High school protest for free education in Chile ends in chaos

75 people were arrested and around 49 carabineros were injured. Photo by Sumy Sadurni/The Santiago Times.

About 5,000 secondary students assembled in Santiago’s Plaza Italia on Wednesday in an attempt to march down the city’s main street, only to have their plans foiled by carabineros, Chile’s uniformed police. Violence erupted as the carabineros broke up the unauthorized protest, resulting in 75 arrests, 49 injured carabineros and three burnt buses, according to police figures.

 “We are here to protest for free education,” a human rights observer told The Santiago Times. “Here in Chile there is still a lot of inequality. There is a lot of wealth, but wrongly distributed. The rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.”

The call for “free” education is a continuation of last year’s student movement, in which university students put heavy pressure on the government to switch from the free-market education model put in place under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet to a government-subsidized one.

In a muddled mess of tear gas, water, rocks and broken glass, protesters angrily chanted politically-charged slogans like “death to Pinochet’s education,” and “lo que el pueblo necesita es la educación gratuita (what the people need is free education).”

The march was organized by the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students (ACES) but also gained support from university students, namely Gabriel Boric, president of the Student Federation of Universidad de Chile (FECH), who spoke of the protest on an interview on CNN Chile.

-  santiagotimes.cl