A closed primary school in Santiago, Chile in the Spring of 2020
This story was written in the Spring of 2020while Chile (and the rest of the world) was in in the first phase of theongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I’m grateful for my editors at GlobalVoices, a publication dedicated to bringing fresh perspectives on all matters of events happening around the world. Give them a click and support if you can.
By April 1, nearly 1.6 billion learners across the world had been affected by school closures due to COVID-19. For school children in the northern hemisphere, the turbulent school year came to an end with the arrival of warmer weather, but for millions of students and teachers in the southern hemisphere the school year is only halfway through. All primary and secondary level schools in Chile have been closed since March 15, forcing teachers to move classes online. Teaching across Chile’s structurally and economically diverse schooling system presents challenges even without a pandemic gripping the country.
At the beginning of the global pandemic, Chile was initially hailed as a leader in Latin America, due to aggressive testing and what the Chilean government called “dynamic” quarantines, or targeted lockdowns in areas with the highest number of cases. But now, the country of 19 million is still battling a growing infection rate. Over 360,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed and more than 9000 people have died due to the disease.
“Winter is coming strong and it is going to be tough, and I don’t think I’m going to see my students any time soon,” Francisca Alvear, a preschool teacher at a private school in Chile’s capital of Santiago told Global Voices through a Zoom video call.
The Carabineros, the national police of Chile, stand gaurd in central Santiago in November 2019
On May 25th George Floyd of Minneapolis, Minnesota, was killed by police officers. Police were responding to a call from a convenience store regarding a disagreement over a possibly counterfeit $20 bill. After confronting Floyd, hand-cuffing him behind his back, and forcing him facedown onto pavement, Officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes. Floyd clearly verbalized that he could not breathe. Three other officers either stood by or helped Chauvin forcebly restrain Floyd. George Floyd was pronounced dead by paramedics around 9:25 PM. Anger and frustration over George Floyd’s killing has spread across the United States in the form of peaceful protests, destructive rioting, and in some instances, looting of private businesses. In countless cases the police response to protests and connected violence have been similar to their response to George Floyd: aggressive, unjustified, and brutal.
In September of 2019 I moved to Santiago de Chile to teach English as a second langauge and hopefully conduct research on education inside Chile. In October of 2019 Chile erupted into mass protest, rioting and in some cases looting. The manifestaciones, as they are referred to as in Latin American media, amounted to a social uprising; an insurrection lead by people that have been pushed too hard, for too long. The protests in Chile are focused on a complex, but interconnected set of grievances: economic inequality, lack of services in health, education, and transportation, unfair pricing of common goods, privatization of public utilities, the land and civil rights of indigenous peoples, and police brutality. What began as a collection of fare-jumping protests against a planned metro ticket hike, quickly escalated, then spiraled out of control when the national police force, The Carabineros, began injuring students with the use of tear-gas, pellet guns, water-cannons, and blunt weapons — all hallmarks of the repressive dictatorship the people of Chile peacefully voted out of exsistant more than 30 years ago.
My research on the Chilean education system has never gotten off the ground, but my teaching experience has been the saving grace of my time here; a respite from the weeks and months of police brutality. I have seen police beat people with metal batons. I have witnessed a police officer racking a shotgun to scare away protesters. I have had tear gas canisters shot in my direction and felt the sting of the canister’s effects. I have watched a looted supermarket burn, only to learn hours later that a man died inside. If the man had been able to escape the market he would have very likely faced armed police officers prepared to complete what the fire did not. Three dozen Chileans have been killed, hundreds more have been permanently blinded by rubber bullets, and more than 10,000 have been injured in the months long ordeal.
The current massive outpouring of police violence in the United States is mirroring what occured and continues to occur in Chile. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the responding protests Police across the US are pushing, tear-gassing, beating, and shooting non-violent protesters.In August I will return to the US and I fear I will be returning to a country in the same grip of anger and violence as Chile — anger and violence not from protesters, but from a police force acting out of unfounded fear, learned aggression, and systematic bias against black, brown, and poor people.
The PSU (or University Selection Test in its English translated acronym) is a national level test taken by high school seniors in order to study at one of Chile’s top universities. Taken by nearly 300,000 students each year, the PSU is similar to the SAT or ACT in the United States, but the stakes are much higher. The test is used as the main admissions metric for the 30 plus members schools of the National Council of Rectors (CRUCh), which are often referred to as “traditional universities”. Most of the CRUCh universities are public, jesuit or private schools created before Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup and the subsequent reworking and large scale privitizing of Chile’s national education system.
The universities that utilize the multi-topic PSU are often thought of as the “best of the best” and offer a clearer path to higher economic status inside Chile’s stratified economy, compared to newer, less prestigious schools created post 1973. As in most developed countries, the more prestigious the university a person attends the more opportunities for work and social advancement that person is afforded. In the midst of Chile’s on-going social crisis high school students have challenged why the PSU exists and what function it serves in Chilean society.
Ask the average US citizen where Chile is on a map and they will likely point in South America’s general direction, with the saying that Chile is the “skinny one”. Americans (a painfully vague moniker United States citizens have granted themselves) usually only learn geography when considering who and who not to bomb into submission. Americans can pin point Iraq, describe Afghanistan in general terms, and Americans over the age of 50 can give you a few key aspects of the Vietnam War. American mastery of elementary level geography is largely based on our military hubris.
It is unlikely that the US is going to bomb or invade Chile any time soon, so most Americans are not going to worry themselves with Chile’s current crisis of economics, political power, and identity. For the nearly 19 million Chileans who are questioning what kind of country they want to be, America’s apathy is both a blessing and a curse. God forbid outside meddlers became involved in Chilean politics, but it is truly a shame that more people across the globe don’t know what is going on in the “skinny country”. Why does the apathy towards Chile’s crisis exist in the first place? And why has international press coverage of the on going protests in Chile slowed to a trickle?
On Monday, October 21st multiple groups, including CONFECH (the confederation of studunt unions in Chile) called for mass demonstrations and strikes as Santiago de Chile headed into day three of military control. A State of Emergency order has now been called for several Chilean cities, including Concepcion and Valparaiso, which hosts the country’s National Assembly. Roughly half the country’s population is now under some form of emergency order due to the ongoing backlash to growing economic and social inequality.
National news outlets are beginning to publish and broadcast some of the violent actions undertaken by the military during the last 100 hours, such as the killing of a demonstrator along the country’s Route 5 highway, the striking of an interview subject in Valparaiso with a tear-gas canister, and the accidental shooting of a famous actor in Plaza de Italia. Still, much more reporting needs to be done on the brutality of the military and police at the national level in order for the public to understand the intimidation tactics being used against demonstrators and by-standers.
In an action dubbed “#EvasionMasive”, students began jumping Metro gates across the city on Monday, October 14th in protest of continued fare increases for the Santiago Metro and bus system. On October 6th, the Metro de Santiago raised the rush hour fare from $800 pesos to $830 pesos, the second fare increase this year, impacting both metro trains and buses. Student groups in the city proposed a week of evading the fare and called on university and secondary school students to jump payment gates on the Metro and refuse to tap “Bip!” cards on city buses; denying the Santiago Metro system revenue from a major constituency.
By Friday, October 18th, the situation spiraled out of control due to forceful police tactics, including the use of tear gas, riot shields and water cannons, and an escalation of violence from protesters, including pulling down Metro station gates, destruction of equipment, and setting fire to locked station entrances. At the height of the evening rush hour the entire Metro system was shut down, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to walk or rely on the city’s already beleaguered bus service to return home from the work and schools.
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors.” — Terry Pratchett
After spending seven years working at a for-profit education services company I have decided to shift gears and refocus my energy on what I have come to believe is one of the most pressing changes in American (and global) public life — the reform and privatization of public education. My goal is to provide educators, policy makers, students, their parents, and the general public with the information and motivation to make informed decisions on the forms of schooling they want in the US.
My main focus is on the interaction between private companies (especially education media companies) and public schooling systems. To begin this journey I have decided to travel outside the US and provide myself, and hopefully my readers, with some perspective on how things work in other parts of the world. I have come to Santiago, Chile to better understand how the Chilean voucher system works and doesn’t work for families, educators, and other stake holders. More specifically, how private education companies work within and exploit the Chilean national education system.
Bevacqua 