Student Protest, Social Mobilization and Political Representation in
Chile*
Inés M. Pousadela
Introduction
This study explores the changes occurred in the organizational forms of social
protest and their articulation with the political system, through the analysis of the protests
lead by the Chilean students movement. This process of mobilization –which included
demonstrations, marches, occupations, hunger strikes, diverse creative expressions, virtual
activism, scattered violence and strong police repression– started in April 2011 and soon
became the largest mobilization process since the restoration of democracy in the early
1990s.
The student protest pointed an accusative finger against the whole political system,
inasmuch as the neoliberal logic governing the Chilean education system since the
dictatorship years (1973-1990) has remained basically unchanged not just by the present
right-wing government but also by its center-left predecessors. Since many of the basic
principles that govern the Chilean socioeconomic model have constitutional status, the
students’ demands logically led to the demand of a reform of the Constitution -passed by
the dictatorship at the peak of its power. Far from being an eccentricity of the student
movement, this demand turned out to be shared by 75% of Chileans (cf. CERC, 2011b).
Under the Pinochet dictatorship, basic education had been transferred from national
to local governments, free public university had been abolished, the University of Chile had
been dismembered in regional units, and the requisites for setting up and running private
institutions had been drastically reduced. As a result of the ensuing boom, the system
modified its composition: nowadays 60% of elementary and secondary school students are
enrolled in private schools, most of them subsidized schools, whereas only a handful attend
elitist private schools. The transfer of education to municipalities increased inequalities,
since quality thereafter depended upon the resources of each municipality. Thus, despite
Chilean education ranking higher in quality than that of other countries of the region, it also
has the highest degree of segregation and is therefore described as a system of “education
apartheid”.
With the creation of approximately thirty new private universities, access to higher
education rapidly ballooned, increasing from 250,000 to about a million students between
1990 and 2010. Nonetheless, university education access rates remained extremely low
*
This paper was written at the ICD (Instituto de Comunicación y Desarrollo, Montevideo) within the project
“Civil Society at a Crossroads”, a joint initiative of PRIA, CDRA, EASUN, INTRAC and PSO to start a
collective reflection and systematization process about the roles, capacities, contributions, limitations and
challenges of civil society around the world.
1
among lower income groups. At present, 60% of students –among them the poorest, who
come from the worst high schools and therefore fare worse in admission exams- attend
private institutions with poor academics. Public universities receive scarce government
funds and are the most expensive in the region. Consequently, 70% of university students
pay for their studies by taking long-term bank loans that will consume a high proportion of
their future earnings.
By emphasizing the economic and political elements (and their intersections and
“complicities”) that have shaped and deepened social inequality and exclusion and affected
society as a whole, the student movement managed to attract growing public opinion
support. Indeed, far from being perceived as narrowly sectorial, the students’ demands for
“free and high-quality education for all” -prompted not by economic crisis but by relative
economic success and the corresponding elevation of democratic aspirations, in striking
contrast with other experiences from the global South- have gained the support of broad
sectors of civil society, both in their virtual expression (public opinion polls) and through
their actual presence in demonstrations –which, as a result, became the most massive in the
current democratic period. Yet, frequent violence was reported and mobilizations were
systematically repressed.
Are the students (urban youths, the typical users of new technologies and
inhabitants of the social networks) a new political subject? In the following pages, this
question is approached through the description and analysis of their organizations and
leadership; their forms of political action and expression; their media impact and their
relationship with public opinion; their discursive interventions within what became a true
cultural battle; their democratization demands, their criticisms to representation and their
forms of legitimization; and their links with politicians, political parties and the
government.
This article is based upon research involving both secondary sources and data from
interviews. All online editions of the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, and to a lesser extent
other newspapers and magazines as well, were revised from April 2011 to April 2012 in
order to construct a chronology of events and to collect data for a description of the
movement’s actions and interventions, as well as discourse fragments allowing for the
exploration of conceptual debates and other controversies. Likewise, countless Web pages,
Facebook profiles, tweets and recorded videos posted in YouTube by the students
themselves were also examined.
The chain of events
The 2011 mobilization finds its precedents in a series of mobilizations by secondary
students that took place since 2001, following the decade of passivity that accompanied the
beginnings of Chile’s slow and gradual transition to democracy. Its most recent predecessor
–an unavoidable reference for most of our interviewees- was undoubtedly the “revolución
pingüina” that took place in 2006 and witnessed the most massive student protests that
Chile had ever seen –until 2011, that is. These protests had eventually led to the derogation
of the Organic Constitutional Law of Education (passed by the dictatorhip during its final
days, in 1990) and its replacement with the General Law of Education of 2009. The new
2
law was the result of an agreement between the center-left government its right-wing
opposition, and has been widely rejected for not reverting the processes of
municipalization, segregation and privatization of the educational system. That is the
reason why the 2006 protests are now considered to have ended in “defeat”. The present
movement, now headed by university students, has thus inherited from its predecessor not
only the demand for structural changes in the education system but also the lesson not to
“leave the solution to the problems in the hands of politicians”.
The 2011 process began in early April with a student strike at the Central University
of Chile, one of the oldest private ones, against a reform of its rules of procedure that would
allow for the sale of part of the institution to a holding. The claim took less than two weeks
to spread beyond the specific case that was at its origin and to give way to the more general
demand for enforcement of the ban on profit in higher education and strengthening of
government regulation of private university operations. In late April took place the first
national mobilization summoned by the CONFECH (Student Confederation of Chile), and
the students’ debt problem took center stage. The second mobilization, on May 12th,
summoned “all actors involved in education”, was endorsed by the National Workers
Council (CNT) and the Teachers Federation (Colegio de Profesores), and turned out to be
the first massive one (15,000 people in Santiago, with replicas in other cities). This time, as
in most of the ones that followed, there were clashes between the Carabineros (the national
police) and violent masked youths known as encapuchados.
The education policy announcements made by president Piñera before the plenary
meeting of Congress on May 21st were deemed insufficient by both university and
secondary school students; each, therefore, called for a new mobilization on May 26th. On
that day, approximately 8,000 people marched in Santiago, and another 4,000 did so in
Valparaíso, the city where Congress is located. After a fruitless meeting with then Minister
of Education, Joaquín Lavín, the CONFECH scheduled a national strike for June 1st, while
other mobilizations were prepared at the regional level. That day’s mobilizations brought
some 20,000 students to the streets in Santiago and smaller crowds in many other cities.
From then on, a score of universities remained in a state of mobilization: some were
occupied and seized by their students while many others remained on permanent strike (that
is, courses were suspended until further notice). In early June a string of occupations started
in secondary schools: two weeks later there were already a hundred occupied schools, and
they reached nearly six hundred by the end of the month.
On June 15th secondary students marched together with workers from the copper
industry, the country’s main source of wealth. On the following day, the “national
mobilization for the recovery of public education” -summoned by the CONFECH and
endorsed by the Teachers Federation and an increasing set of social actors- turned into the
biggest once since the end of the dictatorship (100,000 participants in Santiago and 200,000
nationwide). By the end of the march violent clashes took place along the Alameda,
Santiago’s main street, including a cocktail of ingredients that would soon become
commonplace: rock-throwing, barricades, vandalism, water cannons (nicknamed
“guanacos” in reference to a native camelid that spits when threatened), mounted police,
tear gas, numerous arrests. The presence of infiltrated police in civilian clothes was
repeatedly denounced.
3
On June 23rd approximately 20,000 secondary students marched in Santiago and
some 3,000 did so in Valparaiso; on the 26th, both representative assemblies of university
and secondary students rejected the government’s proposals for just “papering over the
cracks” that did nothing but reinforce the principles the system was based upon. In view of
the continuation of the mobilization, the Ministry of Education moved forward the date of
the winter vacation for the schools in the Santiago metro area, in order to force mobilized
students to either drop the strikes and occupations or “waste” their own free time. However,
the state of mobilization did not decrease.
On June 30th there was a “social strike” summoned by the CONFECH. The
demonstration in Santiago was joined by an estimated 80 to 200,000 people (and twice as
many nationwide). On the same day, the Council of Chilean University Deans (CRUCH)
also rejected the proposal laid out by the government and the Teachers Federation raised for
the first time the proposal of a plebsicite as a way of finding a solution to the problem of
education –an alternative that, according to a CERC (2011b) opinion poll, was favored by
71% of respondents.
At the beginning of July, hunger strikes were undertaken in several secondary
schools. On July 5th president Piñera announced with great fanfare a proposal entitled
Great National Agreement on Education (GANE), including more funding, an increase in
the number and money amount of scholarships, a reduced interest rate for the Loan with
Public Guarantee (Crédito con Aval del Estado), and innovations in the systems of
university admission, accreditation, information and supervision. Again, the proposal was
received with skepticism -and eventually rejected- for it being in agreement with “a model
that finances demand”; as for secondary students, they claimed that all their demands had
been completely ignored. Consequently, a new national social strike was scheduled to take
place on July 14th, the day of the fortieth anniversary of the nationalization of copper under
Salvador Allende’s leftist government.
The third national strike was joined by numerous unions and social organizations,
and its closing demonstration had a festive atmosphere due to the participation of countless
families (parents, children, grandparents). Attendance was estimated at around 15 or 20,000
by the government, approximately 50,000 by some media, and about 100,000 (plus an extra
dozens of thousands in a bunch of different cities) by their organizers. As in previous
opportunities, by the end of the mostly pacific march vandalic actions took place and were
harshly suppressed. The police intervention was criticized as excessive, irregular and
indiscriminate, since it was directed towards the bulk of demonstrators gathered next to the
stage, awaiting a cultural performance.1 A few days later, a television report revealed the
presence of infiltrated agitators within student marches; a number of videos had been
filmed that confirmed the disruptive participation of police in disguise.
Despite being massive, the July 14th mobilization was smaller than the preceding
one, and thus gave rise to speculation about the impending decline of the student
movement. Fatigue, as it turned out, was worse on the government’s side, as shown by its
July 18th cabinet changes. Soon after, during their first joint meeting with the new Minister
of Education, Felipe Bulnes, the CONFECH, the CONES (National Coordination of
Secondary Students) and the Teachers Federation delivered a counterproposal entitled
1
Images available at http://www.radiotierra.cl/node/3279.
4
Great Social Agreement for Education. Bulnes promised to present them with a response on
August 1st; as soon as they received it, the CONES and the CONFECH announced new
demonstrations for August 4th and another national strike for the 9th; they also promised to
bring their own (previsibly negative) response on August 5th.
On August 4th, students decided to march although the local authority (Intendencia)
had rejected their permit request to march along the Alameda, site of the most symbolic
residence of power, La Moneda. The city center was fenced and strongly guarded, and
every attempt at demonstrating was harshly repressed. By the end of the day 874 people
had been arrested and a department store had been set on fire. In response to police
repression, the first cacerolazo (pot-banging protest) since the end of the dictatorship was
summoned and took place on that very night.
On Sunday, the August 7th –Children’s Day- a masive (authorized) family
demonstration took place under the auspices of secondary school students’, teachers’ and
parents’ associations.
The national strike on August 9th was endorsed by the Unitary Workers’ Central
(CUT) and the Confederation of Copper Workers, in addition to various workers’
federations and social organizations. The (authorized) march in Santiago was attended by
between 100 and 150,000 people (60 to 70,000 according to police estimates). It was
mostly peaceful although towards the end the usual disturbances by masked demonstrators
took place and were diligently suppressed by the police. The day ended with almost 400
arrests and numerous injured demonstrations throughout the country.
During the following days the government insisted that no new offers would be
made, but it was open to establish a working forum if the student leaders agreed to work on
the basis of the proposal already presented by the Ministry of Education. By then, the
government was already looking for collaboration from opposition politicians to take the
debate out of the streets and institutionally channel it through Congress. Within the student
movement, however, dialogue tables and congressional practices of exchange and
agreement –the so-called “little arrangements” reached “in closed quarters” and “behind the
people’s backs”- evoked images of the 2006 defeat and were met with visceral rejection. It
was in this context that the idea of a plebiscite –the implementation of which required a
Constitutional amendment- began to gain popularity among students, the political
opposition and organized civil society as a possible remedy for the “crisis” of
representative democracy. Meanwhile, the Teachers’ Federation summoned the citizenry to
massively participate in a “civic plebiscite” -the results of which were eventually handed to
the president in La Moneda on October 18th.2
A few days later, the leaders of both Houses of Congress invited the students to take
part in congressional dialogue tables with an open agenda and no exclusions. Students
eventually participated in a meeting of the Senate’s Education Committee. Around the
same date, the launch of the program “Let’s save the academic year”, designed so that
students of occupied schools would not have to repeat the school year, unleashed
acrimonious disputes regarding the allocation of responsibility for the situation, which the
2
According to its organizers, one and a half million people participated, and 88.7% supported free education.
5
government put on students while it was located by the latter on the inability and lack of
will of the former to respond to their demands.
On August 17th Minister Bulnes announced an “improved” proposal of
scholarships, loan rescheduling, lowered interest rates and the promise that a Higher
Education Supervision Office would be created to fully enforce the prohibition of profit. He
also assured that two bills regarding de-municipalization and the constitutional
enshrinement of the right to high-quality education would be promptly drafted and
introduced for congressional consideration. Once again, the government proposal was
rejected for being incomplete, vague and a vehicle for the perpetuation of a system based
on indebtedeness. The incredulous response of Camila Vallejo was formulated as a
question: “Have we really been mobilized for three whole months so that the government
decides to enforce an existing law [prohibiting profit]?”
The following day a new mobilization summoned by the Teachers Federation, the
CONFECH and the CONES took place in Santiago, Concepción, Valparaíso and other
cities. Despite the rain and the snow, the so-called “march of the umbrellas” gathered more
than 100,000 people in Santiago, and more than 230,000 in the country as a whole. No
significant incidents were reported, especially because the students took it upon themselves
to stop some encapuchados. On Sunday, August 21st another family demonstration –the
“march of the whirlwinds”- was staged in Santiago. It was probably the most massive
event of the whole process, as attendance was calculated by its organizers at almost a
million people.
On August 24th and 25th there was a National Citizen Strike, organized by the CUT
in order to advance its proposal of a National Agreement for Social Democracy, and joined
by various social, union and student organizations –and even by several political parties.
Official non-attendance numbers were low, and the first night witnessed several violent
actions, especially targeted against police stations and stores. According to its organizers,
the demonstration on the following day was attended by approximately 400,000 workers
and students.3 Right after noon vandalism and violence spread despite the demonstrators’
best efforts to stop them. The balance of the two-day mobilization -the most violent of the
whole process- included 1,394 arrests and the first and only death that happened overall:
that of a sixteen-year-old youth who was hit by a bullet (later proven to have been fired
from a passing police car) while he walked across a pedestrian footbridge while watching
the second evening’s cacerolazo.
On the following day, while the government was evaluating whether to apply the
Law of Security of the State to the organizers of the demonstration, the president took a
surprising turn and personally summoned “everybody, students, parents, teachers and
deans” to sit down and talk. The CONFECH, the CONES, the Teachers Federation and the
CRUCH agreed to meet in La Moneda with the president and his Minister of Education,
who handed them an agenda with the topics to be covered in an imminent dialogue table.
The latter, however, was rejected by the students due to what they viewed as the lack of
“minimal guarantees” for a negotiation on an equal footing.
3
Pictures
of
the
day’s
more
creative
placards
and
costumes
available
at
http://www.latercera.com/multimedia/galeria/2011/08/683-29458-7-revisa-los-mejores-carteles-de-marchade-la-cut.shtml.
6
When a day of national mourning was decreed due to an air tragedy that occurred
on the Juan Fernández islands, in the South Pacific, the CONFECH turned its
demonstrations scheduled for September 8th into “silent marches” in which thousands of
people dressed in black walked through Santiago and other cities. Right afterwards, in a
counterproposal presented to the government on September 12th, the CONFECH and the
Teachers Federation established four conditions conducive to dialogue: the deferral of
debate of the bills on education already sent to Congress, the postponement of the end date
for the first semester, the broadcasting of the debates that took place during the dialogue
tables on television or Twitcam, and the immediate interruption of funding to universities
that made any profit. Three days later, the Minister of Education rejected the first two
conditions and partially agreed to the other two: he accepted the disclosure of a
memorandum with the content of each meeting, and insisted on his promise that a future
Higher Education Supervision Office would be in charge of controlling that for-profit
institutions did not receive any state funds.
Again, the government’s proposal was rejected and a new strike was summoned for
September 22nd. The march along the Alameda, crowned with an act in Parque Almagro
that included performances by various well-known artists, brought together around 180,000
people in Santiago (approximately 60,000 according to local authorities) and 300,000
nationwide. Almost simultaneously, in his speech before the United Nations General
Assembly, president Piñera referred to his country’s student movement as mobilized by “a
noble, big, beautiful, and legitimate cause” that his government shared.4 His words were
widely criticized as stemming from a “double standard” by which the government was
internationally forced to validate the same demands that it denied at home.
On September 29th a new national demonstration summoned by the CONFECH
unfolded while at the Ministry of Education the first dialogue table was taking place with
representatives from the CONFECH, the CONES, the ACES (Coordinating Assembly of
Secondary Students) and the Teachers Federation.
Subsequently, on October 2nd, the president and his Interior Minister, Rodrigo
Hinzpeter, announced the introduction of a Bill to Strengthen Public Order that, among
other things, would impose jail sentences of up to three years to those found responsible for
the occupation of educational establishments. Harshly criticized by the political opposition,
the proposal was soon known as “anti-occupations law” or, more simply, “Hinzpeter law”.
On October 4th, a march of approximately 500 students from technical-vocational schools
–which had not been issued a permit because the application for it had been filed past the
deadline- ended with almost forty demonstrators arrested, among them the leader of the
ACES. On the following day, university and secondary student representatives met and
decided to abandon the dialogue table because the government was clearly not willing to
move forward with “issues of substance” such as the universal provision of free education.
On October 6th, a new CONFECH march along the Alameda -not authorized due to
disagreements about the prospective route- was dispersed with water cannons and tearproducing bombs, which were even thrown inside the head office of the FECH, where
students were seeking shelter. In a similar operative to the one executed on August 4th,
papal fences were installed and police were in position since dawn to prevent demonstrators
4
Cf. the presidential speech in http://gadebate.un.org/sites/default/files/gastatements/66/CL_es.pdf.
7
from gathering in their meeting places and advancing from there. Attempts at mobilization
as well as repression were replicated in several cities, and at night a new cacerolazo was
summoned in response to the latter.
On October 18th and 19th, and again one month later, two-day national strikes
called by the Social Movement for Education took place. Leaving aside the international
march” on November 24th and the ongoing protests in its diverse, mostly descentralized,
“cultural” and “creative” expressions, the last couple of months of 2011 slipped among the
urgencies of the educational and political agendas. On one hand, an intense debate took
place within Congress, as well as outside of it, about the Education portion of the 2012
Budget Law –which ended up being passed by late November and even harvested some
votes among the opposition.
On the other hand, between October and November universities held assemblies,
plebiscites, referendos and consultations (summoned by the students and, in some cases, by
the educational authorities themselves) to decide whether to begin the second semester.
Some of them decided to return to classes with “protected schedules” in order to be able to
carry out assemblies and demonstrations; others decided to remain on strike. In some cases
clashes with deans occurred when the latter tried to force the return to school despite the
opposite decision made by the majority of their students. Towards the end of November,
nevertheless, almost all the universities that belonged to the CRUCH were having classes
again. This change in strategy was justified, according to Camila Vallejo and Giorgio
Jackson, upon the “compatibility” between mobilization and class attendance and the
understanding that the achievement of free education was “a long term task” -and “we
cannot be on strike for three years in a row”.
Among secondary students, occupations were surrendered along a longer period: the
last occupied schools were returned to their authorities between mid- and late January 2012
-and still, in some cases the possibility was mentioned of resuming occupations in March,
after the summer. A particularly difficult topic -the resolution of which would take several
months- was that of the expulsion of students suspected of disorderly behavior and causing
damages during occupations, or considered to be “agitators” for having led the occupations.
A good proportion of them (as well as teachers’ occasional dismissals) had taken place in
the municipalities of Providencia, Ñuñoa and Santiago. Remedies of protection were
interposed throughout the year on behalf of the affected students, and since November
many had already been reincorporated with orders from judges. The process continued well
beyond the start of the new school year in March 2012.
In the context of the end-of-year balance of the protests and the definition of longterm strategies –which emphasized the fact that a “new phase” was starting that required a
“change in methods”-, the last activities of the year included a national protest summoned
by the CONFECH against the Test of University Selection (PSU), the admission exam for
the whole higher education system, leading to interesting debates about the goals and
characteristics of the examination. The exam was indeed criticised for being more revealing
of the socioeconomic status of each student’s home that of her talents. On December 29th a
new Minister of Education was appointed. On his first day in office the new Minister,
Harald Bayer, received a visit by the student leaders who wanted to give him a “reminder”
of the demands they had been raising all year long.
8
Leaderships and organizations
The “excessive” starring role of some university leaders, and that of Camila Vallejo
in particular, were very much criticized throughout the process. Camila Amaranta Vallejo
Dowling, a 23 year-old undergraduate Geography student became in 2010 the second
female president of the Students’ Federation of the University of Chile (FECH), the main
university in the country. She is a beautiful, charismatic, voiced Communist Party activist
who was repeatedly portrayed as “manipulated” by that party. In December 2011, she was
demoted to FECH vice-president after being electorally defeated by Gabriel Boric. By then,
35% of Chileans considered her to be the person of the year (Cooperativa, Imaginacción &
UTFSM, 2011j). A survey published by The Guardian also made her “Person of the Year”,5
Newsweek included her in its list of “150 Fearless Women”, and a New York Times article
described her as the “World’s Most Glamorous Revolutionary”. She was also a favorite
target of fierce sexist attacks by the students’ movement’s critics, who noted her “devilish
beauty”, her misleading “saint expression” and considered her talents to be better suited for
a beauty contest than political leadership.
Together with Vallejo, the movement’s main national leaders were Giorgio Jackson,
president of the Students’ Federation of the Chilean Catholic University (FEUC), and
Camilo Ballesteros, president of the Students’ Federation of the University of Santiago de
Chile (FEUSACH). Jackson’s leadership was perhaps the most resisted one by his peers
(although his being so articulate and clear-minded was very much liked by most external
observers) for being the representative of a scarcely mobilized university. Jackson did not
stand for reelection, but in November the continuity list won at the FEUC, lead by Noam
Titelman. Ballesteros –who, as Vallejo, was a Communist Youths activist- did not stand for
reelection and accepted instead his party nomination for mayor at Estación Central. The
candidate he supported at the FEUSACH, also a communist party member, did not even get
to the second electoral round, so the presidency fell in the hands of a center-left
independent, Sebastián Donoso. Also protagonists were the vice-presidents of the
federations, and Francisco Figueroa in particular, from the FECH. A variety of second-line
leaders intermittently stood out along the process.
Vallejo, Jackson and Ballesteros were Executive Board members of the CONFECH,
the national organization grouping the students’ federations of around thirty “traditional”
universities (that is, either public universities, or private ones founded before 1980). The
CONFECH is of fairly recent creation, given that massive higher education in Chile is quite
new. It reaches its decisions by means of assemblies to which member federations send
their representatives, who in turn convey the decisions of their respective student
organizations.
Secondary education students, in turn, are represented by the CONES, led by
Freddy Fuentes, and the ACES, whose leader is Alfredo Vielma. Similarly to university
students, they made their decisions in assemblies. Their processes were generally slower,
5
Cf. The Guardian’s video on Camila Vallejo in http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/jan/13/chileanprotester-camila-vallejo-video.
9
given the larger number of institutions involved. In the language used by leaders,
information and proposals received had to be “submitted to the grassroots” and discussed in
each students’ center or federation, and the resulting positions had to be transmitted by
delegates to their respective national assemblies.
Another important actor was the Teachers Federation, the teachers’ union led by
Jaime Gajardo, also a member of the Communist Party and CUT’s Secretary General. His
stances were frequently symbiotic with the students’ positions, if not more extreme.
A relevant role was also played by the Council of Chilean University Deans
(CRUCH), formed by the deans of twenty-five traditional universities and led by Juan
Manuel Zolezzi. As will soon be shown, their relations with the student movement were a
lot more distant and conflictive than those of teachers.
Lastly, mention must be made of the organizations of parents and guardians,
especially active in the task of denouncing abuses of authority and police violence during
evictions of occupied schools.
The movement for education therefore encompassed a series of relevant actors well
beyond the students’ movement. At the same time, the latter was far from monolithic.
Firstly, right from the very beginning there were differences between university and
secondary school students. Calls for separate mobilizations were common, and only by the
end of June the mere possibility of a shared petition was even envisaged.
Secondly, both secondary and university students’ internal fronts showed fissures.
Secondary education students had two rival organizations competing for representation but
only one of them (CONES) was usually accepted by the government as their speaker. The
difference between them, according to the ACES spokesperson, was that the former
coordinated the so-called emblematic schools, while the latter represented underprivileged
groups and had a more radical platform.
In the case of university students, differences were present within the CONFECH.
For one, the organization only included the federations of traditional universities. There
were actually strong controversies regarding further inclusion of other federations, such as
that of the Mapuche students –based on a different logic of representation- who was only
admitted at the beginning of July.6 Secondly, the CONFECH underwent centrifugal
pressures due to the fact that its democratic layout gave a vote to each member federation
regardless of its size, thus conferring veto power to a handful of small federations
dominated by extreme left groups.
In addition to the abovementioned differences within the students’ movement,
relationships were also tense with another central education actor: the organization
representing the deans (again, not all of them but those of traditional universities). Along
the process, the CRUCH maintained a dialogue with the CONFECH, but despite initial
cordiality, the relationship between them was frequently distant and even conflictive, and
convergences were often circumstantial. The deans themselves did not constitute a unified
front, but as a body they often agreed with the official diagnosis regarding student
“intransigence”. Three particularly divisive topics were tuition costs, the internal
6
The Mapuche are a group of indigenous inhabitants
http://paiz.cl/conversacion-con-jose-ankalao-segunda-parte/.
of
south
and
central
Chile.
Cf.
10
democratization of universities and the decision whether to resume classes or remain on
strike. Each time disagreements soared, student leaders diligently reminded deans that not
them but students were the real “driving force of the movement” and that they would move
forward with or without the deans’ agreement. Deans were also repeatedly challenged to
decide “which side they are on.” In the context of the dispute over the 2012 education
budget, university students asked their deans to join them in a march, as they had done
earlier in the process, to give a firm signal of unity. On that occasion, Zolezzi claimed that
deans had always accompanied students, “not in the style but indeed in the demands.”
Needless to say that the government developed strategies to widen these cracks. The
result was plenty of separate dialogue initiatives with each sector (plus the insinuation of
frequently nonexistent “ongoing conversations and progress” with each of them). For
example, the government decided to carry on the debate about higher education first,
summoned university students and teachers to that end and soon after declared that the
topic was “well underway” in order to keep secondary students in check. Only by late July,
the Teachers Federation, the CONFECH and the CONES joined forces and declared that
they would not meet with the government separately; it was from there that the proposal of
a Social Agreement for Education emerged. From then on the CONES was included in the
invitations -but not the ACES, which exacerbated their fears that the other three
organizations would “sell out” the student movement. Somewhat more successfully, the
government also systematically attempted to approximate the deans’ positions to their own
in order to break them away from the students.
The repertoire of actions
As evidenced from the canonical account presented above, strikes and massive
traditional demonstrations -typical of mass democratic politics- had a central place in the
process. In addition, a great variety of supplementary strategies for the public presentation
of demands took place. Indeed, the repertoire of actions resorted to stands out for its
amazing amplitude. No claim is made that all of them have been covered: the survey
presented in the pages that follow only attempts at providing examples to illustrate the
combination of traditional and new strategies, the unprecedented colorful atmosphere, and
the large doses of creativity and imagination invested in the expression of discontent and
the dramatization of claims.
Massive demonstrations and public opinion
The 2011 student movement had more drawing power than any other social
movement or political group since the restoration of democracy. Demonstrations became
increasingly massive as they turned into “citizen” and “family” marches, uniting parents,
children, grandparents and entire families. They were thus repeatedly described by
participants and observers as “parties” and “carnivals”. In fact, those demonstrations –
typically characterized as the most “effective” form of protest in terms of the production of
11
public support- were the route of entry to the movement for many people -young and not so
young- without any prior political experience.
The recognition by all actors of the power held by numbers reflected itself in a
systematic dispute about figures. That is the reason for the differences, sometimes huge,
between attendance estimates issued by organizers and authorities. From the leaders’
perspective, quantity mattered because –as explained Gabriel Boric– “the political class is
so self-centered that they won’t even notice we are there if we don’t succeed in calling
200,000 people out to the streets.”
Despite the epicenter of the movement being clearly located in the capital city,
Santiago de Chile, there were also plenty of important mobilizations in other cities –starting
with Valparaiso, the headquarters of the National Congress– which not only replicated the
ones taking place in the capital city but also took place independently from those.
According to surveys, in the upward phase of the process public opinion was
increasingly favorable to the student mobilization and movement, while the government’s
work was assessed in increasingly negative terms. According to CERC’s Political
Barometer (2011a), the government’s 35% rate of support in May -the lowest any president
had had since 1990-, fell further to 22% in August. Meanwhile, 89% of the citizenry
expressed support for the students’ demands (CERC, 2011b). A survey by La Tercera
(08/13/11) gave students 76% of social support in August. It also showed that 72% of
respondents made a positive evaluation of secondary school leaders and 77% of university
leaders. In December 77% of surveyed citizens thought that education should be free of
charge, 78% thought no profit should be allowed in higher education and 82% declared the
students’ demands to be right. However, positive evaluations of the government had
increased to 33% (CERC, 2011c). Also Adimark’s monthly analysis show persistently low
figures of government evaluation and presidential approval along the conflict, and high
rates of support for the students’ demands. Last but not least, surveys by Radio
Cooperativa, Imaginacción and UTFSM reveal that a meteoric diffusion process took place
among the population regarding knowledge of and sympathy with the students’ demands.
They also show that, in the eyes of the public, students were the ones making the biggest
efforts to find a solution to the problem.
However, one thing is to support the educational cause, and even the student
mobilization, and a completely different one is to agree with the methods chosen by
students to express their claims. According to Adimark’s polls, approval of the way
mobilizations had been carried out went down from 52% in August to 49% in September,
to a further 38% in October and was set at 40% in November, even with most people not
considering students to be responsible for the ensuing violence. Likewise, despite the fact
that 65% of respondents thought that the government should authorize the marches, only
18% approved of marches taking place in unauthorized sites. Similarly, 62% agreed with
students staging marches to protest, but only 37% approved of the occupation of schools
and universities (CEP, 2011b). In September 63% of the people surveyed by Cooperativa,
Imaginacción & UTFSM (2011g) said that if the dialogue process should prosper, students
should give up their occupations and resume classes.
The year-end balance came to terms with the evidence that the peak of the process
had been left behind. A CONES spokesman said that “the idea is not to wear people out
12
and it is absolutely understandable that people don’t want us to continue with the same
strategies.” The FEUSACH vice-president pointed out that the movement had searched a
“friendly approach to the citizenry”, defined as “our main engine.” Soon after taking office
at the FECH, Gabriel Boric emphasized that mobilizations should be “functional to political
objectives and not a purpose in themselves.”
Occupations of secondary schools and universities
Occupations –treated as illegal by the mayors who most opposed the protests– were
one of the favorite tools of secondary education students, who were thus disproportionally
affected by the violent evictions authorized by municipalities and carried out by the
military police.
Occupations of educational institutions (private ones included) were generally
decided by ballot within each student center or federation (though occasionally they were
the result of decentralized decisions and actions undertaken by small groups). Occupations
could involve from dozens to thousands of students; many were peaceful but others derived
in incidents of various magnitudes. Numerous occupations encompassed a variety of
“cultural actions” staged in order to communicate demands to the public. Evictions took
place either peacefully, after conversations with the authorities or due to an imminent
intervention by Carabineers, or violently by the latter, involving lots of physical damage
and numerous arrests. Depending on the case, they could occur after hours, days, weeks or
even months of occupation; in many cases, buildings were later reoccupied, sometimes
almost immediately after an eviction.
Public authorities, municipal and educational, reacted in many dissimilar ways.
Some university deans tried to prevent occupations by locking the school doors; in one of
the most extreme cases, secondary school students reported injuries when assaulted by
school officials waiting for them inside the building, and declared that the headmistress
herself shot bullets into the air in order to keep them away. Similarly, some mayors were
more prone than others to request police intervention. Criminalization of the student
movement hit its highest points in the municipalities of Providencia and Santiago, the latter
of which accumulated the largest number of threats of and actual legal actions against those
deemed responsible for the “damages” caused during occupations and marches. In contrast,
some mayors actually joined the protests: the Mayor of Calama, for example, did so in
order to claim a larger participation in copper profits for his district, whereas those of many
municipalities in the Santiago metro area did it in demand for more resources for their
public schools.
Other “occupations”
The concept of occupation was extended to a large variety of brief (lasting some
minutes to a few hours) symbolic takeovers of other places, frequently improvised, and
most often evicted by the police. Favorite targets of these decentralized occupations (i.e.,
13
not called by student centers, federations or confederations) were government offices,
political parties headquarters and television channels.
Among the government offices that were occupied were those of the Ministerial
Regional Secretary (Seremi) of Education in several regions, and the Seremi offices of
Mining in Concepción, several mayor and municipal education offices, and offices
belonging to the National Commission of Accreditation and the Ministry of Education.
Headquarters of several political parties were also “occupied”: the targets were not only the
incumbent parties and their allies, but opposition parties as well. The accusations wielded
against them varied: while the headquarters of the Christian Democratic Party on Alameda
was seized in order to point out “their responsibility in the present education situation”, the
attempt to occupy the right-wing UDI’s headquarters in Concepción left the façade
decorated with a piece of graffiti calling its leaders “criminals” and “Pinochet’s offspring”.
Another frequent target were television channels -and even specific shows- that
were “seized” in order to denounce the so-called “communicational barrier” created by the
media. Protesters went on the air with banners, summoning the public to demonstrations
and stating their demands. All “occupations” of TV programs and news shows –the most
publicized of which occurred between June and August-7 were carried out by university
students. At least once the offices of the National Council of Television were also “taken”
in order to demand the broadcasting on national television of a debate about educational
reform, to demand “objectivity” in news coverage, and to reject their disproportionate
emphasis on criminal acts that were deemed not representative of the movement for
education. For the same reasons were also occupied the offices of the holding that owns the
widely read newspapers La Tercera and La Cuarta.
Among other sites that were targeted must also be mentioned the National Senate –
occupied on October 20th in demand of a plebiscite while the joint subcommittee of
Education was having a meeting-; the Valparaiso Archbishop offices and the Antofagasta
Cathedral, both by students from the local catholic universities; the Commerce Stock
Exchange –denounced as a “space for the transaction of shares of private universities”–; the
offices of a handful university deans; the Chacao Channel, in order to interrupt transit
between the Chiloe island and the continent; and even emblematic monuments. The cases
of international organizations such as UNICEF or CEPAL, whose offices were also “taken”
by secondary education students, fit into a different category: these actions were indeed not
aimed at expressing rejection but at requesting help, because –as the students put it- these
organizations “watch over people’s rights” and could help alert other countries about the
Chilean situation.
Cacerolazos
Pot-banging protests have a long history in Chile. They were used for the first time
in 1971-73 against the government of Salvador Allende, reappeared strongly in 1982-83,
this time against Pinochet’s dictatorship, and were regularly resorted to in the 1980s. Since
7
Cf. videos it http://www.biobiochile.cl/2011/06/13/estudiantes-secundarios-se-toman-set-de-cqc-y-hacenpasar-incomodo-momento-a-sus-conductores.shtml; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlrsg13r1ik.
14
democracy was restored in 1990, pot-banging was never used again until the night of
August 4th, 2011, when Camila Vallejo summoned a cacerolazo from her twitter account
as a way to condemn the repression of the demonstrations that had taken place on that very
day. Thousands of people answered the call and banged their pots in discontent from
balconies, front doors and windows in Santiago and other cities, hence avoiding the
prohibition to take the protest out to the streets.8
From then on, cacerolazos occurred with certain regularity. They were called by the
student movement’s leaders to accompany national strikes or in response to new episodes
of repression, and were also adopted as an autonomous strategy by small groups and
executed either independently (e.g., to interfere with a military march or a partisan rally), or
in conjunction with other forms of protest, such as candle nights (velatones).
Hunger strikes
This form of protest was resorted to, starting in July 2011, exclusively by secondary
education students. The most prominent one took place in schools in the Buin district. The
students demanded copper re-nationalization and warned that they would only give up if
the President himself announced the policy they requested. Eight students started the strike,
but a week later there were almost forty students on strike. After one month fasting and
several judicial presentations on their behalf, three Buin students were transferred to the
hospital; however, the strikers’ spokesperson declared that they would continue to
“radicalize the movement” and that whatever happened as a result would be the
government’s responsibility. Hunger strikers received visits of opposition representatives
and senators, Unicef officials and officials from the Human Rights Institute -but the
Minister of Education did not show up. After plenty of controversies between government
officials and students’ parents and guardians, exhortations to the Minister of Education,
criticisms against the government’s “insensitiveness”, and the filing of numerous protection
orders, the strike was eventually called off on day 37.
Similarly long hunger strikes and controversies were also recorded in other
institutions, and in some cases a few parents also joined them. On September 6th, the
Minister of Government himself urged all remaining hunger strikers –around thirty
nationwide- to call off the strikes. The last ones, from Dario Salas High School, finally
called it off after 71 days.
Funas
The funa is a strategy of exposure first resorted to in 1999 after former dictator
Augusto Pinochet was arrested. It is used to “unveil”, “unmask”, and pester with noisy and
colorful demonstrations in front of the home addresses and workplaces of repressors and
8
Cf.
videos
in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME8_OPwiC6w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AMPl39EkAY.
and
15
torturers who remained free and, until then, absolutely anonymous. Its aim -reflected in its
motto, “if there is no justice, there is exposure”- was to arouse, in the absence of judicial
sanctions, social punishment resulting from knowledge of the exposed individual’s past.
These actions were swift, so as to avoid police repression, and of a collective nature
(including the joint reading of a declaration by all participants) in order to obstruct the
allocation of individual responsibility.9
Over the past decade, the reach of funas was broadened to encompass individuals
considered to be directly or indirectly responsible for other human rights violations –such
as, like in our case, the right to education. Among the main targets of funas along this
process were mayors Zalaquett and Labbé. The most remembered funa against Zalaquett
took place on August 19th, when a large group of students summoned through the social
networks gathered in front of the Municipality to express their rejection by shouting “iiiiii”,
an expression used by a well-known comedian when mimicking the public official.10
Linked to these exposures were other acts of spontaneous repulse –against the
Minister of Education at a cultural event, against the Minister of Culture at the inauguration
of the Book Fair– and even symbolic ones, as in the case of the installation of a makeshift
bust of the Minister of Education on Brazil Avenue, in Valparaíso, accompanied by the
inscription To educate is to indebt and “inaugurated” by egg-throwing. More often than not,
especially when the target was the President himself, these acts of repulse were frustrated
by police intervention.
Theatrical staging: The infinite forms of political creativity
Since the very beginning, massive demonstrations routinely ended up with a
“cultural event” featuring popular artists. Also common was the organization of big
concerts and artistic exhibitions for the cause of public education. These events, however,
still followed the “traditional” format. Likewise, marches generally included various
ingredients such as percussion samba, elaborate costumes, painted faces, live music and
dancing, puppets, artistic exhibitions and ingenious slogans to stage political propositions;
nevertheless, none of those defined them.
Many other forms of protest, in contrast, were indeed defined by theatrical staging.
Some of them took place in a festive atmosphere, some did not; they were occasionally
summoned by students’ and/or teachers’ organizations, often organized by small groups of
students through the social networks (mostly Facebook), and in some cases their origin was
unknown.
Among the most original and eye-catching expressions of artistic staging with
political aims were the so-called flashmobs, choreographies performed by a large number
of people in costumes and make-up, frequently summoned from social networks.11 Besides
9
Cf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELdHI1NtlZM.
Cf. video in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp6Fbql8meM.
11
Cf. Thriller, a representation of the “living dead” condition of public education, in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVjqtxGr1nY; “Big Gaga for Education”, to the rhythm of Lady Gaga’s
10
16
these, the most widely known expressions of the movement, a large variety of staging acts
took place. They were often ingenious, as in the cases of the “symbolic suicides” for
education12; the art installation in the street in which collective suicide was simulated with
puppets representing hanged students; the artificial beach set up in the Plaza de Armas by
some 500 secondary students from occupied schools who performed wearing swimsuits and
sunglasses in allusion to the government’s decision to change the date of their winter
vacations;13 the launch of a Genkidama for education, a “technique” used by the main
character of the Japanese animated series Dragon Ball to ask for help from all the forces of
the Universe;14 the big “Cuecazo for Education”;15 the football match played by rival teams
Education and Profit; and, in late December, the installation of a giant mailbox in the Plaza
de Armas for passers-by to deposit their “Christmas wishes” for education.
In addition, it is worthwhile mentioning a myriad of lesser-scale street performances
that were equally ingenious, such as the act by a student who boarded a Transantiago bus
posing as a traveling salesman and offered education to those who could afford it;16 or the
one staged by a group of students who marched to former president Michelle Bachelet’s
foundation carrying a symbolic giant box of “Memorex” to remind her of her government’s
promises. Other colorful and noisy staging acts include the launch of 1,800 balloons for
education and the “vuvuzelas for education”, summoned through the social networks to
play in front of La Moneda.17 Less festive but still deserving of mention was the
“Lacrimogenazo” mounted by Valparaiso students next to the National Congress to exhibit
300 tear gas bombs recently shot by Carabineers in order to show “how much is spent in
repression when with only twelve of these one student could have her tuition at a public
university paid for.”18
Other innovative theatrical expressions were the massive besatones (kiss-ins) in
which –following the motto “with passion for education”- thousands of young couples
gathered in public spaces in various cities to simultaneously kiss during a whole 1,800
Judas, in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC69_9AyJlg; heroes and villains united to save education, in
http://www.eldinamo.cl/tumblr/superheroes-y-villanos-por-la-educacion; “Party Rock for Education”, in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFFXi6oK1Iw&feature=related (for its Antofagasta version, cf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgayUKgIoNA&feature=related); and “El baile de los que sobran”, a
classic Chilean song, in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvlZmbdOXPk&feature=related.
12
Cf. videos in http://www.biobiochile.cl/2011/06/28/estudiantes-protestaron-realizando-masivo-suicidiosimbolico-en-el-centro-de-valparaiso.shtml and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13KCf4yc-sI.
13
Cf. video in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snWddyFq18g&feature=related. The event was replicated
in numerous cities across the country.
14
Cf. video in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5v9uqPlpwI.
15
Cueca is a traditional Chilean dance. Cf. video in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7ig6H_roJc.
16
Cf. video in http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Yb5l9Ehr93o#!.
17
Cf. video in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfBFfenqQrU.
18
In other cases the originality resided in the slogan more than the staging itself. Such were the cases of
“Vacations for Lavín”, a demonstration summoned by the Teachers Federation that ended with the
presentation of a ticket to the Minister of Education so he could go on vacation forever; and the “1,800
umbrellas for education”, summoned by the three main organizations in order to communicate their intention
to continue mobilizing “come rain or shine.”
17
seconds, “the amount in millions needed for free public education.”19
Staging events were clearly not always artistic, festive or innovative. Among their
more solemn expressions were the popular, religiously inspired velatones (an acronym of
“marathon” and “candle”), used not just to express generic demands for education but, most
frequently, to put forward “life or death” demands such as the release of a student leader
unfairly jailed or the investigation of a death in the hands of the police.
Other staging events that allowed for greater visibility of the movement were the
walks, hundred of kilometers and several weeks long, headed from distant cities to Santiago
or the National Congress in Valparaíso. The longest walk was probably the one
accomplished by students from Concepción who traveled 500 kilometers to Santiago to
deliver a letter to president Piñera. Similarly, to maintain a permanent presence in the
public space and make people aware of their demands, a race organized through the social
networks -“1800 hours for Education”- started in June, consisting in several runners doing
relay races around the presidential palace uninterruptedly during 75 days.20
Also relatively frequent were the “chaining ups” of students in the facades or central
halls of symbolic places such as the Ministry of Education, the National Congress (while a
vote concerning education was being held inside), offices of the copper state company
Codelco, and municipal buildings. Other common actions of public space occupation
included the exhibition of posters and placards in “atypical” places: several meters tall
traffic sign structures, monuments and soccer stadiums. In contrast, the traditional staging
act of the “public lecture” was not frequently resorted to, and neither was the installation of
camping tents in public squares, typically frustrated by the police.
New technologies and social networks
The 2011 protests were set apart not only by their political use of artistic
imagination but also by their intensive use of communication technologies. As a
consequence of this, we now have at our disposal hundreds of photographs taken during the
protests not just by media professionals but also by the protagonists themselves, as well as
videos that the latter recorded and instantly posted online and were endlessly reposted,
commented, discussed and reinterpreted in blogs and all over the social networks. Some
occupations were even transmitted live online by Webcams, and plenty of videoclips
created by students during school occupations were posted on the Internet. Therefore, it is
not surprising that opinion surveys systematically highlighted the high degree of citizen
knowledge of the demands and actions undertaken by the student movement.
19
Cf.
videos
in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdJYkopX_C8
and
http://www.prensalibre.com/internacionales/leer_para_creer/Besaton-besos-Chile-Santiagojovenes_5_547195276.html.
20
Even teachers (LT, 20/07/11) and opposition congressmen (LT, 2/08/11) participated in the race, which was
closed with a special event in late August. In addition, in late July, when the first thousand hours were
completed, a second group left Santiago running towards Valparaíso in order to initiate a similar protest
around the building of the National Congress. Other races also took place in other cities. Cf. video in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN5Eb-AGzYQ&feature=player_embedded).
18
In the dexterous hands of the young demonstrators, social networks –and especially
Facebook and Twitter– were essential organization and coordination tools, means of direct
communication between leaders and followers, and an alternative source of information
that was deemed necessary given the omissions and biases of the traditional media. The
Internet itself was both a protest scenario and a combat weapon. The Website Yodebo.cl,
where students massively published the amounts of their university debts, operated in the
first sense. In turn, the Internet became a weapon in the hands of the hacker group
Anonymous, which executed a cybernetic attack that disabled several Ministry of
Education websites.21 As they were used not just by students and their allies but by their
opponents as well, social networks also became verbal battlefields that included the
exchange of insults, uncivil behavior, threats and harsh controversies -frequently related to
Camila Vallejo.
Lastly, social networks -and the Internet in general- were fundamental in terms of
the movement’s international visibility. Some contacts would have otherwise never
occurred or would have taken lengthy proceedings and long waiting periods, but instead
took place instantly and resulted in valuable international and transnational support. They
also yielded replications of activities abroad (especially by Chileans who were “exiled by
education” in Argentina and other countries) and joint activities such as the “continental
demonstration” of November 24th, organized through the social networks by Chilean and
Colombian students. A central offshoot of international links was the “European tour” by
CONFECH leaders, which included press conferences, dozens of meetings (with university
leaders and representatives of the Chilean community in France, with Unesco
representatives and EU and OECD officials in the area of Education), and their
participation in the Parisian edition of the Outraged world mobilization. Soon after coming
back, in her closing speech to the October 19th march Vallejo declared that thanks to that
trip “we have come to realize that our demands are not utopia.”
Points and counterpoints
The definition of education as a good
At the root of the basic disagreement lies the collision between two concepts of
education and, consequently, of the relationship between society and the State. The student
movement defines education essentially as a right: both a universal human right and a
historic right, bequeathed by former generations of Chileans who established it and
benefited from it. Insofar as rights belong to “everyone”, education is thus opposed to
privilege, which by definition is restricted to the few. Education, however, is not only
apprehended as a fundamental individual right that the government must protect and
advance but also as a social or public good –that is, in Giorgio Jackson’s words, as a
“platform for fairness” and the “integrative core of our society”.
21
The Anonymous video is available in http://www.cooperativa.cl/anonymous-bajo-sitio-del-mineduc-enoperacion-de-protesta/prontus_nots/2011-07-08/135516.html.
19
On the opposite side, the most celebrated definition (and the most criticized as well)
was formulated by president Piñera himself, who stated that “education serves a double
purpose: it is a consumer good […] and it has an investment component.” This idea places
education within what critics call “market logic.” In addition, present market conditions
turn it into a “luxury object” rather than a mass consumer good. Thus, it becomes “a
business” which politicians do not want to interfere with because they themselves work in
collusion with “education entrepreneurs”.
Thus the debate about the legitimacy of profit, which the government promises to
regulate or restrict but ultimately endorses as the driving force of progress, while the
student movement seeks to prohibit it at all levels because “when profit is involved,
education becomes a secondary objective and the owner’s expectations for earning money
always prevail.” This conclusion was widely shared: according to several opinion polls,
75% of citizens believed that profit undermined the quality of education and between 75%
and 82% were against colleges and universities being for-profit organizations.
Hence, similarly, the discussion about the role of the State: whereas the concept of
education as a consumer good results in the conception of a regulatory State that controls
the education market, its view as a public good places the State in the role of a guarantor
but also a financer and even a provider of education.
Free education and tax reform
Offers of “aids” for students who could not afford tuition fees were systematically
countered by the student movement with claims that education should be free because it is a
right. This demand -which according to opinion polls was widely supported- was
formulated by the student movement on the basis of the principles of justice and fairness,
and refuted by the government not only with arguments related to the scarcity of available
resources but also with arguments pertaining to justice.
The argument departs from the acknowledgement –expressed by president Piñerathat “nothing is free in life: what is free for students is in fact funded with tax money paid
by society as a whole […] including the poorest people.” Therefore, free education for
everyone –Minister Bulnes concludes– is equivalent to having “the rich subsidized by the
poor.” Free education is then portrayed as a “regressive policy”: thus the government’s
commitment to “making progress towards the provision of free education for the most
vulnerable people,” all the while offering affordable credit to the rest.
According to this argument, demonstrators were protecting the interests of “a few
privileged people” –the students of elite universities, recipients of the biggest chunk of
government funding- to the detriment of students from technical and professional schools
who self-finance their education and who –it was repeatedly noted- were not on strike but
busy working and studying.
This appropriation of progressivism led the student movement to focus on tax
reform. As explained by CONES spokesman Roberto Toledo, “we do not want the poor to
support the education of the rich; quite the opposite, we want the rich to support the
education of the poor through a tax reform that makes the rich, who earn more, pay higher
20
taxes.” Along the same line of thought, journalist Fernando Paulsen denounced that the idea
that free education was unfeasible was a fallacy deliberately disseminated by a small group
of rich people for whom “it was cheaper to pay university tuition [for their children] than
contributing according to their income.”
The invocation of tax reform –supported by nearly 80% of the population (CERC,
2011b)– countered both the argument regarding the alleged regressive character of
universal free education and the one emphasizing the insufficiency of available resources.
Indeed, governmental discourse also stressed “economic realism” and warned about the
perils of “living beyond our means.” On the other hand, the student movement’s demand
was based on the perception that Chile had all the necessary resources to finance a much
broader education commitment. Theirs was thus a demand arising not from crisis but from
prosperity, not from scarcity but from the abundance resulting from growth over the past
few decades. Hence the prevailing feeling of injustice, due to the fact that the calamitous
situation of education was not apprehended as a result of misfortune (the fate of poor
people in a poor country) but of political decisions regarding income distribution in a
prosperous land.22
Principles and bargaining; intransigence and dialogue
The logic of the principle of free education understood as a universal right
inevitably clashed against the logic of negotiation and bargaining. While the government
promised to “reschedule debts” and “alleviate indebtedness”, students rejected a system
based upon “the logic of private banking”; while the government offered budget increases,
students insisted that –as Vallejo put it– “we are not requesting a few more bucks […] but a
much deeper and more systemic reform.” The fight was not for more resources but for a
“change of paradigm, […] a change regarding the meaning of education,” explained
Jackson.
From the government’s point of view, this “intransigence” was due to the extremely
“politicized”, “ideological” and “leftist” character of the mobilization, which was even
portrayed as “manipulated like a puppet” by the Communist Party. According to many
government officials, students had “lost their way”, they had “crossed a line” when
presenting “political and ideological demands” which had “nothing to do with education”,
and had moved far beyond all “legitimate demands” of a student movement by raising
issues such as tax or constitutional reform. In response to these accusations, student leaders
stated in a very straightforward way that their movement was indeed political because the
required changes in education necessarily involved politics; and they redirected the
criticism against their accusers by bringing attention to the ideological assumptions hidden
behind the alleged technical neutrality of the government’s proposals.
22
The tax reform that the student movement called for was to be primarily focused on the copper industry, the
country’s main source of wealth. Some sectors went further to demand the re-nationalization of copper. The
popularity of this alternative was not limited to a bunch of students with extreme views: in December, in the
context of a conflict between Codelco and Anglo American, a foreign private company, 67% of the people
surveyed by CERC (2011c) agreed with the nationalization of big private companies that managed oil
extractive operations.
21
As the process unfolded, however, the strategy opposed to ideological
disqualification prevailed among government officials. Said strategy consisted in ignoring
and minimizing core differences, insisting –as the president did during his speech for Youth
International Day- that “in essence, though maybe not in speed,” objectives were shared
and –as the minister of Education put it– “what brings us together is far more significant
than what sets us apart.” Since September, calls for participation in dialogue tables were
based on this assumption, which was systematically challenged by student leaders.
Moreover, “dialogue” and “street pressure” were understood as mutually exclusive
strategies by one side and as complementary ones by the other: while the government
sought to deactivate street mobilization with promises of dialogue, students viewed street
protest precisely as an effective way to force their demands into the dialogue agenda.
The past, the future, and fear
Students were often accused of “reviving [statist] ideas that already failed in the
past”, and were forced to make it clear that they did not want to go back to the sixties and
seventies, years so distant from the present society of knowledge, but also to point out that
they did not want to preserve the legacy of the “business university” of the eighties and
nineties either. Nevertheless, they did insist on recovering that past in which the same
leaders who ended up privatizing education had themselves benefited from free education.
In any case, the contrast between past and future that eventually prevailed was the
one that opposed dictatorship and democracy. The turning point occurred on August 4th,
when the fenced-in, militarily occupied city center evoked the familiar image of the state of
siege. The government threatened to punish the demonstration’s organizers by enforcing
the State Security Law, strictly enforced the decree that regulated freedom of assembly
since the dictatorship years, and gave free rein to a police force that was still under military
jurisdiction. Thus, it was naturally pointed at as “heir of the dictatorship”. The student
movement, in turn, perceived itself as heir to the fights against Pinochet,23 bearer of the
“unfulfilled promises” of democracy and the gravedigger of the “anti-popular solution”,
that is, the “negotiated transition” that preserved an “exclusive democracy”. Within that
frame was placed the claim for a reform of the Constitution, a text that would have never
been passed under democracy.
Last but not least, a key element related to the democracy/dictatorship opposition is
the lack of fear -of repression, of change, of ideas that were demonized under dictatorship,
and of the possible consequences that could result from “excess” demands- by a generation
born and raised in democracy. A generation that, as Francisco Figueroa points out, “cannot
be blackmailed like our parents and grandparents were by the Concertación” and that, as
emphasized by Camila Vallejo, is not afraid of “denouncing that in Chile there is abuse and
repression, that businessmen are stealing and politicians are often crooks.” Ultimately, the
burden of fear ends up being inverted as the student movement gains courage and becomes
23
Nothing reflected this view better than the slogan printed on a banner that could be seen during a “cultural
event” on July 20th: “Our parents restored democracy, we are going to restore education” (Cf. video in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvlZmbdOXPk&feature=related).
22
aware of its own power. “We have been beaten and repressed [even though] at the most our
mates had backpacks and pencils on them,” explains ACES spokesperson Maximiliano
Salas. And he concludes: “The government is afraid of us.”
The “transversal” strategy and the “silent majority”
The student movement’s “transversal” strategy was aimed at encompassing the
whole society by penetrating through it from side to side, and reflected on its emphasis on
the universal nature of its claim to recover public education as an instrument to equalize
opportunities, and on its willingness to incorporate other social actors and aggregate their
demands.
Students’ demands were not “sectorial” but “everybody’s”; their movement was not
“just” a student movement but also a “social” and “citizens’ movement”. It was so because
what they were fighting for was not a privilege but a universal right, the enforcement of
which required a structural reform of education and, consequently, of a society
characterized by extremely high levels of inequality. The extent of the demand made it
easier to include more social actors, which in turn in turn granted legitimacy to the
formulation of increasingly ambitious demands. The result, far from fusion within an
undifferentiated mass, was the constitution of a heterogeneous mosaic of actors united by
the same cause.
The field demarcated by this transversal strategy experienced fast successive
extensions: it first included the university sector (that is, not only public but also private
universities, and not just students but also professors, deans and workers); next, the whole
education sector (including high schools and technical schools, in addition to students’
parents and guardians);24 followed by workers’ organizations and eventually becoming a
“citizens’ movement”. Within the latter, “transversal” reach even became “generational”.
The so-called “social movement for public education” took shape by end of June, with the
first call to a “social strike”. The overwhelming support that was then received from the
public –a gigantic innovation in the context of a highly fragmented and individualistic
society- was interpreted by the students as the main asset of the movement.
Links with workers, in turn, were shaped in various ways. On one hand, union
leaders endorsed the students’ demands in their role as “heads of household” and “parents
of school age children”; on the other hand, they emphasized that students were “future
workers” after all.
In other cases, inclusion was grounded on suffering of similar situations derived
from the State’s noncompliance with its responsibility to ensure basic rights: thus, for
example, the participation of health workers. In the case of copper industry workers, links
were based mostly on the central role of copper as a source of funding for the education
proposals advanced by the student movement. In some specific cases, the addition of
regional and union demands to the students’ petitions was also apparent. Finally, shared
24
Even students of elite private schools were involved in the mobilization process –and the internal dynamics
of those schools were also transformed as a result of this participation.
23
“outrage” paved the way for students’ participation in the massive March of the Outraged
held in October.25
The claim that the protest was all-encompassing was systematically challenged by
the government in an attempt at placing itself as the true representative of the general
interest of “all Chileans”, “those who march and those who do not”, and not just of the “5%
of students” who “make such a loud noise”. This line of discourse also highlighted that
mobilized students were a minority that was not only highly ideological but also
“privileged”, while the most vulnerable students were “not marching right now”. Likewise,
it sought to exploit the presence of dissident voices within the student body: those of
student leaders of private schools, private universities, technical training centers or
professional institutes who claimed to be discriminated, stigmatized and excluded from the
negotiating table; those of small organized groups of students who opposed the
occupations; and even those of some students who did not take part in mobilizations and
reported having received threats from their mobilized peers. In this context, the government
waved the flag of the “right to study of the silent majorities”, which the Santiago mayor
described as having been “kidnapped” by “a minority group who carries out these illegal
occupations.”
The “silent majority” was soon reincarnated in citizens who suffered the side effects
of mobilizations. Their plight was invoked once and again whenever discussions with
students took place regarding the route of the marches, a step prior to their authorization.
By the end of June the head of the city administration already pointed out that “neighbors
were opposed to mobilizations”, and the Interior Undersecretary blamed students for the
“distortion of police distribution” caused by permanent mobilizations around the Alameda
area, which left neighboring municipalities unprotected and to the mercy of common
offenders. Soon after, collaboration started between the authorities and “discontent
neighbors” organized by local leaders. As a result, it became increasingly difficult for
students to obtain permits to march down Alameda, and the number of unauthorized
marches or routes grew –and so did repression. In December, Santiago’s municipal
authorities carried out a non-binding consultation among the citizenry regarding students’
demonstrations. 72% of participants (24,000 out of some 220,000 inhabitants) rejected the
authorization of new marches. Even though the CONFECH expressed sympathy for them,
it stated –in Noam Titelman’s words– that “we don’t want the fear of a few to limit the
freedom of thousands of Chileans who want to protest peacefully.”
Circuits of violence and repression
As seen on TV screens worldwide, students’ mobilizations often ended with violent
clashes between masked youth (encapuchados) and police officers on horseback and armed
with tear gas and/or water cannons, and occasionally, with looted stores and burnt down
vehicles. All protests, even peaceful ones, ended up with numerous arrests, which
25
Cf.
videos
in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r41K_oLJL_Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8brT9aBOkoY&feature=related
and
24
amounted to 900 nationwide at the peak of the repression.26
The analysis of published information shows that violence typically arose according
to two distinct patterns. In many cases –examples abound– incidents started with the
intervention of police forces to disperse protesters just because they “shouldn’t be there”,
that is, because they were sitting or standing on a sidewalk or in a square, or interrupting
traffic, or trying to camp in a park or occupy any other place that did not belong to them,
the “public” nature of which was therefore put into question. Likewise, in the case of
marches incidents often started with the intervention of Carabineros on account of they
being unauthorized, or because the route followed was not the one agreed upon with
authorities, or because marches had extended beyond the permitted time.
Similarly, violence and damage in the context of occupations, which usually started
out peacefully, tended to occur precisely during eviction procedures.27 Thus, while
authorities justify the evictions as a way of putting an end to disorderly behavior and
damages, students denounce that most of those damages occur are in fact a consequence of
the evictions themselves. In some cases, moreover, they even report “set-up operations”
consisting in the “planting” of Molotov cocktail bombs and the deliberate provocation of
damage with the purpose of incriminating students.
From a different perspective, it can be asserted that violence often started simply
because the police “were there”.28 Even in the context of peaceful occupations -press
reports routinely inform- “Carabineros remain in the vicinity” or “guard the premises”. In
this way, peaceful actions end up in violence when a small group clashes with police
officers, which would not possibly happen had the police not been there expecting (or,
according to some versions, provoking) those very disruptions. Given this scenario, the
endless discussions as to “who started the provocations” come as no surprise.
On the other hand, violence by masked encapuchados also stands out. Violent youth
not only take advantage of situations such as the above described, but also provoke
countless incidents deriving in pitched battles. But then again, why is it that the clashes
initiated by a handful of encapuchados end up involving thousands and dozens of
thousands of demonstrators with their bare faces and no more weapons than their school
backpacks? And who are the people behind the masks? Many are indeed secondary school
students, although they do not respond to any student organization. Student leaders of all
ideologies systematically denied any links with them and emphasized their own peaceful
vocation as well as the fact that barricades “scare people away”. Examples also abound of
situations in which demonstrators themselves attempted to stop acts of violence developing
around them, based on the arguments that “we are not criminals” and that all actions
resulting in the criminalization of the movement and the loss of public opinion support
should be avoided.
26
Cf. images in http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2011/08/110809_chile_estudiantes_2_vs.shtml.
The freedom enjoyed by the Chilean police to burst into school buildings and college campuses seems to be
far greater than in other countries to begin with.
28
This presence is naturalized up to such a point that it is common to read news articles with titles such as the
following: “Secondary school students occupy facade of the National Library. A group of seven students try
to hang a poster on the wall, while Carabineros keep the situation under control” (LT, 11/22/11). One cannot
help but wonder what the “situation” is that is so necessary to “control”: all there is, after all, is seven
adolescents hanging a poster.
27
25
In sum, violent incidents were systematically attributed to minority sectors of the
movement and to the action of “infiltrators”. Movement leaders did admit some
responsibility of small radicalized groups while asking for a better understanding of the
origin of violence –their link to social inequality– and pointing out that lasting social order
and peace can only result from justice. On the other hand, on several occasions they
denounced the presence in the marches of infiltrated police officers who encouraged
violence; they also denounced police unwillingness to contain conflicts and arrest the
encapuchados and, on the contrary, their strategy of applying repressive measures to
everybody present, bringing chaos during family marches or among the masses standing in
front of a stage awaiting the start of a music concert. This account of the causes and
mechanisms of violence echoed in public opinion, that for the most part attributed violence
to police lack of expertise and government intransigence rather than to students’
irresponsibility (LT, 08/13/11; Cooperativa, Imaginacción & UTFSM, 2011i), and believed
that the repressive measures adopted were “excessive” (CEP, 2001b).
At an early stage was police repression already denounced as a deliberate and
systematic “government policy”. Since mid June plenty of reports and injunctions for the
protection of constitutional rights were filed on account of “excessive violence” in marches
and evictions,29 illegal arrests, assaults, beatings, threats and abuse of authority. Reports
pointed both to Carabineros and the Interior Minister, whose resignation was repeatedly
requested for his political responsibility regarding police actions. Repression and human
rights violations were condemned both by the National Institute of Human Rights and the
Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR). Government officials, however,
kept praising Carabineros for their “professionalism” and “contribution to public order”,
which was in turn elevated to the category of fundamental right.
Remarkably, while students denounced violence exerted against people, governors
and mayors took legal action against the individuals deemed responsible for property
damage during marches and occupations. Assessments of damages were systematically
reported by authorities and published by the media after each and every demonstration, as
was the number of police officers injured (together with detailed accounts of their injuries),
which was always suspiciously higher than those of civilians. This accounting inevitably
led to the conclusion –explicitly stated by an UDI congressman- that “there has been no
repression here, but excessive violence by a group of protesters who have caused serious
disruption.”
Criminalization and the mass media
Despite all the evidence regarding the intervention of small groups of radicalized
students and infiltrators with no relation to the student movement, the government’s main
strategy was to hold student leaders responsible for all acts of violence -even if only for
29
Among the most notable denunciations was the one by Central University students regarding a violent
eviction that took place of May. On video recorded by campus security cameras (and showed on television)
an apprehended student lying on the floor can be seen receiving blows until unconscious, as well as police
officers indiscriminately hitting with their sticks, kicking and punching students who run along the corridors
trying to escape (cf. video in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAU_br-ZR-o&feature=related).
26
their inability to prevent or control them- and to assimilate the student movement to their
minor violent expressions, turning social protest into a public order issue. As a result -said
Ballesteros- “we end up talking about violence and not education.”
The official discourse held that stones and Molotov bombs, as well as marches,
occupations and strikes were all kinds of “disorder”, whereas the president and other public
officials embodied the alternative of civility, dialogue and responsible work conducive to
problem solving. The political opposition, on the other hand, held that the criminalization
of social protest was precisely the pitfall that prevented dialogue from taking place because
it obstructed the acknowledgement that students represented a “profound demand of
Chilean society.”
It was clearly the first account that prevailed in the media. The review of
journalistic sources reveals a common practice consisting in illustrating several press
reports related to the student movement with a single photo symbolizing violence (such as
one of a car “set on fire by antisocial elements”). The same practice –that was reported to
the Court of Ethics of the Journalists’ Association and later corrected by the TV station–
was also observed in a prime time news program on TVN (the state channel), which used
once and again the same photograph of an encapuchado throwing a stone as the
background image for reports about the student movement not involving any kind of
violence. A similar case was filed against Channel 13 for its coverage of the June 16th
march, whose disproportionate emphasis on disturbances over the massive character of the
protest echoed strongly in the social networks.30
Around the same time, the union of ministry workers accused the Ministry of
Education for giving Channel 13 and TVN “unusual” help for recording disturbances
during student marches with 360º “spy cameras” installed on the building rooftop. It was
also hinted that an explicit agreement had taken place that only the acts of vandalism
caused by student demonstrators would be shown, but not the violence exerted by
Carabineros. “What the government needs is for this mobilization to frighten public
opinion,” concluded the union leader.
The occupation of public space and the problem of order
The mobilization process revealed the existence of a struggle –a true obsession–
regarding the occupation and clearing of public spaces in a context in which
“authorizations” were required for the exercise of the freedom of assembly and the right to
petition the authorities, as established by Supreme Decree 1086 (1983). In this respect, a
Carabineros commander provided an enlightening explanation after dispersing with water
cannons some fifty students who were staging a massive velatón on the median strip
dividing Alameda and attempted to camp in front of the Ministry: “we proceeded to urge
them to leave and in view of their refusal we decided to disperse them according to
regulations.” That explains the large number of “unauthorized” mobilizations, both big and
30
Possibly as a reaction to this controversy, Channel 13’s coverage of the June 30th demonstrations
emphasized the presence of families with children and the peaceful and festive character of the protest. Cf.
video in http://www.puroperiodismo.cl/?p=14626.
27
small –and mostly staged by high school students, more reluctant than university ones to
follow the stipulated procedures- that were put down by the police.
In such circumstances, controversies predictably arose regarding the issue of public
order. Along the process, the perspective of the student movement gradually shifted from
the concern about obtaining permits to the questioning of the very need of such
authorizations under a true democracy.
The first milestone was the (eventually authorized) July 14th mobilization, preceded
by a warning by the city administration that no march down Alameda would be allowed.
On that occasion, a socialist town councilor requested the Controlling Authority to declare
Supreme Decree 1086 unconstitutional. Soon after, on August 3rd, the mayor of Santiago
refused to “lend the Alameda” and demanded the national government to make sure “not to
allow them to take it”. On the same line, the Interior Minister announced that no further
marches would be authorized down Alameda. Backed by four congressional
representatives, secondary school, university students and teachers filed an appeal to
protect the freedom of circulation of those who wished to exercise their constitutional right
to protest. The appeal, however, was dismissed by the Court of Appeals.
With or without authorization, students insisted on marching. Several governmental
sources accused them of acting “above the law”, seeking to “go beyond the limits”,
“defying authority”, behaving as if the “owned” Chile, and attempting to “rule the country”.
At the same time, they stressed the government’s responsibility to enforce the law and
stressed the value of the right to order and peace. In the morning of August 4th, two
Christian-Democrat congressmen delivered in La Moneda a letter addressed to the Minister
of the Interior in which they warned him that he would be held responsible if any
misfortune occurred.
As the August 9th strike approached, the city administration ended up accepting a
marching route along Alameda. On subsequent occasions, however, the mayor of Santiago
insisted that neighbors were “very scared” and that demonstrations were “killing the
historic district”. In view of the fact that “marches held on Sundays are attended by families
and people who truly want changes in education” whereas “on weekdays people, anarchists
and encapuchados infiltrate them and take advantage”, marches down Alameda should only
be authorized on Sundays or holidays. However, 74% of survey respondents nationwide
believed that marches should always be permitted, even at the risk of vandalism; and 70%
disapproved of the decision to ban marches down Alameda (LT, 08/13/11).
Even so, during the following months authorized marches still took place along
Alameda. On October 4th, however, the police put down a demonstration of about 500
students from technical-vocational schools that had not been authorized because the permit
request had been submitted past the deadline. Two days later a CONFECH march was also
repressed. Despite five hours of negotiations with city authorities, the march had not been
authorized because no agreement had been reached regarding its route.
In early October, when announcing the imminent submission to Congress of socalled “Hinzpeter Law”, the Interior Minister stated that his initiative “represents the great
majority of Chileans”. In turn, his colleague of Education explained that the new
regulations would not penalize mobilizations but only the “criminal attitudes” within them.
Students categorically rejected the proposal as a “backward step for the freedom of
28
expression” and a strategy to “silence the demands” of “every legitimate social protest”.
Opposition lawmakers condemned the government’s view of social conflict as “an
eminently subversive issue”, insisted on replacing repression with concern for the causes of
the conflict, and warned that the project would not pass.
After the repression by the end of the two-day national strike in October, the
director of the National Institute of Human Rights insisted on “the need to regulate the
freedom of assembly by law and not by decree”, and pointed out that Supreme Decree 1086
“dates back to the dictatorship era”. Therefore, she said, it is urgent “to discuss what we
understand today by public order.” Once again, students maintained their call to a
mobilization down Alameda on November 24th even though their permit request had been
denied: from their standpoint, proposals with alternative itineraries and schedules designed
to minimize traffic disruptions or inconveniences to neighbors countered the basic
requirement of visibility, from which the effectiveness of the protest derived. The
effectiveness of the proposal is based upon such visibility. Lastly, on the occasion of the
CONFECH Christmas protest -a “cultural event” that would move from Paseo Ahumada
towards Plaza de Armas-, Gabriel Boric stated that no authorization would be requested
because, after all, they would only march on the sidewalks. “No permission is required to
walk along the streets of Santiago”, he explained.
The unsettled dispute reemerged at the beginning of the new academic year: when
city authorities denied the ACES permission to march down Alameda because “the request
was entered this morning and not 48 hours in advance as required by law,” the
organization’s leader said that “most probably we will march anyway […]. City authorities
have always denied their permission, and it is our right.”
Politicians: “all the same” but not that much
Discourse about political parties, politicians and the “political class” is far from
monolithic. Nevertheless, a profound feeling of distrust is present even among the most
moderate student leaders, towards both the government and the opposition coalition
Concertación, and particularly towards their common preference for “making arrangements
between four walls.”
The students’ perceptions are in line with the opinions that the citizenry as a whole
expressed in a number of surveys: utterly poor and downward approval figures both for
government and opposition, and confidence levels of around 10% for political parties and
17% for Congress, the main arena for the opposition to the president (CERC, 2011a;
2011b). Other surveys, such as CEP’s (2011b) revealed that 29% of respondents –a higher
percentage than in previous years– thought that democracy worked badly or very badly in
Chile. According to an opinion poll revolving specifically around “fundamental reforms”
conducted by Cooperativa, Imaginacción and UTFSM (2011c), 78% agreed that political
reforms should include changes to the binominal system and 76% agreed to the
modification of the system for hand-picking replacements for elective positions.
Such opinions, however, did not translate into the collapse of voting intentions for
political parties. In this respect, the phenomenon was not a true crisis of representation,
29
inasmuch as the discontent was only passively expressed, that is, in the polls and not
through active participation in mobilizations in rejection of the “political class” –
understood as a group united on the basis of their common interests regardless of party
differences and to the detriment of the public good. Likewise, the student movement’s
distrust exhibited various degrees: in practice, the majority accepted the possibility of
establishing links and “tactical alliances” with the opposition, or rather with specific sectors
or individuals within it, but not with the government. Moreover, distrust seemed to have
different roots in each case: while the incumbent right-wing alliance was considered quite
simply as “Pinochet’s heir”, Concertación politicians were rather regarded as
“accomplices” who took part in the former’s businesses, or as “cowards” and “good-fornothings” who had not even dared to change a comma from the laws enacted by Pinochet starting with the Constitution itself.
As already mentioned, the party offices of some members of the Concertación were
also occupied and their leaders were branded “opportunists” for siding with the students
after having allowed or even defended profit in education in the past. Former presidents
from the Concertación were challenged by groups of students, in some cases on account of
their performance on education-related matters and in others for not having clearly stated
their stance regarding the conflict. Nevertheless, far from refusing to make contact with the
so-called “political class”, the main national leaders of the student movement -who in some
cases where party members themselves- understood early enough the need for accepting
(and even demanding) all the support that opposition politicians and legislators were
capable of providing, whatever the reasons they had to do so.
The main interventions of opposition politicians in favor of the students included
the denunciation of the “lack of tune” of government proposals with social demands, the
insistence on a dialogue which integrated all social actors involved, the rejection of the
criminalization of social protest, and the repudiation of repressive measures, including the
initiation of legal actions to challenge them. The latter, in particularly, was a true watershed
as it exposed the existence of philosophical differences between government and opposition
regarding the conception of order, the public space and the resort to the use of force.
Political representation and social legitimacy
The fact that opposition politicians expressed their support for the demands, the
strategies and even the timing of a student movement that regarded itself as
“representative” of a wide social demand created, as would be expected, harsh
controversies around political representation and the sources of legitimacy.
As already seen, the student movement shared with the majority of citizens a diffuse
sense of distrust towards politicians, the National Congress (the place par excellence for
politicians’ negotiations and exchanges), and “politics as usual”, described as duopolistic,
closed and exclusionary. Hence their skepticism regarding invitations to participate in
“dialogue tables”, suspected to be mechanisms designed to legitimate decisions that with all
probability would be made behind closed doors. Hence, too, their attempts at imposing
conditions regarding broad participation, publicity and transparency to prevent a deception.
30
The first round of debate about the appropriate relations between political
representation and social demand took place after the chairmen of the four political parties
within the Concertación postponed a meeting with president Piñera per request of the
CONFECH, and agreed to halt the congressional debate of the education bills introduced by
the Executive until issues were discussed at dialogue tables. The role of Congress explained Senate vice-president (Socialist Party)- is “to “listen to what is going on in
society and respond to it.”
The government, in turn, categorically refused to react to “what is being yelled in
the streets”, because –as minister Lavín put it– “they don’t even have votes”, and “in no
modern democracy are these matters discussed with students; these are important national
issues that are agreed upon in Congress.” Likewise, the students’ attempt at imposing
conditions for dialogue and making demands to the government was rejected as “arrogant”
and “out of place”.
The critical moment of the discussion occurred a few weeks later, due to the
imminence of the 2012 Budget Law parliamentary debate. The government needed a great
deal of opposition votes to have it passed, but students categorically rejected such
agreements. Opposition legislators voiced strong objections to the contents of the
Executive’s proposal and subjected their approval to the incorporation of “improvements”
in line with the students’ demands. Their pro-government peers thus accused them of
“hiding behind the skirts of female student leaders” and of being “led around by the nose”
by radicalized students, and urged them to “take on their political role” and “show who is
the boss in the Concertación”, whether “those who were democratically elected for that
purpose” or “the Communist Party through Camila Vallejo”.
On one side, then, the emphasis was placed on the “political role” of the
government, authorized by election results to “rule” and “govern”, as well as to reach
“institutional agreements” with those who had been “elected for that purpose”, as ordered
by the rules of democracy. They were supposed to do so in accordance to the “general
good”, “listening” but “independently” from any particular organization or interest, which
were after all nothing but “yells in the street”, lacking the hallmark of legitimacy that only
ballots could provide. In turn, what prevailed on the other side of the political fence was the
denunciation of the excessive autonomy of politics regarding social demand, apparent in
the attempt at legislating “behind the backs” of “the social movement” and “the people”. In
this interpretation, the “responsibility for listening” went far beyond the government’s
understanding of it, as it meant the obligation to legislate for and with citizens, admittedly
“represented” in this case by the student movement. Thus, a conception of representation
emerged that was not purely institutional but symbolic, linked to a legitimacy stemming not
from the counting of votes, not even from the counting of heads in the street, but rather
from the embodiment of a majoritarian claim for a right.
As the opposition proposal also failed to satisfy their demands, negotiations
eventually progressed without the students. The Senate approved the education budget in
late November thanks to the votes of three independent senators, who were then strongly
criticized for having “betrayed” the students and further “disgraced” politics. The issue of
representation was brought forward once again between January and February 2012, when
student leaders repeatedly reminded congressional representatives of their obligation to
“legislate for and with the citizens” on occasion of the debate of the “Hinzpeter Law” and
31
again during the discussion of the bill –also introduced by the Executive branch- regarding
the reduction of interest rates for the Loan with Public Guarantee.
Meanwhile, students had understood the urgency of –in Camila Vallejo’s words–
“compete for seats for Congress to be truly representative and not occupied by
bureaucrats.” Since mid 2011 already, a group of students had made an appeal to Chilean
youths to “turn the vote against them” by massively registering to vote, given that their
electoral participation was one of the lowest in the region. And since the problem was
replicated at all levels, since early November the possibility had also been considered for
the best-known student leaders to run for local office. The idea, however, did not involve
the creation of a “student’s party” of any sort but, instead, their accepting nominations from
the political parties the belonged to, as embedded as any other in the fabric of “politics as
usual”.
Epilogue
The outbreak of the student conflict, its intensity and duration took both political
parties and traditional civil society organizations by surprise. In fact, the students
themselves had not hoped that it would reach that far.
The deep causes of the conflict are unanimously identified as structural and
longstanding; discrepancies are apparent, however, regarding the reasons of this specific
outbreak and the characteristics that set it apart from its predecessors, such as its more
radical character, its amplitude and its extension over time. Indeed, if the underlying
problem had remained unsolved for two decades, what is it that prompted an explosion in
this precise moment -not earlier, not later- and gave it its specific traits? Students point at
some explanatory elements, such as the processes of collective learning –and, in particular,
the learning of suspicion- bequeathed by previous experiences. However, while some insist
that the outburst would have occurred regardless of the political leaning of the government,
others emphasize some of specific features of the incumbent government, the first rightwing one in twenty years of democracy, such as its “business-like” approach to politics.
Initiated in April 2011 and led by charismatic and telegenic young people, the
movement reached its peak in August, included a large repertoire of actions effectively
combining tradition and innovation, and found legitimacy not just in figures –that is, in
headcounts on the public square- but also in the innovative use of color, sound, movement
and imagination. As emphasized by many interviewees, it was thanks to these that it was
possible to capture the attention and sympathies of “the people”. This support translated not
only into a high turnout at demonstrations, but also into the generation of a strong “social
consensus” that –it was believed- the government would not dare go against.
Students were initially underestimated and referred to as “whimsical children”; their
leaders –especially Camila Vallejo– were virulently criticized. Their marches were
criminalized and even insulted through their identification with a “disorder” that was not
32
only physical but also moral.31 Nevertheless, their demands were promptly known by the
most part of their fellow citizens and attracted widespread social support based on the
perception that the problem was real and serious –which, in turn, grew stronger as the issue
became part of the political agenda. According to CERC’s Barometer of Politics, the
perception of education as the main problem of the country increased evenly in all social
strata from 24% in May to 73% in August 2011.
In the view of the majority, the students’ demands –for the first time simultaneously
pushed forward by secondary and university students- did not just belong to the students.
The reason was not just its potentially universal character (most families indeed have a
student among them or dream about having one someday) but also the fact that he
education model denounced was consistent with the model of society bequeathed by
dictatorship (and maintained under democracy), and as exclusionary as is the political
system that preserved it. Therefore, the demand for education reform naturally extended to
encompass political (even constitutional) and social reform. Support for demands put
forward by the so–called Social Movement for Public Education, the embodiment of
frustrations accumulated along two decades, was expressed both passively -through opinion
polls- and actively, through direct citizen involvement in protests. The generalization of
demands, the addition of claims and the broadening of the spectrum of stakeholders
occurred at surprising speed. The wider the protests, the higher the number of people (of all
ages) who were having their first political experience in them, and the wider the scope of
demands –related to gender, the environment, workers or indigenous peoples’ rights– that
were incorporated in a chain of equivalence with those pertaining education.
It goes without saying that the situation rapidly overflowed the mold of the
“educational crisis”, which could have easily been managed by the minister of the area. As
the conflict deepened, the ministries of the Interior, Economy, Labor, Transport, Health and
even Foreign Affairs became gradually involved. The conflict involved not only the
Executive but also the Legislative and Judicial branches of government; both the
government and the opposition (as devalued in the eyes of public opinion as the
government itself); and both national and local authorities.
Once they became impossible to ignore, mobilizations were officially recognized as
a “symptom of a democratic maturing process.” Thereafter, the mainstream strategy was to
thank students for their “great contribution” in “bringing the issue into the agenda”, and
immediately point out that the time had come to –in the president’s own words– “go from
protests to action, from intransigence to dialogue, from division to union, from
condemnation to the search for solutions.” Students, however, resisted the pat on the back
and denounced the politicians’ view that once the issue had been brought to the agenda,
they were the ones to solve it. In the words of Gabriel Boric, “we are not throwing a
tantrum, we want to be part of the solutions.” The failure of successive dialogue attempts accompanied by no less than ten appeals by the Archbishop of Santiago to peace,
rationality, and good sense– was the source of countless reciprocal accusations of
31
The mayor of Ñuñoa said the occupied National School for Women was a “slut house” (puterío), and stated
that there were “people who traded money and drugs to have sex there.” Besides unanimous repudiation, the
most interesting reaction to these statements was that of appropriation of the offense by the students
themselves, who subsequently summoned a “march of the prostitutes” in which approximately five hundred
persons took part.
33
intransigence: on one side, the government accused students of wanting to “perpetuate the
conflict” and denounced the growing power of the movement’s wing who went for “all or
nothing”; on the other, the “intransigence of authorities” was also attributed to the growing
prevalence within the government of “the most reactionary right wing”.
From its protagonists’ point of view, the movement for education was the catalyst
that ended up transforming them into actors, that is, turning them from inert objects of
public policy into active subjects capable of exerting influence over them -and willing to do
so. It is repeatedly pointed out that the conflict inaugurated a “historic moment”; that it
caused an “awakening” and created a genuinely foundational context in which the basic
principles of society were put into question. It therefore was a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity in the hands of a fearless generation, born and grown up under democracy, to
“shuffle and play again.” Along the process it became apparent, however, that starting from
scratch was not so easy. For instance, it was unrealistic to remain on strike and maintain the
occupations until achieving the ultimate goals: thus the need for alternative ways of making
progress towards them. Nevertheless, the debate regarding alternative strategies caused
great discrepancies.
The end of the year was the time for self-criticism. Among the mistakes that were
identified were the fact that some leaders had played too prominent a role, and that too
much emphasis had been placed on forms of mobilization that were highly costly to
students and yielded low returns in terms of social support. As pointed out by Boric,
holding occupations “until free education is achieved” means “confusing tactics and
strategy. […] Education is the place where the model of development for the country is at
stake, and thus we need to view it as a long term [process].” Likewise, it was acknowledged
that “allowing for Congress to get involved in the conflict” without having put forward
their own proposal to “prevent politicians to act at their own discretion” had been a great
mistake. In the “second half of the game”, then, the student movement needed to focus on
proposing “concrete changes”; showing more willingness to enter into agreements (without
giving in, however, to attractive offers that only “masked the excesses of the system”); and
deepening the transversal strategy. The latter, in turn, needed to focus not just on seducing
the audience of the mass media but also on democratizing demands at the grassroots level
and strengthening joint work with secondary students and students of technical-vocational
schools and private universities, starting with the inclusion of the latter within the
CONFECH.
In March 2012 the school year started, on one hand, with shielding operations
aimed at preventing the repetition of the 2011 mobilizations;32 on the other, with appeals to
“resume the movement”. According to various estimations, between 5 and 10,000 students
marched with the ACES on March 15th, but they were dispersed because their itinerary had
not been authorized. On that same day, police forces reportedly entered FECH headquarters
beating and throwing tear gas bombs. The first occupation of the year, in turn, took place
on March 27th, on account of demands related to the internal democratization of the
Central University. In other respects, matters related to the expulsion and suspension of
32
On April 13th, for example, the General Controller's Office authorized the University of Chile to indict and
apply sanctions against teachers and students who backed the demonstrations, based on the argument that the
purpose of this public institution was “to promote the common good”, and that its teachers were “civil
servants” without the right to strike.
34
secondary school students who had participated in school occupations -and who, by midApril, were still being gradually readmitted following orders by the Court of Appealsdominated the first few weeks of classes.
The education-related bills introduced by the Executive are still being discussed in
Congress, and students still hesitate in the search for strategies that allow them to influence
the legislative discussion process without overlooking mobilization -without which they
would rapidly lose the status of relevant political actors from the perspective of their
political interlocutors. They do not want to lose the favor of public opinion and they seek to
achieve improvements conducive to their long-term goals without being too intransigent in
the short run. It is therefore extremely difficult, given the number of intervening factors, to
predict whether the ongoing process will end up producing more democracy or simply
more of the same.
35
References
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37