Escalation of Santiago Protests

Date: October 18, 2019 • Location: Santiago, Chile

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 2019.

Protests in Santiago that started 11 days prior escalated into open battle against the Chilean national police, forcing President Sebastián Piñera to declare a state of emergency.

Santiago, also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. Located in the Chilean Central Valley within the Santiago Basin, between the Andes to the east and the Chilean Coastal Range to the west, it anchors the Santiago Metropolitan Region and its conurbation of Greater Santiago, which comprises more than forty communes and concentrates over a third of the national population and around 45% of Chile's GDP. Most of the city lies between 500 and 650 meters above sea level, with recent urban growth extending into the Andean foothills.