The Welcome to Media Roots Radio. This is Abby Martin.

Protests have spread across Latin America in recent weeks, with demonstrations

erupting in Ecuador to Bolivia, Haiti to Honduras. But Chile has seen one of the most

significant and long-lasting movements, with millions of people pouring into the streets for the last

month straight. The protests there began in mid-October and have not waned,

despite government curfews, newly imposed the laws,

and draconian police violence against protesters.

Here to join us to discuss this uprising is Pablo Vivanco.

He is a freelance multimedia journalist, producer, and commentator.

He's also the former director of Telesaur English.

So you just got back from your home country, Chile, to report on the demonstrations

that have rocked the country for the last few weeks.

Can you start by explaining how these protests first began?

Sure.

So in October, the national government of Sebastian Piniera announced that they would be increasing the fares in Santiago's metro system.

This was, you know, the subway system, the metro system was something that was kept even public for most of the dictatorship,

but it's something that under the last term of Bachelet, they introduced a public-private partnership.

And so the administration and collection affairs is something that the private sector started to have a hand in.

When the government announced this, students, particularly high school students, started taking actions.

They started calling for what they, what they began organizing these demonstrations

that they called fair evasions, massive fair evasions.

And what they would do is they would go on mass to West subway station

...