Chile, the leader of ' Indignados ' "out of the Country the men of Pinochet"

The leader of the Chilean protest Camila Vallejoda Santiago de Chile – twenty-three years, Camila Vallejo, normal student of geography has become a star of the notice on the front pages of newspapers and on the covers of magazines around the world. Is the face, beautiful student movement, which has blocked the Chile with impressive demonstrations and strikes (a few days ago we ran away the dead, a boy of 16 years, Manuel Gutierrez Reinoso: carabinero who would shoot was removed yesterday by police) against the Conservative Government of Sebastián Piñera. All Chileans speak of her. The Guardian has even compared to subcomandante Marcos. But Camila has also received dozens of death threats.

Its beauty, its large green eyes, and the nostril piercing is the most obvious symbol of a story that began just over three months ago and which now threatens to radically change the policy in Chile. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations, the country's economic conditions are excellent: the growth forecasts for 2011 hovering around 6 percent, while the average growth of South America stands at 3.8 per cent. But try to tell Camila. You will agree. You do not want to be a star and talking about herself. And to prove it, but agrees to talk policy. Starting from the objectives of the movement: "increase in the transfer of public resources to the State universities and the end of the indebtedness of the students and their families to access to education; Today students and officials do not have the right to organize how categories, nor can they participate in bodies of Government of the University, we have to change; the higher education system must be free ".

What's going on in Chile? In the square there are students, but also the workers and environmentalists. Is the first major social unrest since Pinochet.
In historical terms, in the last 21 years, many student demonstrations have laid the foundations for the construction of the process is in place because they have highlighted the crisis across the education sector. This year, a fundamental step forward was the aggregation of different social actors of the educational world who have advanced their proposals and as the days passed, the progressive support of any company that has made our own proposals. I believe that this wider support to demands for a free and public education, quality has a lot to do with the fact that the Chileans are tired of a neoliberal model imposed by the dictatorship and consecrated by the Governments of concertation. We are tired of indebitarci to get the respect of fundamental rights: education, health and home.

How has the fact that the Government is right?
The role of the right to power was particularly nefarious and attitude towards the demonstrators was of constant intransigence. The right to chose to take advantage of the situation created by the demonstrations to perfect his model, instead of changing it. In my opinion, this attitude meant that citizenship, facing the deafness of the Executive, has opted to condemn the role of the Government and unita movement.

The serious failings of the educational system are a legacy of dictatorship and today, in Government, we see the old names of rispuntare time Pinochet. Difficult to change something.
Many characters who have had important roles during the dictatorship, today we find them in the political and economic context and, in this regard, nothing has changed. But the time of the remnants of dictatorship has expired, because it has changed, however, that we have confidence in the ability to produce those changes which the country needs. Because society has changed.

One of the major criticisms made to the student movement is that it is influenced by left-wing parties: you have the feeling that it is really so?
In the movement are certainly many have joined parties or collective left inside which we have worked for years to introduce substantial changes in the neoliberal model, but requests that the Movement expresses are so fair and so urgent and necessary that have enabled many people of every political colour to identify in the movement itself, giving rise to a great support cross representing the majority of the country. Do not hide my militancy in the Communist Party, but this does not in my role as a spokesman of the movement.

You can change the educational system without introducing substantial changes in the dominant political and economic system?
Can be the starting point of a major change in the economic system. What we do in education has a direct relationship with what we do in the country: it is through education that form the citizens to build a Chile.

You think of the opinions that are forming abroad on this Chile rocked by demonstrations and strikes? You know that all over the world talk about you?
I hope that all the world speaks of Chile, not me. I think you're beginning to see that Chile is not that country success whose image was promoted abroad in recent years and that you understand that there are deep inequality, redistribution of wealth is one of the worst in the world and that the Chileans are tired of going into debt to study, not being able to access a quality education and being oppressed by a whole series of other problems that we have downloaded on the neoliberal model. I hope that overseas is beginning to gain a better understanding of the real Chile and the role of the movement of students who want to change it.

by Cristián Parot Rau

(worked Jacqueline Cassina)

from The daily August 31, 2011