Student Movement Marks Radical Shift in Chilean Politics

While students have not achieved their demand for free quality public education, movement 
develops new strategies with an eye towards upcoming 2013 elections. ---- Voiceover: The 
students of Chile grabbed the world?s attention in 2011 following massive mobilizations 
across the South American country demanding access to free and quality public education. 
Both secondary and university level students organized general assemblies, school 
occupations and sit-ins, and took to the streets in the largest numbers seen since the 
country?s transition to democracy more than 20 years ago. The students frequently found 
themselves confronted with a national police force, called the Caribineros of Chile, that 
seemed to show little reluctance in violently suppressing the largely peaceful movement, 
with one student confirmed killed by a police officer in August 2011 during the height of 
the protests.

It?s been more than a year since The Real News first covered the Chilean student movement, 
where we traced the historical roots of Chile?s education system, among the most heavily 
privatized in the world, to the period of neoliberal reforms introduced under the brutally 
repressive dictatorship of General Agosto Pinochet, who came to power in a bloody 
US-orchestrated military coup in 1973.

David Dougherty, Santiago, Chile: We are here in the capital city of Santiago to find out 
where the student movement currently finds itself, and in what direction it is heading. 
This past year has seen a visible decrease in the number of street protests and school 
occupations; has the Chilean student movement run out of steam, or passed into a new phase 
in its ongoing efforts to develop a cohesive social movement as it gears up for the 2013 
school year, and upcoming presidential elections next November?

Voiceover: Gabriel Salazar is a renowned Chilean historian and professor at the University 
of Chile who specializes in the study of social movements. He says that while the students 
may not have maintained the same presence in the streets over the past year, they have 
since pushed to further develop autonomous forms of organizing in an effort to operate 
more independently of the traditional party politics that according to him had attempted 
to influence and steer the movement during the 2011 protests.

Gabriel Salazar, Professor of History, University of Chile: The student movement and 
social movements in general are not constituted solely by massive marches in the street, 
because another more important aspect is the process of reflection being realized by the 
students, the process of generating their own thought in regards to educational policy? 
the student movement nurtures itself with its own capacity to propose and decide, without 
being driven by political parties, as an exercise of the natural sovereignty of the 
students without being driven by the political parties, they are internal processes, and 
so with the social movement it?s not just about how many times it does or doesn?t appear 
in the streets, it is consisted more fundamentally of the ways in which the students go 
about forming their political position internally and in phases.

Voiceover: The secondary and university level student movements have had distinct and 
sometimes diverging strategies and experiences during the mobilizations, which at times 
have created tensions within the movement. While many of the secondary level students 
ended up having to repeat a grade after missing much of the 2011 academic year following 
the occupations staged in a number of schools, the university level students eventually 
returned to classes to finish the year, after the government said they could either choose 
to accept a proposal including slight increases in student financial aid programs, or face 
losing the aid altogether for those students who were not attending courses in protest. 
Isabella Bolvarar is a secondary level student who participated in the mobilizations and 
the occupation of her high school in 2011. She says that while herself and the other 
students returned to class in 2012 in order to avoid missing another year, the issue is 
far from over.

Isabella Bolvarar, Secondary student, Santiago, Chile: I think the student movement is 
going to be reborn because it?s still an unresolved issue, it still hasn?t been taken care 
of and so we can?t wait for it to die just like that, right now I think it?s in a stage or 
lapse of tranquility because the majority of us are finishing up the year and people are 
concentrating on their studies and their future, but the truth is that the question of the 
mobilizations is always going to be present because the education system is still bad, 
they still are not granting us genuine rights, they still don?t respect us as students or 
people, so either way it?s going to come back, I think next year it will be back just as 
strong if not more so.

Voiceover: A number of commentators have posited that the student movement, which at one
point enjoyed the support of an estimated 80% of the Chilean public, has transformed into 
something larger than an immediate demand for free and quality public education, raising 
fundamental questions about Chile?s political and economic model. Fabian Araneda was 
recently elected as Vice President of the University of Chile Student Federation, or FECH, 
a key player in the 2011 mobilizations. He replaces former FECH president and later vice 
president Camila Vallejo, the young geography student who became one of the most 
internationally recognized voices of the movement. We met with Araneda at the FECH 
headquarters in downtown Santiago, where he explains how a key development in the 
students? strategy has focused on strengthening ties with other popular sectors affected 
by Chile?s neoliberal model.

Fabian Araneda, Vice President, University of Chile Student Federation (FECH): A diagnosis 
we made as students was that in 2011, one of the things we were lacking was connections 
with other sectors in struggle, we were lacking strong links with workers, with housing 
activists, regional movements, ethnic movements. So in 2012 we began to make inroads,
particularly with the housing and workers movements, this was a positive advancement we 
made this year, but we still have a lot of work to do. Above all because within the 
student movements and the popular movements, we still haven?t made these connections 
programmatic, so that the demands of the distinct sectors form a common demand against the 
system that is currently trampling all over us.

Voiceover: Differences in opinion have arisen within the student movements over the degree 
to which they should participate in official political processes and attempts at dialogue 
with the government. So far, the rightwing administration of President Sebastian Pi?era, a
wealthy businessman who became Chile?s first billionaire president upon taking office in 
March of 2010, has made no significant changes to the educational system. Some students 
feel that as a social movement, direct action tactics and sustained mobilizations like 
those seen in 2011 can be the most effective ways to bring about changes in Chile?s 
post-dictatorship political landscape, which they say is characterized by an entrenched 
institutionality reinforced by the country?s constitution, enacted in 1980 during 
Pinochet?s 17-year rule. Others call for varying degrees of participation, warning that 
the students could alienate themselves as a movement should they become too isolated and 
removed from the official political process. Hugo Jofre is a student at the University of 
Chile and a leader in the center-right oriented student group called University Center 
Right, which has advocated student engagement in public policy proposals in order to 
address the problems facing the national education system.

Hugo Jofre, Student Leader, University Center-Right (CDU): It?s necessary that we enter a 
new stage, a new period where the students, whether it be secondary or university level, 
are capable of articulating proposals on a larger scale and thinking of ways to overcome 
these problems by generating public policy proposals and generating solutions to problems 
that aren?t solely based on taking over spaces, or staging more marches or convening more 
people to come out.

Voiceover: Jofre and some other students have lamented the 60 percent abstention rate in 
the country?s recent October municipal elections, which were the first with voluntary 
rather than obligatory voting since Chile?s 1990 transition to democracy. Although turnout 
was extremely low among the general population, which some commentators have attributed to 
a general lack of public confidence in the country?s political system, several newly 
established political parties formed in part by former student leaders from the 2011 
mobilizations made significant gains, including a victory in one of Santiago?s 
municipalities. Camila Vallejo, herself expected to be a potential congressional candidate 
for the Communist Party in the upcoming 2013 elections, urges students and social 
movements to maintain a sense of unity and to participate in the electoral front in tandem 
with other organizational strategies.

Camila Vallejo, former President, Vice President, FECH: The social movement must be the 
principal actor that propels the transformations forward with an eye towards 2013, which 
is an election year, the movement cannot stay at home, the social movement cannot lose 
heart, instead it should assert itself with strength, through the mobilization, but also 
at the organizational crossroads, with respect to the transcendental issues in our country 
which I believe are being tackled in distinct spheres, because this is not just a debate 
about the education we want, it has to do with the country we want to build.

Voiceover: University of Chile sociologist Alberto Mayol has studied the student movement 
extensively. He says that while they have not achieved their goal of free quality public 
education, the political advances they have made mark a radical shift in Chilean politics.

Alberto Mayol, Sociologist, University of Chile: The great irony with the student movement 
is that it did not achieve substantial changes to the education system, at least not yet, 
and yet it radically changed the country. One could perceive that now because of the 
student movement, there is a new thematic opening of space that implies the end of a 
political transition, which includes a greater demand for a much more intensive democratic 
process in Chile, and an approach to issues of inequality that is radical and that implies 
a necessary public policy shift in order to address inequality, and so while the student 
movement has not achieved administrative success, it has achieved political success.

Voiceover: While some students are looking towards 2013 with aspirations for a return to 
the massive street protests that shook the country in 2011, others are mobilizing ahead of
the electoral season, hoping to ride on the momentum of the social movement that has 
changed the political and social face of Chile. Reporting from Santiago, Chile, this is 
David Dougherty with The Real News Network.

Related Link:http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&...=9339