You've Got to Fight, For Your Right, to Party

Ingenious, is what I thought to myself after witnessing the boys begging for money.  What eloquence of method, as they lowered a small tin can with a fishing pole.  The can had a paper cut-out of a shark on it.  The boys were at school—that is to say they were occupying the school but not actively studying in it—sitting on the balcony begging me to put spare change in the can.  The real intelligence of their plea for funds is that they are children begging for money for their education.  I felt guilty, as naturally any passerby would, and gave them some money.  Brilliant device.

Last month twenty thousand Chileans protested the government’s lack of spending on education.  They started at Plaza de Italia and marched through downtown carrying banners that said private education is killing our dreams, free education is possible, and Piñera, who described education as a consumer product, is the devil.  There have been a series of such demonstrations for the past few months now.  Like the boys fishing for money, these protesters are rallying against the enormous discrepancy between public and private education: a gap that is ever widening year by year.  Children are on the streets raising funds for books.

Some conservative Chileans that I know don’t see what the big deal is.  They think it’s unfortunate that some children receive better education than others, but that it is impossible to change such things.  Last night, at a dinner party, it was explained to me, on a piece of pink stationary with umbrellas on it, how impossible it really is.  My instructor, a leasing agent, wrote all sorts of strange budgetary figures on the paper accounting for all the hardships that have befallen Chile in the past ten years including the devastating earthquake and the expensive rescue of the famous Chilean miners last year.  He then went on to say that the people protesting should work harder instead of protesting, that this would allow them to spend more on their children’s education.  In a final tirade (I just sat and listened politely) he said that they were draining the economy by blocking the streets of people trying to go to work.  He added that since these poor people lived in different communities on the other side of the river, they didn’t really have the right to march in the city center anyway. 

The protests are largely fun and peaceful: people play instruments and chant certain slogans like the ones on their banners, stray dogs bark and frolic along with the march, children walk hand in hand with their parents, the smell of choripans fills the air.  I was told of some rather violent protests in the past; even this year tanks with tear gas attacking the crowds could be seen as well as the use of water cannons.  However, these days both sides are armed with video cameras.  Most protesters have phones with video capability, and many of the police, armed with riot gear, also carry small hand held cameras.  This is in part responsible for the now fairly peaceful demonstrations.

Chile is not alone in this battle.  Countries around the world are struggling with the same largely theoretical questions as budgets are being cut: does every human have the right to a good education?  Should the government be able to take away my right to pay for a better education for my child?  Is it fair that social hegemony exists?  And then, of course, the more practical concerns of how we are going to pay for “free” education.  I’m not Chilean and I can only speak through the voices of others I’ve met here, but I don’t see how any democracy can function without an educated populace.  I don’t see how any country can claim to view each of its members as equal with something as fundamental as education so visibly separating the classes.  I don’t see how anyone can look a child who’s begging for better schooling squarely in the eye and tell them that they don’t think they’re worth it. 

Tengo Frio

It’s officially winter here now and I’ve got to say that it’s turning out to be one of the coldest I can remember.  I haven’t bothered to look at any temperatures and, though I’m sure they would tell me that it’s not that cold, I’m not going to.  I grew up in the Midwest of the United States amidst grueling winters that seemed never to end: snowdrifts coming up to my waste, blizzards blinding sight, determined icy patches that wouldn’t melt for four months, and slush (my God that ugly ugly grey slush).  So why on earth, given the conditions I just described, does it seem colder here in Santiago where the only snow I can see is on the Andes?

For one, it’s my house.  This apartment building doesn’t have any heating and so I spend most of my time at home huddled over a small electric space heater that I bought for ten bucks.  It’s an old place and so I won’t try and judge all Chilean dwellings based on it.  It’s so old in fact that I find myself playing Mr. Fix-it quite often.  It’s kind of like a part time job; fixing the plastic piping in my kitchen that looks like it was constructed by a child playing legos, reconnecting lighting circuits that dangle from the ceiling, using electric tape to separate sparking wires in the bathroom (this was a particularly worrying one), and re-calking the sink to the wall.  But I digress, the annoying thing, currently, about this apartment is that it seems to trap the cold.  The thick walls seem to collect the cold from the night and keep the house chilled all day.  It’s a regular thing for me to leave my refrigerator – a.k.a. apartment— and find that outside it’s actually much warmer.

Another thing that makes the cold hard to ignore is that people are dying out here because of it.  I’m sure this was happening back in the Midwest, but I wasn’t as aware of it as I am here.  I read an article in the local newspaper, which reported some surprising numbers of homeless people dying each winter.  I see them, on occasion, building fires in hidden areas of the park or shivering on the steps of a metro station under a collection of dirty blankets; forced to live outside and face the elements like dogs.

Speaking of the dogs; they’ve gone bat-shit crazy.  My only explanation is the cold, but I now hear them running in packs and barking the whole not through.  I got up at four in the morning a few days ago and looked out the window to see a pack of them chasing cars and howling.  It just strengthened my fears that eventually the local dog population is going to get fed up with the humans who are polluting their air and running over their paws with large vehicles; that these dogs are going to start an uprising and turn on us.  That morning I was afraid to leave the house and did peek out the door carefully before walking on those cold, cold streets where the dogs turn to maniacs to keep warm.

But hey, it’s only a few months and how bad is weather really going to get?  I wouldn’t know as I refuse to look it up and regularly ignore people who try and give me figures.  I’ll just get myself some gloves and hide under a duvet until spring.  Hopefully I won’t succumb to the elements like the homeless or the dogs.  At least I’ve got my little space heater.