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gabriel boric
'Like a War Zone': At Least 122 Killed in Deadliest Fires in Chile's History
"We are becoming one of the most vulnerable territories in the world to fires," Chilean president Gabriel Boric said in 2023.
Feb 05, 2024
Extreme wildfires made more likely by the ongoing climate crisis killed at least 122 people in Chile, destroyed at least 6,000 homes, and damaged around 14,000 as the country entered a two-day morning period on Monday after a weekend of destruction and chaos.
The fires, which ignited in the coastal region of Valparaíso late last week, were "without a doubt" the deadliest in the country's history, Interior Minister Carolina Toha said, as Le Mondereported. President Gabriel Boric said Sunday that the fires were also Chile's deadliest disaster overall since an earthquake and tsunami in 2010 and that the death toll would "increase in a significant way."
"We're facing an unprecedented catastrophe," mayor of hard-hit city Viña del Mar Macarena Ripamonti said, "a situation of this magnitude has never happened in the Valparaíso region."
"There was smoke, the sky turned black, everything was dark. The wind felt like a hurricane. It was like being in hell."
The fires first ignited in hard-to-access wooded hillsides around Viña del Mar, a popular tourist destination on the coast, according toThe Associated Press. But they then descended upon developed areas, fueled by drought and heatwave. With temperatures in the area reaching 40°C, the fires devoured a famous botanical garden in the city on Sunday and rendered at least 1,600 people homeless, according to AP. The nearby towns of Quilpe and Villa Alemana were also impacted.
"From one moment to the next, the fire reached the botanical park. In ten minutes the fire was already on us," Jesica Barrios, whose Viña del Mar home was one of those destroyed, toldReuters. "There was smoke, the sky turned black, everything was dark. The wind felt like a hurricane. It was like being in hell."
Another resident of nearby Villa Independencia evacuated her home on Friday to find it destroyed on Monday.
"It's like a war zone, as if a bomb went off," 63-year-old Jacqueline Atenas said. "It burned like someone was throwing gasoline on the houses. I don't understand what happened... There was a lot of wind, a lot of wind and big balls of fire that would fly by."
Drone footage shared by The Guardian showed blocks of homes torched and reduced to rubble and ashes.
"We need help, pet food, supplies, clothing," one woman told
The Guardian. "I don't know. My house, I lost everything, everything."
Boric declared an emergency in Chile's central and southern regions due to the fires. "All of Chile is suffering," Boric said, "but we will stand up once again."
Deputy Interior Minister Manuel Monsalve said that 165 fires were still blazing as of Sunday night, though cooler and cloudier weather predicted for the next few days should help firefighters to control them, according to Reuters. The AP reported that fires burned less intensely on Monday.
Toha said that 43,000 hectares had burned as of Saturday, according to AFP. On Sunday, Toha said around 1,400 firefighters had been sent to fight the flames, as BBC News reported. The military is also assisting emergency services.
There are reports that some of the fires may have been intentionally started.
"These fires began in four points that lit up simultaneously," Valparaíso Governor Rodrigo Mundaca said Sunday, as AP reported. "As authorities we will have to work rigorously to find who is responsible."
El Niño conditions have also brought a drought and heatwave to southern South America during its summer, creating ideal conditions for fire. At the same time, scientists point out that this occurs in the broader context of an ongoing climate crisis driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
"No country can address the Climate Crisis alone. We need a global phase out of fossil fuels."
The fires ignited weeks after a study published in Nature on January 23 concluded that "the concurrence of El Niño and climate-fueled droughts and heatwaves boost the local fire risk and have decisively contributed to the intense fire activity recently seen in Central Chile."
Fires burned three times as many acres last decade compared to the one before, and six of the seven most destructive fire seasons in Chile's history have happened since 2014.
"In the last few years, our country has lived through the impacts of climate change," Boric said last year, which also saw intense fires, as Mongabayreported. "We are becoming one of the most vulnerable territories in the world to fires."
This is not an experience unique to Chile, as Canada's record-breaking wildfire season during summer 2023 attests. Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe explained on social media that "climate change is the difference between dropping a match into green, wet wood vs. bone-dry kindling that's been baking in unseasonably warm temps for weeks. That's how climate change is making wildfires bigger and more dangerous, regardless of their cause."
In a thread on social media, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences graduate student Aaron Thierry explained the climactic context for Chile's fires, including an ongoing drought and record-breaking heatwave and increased fires across South America.
While Chile's government is aware of and taking action on the problem, "no country can address the Climate Crisis alone," Thierry said. "We need a global phase out of fossil fuels. That means all countries need politicians who will deliver this transformative shift in governance. That means we need to get out and vote for them!"
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Chile Rejects Effort to Extend Pinochet's 'Extremist Neoliberal Model'
The proposed right-wing constitution would have further imperiled abortion rights and boosted the private sector's role in key areas, including healthcare and education.
Dec 18, 2023
Chilean voters on Sunday rejected a proposed right-wing constitution that would have further weakened abortion rights and allowed the private sector to extend its reach in the country's healthcare, education, and pension systems.
Sunday's vote marks the second time in as many years that Chileans have spurned a replacement for the current constitution, which was drafted during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's murderous U.S.-backed dictatorship and subsequently amended dozens of times.
Last year, after a massive far-right disinformation campaign, voters rejected a progressive constitution that would have enshrined gender equality, formally recognized the nation's Indigenous groups, strengthened workers' rights, and expanded the welfare state, including by making public colleges tuition-free.
The new proposal, crafted by elected members of a constitutional council dominated by conservatives, "placed private property rights and strict rules around immigration and abortion at its center," Reutersreported.
The proposed replacement would have slightly tweaked the current constitution to protect "the life of who is unborn," a change that observers said would have opened the door to the total criminalization of abortion. The procedure is currently legal in Chile only in cases of rape, a nonviable fetus, or a threat to the life of the mother.
Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler warned that the proposed rewrite "threatened to enshrine an extremist neoliberal model in the country's constitution, extending Pinochet's original vision to include provisions against abortion and same-sex marriage."
Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who also served as United Nations high commissioner for human rights, toldThe Associated Press that she voted against the new proposal because she prefers "something bad to something worse."
The proposal failed with 56% opposed, and Chilean President Gabriel Boric said his government would not attempt to replace the constitution a third time, ending an effort that began with an overwhelming 2020 vote in favor of rewriting the document.
"Our country will continue with the current constitution, because after two plebiscites on proposed constitutions, neither managed to represent or unite Chile in its beautiful diversity," Boric said Sunday.
Paula Ávila-Guillen, an international human rights lawyer and executive director of the Women's Equality Center (WEC), said in a statement that "Chile rejected a constitution that jeopardized the three exceptions to abortion access and would have put the lives of Chileans at risk."
WEC noted that in addition to imperiling Chileans' minimal access to abortion, the proposed replacement "included text that would have allowed pharmacies to refuse to sell the morning-after pill" and "allowed schools to reject children with single mothers under the 'institutional conscientious objection.'"
"The will of the people is clear: The majority of Chileans support reproductive healthcare and will not stand by as their rights are taken away," said Ávila-Guillen. "From Chile to Ohio, this proves that when abortion is on the ballot, protecting abortion access always wins."
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'You Are Not Alone,' Bolivia Tells Gazans as Socialist Government Cuts Ties With Israel
Meanwhile, the leftist leaders of Colombia and Chile and the kingdom of Jordan have recalled their ambassadors to Israel.
Nov 01, 2023
Citing "crimes against humanity," Bolivia's socialist administration on Tuesday became the first in the world to completely sever diplomatic relations with Israel over its war on Gaza, while the leftist governments of Chile and Colombia and Jordan's monarchy recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv.
"We are sending this official communication to the state of Israel in which, as stated, we make known our decision as the Plurinational State of Bolivia to break diplomatic relations with Israel," Bolivian Minister of the Presidency María Nela Prada told reporters at a Tuesday afternoon press conference.
"We also demand an end to the attacks in the Gaza Strip, which have so far caused thousands of civilian deaths and the forced displacement of Palestinians," she continued.
Prada said the decision by Bolivian President Luis Arce "is consistent with our pacifist policy," adding that her government will pursue "sanctions against those responsible for the war crimes that are being committed against the Palestinian people—not only now, but since many years."
The minister also vowed that Bolivia "will send humanitarian aid to those affected in the Gaza Strip, who are going through a serious health crisis," while calling on "brotherly nations" to "produce collective action" to "avoid genocide" in Gaza.
Speaking after Prada at Tuesday's press conference, Bolivian Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani said that "within the framework of its principled position of respect for life, Bolivia has decided to break diplomatic relations with Israel, in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive being carried out in the Gaza Strip."
On Monday, Arce urged the United Nations Security Council to "prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people and pave a definitive solution for Palestine to exercise its right to self-determination, to have its own territory without illegal occupations, and fully enjoy the attributes of a free, sovereign, and independent state."
Bolivia's U.N. ambassador, Diego Pary, said Tuesday that his country "will be on the right side of history."
"The only formula that can truly guarantee peace and security in the region is the full recognition of state of Palestine in internationally recognized pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital," he informed the U.N. General Assembly.
"Free Palestine is not just a cause of the Palestinian people, but rather a question of global justice and peace," Pary—a Quecha Indigenous leader—continued. "The liberty and dignity of human beings must be respected in all corners of this planet and it is our duty to work together to achieve a future in which Palestine can once and for all be free."
"To our brothers and sisters in Palestine, I reiterate, you are not alone," he added. "Bolivia stands with you, and the peoples of the world are with you."
In 2009, then-Bolivian President Evo Morales—who, like Arce, is a member of the Movement for Socialism party—joined leftist former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel over its Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza, in which more than 1,400 Palestinians—most of them civilians—and 13 Israelis, almost all soldiers, were killed.
Bolivia and Israel restored relations in 2019 during the administration of right-wing former President Jeanine Áñez, who took power after a U.S.-backed coup.
Israel responded to Bolivia's move with a Foreign Ministry statement condemning "Bolivia's support of terrorism and its submission to the Iranian regime, which attest to the values the government of Bolivia represents."
Leftist Chilean President Gabriel Boric on Tuesday recalled Jorge Carvajal, his country's ambassador to Israel, "given the unacceptable violations of international humanitarian law that Israel has incurred in the Gaza Strip."
"Chile strongly condemns and observes with great concern that these military operations—which at this point in their development entail collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza—do not respect fundamental norms of international law," he added.
Boric cited the more than 8,000 Palestinians, "mostly women and children," killed by Israeli forces since October 7, when Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel left more than 1,400 people dead and over 200 kidnapped.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that at least 8,796 Palestinians—including nearly 2,300 women and over 3,600 children—have been killed in Israeli attacks, while another 23,000 suffered injuries.
Last year, Boric put off accepting new Israeli Ambassador Gil Artzyeli's credentials in response to Israeli occupation forces' killing of Odai Trad Salah, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy, in the West Bank.
Boric also angered many Israeli officials last year by announcing that Chile would open an embassy in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Also on Tuesday, Colombia recalled its ambassador to Israel, Isaac Gilinski Sragowicz, with left-wing Colombian President Gustavo Petro writing on social media that "if Israel does not stop the massacre of the Palestinian people we cannot be there."
Petro's recall is the latest move in a diplomatic fracas between Colombia and Israel that erupted after Petro likened Israeli leaders' dehumanizing and genocidal statements about Palestinians to "what the Nazis said about the Jews" and called Gaza—often described as the "world's largest open-air prison"—a "concentration camp."
After Israel accused Petro of "hostile and antisemitic statements" and "support for the horrific acts of Hamas terrorists," the Colombian president hit back, saying Israel's war on Gaza is "genocide."
"They do it to remove the Palestinian people from Gaza and take it over," Petro wrote on social media after an Israeli bombardment of the Jabalia refugee camp killed and wounded at least scores and possibly hundreds of Palestinians—one of at least three massacres reportedly carried out by Israeli forces on Tuesday.
"The head of the state who carries out this genocide is a criminal against humanity," Petro added, referring to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Their allies cannot talk about democracy."
On Wednesday, Jordan became the first Arab country having normalized relations with Israel to recall its ambassador over the war. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Al-Safadi directed Rasan al-Majali, the Hashemite kingdom's ambassador to Israel, to return to Amman "as an expression of Jordan's position of rejection and condemnation of the raging Israeli war on Gaza, which is killing innocent people and causing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe."
Jordan—which in 1994 became the second Arab nation to officially recognize Israel—previously withheld its ambassador to Tel Aviv during Cast Lead, and recalled al-Majali in 2019 to protest Israel's imprisonment of Jordanian citizens Hiba al-Labadi and Abdulrahman Miri without charge or trial.
Al-Safadi said al-Majali's return is conditioned upon Israel stopping its war on Gaza and ending the "humanitarian crisis it has caused."
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