A bus burned and complaints of police action in a new day of protest in Chile

The mobilizations this Friday in Santiago de Chile ended the fire of a bus, some clashes with law enforcement and the denunciation of citizens and politicians for the alleged use of chemical substances in the water that the Police throws to disperse the protesters .

These facts were the discordant note of a Friday that once again gathered thousands of people in the central Plaza Italia of the Chilean capital in a festive atmosphere, when they meet 12 weeks from the start of the social outbreak, which has its target in the inequality of the country and that to date has caused at least 27 deaths.

The mobilizations, which began on October 18 last year, have been relegated almost exclusively to Fridays and although they have lost strength there is still discontent in the streets and the crisis seems far from being solved, despite the social measures announced by the Government and to the plebiscite about a new Constitution.

This Friday the police officers of Carabineros tried to prevent the protesters from entering Plaza Italia, but ended up giving up and in the middle of the afternoon the place, the epicenter of the protests, was completely taken.

In parallel and in the corners surrounding the square, clashes began between protesters and police officers, with the first thrown stones and Molotov cocktails and the latter making regular use of the water and water vehicles.

The yellow color of the water thrown by the Police, as seen in some videos, aroused suspicion about whether it would be mixing with a chemical.

"Can anyone in the Government explain why the water of the guanaco (colloquial name that the water-throwing vehicles receive in Chile) has that color? They are burning faces and bodies of protesters at this time! This police brutality must stop," he wrote in his Twitter account opposition deputy Pablo Vidal Rojas.

The opposition deputy Miguel Crispi also spread in the same social network some photos of people with alleged burns on the skin from the water thrown by the police and urged "act promptly to know what it contains" that water.

Another serious incident that left this day was the fire of an urban bus near Plaza Italia, successfully extinguished by firefighters.

MARCH PRECEDED BY THE BOICOT TO SELECTIVITY

The march of this day was preceded by the boycott that at the beginning of the week staged high school students against the test of access to public and private universities, which motivated several calls to march this Friday for this cause in downtown Santiago.

Last Monday and Tuesday some groups of students occupied several centers in which the so-called University Selection Test (PSU) was going to be given, preventing its development and causing its partial suspension.

This rebellion was encouraged by the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students (Aces), which considers that this test segregates students because their results reflect the purchasing power of their families, based on which the wealthiest are formed in better secondary schools and get access to the university through the PSU.

While the most disadvantaged come to this instance worse trained and without guarantees of success.

"I studied in a public school and unfortunately not all public schools are of the same quality as the one I studied and that automatically segregates society," said Felipe Efe, a 25-year-old student who demonstrated this Friday in Santiago.