Youths, Police Skirmish in First Violence of Chilean Campaign

Campaigning in Chile’s first presidential election in 19 years ended Monday with tear gas and rock-throwing skirmishes involving youths claiming to be followers of the rival candidates, the first violence in an otherwise peaceful race.

After the final rally by rightist candidate Hernan Buchi, youths chanting slogans in favor of opposition front-runner Patricio Aylwin stoned police patrolling Alameda Bernardo O’Higgins, a broad avenue in the center of the capital. Police responded with barrages of high-pressure water and tear-gas grenades.

No more than 200 youths appeared to take part actively in the clashes that lasted nearly three hours.

By mid-evening, hundreds of Buchi supporters marched from the rally site to the Alameda, and scattered fighting broke out between the Buchi marchers and the groups that had been fighting the police. Several people were hit by stones. It was unclear whether any of the injuries were serious.

The race to succeed outgoing President Augusto Pinochet, who took power after a bloody 1973 coup, had evolved calmly. By law, campaigning ended Monday to allow voters two days of reflection before Thursday’s balloting, which also will decide 120 House and 38 Senate seats.

Aylwin, far ahead in the polls, heads a 17-party coalition of parties ranging from center to left. Buchi, Pinochet’s former finance minister, is supported by two rightist parties.

Buchi has stressed the social order and economic progress brought by the Pinochet government, in contrast to the turmoil of the 1970-73 rule of Marxist President Salvador Allende, which ended with Pinochet’s coup.

It is not clear whether the rock-throwers who attacked the police and the Buchi supporters were far-left militants, thugs out to stir up trouble or provocateurs. Any violence ill serves the Aylwin coalition in its attempt to project an image of moderation and accommodation.

Earlier, tens of thousands of people filled a major Santiago avenue for Buchi’s final rally, far fewer than the hundreds of thousands who attended Aylwin’s final campaign celebration on Sunday.

The athletic 40-year-old Buchi repeatedly attacked the opposition alliance for including parties and candidates who had participated in Allende’s Popular Unity coalition. Buchi suggested that Aylwin, a centrist who leads the Christian Democratic Party, would prove unable to control the leftists in his alliance.

“Nobody knows if a vote for Patricio Aylwin is a vote for the Christian Democrats or the Socialists or the Communists,” Buchi said. “Are you against violence and terrorism? They are not.”