Far-right Kast government is tightening repression of students while eliminating support funds

~ La Zarzamora ~

On June 3rd, massive student marches took place in various regions of the territory occupied by Chile, in response to the government’s latest anti-educational measures. In Santiago, the repressive forces acted with their usual cowardice, suppressing the crowd and leaving a law student from the University of Chile with multiple facial fractures, requiring surgery.

The measures include, on the one hand, the mega-reform project, currently being debated in the Senate, which entails a series of budget cuts. These affect the School Feeding Program (PAE), the Public Education Support Fund, the Higher Education Access Support Program, and other scholarships and benefits. On the other hand there is the regimentation of educational establishments, with a tightening of “Protected School” (formerly “Safe Classroom”) legislation.

The Protected School initiative, already passed by Congress, entails a series of measures that profoundly violate the school community, with an anti-pedagogical focus on criminalising children and adolescents. These measures include violations such as searches and inspections of backpacks; disciplinary measures that prohibit the use of face coverings; the elimination of free tuition for five years for students convicted of crimes involving physical assault, use of weapons, or serious damage to school infrastructure; and direct sanctions for those who lead or participate in the total or partial disruption of classes.

The reform also aims to eliminate the few existing safeguards protecting ancestral lands from state and private usurpation. In the regions, specifically in Concepción, the demonstration was widely attended by students from primary, secondary, and university levels, as well as by students from various Mapuche student residences, who also demonstrated for the freedom of political prisoners and against the reform to the Indigenous Law announced by Kast in his State of the Nation address.

It is important to note that police intervention in schools has been taking place in Chile for decades, ever since the Safe Classroom Law (Law 21.128) was enacted in 2018 during the Piñera administration. School “security” protocols include the entry of repressive forces into school buildings and the detention of students. These actions, disguised as “security protocols,” are carried out with the complicity of school management teams, including teachers, academic staff, administrators, and others.

These measures, presented to the public as the solution to a security problem, have as one of their main objectives the suppression of student organisation and protest, criminalising students and facilitating their legal prosecution, with the complicity of the educational establishment.

Machine translation. Images: Frente Fotografico