Fwd: Student movement and social revolt in Chile

[Monty Neill <monty@fairtest.org>]

In addition to general info on social upheaval in Chile, this article is 
interesting for the nature of student activism (including taking over 
and running one school) and also how Chile created a three-tiered system 
during privatization of schools under Pinochet.

WEEKEND EDITION JANUARY 27-29, 2012

Descrizione: http://www.counterpunch.org/images/printer.gif 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/27/a-new-chile-is-possible/print>counterpunch

*8* <http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/27/a-new-chile-is-possible/>

*/A Society in Motion/*

*A New Chile is Possible*

by RAÚL ZIBECHI

Chilean students question the education system as commercial and elitist 
because it reproduces existing social inequities and makes them worse. 
But they are not just asking questions: They are practicing the kind of 
education they have spent years dreaming about and struggling to obtain.

“If workers can manage a factory, we can manage the school,” says 
Cristóbal, 17, as he flashes a smile. Cristóbal is a student at the Luis 
Galecio Corvera A-90 high school in the Santiago borough of San Miguel. 
The school is among the 200 in the city that students have occupied. But 
on September 26, they decided to follow the example of the workers of 
Cerámicas Zanón, the Argentine factory workers took over and began 
running 10 years ago.

“Things were getting complicated because the occupation was weakening,” 
Cristóbal says. “It was clear to us that it wasn’t enough to just 
criticize our education. We had to do something more, but we didn’t know 
where to start until we heard that the Zanón workers were giving a talk 
at the University of Chile. We went to listen to them and when we came 
back we started running the school ourselves.”

After the takeover, a majority of students—with the enthusiastic support 
of many parents—returned to school. Some of the teachers joined them. 
“When I saw that my children were getting up and going to school without 
having to wake them up, that they were excited about going, I understood 
that they were doing something important, something that adds up to a 
different kind of education,” says a mother at the basketball court, 
where the November sun shines brightly.

Non-teaching workers took refuge in a union resolution that authorizes 
them to not work without school management. “The unions don’t work if 
there’s no boss,” Cristóbal noted with irony, prompting bursts of 
laughter in the courtyard. In just a few months the secondary students 
have learned more than they did during years of monotonous classes. They 
take the initiative for their studies, propose topics, show up on time, 
and are delighted not to wear the government-mandated school uniform 
they call “penguin suits.”

The student conflict was a tremendous jolt to Chilean society, as 
reflected even by public opinion polls. When the newspaper /La 
Nacion/ asked a group of poll takers to name the best thing about 2011, 
63 percent answered the student and environment mobilizations, compared 
with just 17 percent who chose the University of Chile soccer team, 
which won the South American cup at the end of November. Just 3 percent 
chose the Cervantes Prize, the major Spanish-language literary prize, 
which was awarded to writer Nicanor Parra.

Chile’s most prominent intellectuals agreed with the editor of Le Monde 
Diplomatique, Victor Hugo de la Fuente, who wrote: “In five months of 
massive mobilizations, Chilean students have changed the face of the 
country.” “The Manifesto of Historians [a document designed to answer 
some of the basic questions about the protests and signed by some of the 
nation's leading intellectuals and academics],” goes even further, and 
maintains that “we are looking at a revolutionary, anti-neoliberal 
movement” that is restoring politics to civil society and re-knitting 
the strands of history which were interrupted by the 1973 coup.

*A society in motion*

Chile has not seen such a vast wave of protest since the 1980s and the 
massive mobilizations against the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. The 
year began with solid resistance in the south, around the city of Punto 
Arenas, and protests against increased gas prices. The movement was so 
strong that the government had to negotiate with the Citizens Assembly 
of Magallanes and eventually reversed the price hikes.

Then in May more than 30,000 people protested in Santiago against the 
HidroAysén project to build five mega dams in Patagonia (a project 
supported by both the government and the opposition) without consulting 
the public. Never before had an environmental action united so many 
people, an indication that change was underway.

Soon after, victims of the 2010 earthquake began to demonstrate. Most of 
them were still homeless, spending their second winter in highly 
precarious conditions. As they pointed out, highways used to transport 
goods had been repaired, but not the homes of the poor and working class.

At the end of April, students began to mobilize. On June 30, 200,000 
marched along the Alameda, Santiago’s most important thoroughfare. From 
then on, there were dozens of marches. “Young people were moved by a 
festive spirit,” according to historian Mario Garcés. There were no 
political party banners or uniform signs. Above all, there were no 
marches to familiar state symbols—Congress and the President’s Office, 
the usual destinations for unions and political parties.

In the following weeks, students, especially high school students, 
occupied the television network Chilevision to protest coverage of the 
mobilizations. They also occupied political party headquarters, both the 
ultra-rightist UDI and the opposition Socialist Party.

The most important moment occurred on August 4th. Police repression was 
very strong and 874 students were detained. Throughout the country 
people responded to the students, with /cacerolazos /[beating pots and 
pans in protest] and massive, spontaneous demonstrations in the major 
cities—they even staged a national strike like they did against 
Pinochet. President Sebastian Piñera’s popularity had fallen to 22 
percent by the end of September.

But what happened in the barrios on the night of August 4th is an 
indication of the true strength of the movement. Camila Silva, a member 
of Diatriba, a “militant pedagogy” collective, lives in a 
lower-middle-class barrio called La Florida. “When I went out to the 
first caceroleo with my compañero, there were 100 people. The next time, 
young people from the cultural center brought their batteries and an 
electric guitar, soccer fans came with their Colo Colo banners and there 
were groups with Mapuche flags, something that you only see when there 
is a big win in soccer.”

Camila highlights the enthusiasm of the crowd, the way 
neighbors–especially women–organized spontaneously. “That organization 
is like a community, and it wakes up your memory. People shouting, ‘And 
he’s going to fall!’–the same thing they shouted during the protests 
against Pinochet. There was dancing until two or three in the morning, 
on every street corner there was a group, throughout the barrio, in many 
barrios of Santiago.”

“The left thought that repression had destroyed these kinds of social 
ties. At a certain point those relationships became invisible, but when 
something really big happens, they resurface, because there is still a 
latent memory of them. And people help each other again. The same thing 
happened with earthquake,” adds Cristian Olivares, another student in 
the Diatriba collective.

On the outskirts of the city, men and women who hadn’t marched since the 
“return” of democracy in 1989 took to the streets again. And they did so 
in the ways that those who have little often do: singing, dancing, 
sharing food and drink and turning a protest into a party. In fact, this 
was a vast mobilization against social inequality in a country that the 
United Nations Development Programme says is among the 15 most unequal 
nations in the world.

*Unequal Education*

Ever since the neoliberal reforms of the Pinochet regime, education has 
been a commercial product. Contributions from students and their 
families finance 75 percent of the education system; just 25 percent 
comes from the state. At the university level, seventy percent of 
students take out loans and go into debt to finance their education.

Education is also highly segmented. According to Garcés, there is one 
system for the rich, another for the middle class, and a third for the 
poor. At the secondary level (high school), 7 percent attend private 
schools, which cost between 300 and 500 dollars a month. The middle 
class (about 50 percent of all secondary students), attend semi-private 
or government-subsidized schools operated with a voucher system. They 
pay a small amount (from 40 dollars a month), and financing is shared 
with the state. The poorest students attend “municipal schools,” which 
have few resources.

The semi-private sector is dominated by a group of small businessmen who 
profit from state vouchers. They are authorized to have up to 45 
students in a classroom, while private schools cannot have more than 35. 
Forty percent of those who enroll in municipal or semi-private high 
schools cannot comprehend what they read; 70 percent do not score high 
enough on entrance exams to attend university.

At the university level, social inequality translates into indebtedness; 
there is no free, universal access to a university education. The 
deregulation of the system during the military dictatorship (1973 – 
1980) also led to an increase in the number of private universities. 
There are now 60 private institutions, where the cost of a degree varies 
between $150 a month for social sciences and $1,200 a month for 
engineering or medicine. To finance their educations students have to 
obtain bank loans and go into debt.

Faced with this situation, students are proposing that natural resources 
are nationalized and used to finance public education. There is a 
precedent: Pinochet did not privatize the Chilean state copper company, 
Codelco, and by law part of its profits are used to finance the armed 
forces. Not surprisingly the student movement has support among the 
middle class, even in the some of the more well-to-do neighbors of Santiago.

*Student control of schools*

A half hour from Santiago, the borough of San Miguel reflects the 
various levels of “middle class”: from those who live in high-rises 
along broad avenues to those who live in precarious little houses. 
Formerly one of the largest boroughs of the city, its poorest barrios 
(such as La Victoria) have been torn away in an effort to turn San 
Miguel into a strictly middle class neighborhood. Nevertheless, it 
continues to be plagued with social contrasts.

Secondary School A-90 started the year with 179 students, but a decade 
ago there were 4,000. Students left to go to subsidized schools, which 
are reputed to offer a better education, although their evaluations 
suggest otherwise. The borough’s socialist mayor, Julio Palestro, is one 
of the mayors who have supported the privatization of education. In 2009 
he closed a public school where 2,000 students were enrolled.

At the assembly in the gymnasium young people explain that their school 
ranks number 14 on the list for “academic risk.” Asked what that means, 
they smile: “It refers to the risk that we will become criminals.” Most 
of their parents work for little more than minimum wage (180,000 Chilean 
pesos, around $350), primarily as construction laborers.

Maybe that explains why the management is obsessed with discipline. 
“It’s as if we were locked up, this is practically a jail,” says Yergo, 
a third-year student. Camilo, a second-year student, is happy not having 
to wear a uniform. “It’s like a military doctrine, everyone with their 
crew cuts, their little ties, shirt tucked in. Don’t do this, don’t do 
that. And now [that the students run the school], you can just be who 
you are. You can just freely express yourself, you come here to be 
educated, not to be militarized.”

“The assembly is the control center,” Cristóbal explains. “All students 
participate and at times it’s open to teachers. We have watch duty and 
volunteers come in to make meals. Teachers teach, but they also learn 
from the students. At the beginning we had classes subject by subject, 
but later we saw that parceling out knowledge wasn’t the real way to 
learn, and we all got together for each subject. Some [students] 
explained to others, and the education became cooperative. That changes 
the way you relate to the subject and to the school.”

Just as workers who take over a factory change the way work is 
organized, students who took over their schools changed the “curricular 
boundaries.” Students need to know their rights, says Cristóbal, so they 
offer classes on the Constitution. “Philosophy, for example, lends 
itself to analyzing mobilizations and what is happening in the world; we 
begin to see that students work better if they are more interested.”

Juan Francisco, a philosophy teacher, agrees with his student. “All the 
student discussions have led them to reflect on the structure of power 
in Chile.” That’s why they analyze the constitution in his classes. 
Often they hold workshops, which furthers participation. Weekly 
assemblies have been incorporated into the curriculum.

The relationships between students and teachers have shifted. As 
hierarchies melted, relationships became more cooperative and 
supportive. In the classroom, they sit in a circle. The teacher is 
someone who helps, but is not above the rest. Eliana Lemus, a teacher of 
biology, chemistry, and physics, and principal of the school, maintains 
that discipline is much greater than it used to be, perhaps because it 
is not imposed and there is a desire to be together and share the 
experience.

One of the most notable accomplishments of the student movement is the 
effect it has had on the barrios, where it has increased social 
organization. At public school A-90, the parents association now 
supports the student takeover and control of the school. Cacerolazos in 
San Miguel led to “territorial assemblies,” where neighbors go to 
discuss problems in the barrio, as well as general problems such as 
education. Similar groups have been reported in other Santiago barrios, 
with up to 200 neighbors in attendance.

But not everything has been positive. Several teachers say they have 
been threatened and beaten by colleagues who do not agree with the 
takeover. The socialist mayor, a strong opponent of the movement, beat 
up Cristóbal Espinoza, a student and spokesman for A-90.

*The future of those without a future*

The 2011 student movement is the third such movement Chile has 
experienced in the last decade. In 2000 secondary students took to the 
streets to demand transportation, in what was called the “/mochilazo/” 
or the “backpackers’ movement.” In 2006 there were large demonstrations 
and schools were occupied, leading to the resignation of the Minister of 
Education and a partial modification of the education law.

The “Penguin Revolution,” named for the official school uniform of the 
protesting junior high students, was the first successful movement of 
the democracy. It was as massive as it was innovative; decisions were 
made in assemblies, with direct participation and a lack of hierarchy. 
But for Mario Garcés, “the 2006 secondary school movement was co-opted 
or trapped in the halls of La Moneda [the seat of the national 
government] and fell through institutional cracks.” President Michelle 
Bachelet created a commission of experts, with little student 
participation. They drafted a new law, but, nevertheless, did not remove 
the profit motive from the educational system.

This time around, however, the movement is not limited to students, nor 
is it exclusively focused on education. Chile is going through a crisis 
of legitimacy brought on by the inability of the political system 
inherited from the dictatorship to meet social demands. As the 
“Manifesto of Historians” points out, society is debating again, 
questioning top-down authority and enacting “forms of direct and 
decentralized democracy.”

This “politics of the streets” shows a “vocation for power” that 
questions the way the transition to democracy has taken place, a 
transition “alienated from social movements,” according to Garcés. Not 
only are people returning to the streets, they are also doing another 
kind of politics, broadening the movement, reaching out to the poor in 
ways that the movement in 2006 did not.

Finally, new practices form new people. Marcela Moya, an English teacher 
at A-90, points out, “the articulate fluidity the students have when 
they speak out, their self-discipline.” This is a personal evolution 
that is not all about the individual, but instead is collective and 
political. That suggests changes that are far more profound than what we 
see on the surface: “This movement has given rise to individuals who I 
know are going to be 100 percent committed to the society of the future, 
because they themselves have made that future possible.”

*/Raúl Zibechi/*/ is an international analyst for Brecha of Montevideo, 
Uruguay, lecturer and researcher on social movements at the 
Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to several 
social groups. He is a columnist and also writes the monthly “Zibechi 
Report” for the //Americas Program <http://www.cipamericas.org/>//./

/Translation: Barbara Belejack/


--
Monty Neill, Ed.D.; Executive Director, FairTest; P.O. Box 300204, 
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130; 617-477-9792; http://www.fairtest.org; Donate 
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