(Santiago de Chile) Supporters and opponents of Chile’s proposed new constitution clashed in central Santiago on Sunday after two opposing protests converged in the same place, an AFP photographer noted.
Posted at 3:34 p.m.
A parade of cyclists in favor of the approval of the Constitution, which will be voted on on September 4, arrived at Plaza Italia, the epicenter of protests since October 2019, and were met by another demonstration , organized by people from the countryside, who on horseback and carriage expressed their rejection of the text.
At the capital’s central roundabout, the two groups exchanged insults, threw stones at each other and some cyclists were beaten with sticks.
According to a video broadcast by local television channels, one of the horse-drawn carriages jostled several cyclists while galloping into the pro-Constitution march.
These events occurred during the last campaign weekend before the September 4 referendum, during which fifteen of the nearly twenty million inhabitants of Chile are called to the polls with a compulsory vote to validate or reject the new Constitution.
If the text is rejected, the current Constitution, written during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) then reformed dozens of times after the return to democracy, will remain in force.