Techno reverberates from a small stage set on the steps of Santa Lucia hill in central Santiago. Women dance together under the heat of the late summer sun, wearing the signature green and purple colours of the campaign for women’s and queer people’s rights. “Dance with us to show we women are together,” the MC cries. “Turn your rage into dance.”
This was the country’s biggest International Women’s Day demonstration, or 8M, since the pandemic. Protests were organised in more than 20 cities across the country on Sunday and this Monday, and for the half a million people who took to the streets of the Chilean capital, there was a sense of joy and celebration. Dance groups and artistic performances took over the main thoroughfare. Vendors sold micheladas (a beer-based Mexican cocktail) and cans of beer from the pavements. People shouted pro-abortion slogans against the echoes of percussion bands. Palestinian and Mapuche (a group of Indigenous peoples from south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina) flags waved above the crowds.
It felt like a carnival, but there was an underlying fear among many of the women present.
