Chile tourists 'held hostage' by protesters

Tourists forced to escape to airport on foot as protesters block roads in dispute over fuel subsidies

 

guardian.co.uk, Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent, Tuesday 18 January 2011 18.34 GMT

Chilean protesters burn tyres at a makeshift barricade in
Punta Arenas. Photograph: Pablo Contreras/AFP/Getty Images

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 miles to and from Punta Arenas airport as roadblocks paralyse transport in a dispute with the government over 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, started hiking yesterday from Punta Arenas – one of the world's most southern cities – to the airport 15 miles 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 last Tuesday. "They were very friendly and gave me some coffee and apples to send me on my way," he told the Guardian.

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 Captain Scott's doomed Antarctic trek.

Locals reneged on several promises to let tourists leave, hardening suspicion they wanted to keep them as bargaining chips, said Sullivan. "People weren't happy. Some felt they were hostages but I didn't feel it was that extreme." A protest by tourists verbally clashed with local strikers, fuelling tension.

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 [22 miles] away, and end up the middle of nowhere in Argentina," said one visitor, Lee Schmidtchen, via email.

"Kidnapped was the word most repeated in various languages," reported El Mercurio newspaper. The Red Cross has set up a shelter in a school for tourists who have run out of money.

Tourism industry chiefs said the Magallanes region had lost more than $4m and damaged its reputation.

The dispute flared when President Sebastián Piñera's government announced a 17% 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 radicalised after an unidentified trucker rammed a barricade and knocked two women into a bonfire, killing them. The interior ministry further alienated protesters by threatening to send soldiers to dismantle roadblocks.

Piñera, facing his worst crisis since 33 miners were trapped last year, gave the hero of that rescue, the mining minister Laurence Golborne, the energy portfolio to see if he can work his magic again. Golborne flew to Punta Arenas yesterday to try to defuse a crisis that analysts said could prove politically far trickier than extracting men from a collapsed copper and gold mine.