Chilean Protests Against Nonsense Education System

[nino_savatte]

You can see this Tory-led government trying to shove us in the direction of the Chilean 'miracle'. They're already creating a two-tier education system and some Tories talk openly about vouchers.

 

[gawkrodger]

My Spanish is almost nonexistent but I think a copper has just died in a riot

 

[rekil]

My Spanish is almost nonexistent but I think a copper has just died in a riot

Don't think so. Where'd you get this from?

 

[rekil]

Some drama yesterday.

Hundreds of student protesters occupied various political party headquarters to show their indignation at the passage of a controversial tax reform late Tuesday night.

Frustrated high school students took over the headquarters of the center-left Christian Democratic Party (DC), the far-right Independent Democratic Union Party (UDI), and the liberal Party for Democracy (PPD), while the Socialist Party (PS) headquarters was occupied by university students.

High schoolers also staged a failed attempt to occupy the Communist Party (PC) headquarters. While most headquarters were taken peacefully, Álvaro Pillado, president of the UDI youth league, said protesters stormed the UDI headquarters by force, throwing rocks and smoke grenades.

According to Santiago police, the DC, UDI, and PPD occupations were evicted by Wednesday afternoon, and students voluntarily withdrew from the PS headquarters with no police intervention.

Members of the Socialist Youth explained to the press that the goal of their occupation was to hold their party accountable for its actions which they interpreted as incongruous with the core beliefs of the party. While socialist deputies voted en masse against the bill, all but one socialist senator supported it.

"It has been a peaceful occupation... we want to express our discontent with the actions of our congressmen and from now on the socialist youth will reclaim its space, and dispute that space within the party," Gabriel Ossandón, the group’s spokesperson, explained to press.

The tax reform will allot US$1.23 billion to education spending, mostly by way of an increased business tax. While it aimed to address student pressures for education reform, critics say it falls far short of what the country needs.

Hoping to soften the anticipated backlash from student groups, President Sebastián Piñera had directly addressed them in a televised speech Tuesday after the bill was passed.

"A message for the students: I know you are not responsible for the problems that face our education system today, but I do know that you should be part of the solution," he said.

However, Gabriel Boric, president of the Federation of Students of the Universidad de Chile (FECH), asserted that the students needed a stronger role in “the solution.”

"We do want to be part of the solution. We are not here just to say 'this is bad' and 'I don't like this' but we will not accept the argument by politicians that says 'thanks very much students for bringing this issue to light, now its our job to resolve it,'” Boric told CNN Chile. “We have proposals and we want them heard."

Boric said he would outline said proposals to the Ministry of Education this Thursday.

While happy about the increased budget for education reform, Boric questioned the ways in which those funds will be invested.

"(The funds will) mainly benefit a system of education that produces segregation in our country, and moreover it reinforces the for-profit education system," Boric said. "This reform does not address the needs of our country today … At the end of the day both sides are a little uncomfortable with it.”

Camila (and her pottymouth sister) weren't happy. There was nasty fighting at the PC HQ with some injuries and windows and doors broken.

 

[rekil]

Sunday's march to the memorial of the disappeared. Much fighting in the cemetery. Teargas, watercannon, rubber bullets etc.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/__indignado/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nerraz/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chilefotojp/


UDI deputy Ignacio Urrutia interrupted the start of a minute's silence for Allende today, referring to him as "the coward who committed suicide." Vid here.

 

[rekil]

My Spanish is almost nonexistent but I think a copper has just died in a riot

Can you, like, see into the future? Gawkrodamus.

Copper shot dead. Cristián Martínez Badilla, shot while guarding a supermarket in Quilicura, Santiago. Another one was hit in the thigh, while a minor is seriously injured after being shot at a barricade. According to the article, in addition to the traditional barricades, lots of automatic weapons were used against the police who deployed armoured personnel carriers as well as the usual watercannons and teargas vans. An incendiary bomb was found in the cathedral and disabled.

 

[rekil]

Yesterday's demo. Teargas etc.



Telesur report.

Shit santiago times article about the Mapuche student rep's meeting with heap big fucking liar.

Julian Assange met with Chilean student representative last Friday to discuss Chile’s student and indigenous movements.

Embattled Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange expressed his support for Chile’s student movement during a London meeting Sept. 21 with Mapuche Federation of Students (FEMAE) President José Ancalao.

In an interview with El Dínamo published Wednesday, Ancalao relayed that Assange stated t the student movement in Chile “was strongly ignited, was being emulated in many countries and that it was incredible to see how it has channeled the discontent of the masses.”

Ancalao was in London as a part of a Confederation of Chilean Students (Confech) delegation to participate in the first-ever National Congress of Students and met with Assange, who is currently living in the city’s Ecuadorian embassy. Ancalao spoke to WikiLeaks founder to “directly understand his situation and to tell him about what is happening with the student movement and the Mapuche issue,” according to El Dínamo.

 

[treelover]

Sunday's march to the memorial of the disappeared. Much fighting in the cemetery. Teargas, watercannon, rubber bullets etc.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/__indignado/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nerraz/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chilefotojp/


UDI deputy Ignacio Urrutia interrupted the start of a minute's silence for Allende today, referring to him as "the coward who committed suicide." Vid here.

Was the march illegal?,

btw, those coppers think they are Rambo...

what are those guns with the funny spherical things on top, paint guns?

 

[treelover]

Can you, like, see into the future? Gawkrodamus.

Copper shot dead. Cristián Martínez Badilla, shot while guarding a supermarket in Quilicura, Santiago. Another one was hit in the thigh, while a minor is seriously injured after being shot at a barricade. According to the article, in addition to the traditional barricades, lots of automatic weapons were used against the police who deployed armoured personnel carriers as well as the usual watercannons and teargas vans. An incendiary bomb was found in the cathedral and disabled.

is it going back to the Seventies? with the armed movements, not good, imo...

 

[rekil]

Was the march illegal?,

btw, those coppers think they are Rambo...

what are those guns with the funny spherical things on top, paint guns?

It was legal march, it's a traditional thing, dunno if the coppers send horses and teargas into the cemetery every year. They're paintguns yeah. They'll have someone's eye out.

is it going back to the Seventies? with the armed movements, not good, imo...

I don't know but I don't think so. There seems to plenty of guns knocking about though, and the odd bombing. A 16 year old was picked up for it, caught on cctv I think.


Latest poll shows support for student demands at 70%.





Secondary school student rep Eloisa Gonzalez says she got whacked in the vagina with a baton after occupying the election admin offices in protest against the municipal elections. They're calling for a boycott. Story/pics.

 

[rekil]

Yesterday's santiago march broken up after about 45 minutes.





http://www.flickr.com/photos/chilefotojp/

During a protest on the 9th a copper or prison officer fired shots in the air and managed to hit a 21 year old in the head on the 4th floor of an apartment block. Vid.

 

[nino_savatte]

Camila Vallejo and Noam Titleman given Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Award.
http://americasouthandnorth.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/chilean-student-leaders-win-human-rights-award/

 

[rekil]

Camila Vallejo and Noam Titleman given Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Award.
http://americasouthandnorth.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/chilean-student-leaders-win-human-rights-award/

Well it was for the movement as a whole, not for them as individuals.

Vallejo's award acceptance speech.

I would like to thank the Institute for Policy Studies. I thank IPS not only for this Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award that you've given the Chilean Students Movement for our struggle to recover the right to an education, but also for what you stand for and your ties to everything that's happening today in Chile.

After 39 years, it's impossible — even for young people like us who were born after 1988 — to study the history of Orlando Letelier or anyone else who was tortured or assassinated during the dictatorship without feeling pain. We feel the pain of injustice, the pain of that inhumanity, and the pain of a great blow to democracy that hasn't healed to this day.

And although there's been a powerful attempt to erase our collective memory and silence our entire nation, in Chile we won't forget. We can't forget the Pinochet dictactorship's victims, just as we can't forget the aspirations of the movement that gave rise to Salvador Allende's government.

That movement was interrupted by a violent coup and a brutal and bloody dictatorship. But it wasn't defeated, it was interrupted. Its driving force and principles were to defend the interests and dignity of the people.

That movement respected human rights while aspiring to grant all men and women access to a decent education and quality health care. That movement aimed to bring the benefits of our nation's natural wealth to all Chileans. That movement built sovereignty while strengthening democracy.

In that movement, men and women developed the awareness and will to organize for justice and freedom.

I believe that the Institute, through its work, represents women and men like Ronni and Orlando — people who embodied this movement's ideals and gave their lives for their activism.

It is with sorrow, but also with joy and hope that we cherish the ideas and ideals that embody this movement — the defense of human rights and the struggle for social justice.

Many Chileans are now taking back the reins of history, as indicated by today's great social movements. We must recover from the Pinochet dictatorship's terrible consequences if we want to have a true democracy.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights affirmed that even today there still is no justice in Chile because our electoral sytstem guarantees that human rights violators are over-represented in our parliament, relative to their victims.

In our country, there is no justice. Even if we don't have a dictator anymore, we still haven't gotten rid of the political model that his regime imposed upon us — a market-driven dictatorship. This neoliberal model has proven to be incompatible with respect for human rights. When the great wealth of the very few is derived from the life and work of the vast majority, it isn't compatible with democracy.

Our best way to thank you for this award is to carry on with the historic work to which we have dedicated our lives. We will continue to fight for universal, high-quality, and free public education, workers' rights, and excellent health care for all. We will fight to nationalize Chile's natural resources once again. We will continue the struggle for self-determination and respect that our indigenous peoples deserve.

Today, Chile's indigenous people are a shining example of resistance to the repression and militarization they endure at the hands of our government. We should fight for a new Chilean Constitution, which will shed the neoliberal state the dictatorship imposed on us for the benefit the nation's richest people.

As Allende said, the Chilean people's struggle isn't a fight among generations, and it's certainly not the monopoly of one political party. This must be a struggle by workers, students, professionals, and many social and political movements ready to take on the challenge of joining together despite our differences, because we have grasped the historic challenge that we face.

That is why I would like to dedicate this award not just to all Chilean students, who technically won it, but also to our professors and teachers, as well as the indigenous peoples of Chile.

Appropriately enough, in Chile we celebrate Teachers Day every October 16. Just yesterday, we paid tribute to them.

I am also dedicating this award to the indigenous Mapuche people currently held as political prisoners — including the four who have been on a hunger strike for nearly two months. After hundreds of years of resistance, they are not giving up the fight for their land or their right to their own culture. This award is for everyone who is fighting to make Chile a better place.

Video of a noo yawk do here. Titelman at 1:11:00 and Vallejo at 1:34:00.

From otherwise crap santiago times article.

The major economic scandals of recent times have been legendary: price collusion by top pharmacies, the credit rip-off of less affluent consumers by retailer La Polar, the government’s botched effort to sell off the nation’s lithium wealth to the highest bidder (which just so happened to be former Pinochet son-in-law Ponce Lerou) and – just this week – news that the Interior Ministry almost overpaid millions of dollars for narcotics-fighting technology.

Police are regularly reported repressing protesting citizens of one kind or another — be they disgruntled fishermen from Aysén in the south; Mapuche families reclaiming ancestral lands; residents in northern Chile angered by an ill-conceived, stinking pig farm next door; students demanding free and quality education for all; or environmentalists demanding renewable energy policies rather than energy derived from coal, fossil fuels or antediluvian dam technology.

"Disgruntled" fishermen.

The mapuche conflict is particularly nasty. Ongoing hunger strikes and police shooting children from helicopters the other day.

Ponce Lerou is a brilliant name tbf. Chapeau.

 

[rekil]

High abstention rate in the municipal elections yesterday but Cristian Labbé and a few other notorious cunts were beaten.

Shitty AP/Guardian article.

Dunno how Pinera's party can be described as 'centre-right'.

 

[nino_savatte]

High abstention rate in the municipal elections yesterday but Cristian Labbé and a few other notorious cunts were beaten.

Shitty AP/Guardian article.

Dunno how Pinera's party can be described as 'centre-right'.

When it includes some former Chicago Boys? No way.

 

[rekil]

When it includes some former Chicago Boys? No way.

The BBC do it as well, 'centre right alliance', and so on, right next to articles about how Allende and disappeared people are still eligible to vote, and the indictment of DINA agents over the murder of a Spanish diplomat.

Article about Cristian Labbe here. He also said it was a great honour to lose the election because of his support for Pinochet and it turns out that he had furniture, which had been used by Pinochet in London, flown over and installed in the dining room at the mayor's office, at the public's expense. They can't get rid of it so the new mayor says she won't use the room.

Anti-Labbe tune. 'Back to your barracks'.



Democracy now telly interview with Vallejo (through translator) and Titelman. Part 1 and Part 2

Titelman's parents were exiles. He repeats his good line about the invisible hand being 'a fist that punches you in the face.'

Googletrans interview with Vallejo's da here from earlier in the year. He was arrested 3 times after the coup.

 

[rekil]

Trotskyite hiphop student election video. Should be shit but isn't. Someone should egg Laura on to write lyrics for a tune that's a little bit communism.

 

[nino_savatte]

The BBC do it as well, 'centre right alliance', and so on, right next to articles about how Allende and disappeared people are still eligible to vote, and the indictment of DINA agents over the murder of a Spanish diplomat.

Article about Cristian Labbe here. He also said it was a great honour to lose the election because of his support for Pinochet and it turns out that he had furniture, which had been used by Pinochet in London, flown over and installed in the dining room at the mayor's office, at the public's expense. They can't get rid of it so the new mayor says she won't use the room.

Anti-Labbe tune. 'Back to your barracks'.



Democracy now telly interview with Vallejo (through translator) and Titelman. Part 1 and Part 2

Titelman's parents were exiles. He repeats his good line about the invisible hand being 'a fist that punches you in the face.'

Googletrans interview with Vallejo's da here from earlier in the year. He was arrested 3 times after the coup.

Cheers. I was being sacarstic, btw.

 

[rekil]

10 minute documentary, in English and with subs, featuring interview snippets with Gabriel Boric, Noam Titelman and Giorgio Jackson. I don't know why the teacher is in it.

 

[rekil]

Article on Vallejo by Patrick Kingsley in the Guardian. Even taking the language barrier problem into account, it's not very good at all. There's even some cobblers about Occupy.

I don't speak Spanish, and Vallejo doesn't speak English, so our every utterance must pass through the stoic Leal. Everything gets confused, and I don't feel I'm meeting the Vallejo whose fluent and arresting presence you can find so easily on YouTube

 

[rekil]

Demo on 22nd Nov broken up.



20 minute NUS video interview with Camila Vallejo and Paul Floor Pilquil.

Vallejo, Camilo Ballesteros and Karol Cariola are in the running to be nominated by the PC as candidates for the chamber of deputies.

Motorbike copper ploughing into people during a protest on Nov 27th - 0:33 on the video. The girl was knocked unconscious and has head injuries.

 

[rekil]

Reporters Without Borders urges the Chilean authorities to conduct a full and rapid investigation into yesterday’s burglary of the Santiago home of Mauricio Weibel, the correspondent of the German news agency DPA and Reporters Without Borders and president of the South American Press Correspondents Union.

It was no ordinary burglary. Those who broke into Weibel’s home knew what they wanted and found it – Weibel’s laptop containing the files from his investigation into the role played by Chile’s military intelligence agencies during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship.

The files were the basis of a book by Weibel entitled “Illegal association: the dictatorship’s secret archives,” which the Chilean publishing house Ceibo published in October.

Twenty-fours before the burglary, Weibel’s car was stolen from outside his home. The police found it later the same day in La Cisterna, in the southern part of the capital. It had been completely dismantled.

“The authorities should have reacted when Weibel filed a complaint about the threats he was getting while researching previously inaccessible archives (),” Reporters Without Borders said. “He and his family should receive protection commensurate with the dangers to which they are exposed.

“It is still dangerous for journalists in former Operation Condor countries to investigate the activities of the military governments that were ruling them in the 1970s. Weibel deserves the support of his fellow journalists, not only as regards his security but also because he has helped to shed light on one of the darkest periods of the South America’s recent history.”

Weibel is the son of José Weibel, a Chilean Communist Party leader who disappeared after being arrested in 1976.

Interview with Mauricio Weibel here.

Q: What did the archives reveal about the dictatorship’s secret intelligence network?

A: We decided to describe decision-making and high-level communications during the dictatorship. There is clear evidence of full participation in the repression by civilians and by the foreign ministry. No one was innocent; everyone knew.

In the documents, Chile’s foreign ministers request copies of Operation Condor from the secret police. In a few cases, the secret police suggest to the ministry of the interior that a particular exiled person should be allowed back into the country, but the suggestion is rejected.

Basically, we explain how they operated, what information was communicated, what reports were written, and what kinds of materials were burned, as recorded in the certificates of destruction.

 

[rekil]

Two more burglaries after the one mentioned above.

The next day, intruders stole two laptops from Weibel’s home containing the files from his investigations into the role of the intelligence services during the dictatorship. The same afternoon, friends of the family surprised a man taking photos of the house. He fled when asked to identify himself.

A third break-in took place on 16 december, although the police had already ordered patrol cars to keep an eye on the home. This time, an individual entered the home while Weibel was talking on the phone to interior minister Andres Chadwick, who had promised to guarantee his security

Other cases:

• Carlos Dorat, who co-authored the book with Weibel, has received phone calls from unidentified persons who say nothing when he picks up.
• Javier Rebolledo, the author of a book entitled “Dance of the Crows” about human rights violations by the secret police, had his computer hard disk stolen.
• Cristobal Pena, the author of a political thriller entitled “The Gunmen” set during the dictatorship, had his entire computer stolen.
• Pascale Bonnefoy, who Reporters Without Borders defended in 2010 after a lawsuit was brought against her by a former military officer from the Pinochet era, had her computer, an external hard disk and a camera stolen a month ago.

Last demo of the year broken up with TG etc on the 21st:



Vid 2

 

[rekil]

Landowners killed.

An elderly couple whose family's landholdings in southern Chile have long been targeted by indigenous Mapuche people were killed in an arson attack on Friday. The president, Sebastián Piñera, quickly flew to the scene and announced fresh security measures, including the application of Chile's tough anti-terrorism law and the creation of a special police anti-terror unit backed by Chile's military.

The regional police chief, Ivan Bezmalinovic, said the fire was started after Werner Luchsinger, 75, fired a weapon in self-defence and struck a man from the nearby Mapuche community of Juan Quintrupil.

The attack began on Thursday night as one of many political protests around Chile commemorating the death five years ago of Mapuche activist Matias Catrileo, who was shot in the back by an officer who served a minor sentence and then rejoined the police. The Indians scattered pamphlets related to the anniversary while on the Luchsinger property, Andres Chadwick, the interior minister, said.

[....]

The Mapuches' demands for land and autonomy date back centuries. They resisted Spanish and Chilean domination for more than 300 years before they were forced south to Araucania in 1881. Many of the 700,000 Mapuches who survive among Chile's 17 million people still live in Araucania. A small fraction have been rebelling for decades, destroying forestry equipment and torching trees. Governments on the left and right have sent in police while offering programmes that fall far short of their demands.

The Luchsinger family also arrived in Araucania in the late 1800s, from Switzerland, and benefited from the government's colonization policies for decades thereafter, becoming one of the largest landowners in Chile's Patagonia region. Their forestry and ranching companies now occupy vast stretches of southern Chile, and impoverished Mapuches live on the margins of their properties.

Allende's Chile by Edward Boorstein gives a decent background of the Mapuche and land issues. Landowners did very well out of the coup of course.

 

[rekil]

On Feb 21st, trade unionist Juan Pablo Jimenez was killed on company grounds, shot in the head, the day before he was due to present a list of workers' grievances, safety issues, abuses etc.

El Ciudadano report.

Very large funeral turnout.



Lefty rap gent Portavoz performed his tune Te Quieren at the graveside, a somewhat unusual elegy, swearing and the like. Vid.

A protest the following week was broken up with teargas and watercannon. Vid.

 

[rekil]

^ Police claiming that Jimenez was killed by a stray bullet from a gangland shootout a mile away.

Student march yesterday was broken up.



Vid 2.

Pics.

 

[rekil]

Another minister for education on the way out - impeachment process underway.

Education Minister Harald Beyer was suspended from duty Thursday after charges of professional misconduct against him were upheld by a close vote in the Chamber of Deputies. The case will now pass to the senate for final adjudication.

Ministers met Thursday morning to debate the charges in front of stands filled with university students.

“Goodbye Uncle Profit, goodbye Uncle Beyer,” they chanted 58-56 vote was announced at 1:20 p.m.

Beyer is accused of lying about knowledge of corruption and profiteering in universities and of the alleged mismanagement of recent scandals, including that which led to the closure of Universidad del Mar and the subsequent displacement of 8,000 students.

"I am the victim of a political campaign of the worst kind," Beyer told press following the vote.

Michelle Bachelet claims she'll ‘advance toward’ free education if elected to a second term.

In one of the first moves of her fledgling presidential campaign, Socialist Party (PS) candidate Michelle Bachelet promised an end to for-profit education and steps toward free education if elected to a second term.

The pledge came in an announcement to press Monday in the northern Santiago borough of Conchalí.

“The first project I will send to Congress will be a plan to end profit and advance toward free education at all levels,” Bachelet said.

Less than a week after officially announcing her presidential candidacy, Bachelet pledged the first piece of legislation she would introduce if elected would be aimed at reforming the education system.

“We need to end for-profit education,” Bachelet told a crowd of enthusiastic supporters in northern Santiago on Monday. “Education cannot be a business.”

If elected, this will be Bachelet’s second major attempt to reform Chile’s highly privatized education system. During her first term, in April of 2007, she oversaw the passing of the General Law of Education (LGE), a bill that was forcefully criticized and rejected by student leaders, the national teachers union and conservative opposition.

Now, as Bachelet delivers the same promise she attempted to fulfill in 2007, the same critics are wondering if she deserves a second chance.

Then: General Law of Education

Bachelet’s LGE bill from her first term was an education reform package that included many measures aimed at regulating privatization in the system, including a four-year deadline for educational administrators to declare their institutions non-profit.

The bill was one of the first major pieces of legislation meant to replace the Pinochet-era constitutional education law. Pinochet’s legislation, enacted just three days before the fall of his military dictatorship, made it possible for almost anyone to open a school and receive government funding — without having to adhere to any standards of quality.

Despite the good intentions of Bachelet’s bill, the LGE bill was largely criticized for not going far enough to eliminate the profit-based aspect of the education system, or bothering to assist Chile’s low-income students. The early draft even spurred thousands of students across the country to hit the streets in a series of massive protests known as the “Penguin Revolution.”

“She presented the General Law of Education, which was supposed to end for-profit education within four years,” said Diego Vela, president of the Student Federation of the Universidad Católica (FEUC) in an interview on CNN Chile on Tuesday. “It finally ended with passing a bill that was absolutely contrary, and that only further deepened the segregated and deregulated the (education) model.”

Although details of the campaign promise have not yet been released, the former president said her proposed legislation will work towards ending profiteering and advancing free education at all levels.

Today, Chilean students continue to march in the streets to protest the current system, adamantly calling for an end to for-profit education institutions.

While Vela commended the fact that Bachelet has recognized the student effort and is making education a top priority, he said there needs to be more profound and effective legislation than what was put forward in 2007 before Chile can see significant reform.

Now: facing criticism from the opposition

Bachelet’s announcement was also met with an onslaught of criticism from members of the conservative opposition.

Presidential candidates getting ready to face off against the popular Bachelet were quick to point out alleged failures to stop abuses within the education system during her first term.

Andrés Allamand, presidential candidate for the center-right National Renewal (RN) party, said he is doubtful of her promise to stop abuses in the education system, given her “absolutely compliant” attitude towards Universidad del Mar’s financial irregularities.

“In the last months of Michelle Bachelet’s term, particularly between January and March, more than US$7.2 million in [loans from the economic ministry] were awarded to this university,” Allamand told press after meeting with the university’s former president. “It seems to me this is very important background that should be the subject of an investigation.”

Independent Democratic Union (UDI) president Patricio Melero was also quick to accuse the Bachelet government of passivity when it came to the scandal involving the corrupt institution.

“Where was the concern for inequality in the Bachelet government when the Universidad del Mar families were given the false promise of an education?” Melero asked a crowd on Monday.

Meanwhile, UDI candidate Laurence Golborne said Bachelet’s promise is unrealistic, and does not give any indication as to what will happen with the students attending for-profit schools.

“More than 50 percent of students in Chile today are part of subsidized private education,” Golborne said on Monday. “The question is, what do we do with them? What education are we going to give them?”

Large ST c+p cos the article will go subscriber only in a bit.

The Concertacion were the primary overseers of the intensification of privatised education, over 800 public schools were closed and there was an increase of nearly 3000 subsidised private schools between 1992 and 2012. Link.

-----------------

Communist Party prez Guillermo Teillier caused a stir by owning up to authorising the attempt to assassinate Pinochet in 1986. Link.

During a long interview at the weekend with El Semanal, Teillier, leader and military chief of the PCCh in the 1980s, argued that the armed struggle waged by the far-left urban guerrilla movement Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR), a splinter of the PCCh with which he served as a go-between, was crucial in defeating the Pinochet dictatorship. He condemned violence but insisted that when faced with it “there is no other way to respond”.

Teillier’s remark caused serious ructions. The president of the DC, Ignacio Walker, denounced the PCCh’s strategy in the 1980s as “a profound error” and accused Teillier of having “no sense of self-criticism”. Walker said the armed struggle upheld by the PCCh did no more than “serve as the pretext for the Pinochet dictatorship to carry out greater repressive actions”. He said it was the 1988 plebiscite, “a political, social and electoral mobilisation”, which defeated Pinochet and which the PCCh had opposed “from the beginning to the end”. He also added that it was “incomprehensible that people who lived through the brutal repression of Pinochet did not repudiate with the same force repression from left-wing dictatorships”. A common foreign policy stance between the Concertación and the PCCh over Cuba is a cause of friction.

Christian Democrats lol. UDI cunts and Pinochet's grandson were crying about it as well.

“I find it incredible to read in our papers that a party president, a deputy of the Republic, is boasting about having ordered attacks that led to the death of five people (Pinochet’s bodyguards),” the presidential candidate for the right-wing Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), Laurence Golborne, said in response to the remarks by Guillermo Teillier. “Violence, from wherever it comes, must be condemned”. Golborne was attending the commemoration of the murder of Jaime Guzmán on 1 April 1991. Guzmán, founder of the UDI and the ideologue of the Pinochet dictatorship, was killed by members of the FPMR, which did not lay down its arms with the restoration of elected rule in 1990.

 

[rekil]

Football commentator Claudio Palma narrates a video promoting the demo on the 11th, first official one of the year.



Teacher Mariela Farias wins award for excellence, then protests against privatised education system right in Pinera's face.



Vid.

 

[Dillinger4]

I have been following the events in Chile. Something about this breaks my heart. These young people are so brave and hopeful, in the full knowledge of the horrors of the events of their parents and grandparents generation. I worry about them. I hope they win.

 

[rekil]

Demos in Santiago and 12 other cities today.



Attacked by police as usual. Woman hit in the eye by a paintball pellet.

Acusan que una estudiante de sicología de la Universidad Diego Portales resultó herida por un balín de pintura disparado por Carabineros que la impactó en el ojo. (Foto: @BeatrizteleSUR)