On Friday night, Chile’s right-wing president Sebastían Piñera called a state of emergency for the entire city of Santiago in response to a week of massive protests. Rejecting a planned fare increase, thousands of people have refused to pay the subway fare as part of a protest with a simple slogan: evade.

Massive fare dodging throughout Friday took the government completely by surprise. Two of Santiago’s six subway lines were cancelled and the city’s buses soon overflowed with passengers. Police repression could do little to deter the student-led protests, and eventually thousands of workers joined in the actions. Ostensibly, this was a simply an act of defiance against price-hikes in public transportation.

A handmade poster making the rounds on social media expressed the general sentiment: “It’s not about 30 pesos, it’s about 30 years.” It’s been roughly thirty years since 1988, when Chile began its transition from the Pinochet dictatorship to liberal democracy. Those three decades have seen restoration of civil rights, but also an extension of many of the regime’s neoliberal economic schemes.