The Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH), the largest university organization in the country, held this Friday a national strike and a large march through the center of Santiago to ask for more social assistance for university students due to the rising cost of living. This is the first university demonstration held since The government of the progressive Gabriel Boric took office on March 11, who was an outstanding student leader when he was a student at the University of Chile a decade ago.
Specifically, university students demand an increase in the Higher Education Feeding Scholarship (BAES), which 10 years ago was set at 31,000 Chilean pesos per month (40 dollars) and has not changed since then. “We believe that now is the time to demonstrate, following a whole year trying to generate meetings, instances of conversation and dialogue and that our demands have not been heard,” said CONFECH spokeswoman Noemí Quintana.
insufficient scholarship
The student leader explained that the goal is to raise the scholarship to 48,000 Chilean pesos (61 dollars) and extend it to the months of January and February, when it is the summer break, because “as students we also feed ourselves,” she said. “It is very necessary that as students we return to the streets following two years in a pandemic in our homes, now is the time,” added Quintana. Shouting “32,000 pesos are not the same as 10 years ago!”, the protesters walked through one of the main roads of the Chilean capital.
The university students also requested the Resignation of the director of the National Board of School Aid and Scholarships (Junaeb), Jaime Toháwho has been in office since the second term of the socialist Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018).
Protester shot
During the student protest, at least one student was injured by a shot attributed to the Police. The protest was going through the center of the capital when, according to videos circulating on social networks, a carabinero fired his weapon along with a group of demonstrators that surrounded him.
The President of Chile, Gabriel Boric asked Carabineros this Friday to open an investigation regarding the circumstances in which the protester was shot, and ordered his Ministers of Education and Health to meet with the young. “Our Minister of Education and our Minister of Health are also traveling to Santiago to see this young man and be able to accompany him,” announced the official spokeswoman, Camila Vallejo. According to Vallejo, the 19-year-old is “injured, but not life-threatening.”
The police reform
“It is very important that the work of safeguarding public order is always accompanied by the protection of human rights and this implies both the rest of the protocols and will also imply the great challenge that we have as a Government and to which we have committed ourselves: the reform of the Police, “added the spokeswoman.
The Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, also condemned the act on behalf of the government. “The use of a firearm by a police officer is always a very serious act. Whenever there is an injured Chilean citizen and this is the case, there is a young person injured as a result of that shot. It is a serious fact“, he explained to the local press.
This Friday’s demonstration was the first large-scale university mobilization held in the capital since Boric, a former student leader, assumed the presidency on March 11. “What happened today only shows, once once more, that the Carabineros urgently need a refoundation. Whatever the reason, there is no justification for using a weapon once morest a personexcept for someone who has their legitimate right to demonstrate,” said Confech spokeswoman Noemí Quintana.
The police force has been in the spotlight for years, but especially since the riots at the end of 2019, when thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest once morest inequality and were accused of human rights violations.
young president
Boric, the youngest president in Chilean history and close to the social outbreak of 2019, promised to refound the police force. At 36 years old, Boric is the youngest president in Chilean history and the first who is not part of the two large centrist blocs that have governed Chile since the return to democracy in 1990.
The former student leader governs thanks to a coalition between his party, the Broad Front, and the Communist Party and has promised an agenda of profound changes to install in Chile a welfare state similar to that of Europe. At the moment, it has an approval of more than 50 percent and, Although it was very close to the riots of 2019, there is a sector of those protests that does not support it and has promised to continue taking to the streets.
