On a cold and cloudy autumn morning in Santiago, Chile I set out for the
lower middle class neighborhood of Matucana to attend my first Walmart
protest. I took the subway and walked past auto body repair shops, small
factories, and hardware stores. The Walmart Supercenter is located on the
corner of two high traffic streets, several blocks away from the nearest
residential neighborhood. It is by far the largest supermarket in the area,
measuring over 75,000 square feet, an imposing building in a neighborhood of small shops.
That day—April 28, 2011—eighty Walmart workers, mostly young
and middle-aged women came together to hold a union meeting in front
of the Walmart Matucana store. This was the third reunion en la calle
(street meeting) that workers across Santiago had organized. Workers
were meeting in the street because Walmart had recently changed a
long-standing policy that allowed them to hold lunchtime union meetings in
the store. Walmart argued that if it allowed the union to have meetings in
the store that it would then have to allow all kinds of groups to hold
similar meetings.