Thursday, July 10, 2008




Tuesday I went to a protest in Valparaiso about the new education reform law, LGE, that was passed last week. Protests in Santiago yesterday became violent and students were arrested. This one was peaceful though and organized by professors. In a nutshell:


Chilean President Michelle Bachelet's government has defended the new law. Students and teachers say it does not go far enough to meet their needs and are demanding the government draw more on funds from coffers bursting with revenues from a four-year copper bonanza.

They also accuse the centre-left government of allowing the wealthy right to control the debate over education funding.

Students and teachers say privileged, private schools receive government funds that would be better served in improving the public school system.

Mostly it was just amazing to me that in their lifetime, these professors and folks were afraid to even be seen in groups because of Pinochet's regime. Now they can march and demonstrate and play music in the streets without fear of being tortured or disappeared. It made me really happy.










Also, all this reading about Pinochet and Chile during that time gave me horrible nightmares last night about being taken to a prison camp without knowing why and noone being able to help me. It's scary to learn about what happened here bc it was all done so "legitamitely" with laws passed in the name of national security.





1 comment:

mike said...

I'm liking those stencils!