It was every adolescent revolutionary’s dream: schools throughout the country were occupied and the gates were barricaded. Tens of thousands of students wearing school uniforms (for which they were dubbed “penguins”) marched in the streets defying police brutality. Support came in from across adult society and the education minister prevaricated hopelessly in the face of coherent, well-articulated demands.
“Chile’s secondary school pupils have scored the highest marks in history,” wrote University of Chile historian, Sofía Correa, in a newspaper column. “Their organization, media management, awareness of civic duty and timing all have been outstanding.”
What started in April 2005 as a gripe against school bus fares and university entrance exam fees rapidly grew into a nationwide movement demanding quality education for all Chileans, irrespective of class, ability or spending power. Since Pinochet relinquished power, no other mass movement has so successfully challenged the legitimacy of the neoliberal state the General left behind.
No one took much notice at the start of May when the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary School Students was formed and students in several of Santiago’s public schools walked out of classes. Protests and walkouts are a rite of passage for public school students in Chile. The movements usually fizzle out.
But this time the protests spread. President Michelle Bachelet fanned the flames by not addressing education reform in her state of the nation speech, and the next day (May 22) students seized the first all-girls school. Within three days, 22 schools were occupied, 14 more were on strike and a total of 70,000 students mobilized. The university students’ union and the main teachers’ union, moreover, were openly backing the high school students’ movement.
Camera crews and reporters ventured into the schools, occupied by students for weeks, to find classrooms in pristine condition with no graffiti or vandalism. Everyone was searched for drugs, alcohol or weapons at the school gates and students from other schools were turned away. Meals were served in communal kitchens, with cleaning duties shared. Decisions were made in meticulously democratic assemblies.
On May 26, students at Altamira de Peñalolén School walked out, the first private school students to take action. Within days, dozens of exclusive private schools were on strike or occupied. Playground fences were draped with banners reading “Private, but Not Silent” and “Education Is a Right, Not a Privilege.”
The Assembly was now meeting daily and had elected a negotiating team: Germán Westhoff and Julio “Gordo” Isamit, both 17, and identified with Chile’s right-wing parties, ensured the movement’s political neutrality. César Valenzuela, a 17-year-old member of the Socialist Party, instantly became a national heartthrob and the movement’s principle spokesperson. María Jésus Sanhueza, 16 and a militant young Communist, was nicknamed “little Gladys,” after the late Chilean Communist leader, Gladys Marín. And the rebellious discourse and large front teeth of Juan Carlos Herrera, a lanky 17-year-old, earned him the nickname of Comandante Conejo (Commander Rabbit). By the end of May they were household names.
The Assembly agreed that a meeting with the education minister, Martín Zilic, on May 29, would be the government’s last chance to avert a national student strike, planned for the following day. Inexplicably, the minister didn’t turn up at the meeting so students began working cell phones, blogs and chat rooms to get the word out across the country.
The blanket strike on May 30 may be remembered more for the police violence than for the seven hours of heated discussion between Zilic and the negotiating team or for the closing down of almost all of Chile’s schools and universities. In addition to scores of wounded children, three journalists, two cameramen and even an undercover police officer ended up in the hospital with truncheon wounds. Students responded to police violence by marching through clouds of teargas in the center of Santiago with their arms held high, as if surrendering.
The next day President Bachelet broke her silence. Flanked by Alejandro Guillier, the head of the Chilean journalists’ union, Bachelet said: “I manifest my indignation at the excessive and unjustified violence inflicted on journalists, cameramen and students.” She dismissed the head of Chile’s riot police, Osvaldo Jara.
President Bachelet finally made the government’s first and only public offer. She pledged grants for university entrance exams, half a million free school meals, emergency funds to repair dilapidated buildings and free bus passes for the poorest 20% of municipal school pupils. Furthermore, she promised to send to parliament a reform of the Pinochet-era law on education (known by its initials as the LOCE) and set up a presidential Education Commission.
In addressing student demands, only free bus passes were not included in the offer. President Bachelet said these “would have cost 300 million dollars a year, the equivalent of 33,000 low-cost houses or hospital attention for thousands of poor children.” By another measure, as one Chilean journalist pointed out, the cost was also equivalent to one of Chile’s nine then-recently purchased F-16 fighter jets.
The Student Assembly rejected the President’s offer on two grounds. First, free student bus fares was a non-negotiable. Second, students wanted more representation on the newly formed Education Commission. Students called for another national strike for Monday, June 5.
After Bachelet’s intervention, however, public support for the movement, which peaked at 76%, began to ebb. Nonetheless, the Monday strike was solid and police showed restraint, despite being attacked by masked provocateurs.
But things had started to get complicated. Annoyed by César Valenzuela’s high profile, the Assembly demanded he step down as spokesman. Two of Santiago’s biggest public schools returned to class. Bickering broke out in the previously disciplined meetings, as increasing numbers reasoned the government had given its best offer and wouldn’t return to the negotiating table. Furthermore, political sectors from the far right to the Communists were trying to manipulate the students for their own ends. The penguin revolution was on thin ice.
On June 9, a defiant María Jésus Sanhueza, uniformed in the trademark navy blue jumper and school tie, addressed reporters: “On Monday (June 13) we return to classes. This isn’t the end of our movement, just a change in the way our demands are articulated. We go back incredibly happy with what we have achieved. We know full well that our victory is historic and hard earned.”
The students had won a resounding victory. The government offer was generous. The student movement, moreover, placed education at the top of the political agenda and paved the way for a reform of the LOCE, a cornerstone of Pinochet’s political legacy.
The LOCE was passed on March 10, 1990, the last day of Pinochet’s seventeen-year dictatorship. In keeping with the General’s strict neoliberal program, the LOCE decentralized and deregulated Chile’s education system and left schooling to the whim of market forces. Three types of schools were created—municipal, private and subsidized private.
Patricia Muñoz Salazar, director of Sociology at Playa Ancha University, Chile’s principle teachers college, explained the LOCE’s tiered system, “The state pays municipal and subsidized private schools 50 dollars a month per student. On top of this, subsidized schools can charge a modest fee. Private schools tend to charge between 250-400 dollars.”
The average class size in private schools is 20 students, in municipal (public) schools it’s often as high as 45. Such disparities were noted in a 2004 OECD report that found the Chilean education system to be “consciously structured by social class.” Guillermo Teillier, General Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party, agrees: “It has been clearly established that ‘educational freedom,’ as established by the LOCE, transforms education into a business and generates inequality from infancy.” Chile has some of the hemisphere’s highest rates of economic inequality.
Muñoz Salazar and other Chileans speak highly of the lessons learned from the student uprising. “This eruption of new social actors has laid bare a number of sociological myths,” says Salazar. “First, the assumption that school children can’t speak for themselves or articulate clear coherent demands is evidently incorrect.” The second myth to be overturned, she adds, is that young people are not interested in politics.
The third, and perhaps most striking conclusion, is that the emerging generation is far less individualistic. “They have, to a point, restored our faith in humankind,” laughed Salazar. “The level of solidarity has been amazing. The movement’s organizers all come from the better-off municipal schools and have largely acted on behalf of the poorer kids. Furthermore, all these children are in their last years of school, any changes in educational policy are not going to benefit them directly.” Support from private school students is further evidence of the new camaraderie.
“This is clearly a post-Pinochet generation born without fear,” says Salazar. “They openly declare their party affiliations. They are aware of their rights and are not afraid of criticizing the establishment.”
Justin Vogler is a writer based in Santiago, Chile. A version of this article originally appeared on UpsideDownWorld.org, a Web site covering activism and politics in Latin America.
