By Gene Clancy
Chilean police used water cannons and tear gas to attack a student march for free public education on Oct. 6, hours after protesters’ talks with the government collapsed.
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A huge deployment of riot police surrounded students in the Plaza Italia, Santiago’s traditional gathering place. Student leader Camila Vallejo tried to lead the march while holding a sign saying, “United and Stronger,” only to be pummeled by water cannons and forced to retreat by tear gas.
Protesters hurled rocks at police and set blockades ablaze in the streets as officers on horseback chased students onto nearby campuses. Vallejo said police shot tear gas into their student government offices in “a direct attack against our organization.” The deputy interior secretary said that 285 public buses had been damaged in the course of constant skirmishes with the police. More than 30 people were injured.
Students occupied the Alameda, one of Santiago’s main avenues, by dancing in large numbers, but were blasted with water by the police. Small groups managed to elude officers and approach the presidential palace before being beaten back by police. More than 150 people were arrested in Santiago.
Radio Bio Bio said that in the cities of Concepción, Talca, Curico, Valdivia and Valparaíso, “particularly serious” disturbances occurred, and the “carabineros,” Chile’s militarized national police force, reported 124 students arrested there.
“The government is the guilty one for refusing everything. We request permission to march and they do not give it, we ask for free education and neither [do they give that],” said Camila Vallejo. (Latin American Tribune, Oct. 9)
The Oct. 6 march was the 37th weekly protest since the movement against Chile’s largely privatized education system began in April. The movement is demanding more spending and higher taxes on the wealthy so that quality public education can be free for all.
Chile’s public schools and universities were neglected by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who embraced doctrinaire free market policies. For-profit schools mushroomed under the military regime and the trend continued after democracy was restored, even during the 1990-2010 tenure of the center-left Concertación coalition.
Students accuse the current president, right-wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera, of seeking to push through “a privatizing agenda.” Polls show 89 percent of Chileans support the students’ call for reform, and only 22 percent support Piñera’s performance.
The youth movement has received significant support from Chile’s labor movement. The day after the protests, union and student leaders called for a 48-hour general strike on Oct. 19. (Associated Press, Oct. 7)
Strike demands include removing remaining constitutional vestiges of the 1973-1990 military dictatorship, boosting taxes on corporations, reversing the privatization of the retirement system and allocating more resources to health and education.
Although President Piñera has said that the protests “are having no effect,” he showed on Oct. 9 that the government has indeed been shaken, by signing into law the most repressive legislation yet against the student – and teacher-led protests.
The legislation seeks to criminalize illegal occupation or invasion of buildings and increase penalties for public disorder. If approved, the new law will force television channels to release tape used to record the protests so that authorities can find and prosecute individual protesters.
The goal of this repressive legislation, like the fascist tactics of the police, is to crush student occupations like the one by the students of the Carmela Carvajal primary and secondary school.
Dozens of teenage girls emerged from the predawn darkness and scaled the spiked iron fence around the school. They used classroom chairs to barricade themselves inside and settled in. Five months later, the occupation shows no signs of ending and the students are still fighting for their goal: Free education for all.
So much food has poured in from supporters that the students from Carmela Carvajal now regularly pass on their donations to hungry students at other occupied schools.
Municipal authorities have repeatedly attempted to retake the school, sending in police to evict the rebel students and get classes back on schedule, but so far the youth have held their ground.
The students and workers of Chile are not intimidated and are carrying their struggle forward. They are an important part of the mass uprisings and occupations which are taking place all around the world.
Fr. Workers World
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