In Chile, things are in motion. The student movement has set off a process and opened up a new political movement.
When the Chilean people threatened to take down the dictatorship in the mid 80s, like other countries in the region, the political parties came to their support in order to come to an agreement on an ordered transition and prevent the mobilization from developing.
The current Constitution is a result of this pact. And the Constitution dictates the education system. Therefore, the current struggle is taking on the very political regime that resulted from that situation. This explains the brutality with which the government before the Concertación, Bachelet’s fake socialism, confronted 2006’s mobilization of the penguins.
2011
This year began with massive mobilizations in opposition to the Hidroaysen Dam project by environmental organizations. The near month-long struggle of 11 thousand subcontracted miners at El Teniente, the world’s main underground copper mine, followed, and soon afterwards came a strike on the part of the entire Federation of Copper. And for the past three months, we have been witnessing the heroic student struggle against the privatization of public education.
This situation has damaged the political regime. As President Sebastián Piñera’s approval rating has dropped to 26%, that of the Concertación has gone down to 17% in the midst of great opposition to all the political parties.
Within this context, the Communist Party launched a struggle with electoral aims but was unsuccessful. Today, the program of the students has advanced beyond the possibilities of the Chilean capitalist system.
The students are demanding “a quality education that is public, secular, and free,” and that the resources to fund it come from the “renationalization of copper of which today, more than two-thirds is in private hands” and the “socialization of the copper surplus, and that and end be put to the legal enrichment of the four richest families, who along with the transnational capitalists, own Chile.”
The government had to put out the fire. The crisis provoked the government to overreach. Noticing the deterioration of the movement and capitalizing on the winter break, under pressure from the Independent Democratic Union (UDI in Spanish), Piñera’s right-wing party, the government attempted to repress the movement on an unprecedented scale. This was like trying to drown the flames in gas. The middle class, the sector most affected by the privatization of public education, took to the streets in pots and pan protests, which had not been seen since the 80s. And this reignited the student struggle, which at that point was joined by the middle class and sectors of the working class like miners and port workers, who are consciously fighting alongside the students.
Change in Student leadership
The attempts by the Communist Party members who are leaders in the Confederation of Chilean Students to channel the mobilization into a parliamentary struggle and make partial agreements with the government has led to their loss of credibility. The leaders of the federation are falling and a new layer of independent left-wing militants, very much angered by the CP, is replacing them.
This layer of militants has taken up the slogan of nationalization of copper to fund public education in the program of the struggle, has marched alongside and constantly calls the miners to action, especially SITECO, and is calling for unity between students and workers.
And they have set off a discussion in Chile: if the educational system is constitutional, the Constitution has to be changed, which means a constitutional convention would have to be called.
Perspectives
The leadership of CUT, as well as that of the PC, had called for a national strike on August 24th and 25th, predicting that by then, the student struggle would be a mere memory. This is what is currently worrying the Chilean establishment.
With September 11th approaching which is the anniversary of the coup, a date in which there are always large demonstrations, all the political parties and the Chilean bourgeoisie is worried.
The student movement is painting a new Chile.
