Chilean Student Movement Awarded for Organizing Nation’s Largest Protests

For this post I watched an interview, via DemocracyNow.org, with two leaders of the Chilean student movement. Camila Vallejo the vice president of the University of Chile Student Federation and Noam Titelman the current president of the—of the Catholic University Student Federation. They are in the United States, in part, to receive the 2012 Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, which is given by the Institute for Policy Studies. It is named for the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, who were murdered in Washington by agents of the U.S.-backed Pinochet regime in September 1976. 

During the interview Titelman goes on to talk about the significance of the movement and what is taking place now in Chile. He begins by addressing the education system in Chile, “I think the first thing to understand is that we have a very special educational system, which was imposed during the 1980s during the Pinochet dictatorship, which has one basic principle, and it’s that the market always works.” Obviously this is not always the case. While Chile’s public education is dying, there is only 36 percent of students who are enrolled in public schools. The rest attend private school which validates just how privatized a state can become. This contributes to the problem of inequality.

The Chilean students’ movement led last year’s massive citizen democracy movement. It is considered the largest protests of this generation. This movement has caused hundreds of thousands to rally in the streets of Santiago and other major cities. They are demanding greater access to affordable university education as well as deeper structural changes in Chile. The country has the highest per capita income in the region but also one of the most unequal distributions of wealth.

Click here to be directed to the full interview and a transcript.