By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org

Vallejo: Is she really becoming a controversial figure?

An estimated quarter of a million students joined in demonstrations Thursday across Chile to press their demand for free and decent public education for all.

The largest of the actions took place in the capital of Santiago, where some 150,000 university and high school students along with teachers, professors and other workers marched from the Plaza Italia in the center of the city to the Mapocho station on its northern side.

Smaller demonstrations were held in cities across the country.

The march marked one of the largest demonstrations since the end of the 17-year-long US-backed military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1990, and the mass student movement is aimed against the “free market” educational system that was instituted under that repressive regime.

Under Pinochet’s iron-fisted rule and with the input of US economic advisers, the government’s support for education was drastically scaled back in favor of a privatized, decentralized system in which private schools were granted subsidies and parents given vouchers to pay for education.

The system served to deepen the already profound social inequality in Chile, denying decent education to working class and poor youth. The end result is a system in which university education is, in relative terms, the most expensive in the world.

The government covers barely 15 percent of its costs, with the rest falling on students, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the US, the government share is 40 percent, according to the OECD, while in Europe, at least until recently, it has been up to 80 percent. The Chilean system has fostered a lucrative student loan sector together with punishing debt burdens for those who seek a degree.

The demonstration, the first nationwide protest of this year, took place amid uproar over the bankruptcy and financial scandal at the Universidad del Mar, a private institution, which the government has ordered shut down in the face of student protests, hunger strikes and occupations. At least 11 other private colleges are under investigation, and Chile’s education minister, Harald Beyer, has been suspended and is facing impeachment charges related to the scandal.

It also was held in the context of a presidential election campaign. The two major political coalitions, the right-wing Alianza of incumbent President Sebastian Piñera, and the Socialist Party-led Concertación, are set to hold primaries at the end of June, with the election scheduled for November 17.

In Alianza, three right-wing politicians who have served in Piñera’s cabinet—Andrés Allamand, Laurence Golborne and Pablo Longueira—are competing for the nomination.

In Concertación, the front-runner is former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, who announced her candidacy late last month after returning to Chile from New York, where she had been appointed head of UN Women.

The student movement began in 2006 under Bachelet’s presidency, when high school students took to the streets in what was then dubbed the “Penguin revolution” (a term derived from their white and black uniforms). The mass movement was rooted in mounting frustration over the lack of affordable and quality public education. Concertación, which held power for 20 years following the Pinochet dictatorship, never altered the constitution on the question of education and kept in place key economic and social policies inherited from the military regime.

Hostility to both of these capitalist political coalitions was evident on the student march Thursday. Students carried placards with slogans reading “I don’t believe you anymore, Michelle” and “Bachelet, Piñera, the same misery.” Demonstrators chanted “We will get back the free education taken from us by Pinochet and Bachelet!”

As the election draws closer, however, pseudo-left elements operating within the student movement will work to divert and subordinate it to the Concertación campaign.

This is particularly the case with the Stalinist Chilean Communist Party (PCCh), which reached a partial electoral alliance with the Socialist Party-led front in the 2009 congressional elections and is preparing for talks with Bachelet and other Concertación officials on backing the ex-president’s bid for another term.

This alliance has been publicly opposed by the Christian Democrats, who have been the principal right-wing ally of the Socialist Party since the end of the dictatorship. The party’s leadership loudly denounced PCCh chairman Guillermo Teillier after he acknowledged in an interview with the weekly magazine El Semanal last week that he had authorized an attempted assassination of Pinochet in 1986.

Bachelet clearly wants the PCCh in her camp to provide a certain left cover. She has announced since her return that she intends once elected to submit to congress a bill to end “for-profit education and increase free education” and to push for the drafting of a new constitution. Given the failure of her own administration and of Concertación to do anything of the kind for over two decades, these promises enjoy little credibility among the student protesters.

Late last year, Camilo Escalona, the Socialist Party head of the Chilean Senate, assured Chilean businessmen that Bachelet would be the best candidate to confront a “threat to stability” created by rising social inequality.

Growing unrest has found expression in a recent series of mass strikes, including a protracted struggle by Chilean port workers which began last month and a one-day nationwide strike by copper miners on April 9. The walkouts led Piñera to make a public statement Wednesday warning of the “enormous harm” caused by the workers’ struggles.

“It is necessary to issue this warning because I have seen many countries that have been derailed, simply because the people haven’t realized that it is difficult to build a country that works for everyone, yet it is so easy to destroy it,” he declared.

In addition to the anger voiced against Bachelet during the course of Thursday’s march in Santiago, the student demonstrators also reacted with hostility toward the distribution of leaflets promoting the candidacy of Camila Vallejo, the former leader of the University of Chile Student Federation (FECH) who was turned into an international celebrity in 2011. She is now running as a parliamentary candidate for the Communist Party.

Happiness is Skateboarding Over Evil
by SAUL LANDAU
The new film, “No”, takes place in Chile in 1988 as the nation faced a plebiscite — a vote of all citizens –on whether to keep General Augusto Pinochet in power, or not. The Army commander who seized power after a 1973 military coup against elected President Salvador Allende had ruled for more years than Hitler, and had become an old man who gained international notoriety by assassinating, disappearing,” torturing, and sending opponents into exile. But the foreign investors praised his embrace of Chicago Boys economics, a supposedly free market economy whereby proletarios (proletarians) could evolve into proprietarios (property owners), which in practice meant that capitalists could buy Chile’s forests and convert them into chopsticks and tooth picks.

After 15 years of military dictatorship and unbridled capitalism, Chileans got to vote to allow Pinochet to continue his rule. It was “Yes” or “No” — open the political game to a genuine choice. The film focuses on the “No,” campaign waged by the anti-Pinochet forces. To win voters, Chilean TV offered each side a series of 15 minute daily programs.

The old Chilean lefties, who directed the campaign had no experience in selling their side of the story on television; so they choose René Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal), a talented ad man, to design the campaign to convince the Chilean majority to reject Pinochet.

Rene designs the commercials in the style he perfected through making soft drink commercials  and soap opera promotions, to use the zeal shown by actors pitching a fizzy drink to deliver a message for a new, happier Chile. But Rene must spar with left-wing ideologues about the contents of the message. All recognize the fact that Pinochet had to concede to the referendum because of strong foreign pressure to legitimize a government that was inherently illegitimate—Pinochet’s coup and post-coup brutality was directed against an elected government, and the Chilean population that supported it.

The film also turns into a contest between two Chilean ad men, both adherents of the Madison Avenue alchemy of selling shit by making it smell like perfume.

Rene lives with his eight year-old son (Pascal Montero), both abandoned by his estranged wife Veronica (Antonia Zegers), a miitant leftist who thinks “No” cannot win because Pinochet will rig the results and intimidate the public. But Rene, despite the threat his involvement holds toward his career in advertising, agrees to take on the campaign.  His boss at the commercial ad agency, Lucho Guzman (Alfredo Castro),  a Pinochetista, colludes with a Cabinet Minister (Jaime Vadell) to direct the “Yes” campaign.

The audience gets a visual education in commercial production, but  this does not substitute for character building and inter-personal stories, the lack of which weakens the movie. The film also gets lost in the commercials and loses the important political context that has generated the story.

We do, however, see convincing scenes of Pinochet’s forces attacking peaceful crowds, using violence as their primary means of persuasion. Rene at one point must fear for his son’s safety, as the “Yes” advisors become anxious when they see that the “No” is gaining popularity in the polls, and begin to threaten people working for the “No.”.

The inner plot, Rene’s attempt to win back his estranged wife, becomes a welcome relief from the drumming of the ad campaign.  His wife still likes Rene, but whatever made them separate remains fixed strongly in her mind—unfortunately, we never find out what it is.  As she rejects his overtures to have sex and reunite, the film makes no attempt to illuminate the barriers to resolving their relationship.

The anti-Pinochet Chileans behind the “No” commercials get irritated by Rene’s peddling their political voice like a commodity. They insist their 15-minute nightly TV allocation should portray Pinochet’s brutality, show his goons doing their  violence and lawlessness, exposing the crimes of the regime.  Rene, the ad man, calculates that selling “No” instead requires commercial TV advertising techniques. He doesn’t belong in the world of ideas, but in the psychological domain of manipulating complacent and frightened buyers to accept his product.  In this way, the movie participates in the trivialization of actual mass mobilizations, door-to-door campaigning, and the vast amounts of literature that anti-Pinochet forces produced for this effort.

Some Chileans, despite their disgust over what Pinochet had done to their people and country, feared his ouster would bring economic chaos, unemployment, massive poverty. Rene thinks about how these factors might reduce voter turnout. He answers these perturbing issues by peddling happiness. His nightly TV spots emphasize the promise of future contentment if No wins. He attaches a rainbow backdrop to the entire ad campaign. Beautiful outdoor scenes feature gleeful dancers and jubilant children, all with their feet moving rhythmically. Oh joy!

As the historic day of the vote approaches, the film centers on the competition between the Yes and No ads, a back-dated Mad Men scenario that overstresses the making of the commercials as the center of history.

A welcome and nicely underplayed strain of humor, however, accompanies the use of contrived marketing tricks and simplistic messages to bring down a dictatorship. The film shows how silly jingles and staged cheerfulness became useful political tools.

That ad man element gets enhanced when the Yes side, aided by Guzman, modifies its campaign accordingly. The film also ends on a note of droll realism. Rene skate boards along the streets, as if to demonstrate that despite his marital woes the boy part of him remains alive and well, and to celebrate the victory of good  — happiness is skateboarding – over evil.

Bernal acknowledges his victory with quiet intensity and  skeptical facial expressions. He, and the film’s director Pablo Larrain, hint that the superficiality of Rene’s advertising schemes will endure beyond the No vote, and etch themselves deeply in Chile’s destiny. Indeed, the newly democratic Chile remained a country where consumerism prevailed, a place divided by class, wealth and power— and the succeeding governments would behave in the world of commodity production and mass consumption where desire produced by advertising acted as a control on social behavior.

Saul Landau is filming (with Jon Alpert) a documentary on Cuba’s anti homophobia campaign. His “Fidel” and “Will The Real Terroris Please stand Up” are available on dvd from cinemalibrestudio.com

This is a Pinochetista site singing the glories of the butcher of Chile, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and the Chilean (fascist) armed forces. (Spanish helps). 

Since everything is upside down in the rightwing mind, the brutal repression of an unarmed civilian population is described as a “glorious battle against international Marxism.” The site’s banner is

LOS VALIENTES SOLDADOS DEL 73 DE CHILE

(The brave Chilean soldiers of ’73)

The cherry on the cake is provided by a news snippet announcing that Hugo Chavez transferred (stole and handed over) $ 20 billion dollars to Cuba, shortly before dying.  Where this “fact” comes from is not clear.

As befits a chauvinist mentality, the  design of the site is crude, with Chilean flags and pictures of Pinochet and his accomplices injected practically in every quadrant.  As brutally raw as propaganda can get. Chilean reactionaries would do well to borrow a few lessons on how to brainwash people from their spiritual Godfather in North America. 

CONTRIBUTED BY Juan Manrique de Lara (Mexico City)

Miércoles 4 de agosto 2010
Los excesos de la Ley Antiterrorista
Por Loreto Soto, RADIO.UCHILE.CL
[This is an archival report on a conflict that has not been resolved. Read the addendum, too for an account in English of the same topic.]

Testigos sin rostro, largos periodos de prisión preventiva sin derecho a beneficios y condenas el doble de duras que las de la justicia ordinaria, son algunas de las restricciones que consagra la Ley Antiterrorista que es aplicada en la mayoría de las causas mapuche. Los expertos coinciden en que la invocación de esta ley para este tipo casos es una exageración y que sólo se utilizan para silenciar una protesta social.

Una de las principales demandas de los presos políticos mapuche que está en huelga de hambre hace ya tres semanas en las cárceles del sur del país, es que no se les aplique la Ley Antiterrorista en los procesos judiciales relacionados con sus reivindicaciones históricas.

Esta legislación, entre otras cosas, establece penas mucho más duras para los mismos delitos tipificados en el Código Penal. Y es que cualquier acción que tenga apellido de “terrorista”, automáticamente recibe un trato diferente porque, de acuerdo a la definición de Naciones Unidas, un acto terrorista es equivalente a un crimen de guerra en periodo de paz.

Pero además hace que los procedimientos judiciales sean mucho más complejos para los acusados, ya que “establece una serie de restricciones a las garantías del debido proceso”, indica el abogado experto en asuntos indígenas del Observatorio Ciudadano, José Aylwin.

De hecho, si una persona es procesada bajo esta legislación, se puede mantener el secreto de investigación por largos periodos. También permite la protección de los testigos, lo que da dado lugar a la utilización de testigos sin rostros que difícilmente pueden ser interrogados por la defensa, y admite la intercepción de las comunicaciones del imputado. Pero además, la ley Antiterrorista dificulta enormemente la aplicación de medidas cautelares distintas de la prisión preventiva, por lo que las personas procesadas son privados de libertad por mucho tiempo.

Y, precisamente, bajo estas condiciones son juzgados la mayoría de los casos que tienen que ver con el conflicto mapuche. Debido a las limitaciones que consagra esta ley, en algunas ocasiones, los acusados terminan siendo liberados sin ningún cargo, luego de pasar largos periodos en los recintos penitenciarios.

Emblemático fue el juicio de la documentalista Elena Varela, quien luego de un proceso de dos años, el requisamiento de su material de trabajo, su encarcelamiento y de ser acusada bajo la ley antiterrorista, fue absuelta por el tribunal oral en lo penal de Villarrica.

El caso de Luis Tralcal Quidel también es un ejemplo de los excesos de la aplicación de esta ley. El comunero fue acusado de participar en el incendio de predios forestales en Cholchol. Después de un largo tiempo en prisión preventiva fue liberado porque el Ministerio Público no lo pudo vincular con ningún delito.

Reformas a la ley, una decisión política

La ley 18. 314 o Antiterrorista fue promulgada el 16 de mayo de 1984 durante la dictadura militar. Sin embargo, fueron las reformas que se aplicaron durante el gobierno de Patricio Aylwin las que permitieron que se comenzara a utilizar para los conflictos que se presentaban con los pueblos indígenas en el sur.

Según indica el informe “Indebido Proceso: los juicios antiterroristas, los tribunales militares y los mapuche en Chile” elaborado por la organización Human Right Watch “frente a una situación en la que el gobierno militar había tratado esencialmente el terrorismo como un delito político o ideológico, las reformas de Aylwin eliminaron sus connotaciones políticas y lo tipificaron simplemente como un delito violento gravísimo contra las personas”.

Esta ley considera como crimen terrorista el homicidio, la mutilación, la retención de una persona en calidad de rehén, el envío de efectos explosivos, incendio y estragos; descarrilamiento; apoderarse o atentar en contra de una nave, aeronave, ferrocarril, bus u otro medio de transporte público en servicio; atentar en contra de la vida o la integridad corporal del Jefe del Estado o de otra autoridad política, judicial, militar, policial o religiosa, o de personas internacionalmente protegidas; colocar, lanzar o disparar bombas o artefactos explosivos o incendiarios que puedan causar daño y asociación ilícita para cometer cualquier de estos delitos. La mayoría de estos actos también tiene su correspondencia en el Código Penal.

Sin embargo, para el director del Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad Diego Portales, Jorge Contesse, “el ex Presidente Ricardo Lagos fue el primero en entender que había una afectación de carácter terrorista al orden interno y que, en consecuencia, lo que correspondía era la aplicación de este estatuto especial que es la legislación antiterrorista que existe en Chile”.

En este sentido, el senador Renovación Nacional (partido de ultra-derecha—Eds) Alberto Espina recordó que la polémica “ley Antiterrorista como la conocemos hoy fue dictada íntegramente durante el gobierno de Patricio Aylwin. Es una ley promulgada en democracia y aprobada íntegramente por el Congreso”.

Finalmente, con la Reforma Procesal Penal se le dio la prerrogativa al ministerio del Interior, a las Intendencias y a los Fiscales para invocar esta criticada ley y, precisamente, los fiscales relacionados con las causas mapuche la han utilizado sistemáticamente.

Delitos menores, castigos desmedidos

Pero según Jorge Contesse en el caso de las reivindicaciones mapuche “no se cumplen los estándares para hablar de actos terroristas. Son hechos delictuales que pueden ser abordados desde el punto de vista de la legislación común chilena”.

El abogado agregó que “hay que recordar que en el mal llamado conflicto mapuche no ha habido muertos que no sean indígenas. Las personas que han fallecido han sido todas mapuche a manos de fuerzas especiales de Carabineros y en consecuencia, la utilización de esta legislación antiterrorista, lo que hace es distorsionar la utilización de la herramienta penal que legítimamente puede utilizar el Estado”.

En la misma línea, José Aylwin sostuvo que “no hay ningún argumento sólido que permita justificar la utilización de esta legislación especial para acciones de protesta social que, eventualmente en algunos casos, podrían ser constitutivas de delitos, pero que en ningún caso revisten el carácter de terrorista y que si se constituyen delitos, hay legislación ordinaria que permite su sanción”.

De hecho, el comité de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas ya ha llamado la atención a Chile por la definición vaga y amplia que existe de terrorismo en nuestra ley.

“Las conductas terroristas deben estar muy delimitadas, muy claramente tipificadas y en Chile tenemos una definición que todavía es muy amplia, que permite que sea invocada en situaciones de conflictividad social especialmente porque lo que está ocurriendo en la Araucanía es una situación de conflictividad social producto de reivindicaciones de los pueblos indígenas”, afirmó Contesse.

El académico concluyó que “en los casos en que se produzcan hechos delictuales, la ley chilena contempla remedios para ello en la legislación penal. Pero de ahí al salto cualitativo que es la invocación de la ley Antiterrorista, que hace paralelo lo que ocurre en Chile con la aplicación de bombas en España, con derribar torres en Estados Unidos, con estrellar camiones en Paquistán es, desde luego, una exageración”.

Excesos que tienen a una treintena de presos políticos mapuche en huelga de hambre para lograr que la cuestionada ley Antiterrorista no pueda ser utilizada nunca más en sus casos.

_________

Mapuche protests often meet with a violent police response. © Flickr user antitezo, Creative Commons license.

Survival International: Mapuche hunger strike continues
Posted by Terri Hansen on 9/16/10 • Categorized as indigenous peoples,land

Thirty-four Mapuche prisoners in Chile were nearing the seventieth day of a hunger strike by mid-September.

Their protest began to highlight the use by the Chilean government of anti-terror legislation to criminalize attempts by the Mapuche to recover their ancestral land. Although the Mapuche were only conquered in the 19th century after many years of resistance, most of their lands have since been confiscated by logging companies and wealthy farmers.

Several days ago four Chilean MPs who were visiting the strikers in jail announced that they were themselves joining the hunger strike.

The decision to prosecute the Mapuche under Chile’s strict anti-terror laws means that they can be detained indefinitely, tried in military courts, and receive far harsher sentences than would be the case in a civilian court.

In a belated response to the hunger strike, Chile’s President Piñera has proposed some modifications to the anti-terror legislation. The Mapuche, however, charge that these changes were planned anyway, and there is widespread suspicion that the government’s real motivation is to concede just enough to end the protest before Chile celebrates its Bicentennial on September 18th.

Chile ratified the key law on indigenous peoples, ILO Convention 169, two years ago, but has made little progress in implementing its provisions.

Further information (in English): Mapuche International Link. In Spanish: http://www.mapuche.info/.

Read the original story at Survival International. Read related story at Indian Country Today. See also, At the roots of Mapuche resistance

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