Soap Box

Protesters burning a church.  A church!!!

Alright, I know I'm not Chilean.  I know that my perspective is different.  I know that perhaps I have no right to be weighing in on this situation, but as I was forced to live through it (and am being forced to endure a less intense version of it at all times) I am going to comment on the national strike that occurred yesterday and the day before here in Chile.

For three months the students of this country have been "en paro", meaning on strike.  They haven't been attending any classes for three months.  Some of them even took desks and chairs from inside the school to barricade the gates of the schools so that they cannot be entered.   From what I can tell, and I have spoken with several Chileans on the matter, what they want is free education.  We're talking FREE.  As in, no tax hikes, no tuition, entirely government funded, FREE education.   Sure, it sounds like a great idea.  I am all for everyone being able to study wherever they want for as long as they want, and maybe, someday in the future we'll figure out how to do it, but the fact of the matter is that the government and public institutions of a country of millions cannot just upturn themselves and change everything about their policies in a matter of months.  It just doesn't work like that.  And that is exactly what they want and what they expect.

The students also want higher quality education which having both worked and studied in a Chilean high schools, universities and private institutions I can completely understand.  The quality of education here is nothing like what we offer in the US.  Last year I attended the best university in Chile and one of the best in South America and I found my workload was minimal, that I was hardly expected to attend class, that often when I did attend I was turned away because the department was striking about something and that in the end I took away perfect grades having done what I felt was about 10% of the work it would take to get the same grades at my home institution.  Higher quality education is a welcome proposition in any country.  It can always be better.

So, alright, the students here want affordable and high quality education.  Why then, Melanie, are you standing on your soap box with a maniacal look in your eye holding a hairbrush like a microphone?

Because they are tearing this damn city apart.

The last two days all of Chile had to endure not only barricades in their transportation systems and massive marches and protests throughout the country, it had to endure fires in the streets, rocks and molotov cocktails being thrown at buses and into store windows, churches being burned, gunfire and tear gas.  The city's resources in terms of police and fire departments were taxed to the maximum all by people who want the government to just hand them a big pile of money???  Stores were looted by workers on strike over unfair conditions.  Does anyone else recognize the painful irony there?  And who is this all affecting?  Sebastian Piñera, the president of Chile, is sitting comfortably in his office in La Moneda while the people the protesters really hurt are their neighbors, co-workers and friends.

People here have the right to protest.  They have the right to be pissed off.  They have the right to stand up for what they believe in.  But where does anyone get off behaving like this?  I know that the whole movement isn't comprised of violent people, and a number of people who believe in the cause have been recorded as saying that they are ashamed by the way some of their compatriots have been acting.  My heart goes out to them.  My heart goes out to anyone who feels downtrodden by their government, who can't afford a decent education, who works in unsafe and unfair conditions.  My heart will never go out to someone who is stupid enough to believe that the answer to all of that is to set a church on fire.

"Violence in the hands of the people isn't violence, it's justice!"

Lady, you must be out yo' damn mind.