Modest price hike, massive protests

SANTIAGO, Chile — The decision to add 30 pesos — about 4 cents — to the cost of a ticket on Latin America’s most modern public transportation system this month drew little attention inside or outside Chile, at first.

People quietly fumed. A week later, high-school students launched four days of turnstile-jumping protests. Crowds of angry youths built up inside metro stations.

With no warning, on the afternoon of Oct. 18, they set fire to stations, then trains. Then grocery, department stores and pharmacies went up in flames. Hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded at home or on the streets without public transport. But instead of blaming the young protesters, Chileans from almost all walks of life used social media to call for protests against years of government mismanagement.

Santiago exploded into a week of massive street protests that culminated Friday with more than a million people in the heart of the capital and other major cities — the largest demonstrations ever in the country, according to multiple historians.

With the world wondering how modern, prosperous Chile had erupted into chaos, a protest concert drew 15,000 on Sunday to green and shady O’Higgins Park in central Santiago. There, Chileans said the rise in the cost of a metro ticket had been merely the spark that set off years of frustration with the dark underbelly of their country’s long drive to be the most market-driven economy in Latin America.

“What we Chileans want is equal treatment for all, that the cake be divided up fairly,” said Mario Gonzalez, 34, who runs a T-shirt printing business. “We don’t want anything for free; we just want to pay a fair price.”

Young, old, poor and middle-class, protesters said they were united by frustration with the economic model that has left Chile with region-topping...