Chilean Protests Against Nonsense Education System

[rekil]

No demo today as no permission granted. UDI sulking over the occupation of the Bulnes meeting and the senate president's refusal to allow the police to clear the room.

Student gets 2nd degree burns from watercannon.

Fighting at occupied Valparaiso school.

Police came back at night and cleared the school.

Student with motor disability assaulted by police.

 

[rekil]

Valparaiso school mentioned above retaken by students.

 

[rekil]

BBC - Chile's student protests show little sign of abating. Gideon Long again. Better than previous efforts but still crappy, especially the bit about the education budget. Compare tone and content of this BBC World article on Chile with Long's bemused shittery.

Camila Vallejo wrote a piece on her background and that a couple of months ago here.

I was born in April 1988. My parents were communists and one of my grandparents MIR. None of them suffered detention or exile.

[...]

My parents live off their work. My father studied theater, mechanical engineering, my mother mapping, but did not finish. Today they have a small business. My mother works with him in the house. I am working class.

[...]

The first political reading I read was a book of Bakunin. It was a photocopy lent to me by an anarchist schoolmate. I think we were in eighth grade. I do not remember the title of the work, but I was impressed by the way he described the structures of power.

The album Kid A is the best.

Shit album.

I liked Fight Club.

Shit film.

 

[Riklet]

I'd use my canon on her. fnar fnar etc.

Thanks for the updates copliker, they're v. interesting to follow! that school siege vid is pretty amazing, AND they're back for more. Serious balls. The photo of yer man with the burnt up face from the watercanon is fucking grim, still got that image in my head!

 

[rekil]

I'd use my canon on her. fnar fnar etc.

As you'd imagine, she's a bit fed up with that sort of carry on by now.

Thanks for the updates copliker, they're v. interesting to follow! that school siege vid is pretty amazing, AND they're back for more. Serious balls. The photo of yer man with the burnt up face from the watercanon is fucking grim, still got that image in my head!

There's a few lessons to be learned from this whole thing I think. I'm missing out lots of stuff for various reasons but trying to put up the main stuff that's being reported as well as other stories that give a picture of what's happening overall. My mate's mam in sweden is a Chilean exile but when I was over there I wasn't able to talk to her about it due to amongst other things the language barrier and drunkenness.

A couple of docus about the dictatorship.

Chile: Imágenes de una Dictadura. The lad at 5:40 could've been a proper hero. Compare the two funerals, the one at the start is a nazi war criminal, the other at the end and at the start of pt 4 was a young photographer burned alive and left in a ditch.

La Dictadura Chilena en imagenes ineditas. The ladies at 5:25.

Transport strike today.

8:47 | Drivers arrested in Florida will be taken to court at 16:30 hours, which are expected to be formalized by the State Security Law.

8:49 | The State Security Act provides for sentences of five years in prison for blocking streets.

Chadwick: The State must meet the needs of students.

Andrew Chadwick, spokesman for the Government, participated on Tuesday in the opening of the first South American Congress of Correspondents of the UDP, which empathized with the demands of the student movement, ensuring that they have gone so far that now is the time that the state responds to their needs.

Duplicitous rubbish for the benefit of foreign press and organisations.

Minister Chadwick has previously been among the government’s most vocal critics of the protests, and the address stood in stark contrast to his statements made to the Chilean media.

“The student movement is not directly concerned with the theme of education, but .... with agitation and generating violence,” Chadwick said to a press gallery on Oct. 8.

“We regret enormously that the student movement. . . . has been captured, co-opted and led by. . . . the most extreme of the most extreme, the most intransigent, the most ideological, the harshest of the harsh.”

More demos scheduled. Tomorrow, November 5th and November 8th.

TV station studio taken for a bit. Shame about the v for vendetta yoke.

 

[rekil]

Vid of the thing above.



I've used Veritoch's twitter account as a source of pics and info and that. Brief story here about how fascists/gremialistas published her home address, threatened her etc so she quit. She's back as @veritoch_ now.

Badly googletransed story about an 18 year old who suffered waterboarding type torture on police bus. And a bit about someone who got jumped and battered by a load of coppers during the strike on August 25th. Loads of cases of this sort of thing.

Student union election results for posho catholic university. The top 2 face each other in a run off. Article here. Elections in Vallejo's university soon as well.

34,27% NAU; (Liberals)
26,36% 1a; (Fash)
20,84% Solidaridad; (Fash)
13,79% Crecer; (Lefties)
4,73% Caridad; (fuck knows)
1,34% blancos;
0,71% nulos

Silliness. Popular satirical puppet news show.

 

[rekil]

Secondary school students tried to set up a protest camp on the bank of the highly polluted Mapocho river. Report here.
Police broke it up, one 14 year old brought to hospital after being kicked in the vagina. Complaints about sexual abuse filed. Telesur vid report here.

Santiago Times report.

Reflecting recent comments of student leaders from Chile’s public universities, the high school spokesperson also indicated that the student movement might be expanding beyond the theme of education.

“This is also a movement of the [indigenous] Mapuche people in their historic fight for the land that the Chilean state took from them, it’s a movement for health care, its a movement for housing, it’s a movement of many movements that will change the nature of our society and change our vision of society,” he said.

Attempt to occupy ministry of education failed on Thursday.

Large collection of images of the movement on The Clinic site.

The girl with the bloody face halfway down was shot in the face with a TG canister in May I think.

El Surco - Anarchist magazine.

 

[rekil]

Vid of heroic teacher lady mentioned in post #86 on Oct.19th demo making watercannon retreat (a bit) here about 3:50 on.

Communist Party office in Concepcion attacked on 30th Oct.

Little bomb outside right wing newspaper office last week.

Family oriented demo yesterday. Telesur vid report.

The skaters were out. On a related note, vid of skateboard being used in unorthodox fashion during May demo mayhem here.

Santiago City Hall occupied by 50 secondary school students today, cleared by police not long afterwards in the usual manner, 2:50 on in vid here. Report.

Santiago Times report.

Around 50 high school students occupied Santiago’s City Hall on Monday morning in a protest that ended with 44 arrests, after apparently being allowed in by municipal workers sympathetic to Chile’s student movement.

The group seized the building just before 8 a.m. and hung banners from its balcony that overlooks the capital’s central square, Plaza de Armas.

The protest lasted for an hour until Carabinero special police forces entered through a side door and forcibly evicted the students. Eighteen of those arrested were female and 26 male. La Tercera reported minor damage to the building.

Mayor of Santiago Pablo Zalaquett -- who ordered Carabineros to evict the protesters -- said that he would press charges against the students, who he accused of trying to “polarize the country and initiate class warfare.”

University of Chile administrative building also occupied today.

 

[rekil]

Demo today in Valparaiso where the national congress is situated. They have a tank.

Editor of The Clinic mag on the 6 months of protests.

About 400 high schools continue on strike, 200 occupied by their students. About 6,000 university students will lose their school year. More than half of the state supported universities are occupied by their students and the second semester is in jeopardy. The situation, quite literally, is just as it was when all the marching began last April 28.

....

So much has occurred. And so little. The education issue and the eruption of popular support sharpened the realization that we live in a society that is sick with inequality.

....

We are told that armies of young high school and university students are preparing use their summer months to demonstrate on the Zapallar beach – where Chile’s elite have their summer homes – or other places – in order to make known their claim for the money they need to study.

....

If nothing serious or convincing comes from this movement now, there’s nothing to suggest that it will come to an end. Vacation time is upon us, but the students will return, rested, next year. Just now they want to go door to door, just like political candidates, to every part of the country. To explain to people what it is they are seeking, face to face, to tell them what this battle is all about.

 

[rekil]

Demo broken up yesterday.

Band gets teargassed (1 min in) but keeps playing.

Teargas fired into crowd at 6 mins.

Small boy arrested for (I think) picking up spent teargas canisters. A girl tried rescuing him but she got arrested as well.

Pics by:
Nerraz.
Nelson Arancibia.
Mtellezcar.

Student union election results for posho catholic university. The top 2 face each other in a run off.

The gremialistas/fascists were defeated by a narrow margin. Report. If they'd won they could have caused some problems.

 

[rekil]

On the 21st, Cristian Labbe is leading a tribute to Miguel Krasnoff who's doing a 100 year stretch for murders during the dictatorship. Story here. And here. The president's office sent a message of support and congratulations to those attending the tribute, and then claimed it was a mistake and that Pinera said "my government would never participate in a tribute to a man who showed no mercy to women." If accurate that's a peculiar statement on a few of different levels.

Peter Gabriel embarrassed Pinera at a meeting apparently. It was supposed to be a photo op in advance of a concert but he went on a bit.

I wanted to mention some points related to human rights. Topics to which he was very attentive and was very open. These had to do with history, the legacy of truth, justice and reconciliation as in the cases of Victor Jara, indigenous peoples, the right to their land, education and protection of their culture and violence against students.

Other supporters from the world of pop include:
Public Enemy. From July.
Calle 13. These fuckers are massive.
Faith No More.

Camila Vallejo going for re-election at her university. The Trot list is called 'Weapons Of Criticism' (...) Vallejo's position as head of the student federation has been taken by her mate (and dental student ) Scarlett MacGinty. Brilliant name.

There are demos today, tomorrow and on the 24th.

Photo by nerraz taken last week.

 

[rekil]

Demo dispersed by the usual means yesterday before the closing rally/concert concluded.

Synchronised rioting team.

 

[rekil]

Chilean military court grants bail to cop who killed Manuel Gutierrez.

Gerson Gutiérrez, who requires a wheelchair and was present at the scene, said his primary concern is that his brother’s death will “remain unpunished.”

“After getting out of prison, the next step is impunity and we don’t want this to happen. We don’t want Manuel to be a Matías Catrileo, we don’t want him to be a Collio,” he said, referring to two indigenous Mapuche activists who died after being shot by Carabinero officers, “who didn’t receive justice.”

The family’s lawyer, Washington Lizana, denounced the decision claiming that there was a strong possibility that Millacura tampered with the crime scene and could pose a danger to the investigation.

“[Millacura] not only denied the facts, but altered tests and deleted evidence. He made a deliberate effort to ensure he’d get away with his crime," said the lawyer. “We don’t agree with the fundamentals of this decision, because as the accuser understands, Mr. Millacura poses a danger to society.”

Protests yesterday against Cristan Labbe and the do for banged up DINA bollocks Miguel Krassnoff. Googletrans Report. Interview with torture victim here.

Woman hit in the stomach by tear gas canister during the protest. Video.

The chamber of deputies rejected the education budget. The students had rejected the negotiations between the opposition and the government.

 

[rekil]

Santiago Times reports on these two stories. Just noticed that links to their articles die and become 'subscriber only' after a while, so it'll be necessary to c&p them or something.

Chile’s lower house rejects education budget for 2012.

The center-left Concertación alliance united with other unaffiliated opposition parties and independent deputies to reject the proposal with a vote of 54 in favor to 58 against, after a tense 12-hour meeting.

The decision follows the earlier rejection of the education budget by a preliminary mixed committee of senators and deputies, which sparked weeks of negotiation between the two major political blocks to try and reach an agreement in the nation’s bicameral National Congress.

Victims confront homage to torturer in Chile’s capital.

Hundreds of people gathered in front of the exclusive Club Providencia in Santiago on Monday evening to protest the launch of a new edition of a book that seeks to exonerate a convicted torturer of the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

[...]

After the last guest had entered the building an armored truck drove down the street warning protesters that the building had received a bomb threat and asking them to leave the scene.

“The terrorists are in there!” yelled someone from the crowd, pointing at the building. Nobody left.

Carabinero special forces began evacuating the area with teargas canisters and blasted protesters with water laced with chemicals launched from water cannons.

A pitched battle ensued as mobs of angry protesters armed themselves with large stones and began tearing down street signs and park benches to hurl at armored police vehicles.

Reporteos on Flickr

I don't recall if he's mentioned in any of the makhnovist books I have, but It says here that Krassnoff's grandad was responsible for slaughtering Ukrainian jews during the civil war (and both he and Krassnoff's da collaborated with the nazis later on.)

Peter Krasnow was a war criminal who led the Don Cossacks in the Ukraine, responsible for numerous massacres and pogroms, against the Jewish inhabitants of these areas.

Together with other criminals as Semeon Petlura, the Cossacks led between 1918 and 1920 - more than 1,300 pogroms, killing close to 150,000 Jews."

 

[rekil]

Video of Krassnoff protest.

Telesur tv report with English subs.

Demos yesterday. Broken up with teargas, horses etc. Pics by Reporteos on flickr.

Dario Salas school raided. Video here. Police ram the gates at 4:00.

 

[rekil]

Cristian Labbe complaining about the protest against the tribute to Krassnoff.

At stake here is the principle of freedom of expression, the principle of freedom of assembly.

And on victims of the regime.

They were taken to these places because they were selling milk at a dairy truck, nothing happened to many of them, I do not say that there have been no excesses. War makes good men do bad things and that's natural.

Education budget passed by the chamber of deputies.

The center-left opposition once again voted as a block to reject the proposal, but the the support of three key independent deputies saw it pass with 58 votes in favor, to 55 against.

The decision of the Chamber of Deputies means that the education item has now been officially ratified by Chile’s Congress, after the Senate approved the budget last Friday, when opposition senators abstained from voting.

@Mobilized2011 on the twitter has updates in English. Lots of videos, pics, reports, info, and a list of occupied and striking schools and colleges on mobilized2011.tk, there's a section in English as well.

Telesur report with English subs on last week's demo.

Copper discharged for assaulting students in Antofagasta last week. Not sure if he's featured in the vid here. There are many many 'off the ball' incidents.

 

[rekil]

More fightin' at the weekend, coppers making a big effort to arrest women and girls here for whatever bullshit reasons. Yer man alejandro5225bb's channel has lots of raw footage. He's always on the spot, noting copper names, vehicle numbers and that. Dunno how he hasn't been battered or hit by friendly fire yet. Eg, tear gas van (nearly) captured vid, 2.00 on.

The telethon was on at the weekend, an annual event purporting to raise cash for disabled kids but which conveniently provides companies with free advertising and tax break opportunities. Correctly identifying that charidee is bollocks, the students declined to take part this year, except for interrupting Pinera's speech at it, (video here) and some others getting arrested for protesting at it the following day Report here.

Googletrans Giorgio Jackson article about it here.

 

[rekil]

Camila Vallejo failed to get re-elected as president of her university. Santiago Times report. She's been replaced by an 'autonomous left' geezer called Gabriel Boric who has a beard and a mullet. They appear to have an anarchist, Felipe Ramirez of the Libertarian Students Front, (Frente de Estudiantes Libertarios) on board as well.

In an interview with Radio Coopertiva Boric signaled his intention to disengage the student movement from Chile’s political institutions and instead seek to change the institutions themselves.

The new leader’s position puts him at odds with the strategy employed over the last few months, of which Vallejo was a central figure, to work with the opposition Concertación alliance to exert pressure on the government.

“We don’t want to answer to the traditional political parties, but rather to create new sectors that represent the discontent of the people who no longer feel represented by the right or by the (center-left) Concertación,” said Boric.

 

[rekil]

Yesterday, students trashed a do honouring Jaime Guzman, Pinochet sidekick and UDI founder who was killed by the FPMR on 1991. Arses displayed and booze tucked into. Video report here. The bit with the hose is great.

Compilation of police activity.

Short film about how demos usually go.

Youngster arrested for holding up a sign.

The problem is that police are legally authorized to proceed with this arrest. Supreme Decree 1086, 1983, authorizing them to dissolve any "unauthorized demonstration." The decree does not specify what is a manifestation, and in practice holding up a sign without first seeking permission from the Municipality is considered "illegal demonstration". Chilean legislation violates the principle of freedom of expression.

 

[rekil]

More on the Guzman protest. It neglects to mention the booze and amusing hose incident sadly. All participants have since been threatened with expulsion.

Chileans protest homage to assassinated Pinochet advisor. - Santiago Times

Over 150 protesters made their voices heard during a dinner on Thursday marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of right-wing politician Sen. Jaime Guzmán, founder of a conservative political party and top civilian advisor to former dictator Augusto Pinochet. The public protest of the event caused President Sebastián Piñera, the only speaker scheduled, to cancel his appearance at the last minute.

The dinner was organized by the Jaime Guzmán Foundation and saw many high-profile government officials in attendance, including Minister of Education Felipe Bulnes, government spokesperson Andrés Chadwick, Finance Minster Felipe Larraín, Defense Minster Andrés Allamand and Secretary General Cristián Larroulet.

The protest started on the east campus of the Universidad Católica, where demonstrators, mostly students, held banners, rained down leaflets and threw eggs from a second floor balcony onto the politicians as they arrived.

Security guards created a protective barrier around the attendees as the protesters pursued them to the location of the dinner. Both El Mercurio and La Tercera reported that the president of the university refused to allow police on campus to disperse the protesters.

Guzmán was a staunch supporter of the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990). He helped draft many of Pinochet’s policies and was principal author of the current 1980 Constitution of Chile that ingrained a number of reforms to maintain a powerful executive branch and conservative rule by establishing the binomial electoral system that guaranteed rightist politicians equal representation in Congress notwithstanding lower popular vote totals.

Guzmán also founded the far-right Independent Democrat Union (UDI) party in 1983. The UDI remains powerful today, joining Piñera’s center-right National Renewal party in the governing Alianza coalition.

During the transition to democracy after Pinochet left power, Guzmán won a seat in the Senate despite placing third in the election, thanks to the binomial system he helped create.

Members of the radical left-wing Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front group assassinated Guzmán in 1991 as he was leaving Universidad Católica, where he taught Constitutional Law.

“The left has always been violent, so these types of events do not surprise me,” said UDI Dep. Iván Moreira to El Mercurio of the protests outside the dinner.

Secretary General Larroulet referred to the protesters as “violent without the democratic spirit” to La Tercera.

Once inside the campus and close to where the politicians had gathered, some protesters tried to gain entrance by breaking windows, while others dropped their pants and mooned the guests inside.

The protesters eventually dispersed, and president of the Jaime Guzmán Foundation, Juan Eduardo Ibáñez, led the remembrance in place of President Piñera.

“Twenty years ago Jaime Guzmán was shot dead for his ideas, in this place,” Ibáñez said.
“Twenty years later we will not allow his ideas to be continued to be oppressed with violence.”

This was the second protest organized around the celebration of a key member of the Pinochet dictatorship. In November hundreds gathered to voice their displeasure with the launch of a new book that attempted to exonerate convicted torturer and former brigadier general Miguel Krassnoff.

Camila Vallejo romped to victory in tipsy guardian sub eds' hastily cooked up end of year filler person of the year poll. The result is all over the Chilean media and is a further embarrassment for the government. It's absurd given how poor the guardian's coverage has been, half a dozen articles since May, but there you go.

She also topped a poll for Chile's person of the year, ahead of Pinera, Alexis Sanchez, poet Nicanor Parra, and defence minister Andres Allemand.

Poll respondents were asked which of the five figures their families regarded as the most important person of 2011, with 35.3 percent opting for Vallejo, and 20.4 percent naming Chile’s head of state.

Parra and Sanchéz scored 14.8 and 14.7 percent respectively, Allamand 13.6, with the final 1.2 percent opting for none of the above.

Just under half of all respondents (46.6%) voted for education as the defining issue of the year. Another 20.8 percent voted for the broader category of social movements, making it the third most important issue of the year according to respondents.

The demands of the student movement also received further popular endorsement in the poll, with 81.9 percent of respondents in favor of the call for an end to the for-profit educational system, 66.2 percent in favor of changing the municipally administered high schools to a federally administered model, and 60.3 percent supporting students’ demands for free, universal higher education.

63 year old Patricia Schulz, shot in the head with a tear gas canister at the Krassnoff protest. Attempt under way to find and charge the policeman responsible with attempted murder. Story.

Pinera booed at children's party thing organised by his wife.

 

[rekil]

Live version of same tune. These furious hip hop women are a bit scary tbh.

Zaturno - Marionetas. My mate's brother knows this bloke. From earlier in the year, when Obama visited, filmed on mayday apparently. Autotune (!?)

Camila Vallejo reaction to bullshit guardian poll. Telesur vid with English subs.

Googletransed but fairly intelligible leaving do speech.

New supreme court president is massive cunt.

Relatives of people “disappeared” during the dictatorship, along with other protesters, demonstrated against Ballesteros in front of the Supreme Court on Monday. The new Supreme Court president will administer the nations’s judicial system for a two-year term starting in 2012.

While other judges allowed human rights lawyers to prosecute officials for their roles in forced disappearances - saying that disappearances amounted to kidnappings, and so were on-going crimes falling outside the scope of the 1978 Amnesty Law - Ballesteros refused. Chilean investigative newspaper Cambio21 listed six cases since 2000 in which Ballesteros favored impunity for figures who were active in the dictatorship.

Ballesteros first became a judge in Osorno in 1976, where he presided over military tribunals that persecuted political prisoners and by-passed the country’s normal judicial system during this period.

Ballesteros has argued that he was only doing his job as a judge at the time, saying in 2005 that “article 85 of the military code clearly stipulates that court judges have the obligation of presiding over military tribunals.”

(Unauthorized) demos today.

Being beaten inside police bus.

 

[rekil]

I don't suppose anyone knows the tune used in this vid of a ballsy dancer lady filmed at a protest against the 'bombs case' earlier this year, a massive fit up. Enquiries have drawn a blank.

It's Todos Juntos by Los Jaivas, folkies who fled after the coup. Very famous tune apparently. Version with English subs here. The bloke who told me about it filmed this.

 

[rekil]

Education minister Felipe Bulnes has jacked it in.

Mr Bulnes is the second education minister to resign since President Pinera took office in March 2010.

His predecessor Joaquin Lavin stepped down in July in the face of massive protests by students and teachers that closed many schools and universities and led to violent confrontations with police.

Another protest against Cristian Labbe the other day, watercannon etc. Copper at 4:40 is a twat.

Pic by Nerraz.

 

[rekil]

Profile of new education minister. Harald Beyer, social darwinist.

Al Jazeera docu. Some errors and omissions but ah sure it'll do.



Some notable pics I forgot to post earlier.

Mural in Dario Salas school, damaged somewhat pathetically by police in a raid later. The penguins' faces were daubed with paint.

I'm amazed that this thread hasn't been trolled to bits. I'm away for a bit after the weekend so no more from me on this for a while.

 

[rekil]

Brief update on this for anyone still following it.

The education ministry is faffing about with textbooks.

A prominent scholar with Chile’s National Council of Education (CNED) resigned on Wednesday following the controversial decision to erase the term “dictatorship” from the country’s history curriculum.

Dr. Alejandro Goic resigned in a letter to Education Minister Harald Beyer, citing “deep and irreconcilable differences with the curricular content of the history course as defined by the Ministry of Education.”

In the new proposal for the curriculum, which would affect children as young as five, the term “military dictatorship” would be removed from Chile’s history curriculum, as well as the phrases such as “removal of the rule of law,” “systematic violation of human rights,” and the word “coup.”

“This is not just an academic discussion of what is involved when referencing an existential situation, but it is a real drama that affected tens of thousands of Chileans who suffered imprisonment, humiliation, insults, torture, exile, banishment, loss and death,” Goic wrote in his resignation letter.

The Ministry tried to pass the changes in the curriculum through the Council in October 2011, despite a previous outline for a history curriculum for primary and secondary schools having been approved as recently as 2009.

Teachers, parents and activists expect a final decision on the changes to come after the summer vacation ends at the start of March.

The architects of the new curriculum have defended the changes arguing that the rewording of the curriculum encourages “different ways of thinking” about the years from 1973 to 1990 when military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet brutally ruled Chile.

It's summer there so things are quiet until mid March but a demo on Thursday was broken up in the usual manner. Man down at 4:00ish.



The police are using a flamethrower type of teargas spraying device here, see 3:00ish.



Vallejo winding up the right a bit here.

The student leader told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that "the people have a right to fight massive structural violence that exists in society. And we have never ruled out the use of arms, if the conditions exist. However, at this moment, that road is completely ruled out, because the tension that exists today is neo-liberalism vs. democracy. "

A not very good New York Times article here.

Der Spiegel has been covering this reasonably regularly. Articles and pics here.

El Dinamo has a useful section with regular updates here.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Good work, copliker. Thank you for your efforts.

And, of course, a massive well done to all the protesters. Inspirational stuff.

 

[Col_Buendia]

Hmmm, missed this before. Thanks for all the posts. I was in Santiago for a few days in October, the atmosphere seemed tense at the best of times, loads of cops everywhere. Have things quietened down since then? You don't seem to have the same amount of posts covering demos now. And what is the significance of Valleja being replaced by Boric - is he talking about not even negotiating with the state? More radical than her?

I'd give a commentary on the Colombian student protests, but the govt here "withdrew" the edcuation reform bill a few weeks after we arrived. The general consensus among my uni friends here is that is was a delaying tactic, to get the students back into university, let the movement lose momentum, and then reintroduce it this year. The protests here have been radically different to the ones in Chile - they've really been noticeable for their pro-actively "non-violent" posture, with Black Bloc types regularly booed off demos. In a country like Colombia where violence is the de facto language of politics, it certainly makes an interesting change... [apols for derail!]

 

[rekil]

Hmmm, missed this before. Thanks for all the posts. I was in Santiago for a few days in October, the atmosphere seemed tense at the best of times, loads of cops everywhere. Have things quietened down since then? You don't seem to have the same amount of posts covering demos now. And what is the significance of Valleja being replaced by Boric - is he talking about not even negotiating with the state? More radical than her?

It's quietened down as it's summer and they said they need to rest and plan for this year, but there are still plenty of schools occupied, demos here and there, such as the one against the mayor of Nunoa a couple of weeks ago after he called one of the occupied girls schools a whorehouse. I've no idea what Boric intends to do differently, I haven't seen much about him. The right voted tactically for him to sort of get Vallejo out of the picture but I don't think the change of faces will do any harm.

I'd give a commentary on the Colombian student protests, but the govt here "withdrew" the edcuation reform bill a few weeks after we arrived. The general consensus among my uni friends here is that is was a delaying tactic, to get the students back into university, let the movement lose momentum, and then reintroduce it this year. The protests here have been radically different to the ones in Chile - they've really been noticeable for their pro-actively "non-violent" posture, with Black Bloc types regularly booed off demos. In a country like Colombia where violence is the de facto language of politics, it certainly makes an interesting change... [apols for derail!]

Yeah ta, I've tried to keep up with that as well but just don't have the time.

 

[rekil]

Googletransed interview with Gabriel Boric in The Clinic Online today.

A gallery of (large) pics from thursday here. Other pics by Mtellezcar and Nerraz.

That teargas spraying thing I mentioned.

The photographer has captioned this as 'Animal'.

 

[rekil]

Santiago Times video of last week's carry on with rather shitty finger waggy narration.



Girl bokked on the head by mounted police in august.



Giant flag at the national congress, nice and that, but the bit at around 0:50 is absolute quality.

Boric's outfit's site is here. http://www.autonomistas.cl/