Camila Vallejo – Latin America's 23-year-old new revolutionary folk hero -Guardian

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/08/camila-vallejo-latin-america-revolutionary?newsfeed=true

excerpt:
As the second female president of Chile's leading student body, known as Fech (Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile), Vallejo – who is also a member of the youth arm of the Communist party, the JJCC – has presided over the biggest citizen democracy movement since the days of opposition marches to General Augusto Pinochet a generation ago.

The government response has reminded many older Chileans of that same dark era. Three days ago, on Thursday, Chilean riot police ambushed Vallejo and a group of fellow student leaders just after a press conference in downtown Santiago. "They targeted the leadership with violence," said Ariel Russell, a University of Chile student who witnessed the attack. "We had not even started the march and the police apparatus was upon us."

Vallejo, a 23-year-old geography student, was singing and marching with a handwritten sign when a squad of military vehicles closed in and attacked her with jets of tear gas. A pair of trucks mounted with water cannons unleashed a barrage of water fierce enough to break bones and scrape a person across the pavement. Vallejo was soaked, a cloud of tear gas was then blasted on to her body. With her skin wet, the chemical reaction was massive and incapacitating. Vallejo was paralysed. Her body went into an allergic reaction and welts from the gas erupted over it.

"At first, we resisted, but it was intolerable," she told the Observer. "You could not breathe, it was complicated, we had to run away from the carabineros then another water cannon hit us in the face with a different chemical, this was much stronger … my whole body was burning, it was brutal."

Over the next four hours, journalists were beaten and 250 people arrested. Twenty-five police were injured as masked youths with paint bombs and handfuls of rocks counter-attacked. All Thursday afternoon, downtown Santiago was awash in running street fights between heavily armoured police units and hundreds of protesters decked in shorts and tennis shoes, with scarves to shield them from the gas.

As squads of police attacked students, pedestrians and even an ambulance, Vallejo huddled up in an office, receiving medical care and monitoring the situation through mobile phone reports from a team of scouts at the edges of what quickly became a riot.

The government blamed Vallejo for the chaos; after all, she had made the much publicised call, mobilising her followers to congregate at Plaza Italia, a public park and march along the Alameda, the capital's main thoroughfare, which sits less than two kilometres from the lightly guarded presidential palace. Vallejo was quick to retort that public gatherings need no authorisation and that the police had illegally attacked students standing in a park.

I know it's politically incorrect to remark on female beauty but my first thought was that Camila Vallejo is, hands down, the most beautiful young woman I have ever seen (in a photo) and I cringed to think what these thugs did to her face and skin with their diabolical hoses of burning toxics. Of course it makes no difference whatsoever how beautiful an injured person is, but it was just an instinctual reaction--as if they'd thrown chemicals at the "Mona Lisa." (She really is that beautiful.)

I witnessed similar brutality by the police during Seattle '99--pepper spray hoses directed at the faces and heads of peaceful, seated protestors. It is a horrible thing to see. I was a legal observer and didn't get hosed, but certainly had to run from the choking toxic fumes that they filled downtown Seattle with--totally unnecessary and unprovoked. It wasn't until after these attacks that they let loose their "black-masked" young agents provocateur to kick in some store windows and burn trash cans for the evening 'news.' "Alice in Wonderland" 'logic' by the police: They do something horrible to provoke violence, and when peaceful protestors remain peaceful, even when brutally provoked, they can't stand it and have to manufacture a violent response. If the "black-masked" young 'anarchists' were not police issue, the police certainly "owned" them by letting them run wild trashing private property.

Maybe we need to "occupy" the pepper spray and pepper spray hose manufacturers. I was thinking, same tactic, all over the world, where the rich oligarchs are stealing everybody blind and trying to prevent peaceful protest. How do you get "at" them? Maybe the thing is to get "at" the people making their weapons. It is so despicable when they brutalize peaceful protestors. They are hitting at democracy itself. They WANT riots and when we, the exploited peoples of this earth, won't give them riots, they create them with their weapons. So why not target the weapons manufacturers? We can't influence those making decisions any more. But we could shut down their death and injury factories.

including men -- as have revolutionary men.

For instance, look at how Che and Fidel in his youth inspired women with their physical beauty.

It's about the brave, idealistic, determined look in their eyes and how they move as well.

I wish her the best with those repressive forces in Chile.