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The Students' Rebellion in Chile: Occupy Protest or Classic Social Movement? Cesar Guzman-Concha a b a Department of Political Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands b Center for Area Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany

Version of record first published: 06 Aug 2012

To cite this article: Cesar Guzman-Concha (2012): The Students' Rebellion in Chile: Occupy Protest or Classic Social Movement?, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest, DOI:10.1080/14742837.2012.710748

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The Students’ Rebellion in Chile: Occupy Protest or Classic Social Movement?

CESAR GUZMAN-CONCHA Department of Political Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands and Center for Area Studies,

Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

ABSTRACT This article gives an overview of the trajectory, components and repertory of the Chilean students’ movement, which staged a series of protests during 2011. Although it started by contesting inequalities in the education system, the movement soon evolved into a challenge to the authoritarian character of political institutions, sharing similar goals with protests elsewhere around the world—including radical economical and political democratization. Should we therefore see the Chile students’ protests as an Occupy-type protest? By analyzing the main interpretations over the movement, this article argues that the Occupy label is insufficient to understand the specificity of the conflict. In Chile, protests did not occur through small groups coordinated by loose networks; instead, they were spurred by traditional student organizations. This created a scenario of social unrest that resembles classical forms of contention, and in that respect differs from Occupy Wall Street, the indignados or the Arab Spring. This case shows that despite the crisis of neoliberal governance forming a common historical backdrop, the modularity (how?) and the composition (who?) of the movement are better explained by the historical configuration of national political systems.

KEY WORDS: Chile, students’ movement, occupy movement, education, protest

Is the Chile students’ rebellion an Occupy-type protest? In 2011, when thousands of

protestors occupied public squares in New York, Madrid, London and other cities

worldwide, Chilean students were also on the streets. While the former demonstrated on

behalf of the ‘99%’ affected by the economic crisis that followed the financial collapse in

the developed world, the latter struggled for free education, more state involvement in the

education system and political reforms. Is the Chilean case an example of the same

movement that took place in advanced countries? Were these disparate protests

movements connected, and if so, in what ways?

This article analyzes the students’ uprising in Chile. It describes the main characteristics

of the movement, and assesses some of the interpretations of the movement that have been

influential in the national public debate. These accounts have paid attention to one of the

following aspects: a rebellion of the indebted middle classes; a mobilization against the

rightward shift in government; the higher cost of repression; the importance of information

and communications technologies for catalyzing collective action on an extraordinary

scale. Comparison with the worldwide wave of Occupy protests highlights important

1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/12/00001-8 q 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2012.710748

Corresponding Address: Cesar Guzman-Concha, Center for Area Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Email: [email protected]

Social Movement Studies, iFirst article, 1–8, 2012

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2012.710748

differences between Chilean protesters and other exemplary cases of popular dissent that

have occurred more or less simultaneously. However, for Chilean activists, protest

movements in other countries represented a source of inspiration and reinforced their

morale. The great attention that these protests enjoyed in mainstream media enhanced the

resonance of the motives and claims of Chilean students.

Collective action arises in presence of grievances, opportunities, identity, emotions and

embeddedness (Klandermans et al. 2008). I argue here that the combined effect of these

factors explains the emergence and magnitude of the students’ movement in Chile.

Therefore, no single variable can account for this large protest movement. The movement

is the result of the combination of long-term historical factors with causes that relate to the

political process, and the presence of triggers. Thus, the local context explains crucial

characteristics (e.g. modularity, composition) of this episode of civil unrest. These factors

can be summarized as follows: (1) a long-standing failing education system at all three

levels. The lack of regulation of the private sector, combined with the extension of a state-

sponsored private market of college loans, has only improved access at the expense of

quality and has furthermore increased the indebtedness of families. This has fed the streets

with disgruntled students; (2) the turn in government that allowed a right-wing coalition to

take office 20 years after the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990, which reinforced the

perception that the political regime was unresponsive; (3) for decades the identity of the

students’ movement has been oppositional, clearly left-leaning and rooted in the tradition

of the historic students’ movements of the 1920s, the 1960s and the 1980s. Such an

identity has been a major source of collective action; (4) strong feelings of injustice and

indignation arose among the young as their grievances were not properly addressed by

successive governments. The perceived futility of any attempt to negotiate has spread

feelings of disillusion; (5) The students’ unions are historically rooted and legitimized by

their own constituency and the wider public. They have been a key resource for socializing

ideas and claims, organizing and leading the protest, effectively communicating their

demands and persuading public opinion. These organizations are the reservoir of the

movement’s memories, which facilitate its reproduction over time.

Examining these five factors together enables us to go beyond local accounts of the

movement, which tend to be unidimensional, insofar as they put the weight of the

explanation on single factors; and/or manifest a structuralist bias, insofar as they often

dismiss the relevance of factors other than indebtedness and the historic deterioration of

the education system. However, although it is argued here that the Chilean protest

movement is rooted in the national context, this does not imply that it was indifferent to

similar events in other countries. In fact, students benefited from the international wave of

protest, in particular the demonstrations in Western countries. In a similar vein, the events

in Chile enhanced the geographical range of the wave of protest, giving both activists and

observers grounds to speak of a far-reaching movement.

The Conflict

In the last days of April 2011, the Confederation of Chilean Students (CONFECH)

announced a national day of protest to be held on 12 May. With the support of other civil

society organizations, 15,000 marched in Santiago under the slogan ‘there is no future

without quality public education’. The main demands concerned an increase of funding for

the university system, a comprehensive reform of access mechanisms and the

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democratization of university governance. This and subsequent demonstrations were

intended to influence the public agenda on the eve of the annual presidential address to

parliament, which takes place every year on 21 May, detailing the contents of the

government’s legislative initiatives for the coming year. On 21 May, over 20,000 gathered

outside parliament, calling on the government to address the problems of the education

system. As the president’s speech ignored their demands, the students declared their

intention to intensify their campaign of protest. In a press conference, Camila Vallejo,

CONFECH’s spokesperson and the head of the students’ union at the Universidad de

Chile, announced new rallies and the threat of indefinite strike if the government did not

meet their demands.

While the education secretary declared that those mobilized were an ‘ideologized

minority’ and that students ‘have gone too far’, secondary students joined in the movement.

The demands of the secondary students corresponded with those of their fellows in college:

free education, the proscription of for-profit schools and greater public investments

to improve Chile’s disastrous public school system. On 9 June, 26 schools were taken over

by students and most of the public universities went on strike or had their buildings

occupied. By the end of July, nearly 140 schools were occupied in Santiago alone.

Marches on 16 and 30 June refuted the government’s expectation that after a few

demonstrations the movement would fade away: over 100,000 people demonstrated in

Santiago and there were massive rallies in all the major cities. The students were joined in

these rallies by the main national labor union (CUT) and public-sector workers, MPs from

opposition parties, chancellors and faculty members of the main public universities and

even well-known television personalities. These events became Chile’s largest

demonstrations since 1990.

The impressive support for the movement and its own collapse in popularity led the

government to believe that, not having anything to gain from the conflict, repression

combined with the radicalization of some fringes of the movement would lead to its

exhaustion. Yet increased government repression provoked widespread public indigna-

tion, strengthening the movement. The national day of protest on 5 August resulted in the

arrests of over 900 demonstrators nationwide, 14 wounded (two of whom were police

officers) and the transformation of downtown Santiago into a site of clashes between

students and police. The disproportion of the police reaction produced a revival of an old

piece from the Chilean repertory of protest: cacelorazo, banging cooking pans, frequently

used during the struggles against Pinochet’s dictatorship. This time, cacelorazo denounced

President Piñera’s handling of the education problem. ‘Cacelorazo’ was the world’s