Patricio Maturana fired a teargas canister that permanently blinded Fabiola Campillai as she walked to work during protests

A former Chilean police special forces captain has been found guilty of assault after permanently blinding a woman he shot in the face with a teargas canister during a wave of protests in 2019.

The court in the capital Santiago found that Patricio Maturana had committed “unlawful coercion resulting in serious and very serious injuries” to Fabiola Campillai who was walking to a bus stop when she was struck. The public prosecutor has requested a 12-year prison sentence.

Chileans will cast ballots on Sunday to approve or reject a progressive document to replace the Pinochet-era constitution

Chile is heading towards a historic plebiscite on a new constitution to replace the document drawn up during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, but the vote will take place amid a climate of uncertainty driven by a storm of falsehoods and divisive campaigns.

For weeks, television advertising spots, street canvassers and social media campaigns have attempted to sway opinion towards the two options which will appear on the ballot this Sunday: “approve” or “reject”.

Draft shifts country away from Pinochet-era document, enshrining cultural rights and laying out path of autonomy for Indigenous peoples

The process of drafting Chile’s new constitution has come to an abrupt, jubilant end as the final votes were held quickly by the 154-member, gender-equal constitutional convention.

Huddling between the colonnades at the former congress building in Santiago, which has played host to Chile’s constitutional process, the delegates hugged and cheered as the draft was finalised.

Process spawned amid mass protests in 2019 will culminate in September plebiscite but polls show only 38% currently in favour

After 10 months of fraught negotiations, Chile has finalised the draft of a new constitution that could replace the document drawn up during Gen Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

María Elisa Quinteros, the president of the gender-equal, 154-member assembly will formally present the draft at a ceremony in the port city of Antofagasta on Monday afternoon.

Progressive former student leader hopes to transform a country still living in the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship

After a dizzying rise from student protest leader to head of state in just over a decade, Gabriel Boric has been sworn in as Chile’s youngest ever president.

“Know that we are going to do our best to rise to the challenges we face as a country,” he said as he received the presidential sash at a ceremony in the port city of Valparaíso.

Gabriel Boric, 35, picks youthful team including at defence the granddaughter of Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a coup

Chile’s millennial president-elect, Gabriel Boric, has named a progressive cabinet, with a ministerial team which for the first time anywhere in the Americas is dominated by women.

Boric, a 35-year-old former student leader, will replace the billionaire rightwing president Sebastián Piñera on 11 March as he becomes the youngest president in Chile’s history.