construmart escape.A precarious order is imposed.
Outside, four men are squatting in a flag off the southern side of the razed premises.When one of them offers a lighter to turn on a cigar, it shows the calluse and yellowish fingers generated by the base paste.He receives the lighter back and begins to tell that the looting departed on Saturday before lunch, which continued for several hours and that neighbors arrived “from the Santo Tomás, which is there in front;of the San Gabriel;of the Spain Villa, everywhere ".
He says that the fire left the afternoon of that Saturday.But he is wrong.The Firefighters and the Municipality confirmed to Ciper that the flames broke out after 5:00 p.m. on Sunday.Two calcined bodies appeared in the constramart fire appeared.One to just three meters from the exit door.A firefighter explains details: “He only burned the peel, so to speak, he still had viscera and his genitals in sight, so we knew he was a man.The other was at the center of the premises and his body was burned, they were only bones ".
Days later the identities of the two victims will be confirmed: José Atilio Arancibia Pereira (74) and Eduardo Alexis Caro del Pino (44).
It's 12:06 on Tuesday 22.Carabineros leave and firefighters too.Outside all those who looked out of the mask of curious neighbors: "They left, goats!".A stampery enters again.A three -quarter truck, a truck and several vans appears.The organization is improvised, but precise.Those who previously spoke with the carabineros condemning the chaos, now run with iron and smiles in the face.
- Feña!Come come!
The one who shouts is a young woman about 20 who calls her friend to accompany her inside the premises to look for something that serves.While they enter, a Mrs. CRESPA and CHASQUILLA, dressed in a white tight shirt with black and knee skirt, it hardly comes out with a cement cake in the hands between the hands.He says he wants it to fix his garden.
"Los Pacos, Los Pacos!" Haits someone.Stampede.But it was false alarm.They all run and enter again.More cars and more trucks are parked."Vamooos, caaabros!" Shouts a man, encouraging.Three teenagers go out with a supermarket car with three sacks of cement.There are complete families that are helped to load iron and beams.A man of jeans and jacket advances slowly loading four ceramic boxes.
José Arancibia Pereira.His body was found inside the Construmart that caught fire in La Pintana.
At 12:19 three PDI cars arrive and the detectives go down with their shotguns: "Out!".They don't shoot, but everyone understands
signal and start.The free chipe lasted 13 minutes.No one faces the PDI, not before Carabineros.Here nobody shouts slogans.This is not Plaza Italia.
A neighborhood leader of the area who prefers to keep his identity safeguarding, speaks of abandonment:
-I am jobless.The last time I worked hired was in 2014, I was about three years, she was a supermarket saleswoman in Santa Rosa.Here most of my neighbors work.In my sector there are working people.The majority are janitor, they do toilet, there are drivers or work in construction.They work far from the house.There are people who get up at 4:30, at 5, at 6.The bad ones are few, but they stand out.Now it's bad here, the sector spoiled.But these last years have been noticed more.It is for the drug.Studying is difficult.We are second -class citizens, as the song of the prisoners says.They do not come carabineros.One no longer calls them.Is to look and shut up, no more.
Juan Carlos Montecinos, president of the Ambrosio Norte Neighborhood Board (which is fold back from the wholesaler) decides to speak with his name.He is 64 years old and is retired.He says that during the fire he went with his neighbors to help, so that the houses stuck to the supermarket were not burned.
- Seeing the smoke there was panic, if the wind changed the population burned.It is complicated here.Here we pay dividend.I receive 165 lucas of retirement and payment 90 of dividend.What is left to eat, pay light, water, gas?My lady doesn't work, they fired her. What do I do to live for 30 days?I already have my life made, but our grandchildren and children what future will they have?This is not from the Piñera government, it belongs to all governments.That is why protests.We want a dignified life.Be able to go, take an ice cream.But salaries do not reach.And this does not come from now, it comes from many years.
