Bands of protesters lit bonfires along the central Alameda Avenue and clashed with riot police as clouds of teargas and smoke engulfed the centre of the city. Earlier on Monday, Piñera announced that the interior minister, Andres Chadwick – an outspoken supporter of Augusto Pinochet during the 1973-1990 regime – would be replaced by Gonzalo Blumel, a young lawyer. The government ought to proceed with an ambitious social agenda that takes charge of the citizen’s demands,” said Alvaro Elizalde, president of the Socialist party. The new interior minister Blumel repeatedly welcomed human rights investigations, and also reached out to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants recently settled in Chile – in dramatic contrast from the hardline authoritarian rhetoric of his predecessor Chadwick. Social media streams have been full of images of security forces beating protesters after Piñera declared a state of emergency and deployed the army last week. Human rights groups on Monday demonstrated outside the supreme court and demanded stricter limits to the crowd control tactics used by security forces which thus far have led to more than 1,000 Chileans injured and morethan 100 partially blinded after being shot in the eye. “We demand that the right of protesters be respected,” said the letter, which called for “an active and responsible dialogue, in good faith, to create pathways to solutions”. Outnumbered officers have been unable to stop mass looting and vandalism which has left more than 100 supermarkets in ruins, alongside numerous subway stations, pharmacies and banks.
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