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‘Santiago Rising’ filmmaker says Chile’s ‘social explosion’ holds lessons for UK (video)

Film on tour around UK shows in Liverpool tomorrow night and documents social uprising that toppled decades of dictatorship

At his own expense and as a fortieth birthday present to himself, filmmaker Nick MacWilliam documented the Chilean ‘social explosion’ that ended decades of murderous dictatorship in Chile as student protests against transport fare rises ignited a general uprising.

And MacWilliam, who lived and worked in Chile and elsewhere around Latin America, says that the sudden change, from hopelessness and exploitation to hope and change, holds lessons for the UK. Chile was the ‘laboratory’ for the right-wing stripping of assets, impoverishment and disenfranchisement of millions – a model subsequently followed in countries around the world, including in the UK under Thatcher and even more so now:

For details of other showings, visit santiagorisingfilm.com. Skwawkbox received no remuneration or benefit in kind for this article.

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11 comments

  1. Chile was populated mainly by Spaniards from the north on the Atlantic coast, as for natives Americans they have the Araucans.as their ancestors. Both north Spanish on the Atlantic coast and Araucans are people that are not scared to fight.
    It took Rome 200 years to conquest the Iberian Pensinsula, the northern Spanish tribes fighting to the death with women riding into battle. While the Araucans fought the Spaniards to the death too.
    English specially in the south would never be Chileans, I am sorry but the English in their majority are too fond of their kings and queens, to have a revolt like in Chile you need a republican spirit, to understand citizenship rather than been happy to live life as a subject.
    Look at your British passports, you are British subjects as opposed to British citizens. A revolt similar to Chile? Somehow I don’t think so.

    1. I sadly agree. The army’s not shy of protecting the monarchy and many people would stand with them. I think we must be the world’s happiest subjugated people.

    2. I find a lot of people revolting, especially the ignorant half wits who post crass generalisations & think they’re facts.

      1. Not facts, opinions based on the symbiotic relationship between the monarchy and the armed forces since Napoleonic times along with the hierarchical structure of the armed forces, the top of which sits Sandhurst. I don’t believe we’d be allowed to leave NATO either. On the other hand, we are very a successfully managed democracy so the likelihood of army intervention is negligible. Still, that didn’t stop threats to bring Corbyn down, or Wilson. Maria is right, we don’t have a republican spirit.

      2. And not to forget, British armed forces provide repressive regimes all over the world with training to control their people or attack their neighbours and we never question it in the media or parliament.

      3. Steve Richard, as Lundiel says mine are informed opinions. But, it is a fact that your British passport presents you and any other Brit as a subject to her majesty the queen.
        She doesn’t pay taxes despite her huge state, she is one of the wealthiest women on earth through the pillage of foreign lands, these are facts too.
        The monarchy exploited poor British people that readily helped her family to amass a huge fortune by been willing to died for the monarchy in foreign lands, while many of their widows and orphans were forced to live in the work house in destitution, after their deaths.
        Nowadays it is mainly working class lads from left behind areas that join the British Army and go an died in foreign lands for queen and country.
        Tell me please what do you have to be proud about it? Where is your citizenship?

    3. I hope to see the film, from watching the video within the article, it sounds great.

      Also, I fully agree with Maria and Lundiel.

      I am very much a republican and I despise the monarchy as much as I despise the tories and labour under the con-artist MR keir “erik armrest” starmer.

  2. Do I have to watch the whole interview just to find out where the hell in Liverpool it’s being shown?

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