Protesters in southern Chile have blocked roads and turned thousands of tourists into “hostages,” prompting some to try to escape by trekking to the airport on foot.
Tourists are dragging luggage for kilometers to and from Punta Arenas International Airport as roadblocks paralyze transport in a dispute with the government about fuel subsidies.
Tourists, mostly from Argentina, Europe and North America, staged their own demonstration to complain about dwindling food, money and patience, with some saying they had been “kidnapped.”
Paul Sullivan, 22, a backpacker from Devon, England, started hiking on Monday from Punta Arenas — one of the world’s most southern cities — to the airport 24km away. He passed five roadblocks where locals offered soup, rice and meat, but made no apology for marooning him and an estimated 2,000 visitors since Jan. 11.
“They were very friendly and gave me some coffee and apples to send me on my way,” he said.
The civil engineering graduate hitched rides part of the way from vehicles which shuttled between roadblocks. In the opposite direction trudged people with suitcases — tourists who had just landed, unaware there was a general strike and were trying to get to town.
Sullivan made it out, as did a French couple, but hotels remained filled with holidaymakers desperate to leave, but hesitant to do so on foot in cold, windy conditions. By coincidence, this week was the 100th anniversary of British Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed Antarctic trek.
Locals reneged on several promises to let tourists leave, hardening suspicion they wanted to keep them as bargaining chips, Sullivan said.
“People weren’t happy. Some felt they were hostages, but I didn’t feel it was that extreme,” Sullivan said.
The military evacuated a large group from Puerto Natales by air, but others in Torres del Paine national park reportedly remained stranded.
“Tourists here are unable to leave unless they walk to the Argentina border, the nearest point being over 35km away, and end up the middle of nowhere in Argentina,” one visitor, Lee Schmidtchen, said via e-mail.
“Kidnapped was the word most repeated in various languages,” El Mercurio newspaper reported.
The Red Cross has set up a shelter in a school for tourists who have run out of money.
The dispute flared when Chilean President Sebastian Pinera’s government announced a 17 percent rise in the price of natural gas as part of a plan to tackle Chile’s energy deficit and to reduce subsidies paid by the state-owned National Petroleum Company.
People in the frigid Magallanes, who use gas to heat homes and power vehicles and factories, complained that they would be unfairly hit. Protests radicalized after an unidentified trucker rammed a barricade and knocked two women into a bonfire, killing them.
The Chilean interior ministry further alienated protesters by threatening to send soldiers to dismantle roadblocks.
Pinera, facing his worst crisis since 33 miners were trapped last year, gave the hero of that rescue, Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Golborne, the energy portfolio to see if he can work his magic again. Golborne flew to Punta Arenas on Monday.
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