Bowdoin College Bowdoin Digital Commons Honors Projects Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2018 Que vivan los estudiantes: Cycles of Contention and the Chilean Student Movement (1906-present) Jonah Watt Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/honorsprojects Part of the Latin American Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Watt, Jonah, "Que vivan los estudiantes: Cycles of Contention and the Chilean Student Movement (1906-present)" (2018). Honors Projects. 100. https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/honorsprojects/100 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship and Creative Work at Bowdoin Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of Bowdoin Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Que vivan los estudiantes: Cycles of Contention and the Chilean Student Movement (1906-present) An Honors Paper for the Latin American Studies Program By Jonah Gordon Watt Bowdoin College, 2018 ©2018 Jonah Gordon Watt ¡Que vivan los estudiantes, Long live the students, jardín de las alegrías! garden of joys! Son aves que no se asustan They are birds who are not afraid de animal ni policía, of neither animals nor police, y no le asustan las balas and they do not fear the bullets ni el ladrar de la jauría. nor the howling pack. Caramba y zamba la cosa, Caramba y zamba la cosa, que viva la astronomía. long live astronomy —Violeta Parra, “Me gustan los estudiantes” ii Table of Contents List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... iv Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................ v Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: Radical Roots ......................................................................................................... 23 Chapter II: The Penguin Revolution ....................................................................................... 45 Chapter III: The Chilean Winter ............................................................................................. 73 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 113 Epilogue ................................................................................................................................ 118 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 132 iii List of Figures Figure 1:1: AOAN March, November 22, 1918 ......................................................................28 Figure 2:1: El Mercurio coverage of May 10, 2006, protests .................................................61 Figure 2:2: Instituto Nacional en toma ....................................................................................63 Figure 3:1: Universidad de Chile en toma ...............................................................................74 Figure 3:2: Approval ratings, March 2010 ..............................................................................75 Figure 3:3: Poster for a march on April 4, 2007 ......................................................................78 Figure 3:4: Poster for a march on June 1, 2010 .......................................................................80 Figure 3:5: “1800 horas por la educación” ..............................................................................97 Figure 3:6: “Thriller” flash mob ..............................................................................................98 Figure 3:7: “Una playa para Lavín” .......................................................................................100 Figure 3:8: “Marcha familiar por la educación” ....................................................................104 Figure 4:1: Poster for a march on June 26, 2013 ...................................................................121 Figure 4:2: Poster for a march on April 16, 2015 ..................................................................123 Figure 4:3: “Los abuelos apoyamos a nuestros nietos” .........................................................124 Figure 4:4: Poster for a march on July 28, 2015 ....................................................................124 iv Abbreviations ACAS Asamblea de Centros de Alumnos de Santiago ACES Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios AES Asamblea de Estudiantes Secundarios de Santiago AFP Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones AOAN Asamblea Obrera de Alimentación Nacional CAP Consejo Asesor Presidencial para la Calidad de la Educación CONES Coordinadora Nacional de Estudiantes Secundarios Confech Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile CRUCH Consejo de Rectores de las Universidades Chilenas FECECh Federación de Centros de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile FECh Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile FESES Federación de Estudiantes Secundarios de Santiago FEUC Federación Estudiantil de la Universidad Católica FOCH Federación Obrera de Chile JUNAEB Junta Nacional de Auxilio Escolar y Becas LGE Ley General de Educación LOCE Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza OEP Organizaciones Económicas Populares PSU Prueba de Selección Universitaria PUCV Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso RBP Revista Bello Público UP Unidad Popular UPLA Universidad de Playa Ancha v Acknowledgments First and foremost, I owe my tremendous gratitude and un fuerte abrazo to my advisor, Professor Allen Wells, whose passion for Latin American history has fueled my own interest since my first year at Bowdoin. I cannot thank you enough for your tireless revisions and attention to detail and for the enthusiasm with which you have embraced this project. Thank you for challenging me to see the broader picture and follow the “nuggets” of evidence. It has been an honor to work with you and to end our Bowdoin careers together. Next, I would like to thank Professor Bill Taylor, Professor Jay Sosa, and Profesora Nadia Celis, whose thorough reviews and suggestions helped to guide my research. Professor Taylor and Professor Sosa’s unique expertise helped to make this the dynamic, interdisciplinary, and at times, challenging, project that I set out to undertake. I owe a particularly heartfelt thank you to Profesora Celis, who has challenged and inspired me since my first semester and taught me that the classroom should be a political space. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Professor Jenny Baca, who exposed me to Chilean social movements and introduced the word “neoliberalism” into my vocabulary. Thank you for teaching me to think critically and how to intertwine my academic interests with a deep commitment to issues of justice. This thesis would not have been possible without the generous support of the Latin American Studies Research Award, which enabled me to begin interviews and archival research following my semester in Chile. Thank you as well to the Grua/O’Connell Research Award, which provided me with the funding to return to Chile in January to conduct three weeks of additional archival research. The Grua/O’Connell Mini-Grant also made possible a vi trip to Binghamton University to present at the Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies Undergraduate Conference in April. I owe a particularly heartfelt thank you to the Office of Student Fellowships and Research and the guidance of Cindy Stocks, Corey Colwill, and Kate Myall. I would also like to thank the Archive of the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile (Student Federation of the University of Chile) and particularly Evelyn Soto Quiroz for sharing your time and knowledge of the student movement with me. I was fortunate to meet many wonderful people who housed, fed, and taught me during my time in Chile. This list is too long to enumerate, but their love and desire to share is truly what inspired this project. My academic interest in the Chilean student movement was sparked by my own involvement in student activism. Thank you to the leaders of Bowdoin Climate Action, who have taught me the challenges and immense rewards of leveraging student power. None of this would have been possible without the endless support and love from my family. Thank you to my parents for instilling in me a deep passion for justice and to my Savta, whose own stories of resistance and perseverance resonate with many of the themes I have encountered in my research. And finally, millones de gracias to the students who have so generously shared their stories and perspectives with me. It has been an immense honor and joy to listen and learn from you and to bring your voices to life through this thesis. I hope that I have done justice to your experiences and the passion that drives this movement. vii Introduction Hundreds of students had congregated outside the Casa Central on the morning of April 11, 2017, when my micro arrived at the Universidad de Playa Ancha (UPLA), the public university where I studied for a semester. Peers informed me that classes had been canceled for the marcha educacional, a national demonstration