07) STUDENT PROTESTS SHAKE
The past year
and a half has seen significant student resistance in the streets in
Most basic
and secondary schools, and most universities in
Not
surprisingly, debts affect 70% of all university students, and most from poor
families drop out. Monthly fees range from $240 to $840 CND; the average
monthly salary in
Protests started
in July 2011, when miners shut down state-owned Codelco
copper mines to protest privatization and demand higher pay and benefits in
light of record global copper prices. The miners walked out on the 40th
anniversary of the
"We
believe that the key to a successful student movement is [...] to interweave
social networks with the people, the workers, with social organizations, the
trade unions, and with the youth who did not make it into the University ‑
who were left kicking stones," said student leader Camila
Vallejo, who is also a member of the Central Committee of the Young Communists
of Chile.
In August, a
political strike was launched on the national level by labour,
calling to replace the Pinochet‑era constitution with a new charter
guaranteeing free quality education. Repeated mobilizations saw 82 unions walk
out.
"The truth
is I do not know the difference between the political and social, when social organisations realise that the
current institutional framework cannot resolve the big issues of our country,
such as the subject of education," Communist Party president and MP
Guillermo Teillier said.
A few days
later, 600,000 marchers turned out in a country of about 15 million.
Into the fall
and winter, students held negotiations with the government, as well as hunger
strikes, occupations, disruptions of the Senate, and many more peaceful
demonstrations, often facing police water cannons, tear gas, beatings and
hundreds of arrests. Neo‑fascists also burnt the offices of the Communist
Party of
The
demonstrations have taken place on a backdrop of indigenous land reclamations,
environmental protests against damming of Patagonian rivers, and protests by
gay and lesbian activists, earthquake victims, and the homeless and the poor
against high gas prices. "This is no movement that comes of
spontaneity,"
"Not
since the days of Zapatistas' Subcomandante Marcos
has Latin America been so charmed by a rebel leader,"
"We do
not want to improve the actual system, we want a profound change ‑ to
stop seeing education as a consumer good, to see education as a right where the
state provides a guarantee,"
(The above
article is from the February 1-14, 2012, issue of People's