President Michelle Bachelet lead Monday Chile’s official ceremonies at La Moneda Presidential Palace that commemorated the country’s own September 11. Former collaborators of deposed President Salvador Allende, ruling Concertacion politicians and Allende family members attended the event.
At the most symbolic moment occurred when President Bachelet placed a red rose at a memorial plaque that commemorates President Allende inside the Presidential Palace.
A symbolism that remembers the end of democratic rule in 1973, when the military assaulted the Presidential Palace with fighter jets, tanks, and grounds troops, setting the historical building ablaze.
That image of La Moneda Presidential Palace burning is seared into the minds of Chileans as the symbol of the country’s darkest period in history.
That image of the Palace ablaze reappeared Sunday when social groups, human rights organizations marched by the Presidential Palace commemorating September 11. The marched also attracted anarchist groups.
Anarchist had been preparing since Monday fighting with police outside Universities; so Sunday, anarchist groups clad in black clothes, with their faces covered threw paint bombs and a firebomb through a window of the Presidential Palace; also with fought police throughout the march, destroying public and private property.
The image drew immediate condemnation from all sectors of society. Anarchist web sites called the event a direct action against an exclusionary democratic system that applies globalised and liberalized economic policies that oppress the working people.
The Government says it is planning to take action in an effort to deter anarchist groups from hijacking the right of people to demonstrate on public spaces. Anarchist groups use emblematic dates like September 11 and May 1, as symbolic dates to fight with direct action what they call Chile’s corrupt exclusionary democratic system.
But the image of La Moneda Presidential Palace attacked with a firebomb has the public demanding action against violent groups to prevent similar incidents from taking place, and demand the government put a stop against the direct violent action of anarchist groups.
Groups made up ironically of young people who grew up in democracy and are a highly educated product of Chile’s democracy.
