Santiago, Oct 25 (AFP/APP):A year to the day after more than one million people thronged downtown Santiago in the biggest march of Chile’s social uprising, Chileans vote Sunday on whether to change the country’s dictatorship-era constitution. Voters are expected to turn out in numbers, spurred on by slogans that scream from the graffiti-scrawled walls of central Santiago, harking back to the violence-scarred protests that left 30 people dead and thousands wounded. “Chile decides,” and “I want peace so I’m voting Reject!” shout inscriptions in the city center, where blue-jacketed copies of the constitution — which critics say favored the wealthy — are selling as souvenirs. “Learn how they privatized our water,” bawled one vendor from a kiosk on the central Paseo Huerfanos street. A protest movement which had daily drawn thousands onto the streets reached critical mass on October 25, 2019, and the within weeks President Sebastian Pinera had agreed to initiate a process to draft a new constitution. Demand for a new constitution had been a recurring theme of the protests, set off by a hike in public transport fares. They rapidly turned into widespread demonstrations against social and economic inequalities — encompassing health, education and pensions — inherited … Continue reading From protest to ballot box, Chile votes in referendum for change