May day

Well its international workers day, and here in Santiago everythings shut down for the big demonstration. In preparation the authorities have behaved in the same manner as Thursdays demonstration: put lots of men in body armour and with shields on the streets, backed up by lots of armoured vehicles with rather ominous attachments.

The demonsration was to say the least huge, Lots of banners, boistresness and shouting but , with one or two exceptions, peaceful. The demonstrators made the usual appeals to the tenents of dialectic materialism: "the workers united etc etc", which the authorities generally met with a bored here we go again sort of response. One incident stood out a demonstrator was making an appeal of proletarian brotherhood to one policeman who responded by waving his baton and shouting at the representative of the workers, probably along the lines of "fuck off you bell end, or I´ll shove this baton up your arse so hard and so deep you´ll be tasting shit of your teeth for a fortnight". But in Spanish. Divide and conquer thats what I say.You´r probably wondering how I got so close to the action, easy I watched it on television. If you think I was going out in that your off your head. L a Serena and then the Atacama next.