Chilean students call to mobilize and continue protests

Almost 500 students protest outside the municipal building in
Providencia, Santiago. (Courtesy of La Tercera/ Flickr)

Secondary student leaders called for a deepening of student mobilizations Monday after more than a week of school occupations and confrontational marches in Santiago.


“The call we make is for a national mobilization,” Cristofer Sarabia, spokesperson of the National Coordinator of Secondary Students (Cones), told the press. “We make a call to mobilize, but in the manner in which each school will define.”

In Chile, student occupations are generally decided on democratically by the student body of individual schools.

Minutes after Sarabia’s speech, police stormed the then-occupied Instituto Nacional, one of Santiago’s most symbolic public schools, detaining 101 people in the process.

Clashes like this are likely to get worse in the coming days as the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students (ACES), a parallel student organization, announced a national strike set for Thursday.

“As students, we make an extensive call to social organizations that have been supporting us, to students who have been mobilizing and to academics who in recent days have been increasingly at the demonstrations,” said ACES spokesperson Eloísa González.

González was particularly vocal in her rejection of the Public Order Control Law, or Hinzpeter Law, which is currently in Congress and proposes increased punishment for unauthorized protests and occupations. Under the law, the occupation of public property is seen as a crime and could carry a three-year jail term.

“Today, high school students are very clear that we strongly reject any law that criminalizes the social movement and the student movement like the Hinzpeter Law,” González said.

Still hanging in the balance is the role of the Student Federation of Universidad de Chile (FECH), an organization that was at the helm of last year’s protests. Universidad de Chile’s main campus has been occupied since late Thursday night by a small group of students standing in solidarity with protesting high schoolers, but the FECH has yet to condone or condemn the occupation.

The departments of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Philosophy and Humanities, Social Sciences, Communication and Agronomy in the university voted in favor of a strike to support the occupation of the institution, according to FECH president Gabriel Boric.

University Director Victor Pérez called for the “immediate peaceful eviction” of the main campus in the institution and he reiterated the symbolic nature of the occupation of one of Chile’s leading higher institutions.

“I can understand their arguments but I do not condone this action,” he said. “The main campus represents a symbol of our house of studies and of the Republic. It is an icon of our pluralist public education — secular, diverse, tolerant and intellectually free.”

FECH leaders say the organization will make its final decision Tuesday.

By Tom Murphy - The Santiago Times