Although this meant that the students had taken the protest to the next level and that things were getting really serious, my friend Martin and I decided that this was an excellent opportunity to get to work on our documentary. We went to the back door that the students were using as an entrance (the front door of the school is barricaded shut) and when they opened the peep hole to see who it was we explained to them that we were exchange students from the US who wanted to make a documentary about the strikes. We exchanged contact information, and they told us to come back that evening, as that night starting at 5pm they would be preparing for the strike. Since most of the people inside in the morning were sleeping, they didn’t want us filming in there in the morning.
So, we spent the rest of Wednesday planning and working on our ideas for the documentary before returning to school at night. We talked to our internship coordinators at the TV and radio stations, and they agreed to give us footage and broadcasts of the strikes to use in our documentary. Additionally, we set up a time to interview Carmen, the journalist at the TV station who had been in charge of covering the protests.
When we returned to La Catolica that night camera in hand, we had no idea what to expect. We were greeted by our new friends at the door, and they took copies of our passport for identification (so that if something happened inside the building they would know who was inside) and our bags were searched. Then one of the door guards, Pablo, showed us around the inside of the building.
The inside of the courtyard was much different than we had remembered from the first week being here, as the courtyard had turned into a lounge for the protesters over the last 3 weeks. The school had gotten pretty dirty, although there were handmade signs around asking the students living inside to please keep the areas clean. Each major had taken a classroom and made it their meeting/sleeping space, and decorated it accordingly.
At 5pm every day each specific major held a meeting for students who wanted to be involved in the upcoming protests to fill them in on the latest news, and at 8pm every night the leaders of each major had a meeting with the president of the student union to go over the plan for the next day. We were given permission to film anything we wanted, the only thing we could not film was the meeting itself, as they feared we would divulge their plans to the police.
We met a lot of interesting characters, and everyone we talked to was very interested to hear our opinion of what was going on at La Catolica as well as to hear what University education is like in the United States. They were surprised at how much education costs in the US, and that students there were not as active about changing the costs of education as they are here in Chile. We interviewed a few of the student leaders, and it was really interesting to hear what they had to say.
Although I don’t necessarily believe in everything they are fighting for and I don’t think that all their ideas are practical, I see validity in some of it. The student protesters have many problems with the system of higher education in the country, but some of the main reasons they are upset include the cost of the education, the difference in quality between private and public education, and the lack of a democratic decision-making process in the university among the staff, students, and faculty.
One of the students we interviewed explained that they believe education should be a right, not a privilege, and that university education should be free for all those who get accepted since it is a right. They are angry that the higher education system in Chile has turned into what they feel is a “market” and that rather than having schools compete for students and charge high prices the universities should focus their efforts on providing a free or lower cost and better, higher quality education for the students.
They are angry at the government and in particular the minister of education since Chile spends much less of the annual budget on education than any other Latin American country. They also believe that the public institutions should be held to higher standards than they are now, because currently there is a large gap in the quality of education that students at public and private schools receive, and as students at a private university the students at La Catolica believe by striking they are fighting for their friends and fellow citizens who attend public schools so that they too can receive good quality education.
Additionally, within La Catolica itself, the students want to implement a democratic decision-making process, where the students, staff, and faculty all have a say in how the school is run. These are just a few of the many reasons that they have decided to strike. We didn't realize this at first, but it isn't just La Catolica that is striking. Just about every university in Chile is locked down right now, and they are currently at a standstill because the administration and government have said they will be open to dialogue once the students end the protests, and the students say they will not end the protests until they work out an agreement with the administration.
It was really interesting to talk to the 20 or so students we met inside the building and hear their ideas, since these are people the same age as me doing something that they feel will improve their country and sticking up for what they believe in. Although my ideas differ somewhat from theirs, it made me wonder if there was an issue that the majority of college students in the US would be willing to band together and fight for in order to change.
Throughout the course of talking to the students we realized that this issue of education was a defining one for their generation. We began looking for other students to talk to at La Catolica with different opinions, as we knew that for every student that was protesting, there was at least one student who disagreed with the protest.
We talked to some of our professors to set up interviews, and throughout the course of the interviews learned a lot about Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile in the 70’s, and how his regime had been the one to end the free education system.
Back before Pinochet, all education was nationalized and free, so no matter how much money your family made, you got an education through secondary school. You graduated knowing how to read and write, and then depending on how hard you studied and how hard you worked, you could apply to universities. If your grades were good enough to get into a university, you went for free.
Within this nationalized system, there was a large teachers union that every teacher and university professor belonged to. This union therefore had a lot of power, and when Pinochet took over the country in the 70's, he disliked the teachers union and was so afraid of its power that he dissolved it.
This caused the nationalized free education system in Chile to crumble, and over the years the quality of education in places where there was little money deteriorated to abhorrent levels. No longer were you able to get a good education regardless of your family's place in society.
Due to this change, many private schools popped up throughout the 80's and the 90's to combat this decline in education quality. However, the fact still remained that if your family didn't have the funds to send you to a private institution, then you lost out on the quality of your education.
The public education system now in Chile has improved a little, but Chileans believe it is not up to the standards of the public school systems in other Latin American countries, and not up to the standards previously held in Chile before Pinochet.
My professor believes that the difference between the students in this generation and the students in the generations past is that the generations of parents and grandparents who grew up during the dictatorship of Pinochet lived through the atrocities and never had the courage to speak out against the system for good reason, in fear of being killed. On the contrary, this generation of Chileans is the first with no direct memory of Pinochet, and therefore has been the first generation to get this far towards making positive changes to the education system.
Through our further study of the protests here and through our conversations with students, professors, and administrators we are hoping to gain a better understanding of what this divisive issue and this generation of politically active students means for the future of Chile as well as the future of Latin America.
Long story short, we felt the next step for our documentary after talking to some of the students one on one was to attend an actual protest. So, on Thursday morning, we showed up at La Catolica two hours before the biggest protest yet was scheduled to take place. We met up with our Chilean friend Fransisco, an engineering student at La Catolica who is for the protests, and he showed us around some of the other buildings and even helped us set up an interview with Natalia, the president of the student union for all of the Universities in Vina del Mar/Valparaiso!
After we walked around the buildings and took pictures of the students preparing for the protest, Fransisco walked us across town to the square where the protest was going to begin. We were glad to have him as a guide, since we were nervous carrying all that equipment by ourselves in a city that we are still getting used to.
We arrived just as it was beginning, and I stood on the sidewalk on Martin’s shoulders and took videos of the students marching past. (Villanova specifically told us we were not to officially take part in any protests – which we were fine with – so we made sure to stay on the sidewalk away from the action.)
We continued up the avenue, reading the interesting signs and learning the chants, until we reached the police blockade at the front. The police had set up roadblocks across the main avenue, and were not letting any students go past.
The peaceful protest was brought to a halt, but we were stuck on the side with the students and wanted to go to the other side to get better shots! So we worked our way through the crowd and got to where the police were gathered on the side, and I used my Villanova student ID to convince the Chilean police that Martin and I were official press from the United States (I guess my school ID looks more official than I thought!) Once we were on the inside, we got a true feel for how serious the issue was.
The protest that had been peaceful 5 minutes before turned violent as the students began throwing rocks and bottles at the police and police vehicles stationed on the other side. When one student started throwing barricades, the police turned on the trucks and sprayed the quickly dispersing crowd with the water hose. When that didn’t disperse the 100 or so students that remained, the police turned to tear gas to break up the crowed.
A half an hour later, the street looked like a war zone with lemons (to counteract the gas), paint, ashes, and water littering the street. It took the police the rest of the day to clean the street and restore the neighborhood and its businesses back to normalcy.
Back at the school inside the planning room the students who remained and had not been picked up by the police gathered to regroup and go over strategy, and we talked to a few of them. We had a hard time agreeing with their striking tactics, as we felt they could get their point across better if they had chosen to remain peaceful, but we know that every culture is different and that maybe our cultural barriers were keeping us from seeing the side of the protesters more clearly.
All in all, it was an incredibly interesting and educational experience, and to top it all off we didn’t get hit with tear gas that badly! We have lots of plans for our documentary this coming week, as we are giving a presentation and showing some of our footage for our professors on the 4th. We have a lot of work to do before then, but we are hoping that this week is filled with just as many exciting and educational experiences as last week was. But, we know our limits, and are being careful not to get ourselves in to trouble J
After we walked around the buildings and took pictures of the students preparing for the protest, Fransisco walked us across town to the square where the protest was going to begin. We were glad to have him as a guide, since we were nervous carrying all that equipment by ourselves in a city that we are still getting used to.
We arrived just as it was beginning, and I stood on the sidewalk on Martin’s shoulders and took videos of the students marching past. (Villanova specifically told us we were not to officially take part in any protests – which we were fine with – so we made sure to stay on the sidewalk away from the action.)
We continued up the avenue, reading the interesting signs and learning the chants, until we reached the police blockade at the front. The police had set up roadblocks across the main avenue, and were not letting any students go past.
The peaceful protest was brought to a halt, but we were stuck on the side with the students and wanted to go to the other side to get better shots! So we worked our way through the crowd and got to where the police were gathered on the side, and I used my Villanova student ID to convince the Chilean police that Martin and I were official press from the United States (I guess my school ID looks more official than I thought!) Once we were on the inside, we got a true feel for how serious the issue was.
The protest that had been peaceful 5 minutes before turned violent as the students began throwing rocks and bottles at the police and police vehicles stationed on the other side. When one student started throwing barricades, the police turned on the trucks and sprayed the quickly dispersing crowd with the water hose. When that didn’t disperse the 100 or so students that remained, the police turned to tear gas to break up the crowed.
A half an hour later, the street looked like a war zone with lemons (to counteract the gas), paint, ashes, and water littering the street. It took the police the rest of the day to clean the street and restore the neighborhood and its businesses back to normalcy.
Back at the school inside the planning room the students who remained and had not been picked up by the police gathered to regroup and go over strategy, and we talked to a few of them. We had a hard time agreeing with their striking tactics, as we felt they could get their point across better if they had chosen to remain peaceful, but we know that every culture is different and that maybe our cultural barriers were keeping us from seeing the side of the protesters more clearly.
All in all, it was an incredibly interesting and educational experience, and to top it all off we didn’t get hit with tear gas that badly! We have lots of plans for our documentary this coming week, as we are giving a presentation and showing some of our footage for our professors on the 4th. We have a lot of work to do before then, but we are hoping that this week is filled with just as many exciting and educational experiences as last week was. But, we know our limits, and are being careful not to get ourselves in to trouble J
Viva La Chile!
Julia Marie
Students burning garbage receptacles in the street to protest
A tear gas bomb being let off in the middle of the protest
Engineering students made a fake police car and ran it through the streets - we thought this was pretty clever!
A student being hit with a high pressured water hose
Here is the police truck shooting water at the crowd
Here are students marching peacefully through the streets
Here is the poster for the finished documentary!
Here is an article my professor wrote about me and got published in a Chilean newspaper!
