Day of the Young Combatant

I arrived at work this morning and received an email with the subject line "Flexible departure today." I began to read the email, curious about what exciting event could mean that we would get to go home early, which led me on an internet hunt about a few different things.

First, what does the word desmanes mean in english? Thanks to wordreference.com, I was able to come up with the following:

desmán sustantivo masculino

1. (exceso, abuso) outrage, excess;
   los desmanes cometidos durante la guerra the excesses o outrages committed during the war;
   los desmanes de los hinchas the disorderly (o violent etc) behavior of the fans

Hmm...this doesn't sound good. To give you an idea of the whole content of the email the whole Santiago office received from the Director of Human Resources, I have taken the liberty of translating it below for you.

Dear colleagues,

Estimados colegas:

Due to the fact that there is a possibility that riots may occur in certain sectors of the city, as in years past on this day, those who believe that they may face personal risks and need to arrive home earlier may leave at 5:00 PM.

Debido a que existe la posibilidad de que ocurran desmanesen ciertos sectores de la ciudad, como en otros años en esta fecha, quienespiensen que pueden afrontar riesgos personales y necesiten llegar más tempranoa sus domicilios, pueden retirarse desde las 17:00 en adelante.

We are confident that those who make this decision do so responsibly and with the prior authorization of their supervisors.

Confiamos en que quienes tomen esta decisión lo haránresponsablemente y con la debida autorización previa de sus jefaturas.

Greetings and be careful,

Saludos y cuídense,

Roberto Gejman

Socio| Director deDesarrollo de Personas

After reading that and discovering the meaing of desmanes, my next question was what sectors were these outrages going to happen in?? Fortunately, I was able to find an article in one of the Santiago online newspapers that described the parts of the city where police are going to be stationed, as those areas are predicted to be "problematic." My neighborhood is nowhere near any of them. Phew.

My final question was what the heck people were going to be rioting about? What is so special about March 29 in Chile? Thanks to my friend Wikipedia, I had my answer to that too! According to wikipedia, today is Día del Joven Combatiente, or in other words, "Day of the Young Combatant."

Day of the Young Combatant (Spanish: Día del joven combatiente) is a non-official commemoration day, celebrated each March 29th in Chile. It commemorates the assassination of the brothers Rafael and Eduardo Vergara Toledo, which occurred on March 29th, 1985 during the military regime era in Chile. The commemoration has evolved into a day of protest manifested in some urban areas of the country. The center of the protests is in the Villa Francia neighborhood, in Estación Central Commune of western Santiago.

So, I am now going to continue playing detective to figure out who the Vergara brother are, because I am pretty sure there is no relation to Sophia Vergara. Personally, I think protesting 27 years later about an assassination is a strange way to show your disdain for violence in the past, but like I have said before, I rarely understand the reason many things happen in Chile. What I do know, is that I will be skipping the Happy Hour I had planned on going to tonight and staying indoors.