The “Occupy Wall Street” protests across the United States show that North Americans are finally standing up against the big banks and their bought-and-paid-for politicians.
And the protests have gone global. On October 15, sympathy demonstrations erupted in more than 900 cities around the world. Noted the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, globalized finance has succeeded in “globalizing discontent and indignation.”
October 15 was historic, said one of organizers in Chile — “the first universal gathering of citizens for a better world.”
Calling themselves los indignados and las indignadas (the angry ones), the protestors in Latin America were internationalizing Spain’s “Real Democracy Now” movement, as well as Occupy Wall Street in the U.S.
Both of those movements, of course, owe a debt to the ”Arab Spring,” the mass movements in North Africa and the Middle East that have toppled dictators there. And while the protests were international, they were also rooted in the struggles in each county.
In Santiago, Chile, an estimated 5,000 “angry ones” marched with music and dancing, calling for a new constitution and supporting the university students who are striking for a free public education system.
Argentines demonstrated in at least eight cities, including Buenos Aires. They included a movement of unemployed that developed in the financial crisis of 2001. “It can’t go on like this,” said one marcher. “The rich created the crisis, and we, the poor, always end up paying.”
Protestors in Mexico City — and 20 other Mexican cities — carried signs saying “Estamos Hasta la Madre” (“We’ve had it up to here”). The slogan has been big in Mexican protests this year, including the mass march on the capital calling for an end to the violence.
Observed renowned Uruguayan author Eduado Galeano, the international demonstrations show that “we’re not condemned to living in the most dangerous universal dictatorship.”
“Everything can change,” he said.
