Violent protests in Chile over food shortage amid virus lockdown
Clashes between residents and police broke out in the poor El Bosque neighborhood of Santiago on Monday, May 18, with people complaining about a lack of food and work due to the lockdown currently being imposed on the Chilean capital to help contain the coronavirus.
A group of protesters threw rocks, shouted, and burned piles of wood along a street in the destitute neighborhood on Santiago's southern fringe. Images on local television showed police spraying tear gas and water cannons to disperse the growing crowd.
The municipality said in a statement that families were going hungry in the poorest sectors of El Bosque, a neighborhood where many work informally, or not at all. The city district has been under quarantine since mid-April, city officials said in a statement.
Santiago is one of Latin America's most prosperous cities. But a stark rich-poor divide and a growing sense of inequality prompted mass protests in late 2019. Many of the demands lodged by protesters last year, from increased pensions to higher pay, remain unresolved.
Chile's center-right president, Sebastian Pinera, said in a televised address later on Monday that his government would deliver 2.5 million baskets of food and cleaning supplies directly to homes by late this week or early next.
Chile surpassed 40,000 cases of the new coronavirus last week amid a sharp spike in infections that has seen hospitals approach collapse in the weeks ahead of the Southern Hemisphere winter. The country now has 46,059 total cases and 478 deaths.
(Source: Reuters)
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