Since October 18, 2019, in Chile, a social movement has been present for the claim of living conditions in a privatized society up to the limit of the possibilities that its citizens can resist. Health, pensions, education and even water, are services for which citizens must pay. Different social movements, since 2011, have claimed against this system. In 2019, the rise in the public transport fare caused the largest social mobilization seen since the return to democracy in 1988.

As a result of these social protests, 445* people have been seriously injured in their eyes by various riot police weapons. If this phenomenon of permanent mutilations occurred in Chile in the 4 months following the so-called “social outburst”, the number of victims with eye injuries is higher than those registered in the world in 27 years, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The artwork is a J’accuse of this serious situation of human rights violations carried out in a democratic country. Of the 445* cases, 35 of them are people with total loss of vision in one or both eyes. The rest are injuries that will be evaluated over time to determine the levels of vision loss.

* Figure recorded as of February 27, 2020. The figures of cases of mutilation of one or two eyes are the official figures of the National Institute of Human Rights of Chile (INDH), a state entity that has been collecting human rights violations and bringing them to justice. In addition to them, the cases are supported by reports from the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Human Right Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI), and the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNHCHR).