Sleeping on a tiled classroom floor, sharing cigarettes and always on the lookout for police raids, the students of Carmela Carvajal primary and secondary school are living a revolution.
It began early one morning in May, when dozens of teenage girls emerged from the predawn darkness and scaled the spiked iron fence around Chile’s most prestigious girls’ school. They used classroom chairs to barricade themselves inside and settled in. Five months later, the occupation shows no signs of dying and the students are still fighting for their goal: free university education for all.
A tour of the school is a trip into the wired reality of a generation that boasts the communication tools that feisty young rebels of history never dreamed of. When police forces move closer, the students use restricted Facebook chat sessions to mobilize. Within minutes, they are able to rally support groups from other public schools in the neighborhood.
“Our lawyer lives over there,” said Angelica Alvarez, 14, as she pointed to a cluster of nearby homes.
“If we yell: ‘Mauricio’ really loud, he leaves his home and comes over,” she said.
For five months, the students at Carmela Carvajal have lived on the ground floor, sometimes sleeping in the gym, but usually in the abandoned classrooms where they hauled in a TV, set up a private changing room and began to experience school from a different perspective.
The first thing they did after taking over the school was to hold a vote. Approximately half of the 1,800 students participated in the polls to approve the takeover, and the yays outnumbered the nays 10 to one.
Now the students pass their school days listening to guest lecturers who provide free classes on topics ranging from economics to astronomy. Extracurricular classes include yoga and salsa lessons. At night and on weekends, visiting rock bands set up their equipment and charge 1,000 pesos (US$1.93) per person to hear a live jam on the basketball court. Neighbors donate fresh baked cakes and, under a quirk of Chilean law, the government is obliged to feed students who are at school — even students who have shut down education as usual.
So much food has poured in that the students from Carmela Carvajal now regularly pass on their donations to hungry students at other occupied schools.
Municipal authorities have repeatedly attempted to retake the school, sending in police to evict the rebel students and get classes back on schedule, but so far the youngsters have held their ground.
“It was the most beautiful -moment, all of us in [school] uniform climbing over the fence, taking back control of our school. It was such an emotional moment, we all wanted to cry,” Alvarez said. “There have been 10 times that the police have taken back the school and every time we come and take it back again.”
The students have built a hyper-organized, if somewhat legalistic, world, with votes on everything including daily duties, housekeeping schedules and the election of a president and spokeswoman. The school rules now include several new decrees: no sex, no boys and no booze. That last clause has been a bit abused, the students say.
“We have had a few cases of classmates who tried to bring in alcohol, but we caught them and they were punished,” said Alvarez, who was stationed at the school entrance questioning visitors.
Alvarez, who has lived at the school for about four months, laughed as she described the punishment.
“They had to clean the bathrooms,” she said.
Carmela Carvajal is among Chile’s most successful state schools. Nearly all the graduates are assured of a place in top Chilean universities, and the school is a magnet, drawing in some of the brightest minds from across Santiago, the nation’s capital and a metropolis of 6 million.
However, the story playing out in its classrooms is just a small part of a national student uprising that has seized control of the political agenda, wrongfooted conservative Chilean President Sebastian Pinera and called into question the free-market orthodoxy that has -dominated Chilean politics since the Pinochet era.
The students are demanding a return to the 1960s, when public university education was free. Current tuition fees average nearly three times the minimum annual wage, and with interest rates on student loans at 7 percent, the students have made financial reform the centerpiece of their uprising.
At the heart of the students’ agenda is the demand that education be recognized as a common right for all, not a “consumer good” to be sold on the open market.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
BORDER SERVICES: With the US-funded International Rescue Committee telling clinics to shut by tomorrow, Burmese refugees face sudden discharge from Thai hospitals Healthcare centers serving tens of thousands of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have been ordered shut after US President Donald Trump froze most foreign aid last week, forcing Thai officials to transport the sickest patients to other facilities. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which funds the clinics with US support, told the facilities to shut by tomorrow, a local official and two camp committee members said. The IRC did not respond to a request for comment. Trump last week paused development assistance from the US Agency for International Development for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy. The freeze has thrown
PINEAPPLE DEBATE: While the owners of the pizzeria dislike pineapple on pizza, a survey last year showed that over 50% of Britons either love or like the topping A trendy pizzeria in the English city of Norwich has declared war on pineapples, charging an eye-watering ￡100 (US$124) for a Hawaiian in a bid to put customers off the disputed topping. Lupa Pizza recently added pizza topped with ham and pineapple to its account on a food delivery app, writing in the description: “Yeah, for ￡100 you can have it. Order the champagne too! Go on, you monster!” “[We] vehemently dislike pineapple on pizza,” Lupa co-owner Francis Wolf said. “We feel like it doesn’t suit pizza at all,” he said. The other co-owner, head chef Quin Jianoran, said they kept tinned pineapple
RSS