la protesta estudiantil

Dissatisfaction with the education system continues. For those who don't know, a year and a half ago there was a 6-month strike in the Chilean universities, and the unrest hasn't disappeared. Protests are countrywide, with the biggest obviously in Santiago, sometimes involving hundreds of thousands of participants. As I've already mentioned, this semester at ULS there was already a one day paro (strike), a 6-day toma (take-over), and many student asambleas (assemblies). 

Last Thursday, September 27th, the block of 11:30 classes was cancelled throughout ULS because the Federation of Students of ULS  had petitioned eloquently for permission for a student marcha (march) in the center of La Serena. Similar marches occurred throughout the country, if I'm not mistaken. To elaborate on this I will give some background information about the educational unrest.

Students believe that Piñera's policies to channel money into the Chilean high education system have not gone far enough, calling instead for systemic changes that would make education less privatized and accessible to all young Chileans, regardless of their resources. Public institutions in Chile charge as much as privatized ones, which causes outrage in Chilean students when they compare Chile's education system to some of its Latin-American counterparts. Argentina, for example, offers tuition-free higher education (post-graduate education studies excepted). Students in high school, too, protest the education system; in 2011 there were hundreds of high school tomas.

Student protests take the form of marches, meetings, takeovers, strikes, and more - sometimes violent. However, very few changes have been enacted by Piñera's administration. Instead, one of the great achievements of the student movement has been to drastically lower Piñera's approval rating, which was previously at a high following the mining rescue in 2010. Though it is currently at 36%*, some sources say that it was as low as 22% at the height of the student protests. In contrast, the student movement, at its height, had an public approval rating of 72% (and I can't find a current statistic).

This is a good article for some background information, although most of it isn't relevant to my general topic as it mainly covers the leadership of the student movement. So, for those who don't want to read the whole article (it's really long...), I picked out the salient quotes:

• "A university education in Chile is proportionally the world’s most expensive: $3,400 a year in a country where the average annual salary is about $8,500."
• "Hoping to erode popular support for the students, government spokesmen and conservative media portrayed the protesters as lawless radicals. Most notorious among them were the encapuchados, who wore scarves around their faces and hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police. Students insisted that most encapuchados were from outside the movement and that at least some were infiltrators, planted to incite police counterattacks."
• “'Because in Chile it’s the fathers who are the nihilists, the suicides, the silent ones, the frustrated, and their children the reformers, the realists, the strategists.'"
• "... the new student leadership has to avoid allowing the encapuchados, who feed government accusations that the movement is increasingly violent, to dominate the demonstrations"

And now back to La Serena. The time period of 11:15-2:30 was reserved for the march. My 9:45 class happens to be in the Ingeniería (Engineering) campus, which is located close to where the march would be. As I headed out of it at 11:15, I ran into a few of my friends walking into the main part of the city to grab lunch quickly in order to avoid being caught up in the march. They told me it would probably be a good idea to stay away from el centro for a few hours, since there would be pacos (derogatory term for policemen) using tear gas and encapuchados throwing rocks.

A teacher asked some of my friends what the students hoped to accomplish with this march, and one answered that they were mostly just trying to remind the public that the movement is still active and the problems have not gone away.

I headed home for lunch, which meant that I had to walk by campus Andres Bello. This campus is on a hill, with a main road bordering the campus at the bottom of the slope. The road was blocked off to cars by carabineros (policemen) with anti-gas helmets on, and there were also some carabineros stationed at two places along blocked section of the road.

When I returned in the afternoon for my 2:30 class in campus Andres Bello, there was a traffic jam since the carabineros were still posted and detouring traffic. I could see throngs of people dispersing at the far end of the road - the march was over. I think the march went smoothly overall because I didn't hear about any use of tear gas. 

However, on my way up the campus stairs, I passed a few kids with scarves wrapped around their faces - mainly their mouths, presumably to help in case of tear gas. These encapuchados were strategically placed. Since they were on a hill, it was much easier for them to throw rocks at the carabineros than for the carabineros to target them. The area is also mostly shrubbery with some trees, which allowed them to hide effectively. Lastly, there are students (non-encapuchados, that is) walking in the university campus, so it was very difficult for carabineros to solely target the encapuchados.

The encapuchados picked up loose stones, stood up from their crouched hiding spots, rushed forward for a better shot, and threw them at the carabineros down below, scurrying back to the shrubs for protection. As I headed up the stairs I frequently turned around and craned my neck, but I couldn't see if they hit their targets. The carabineros were ignoring the encapuchados completely, so I'm not sure whether they were effective or not. From what I saw, the encapuchados were pretty diligent about not throwing stones as students and civilians walked by.

The carabineros couldn't go stop the kids throwing stones because of one main reason: a scarf is a common fashion item here for both genders. This means that at a moments notice - as soon as they saw the carabineros starting up the hill - these encapuchados could just move the scarf to the natural position around their neck and blend in with hundreds of students on campus - jeans, sweater, backpack and scarf.

At about 3:55 when my class was over, I could see that the carabineros were still there and the road was still blocked off. As I started to head down the campus stairs to walk home, one of my classmates told me to watch out for rocks being thrown. I didn't see any this time around, though.

In his comment, my classmate also said with a bit of scorn that the encapuchados were some high school students just looking for some fun. However, I'm not positive that's true in this case. Each high school here has a uniform, and since these kids didn't have uniforms on, they were likely university students. Though they could definitely have changed out of uniforms, I think it more likely that my classmate honestly didn't know who they were and was simply reflecting the viewpoint that the student movement in general is separate from the encapuchados. Also, they didn't look like they were in high school - to me, they looked to be around 20.

[This is obviously an incredibly brief account of the problems and issues involved in the Chilean education protests - you could write your dissertation on this and still have plenty to talk about. If you want to know more about the student movement in general, the education system in general, or the movement in La Serena, avísame and I will get more info for you!]

*Currently being through August 2012.