Chile Students Battle for Free Education

In Chile, students have sustained a mass movement protesting for public colleges and universities to be made tuition free for more than a decade. At the most recent march, on April 21, some students again battled police tear gas and water canons with rocks and Molotov cocktails. In 2011, 2013 and 2015, students took over many of their campuses for months and organized long-term protest camps in classrooms. In 2015, nearly half of the nation’s public school and university educators went on a six week national strike, many of them joined their students marching in the streets. Meaningful changes have yet to pass the Chilean congress. The public education system remains much the same as it was under the former U.S. backed Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.