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Chilean police tear gas student marchers

Posted on: Tuesday, 30 May 2006, 17:30 CDT

By Fiona Ortiz

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Police used tear gas and water cannons to try to break up Chile's biggest student protests in decades on Tuesday as thousands of students marched to demand the government spend more of its fat budget surplus on education.

Dozens of students were arrested in the capital and protest leaders said half a million students occupied hundreds of schools all over Chile calling for free bus fare, free college entrance exams, more teachers and improved school buildings.

"We are protesting on behalf of our school. The bathrooms are disgusting, you can't even take a shower in the locker room, and they don't do anything about it," said Bernardo Ferrada, 15, his nose and eyes burning from tear gas.

Ferrada said he and 25 other students from the Arturo Prats high school in the middle class neighborhood of Puente Alto joined a march headed to the national palace before police sprayed them with tear gas from armored vehicles.

Protests began two weeks ago when students took over a few schools in the capital -- sleeping overnight in classrooms and eating food brought in by sympathetic parents.

The movement spread all over the country and has turned into the biggest street protest faced by new President Michelle Bachelet. Local media said Chile hasn't seen student protests on this scale since the early 1970s when Socialist President Salvador Allende was in office.

Bachelet is highly popular and her center-left coalition has been in power for 16 years in Chile, one of Latin America's wealthiest countries. But students say schools should be seeing more government funding at a time when profit from high-priced copper, Chile's main product, has handed the government billions of dollars of budget surpluses.

"Copper sky high and education in the gutter," read a banner at one school.

MINISTER TO MEET STUDENTS

Bachelet initially said her government would not negotiate with students who had occupied schools but on Tuesday Education Minister Martin Zilic said he would meet with student leaders to hear their demands.

Students and parents have criticized what they have said was heavy-handed police reaction to peaceful marches.

"The police did what they had to do to dissuade the students from marching, so that they don't interrupt traffic and disturb the peace," Santiago city administrator Victor Barrueto told TVN television.

Santiago's main avenue was closed all afternoon and into the evening as protesters regrouped after repeated bouts of tear gas and water cannons. Bus service was interrupted in some areas and some subway stations were closed.

Protesters said they want the $40 college entrance exam fee and 20 cent student bus fair both to be eliminated.

While protesters marched in the capital, students in Valparaiso, Concepcion and other cities held demonstrations and college students stayed away from classes in sympathy.

Students at elite private schools -- including the school Bachelet's youngest daughter attends -- went to school but held solidarity events on Tuesday instead of classes.

The well-organized student leaders in their grey-and-blue school uniforms have taken over the nightly news and the public agenda in the last two weeks.

In recent decades, Chile has expanded school coverage to most of the population, but students say quality has lagged.

"We have not improved the quality of education as we wanted. The big new challenge for us is closing the quality gap," Deputy Education Minister Pilar Romanguera acknowledged in a recent radio interview.

(Additional reporting by Antonio de la Jara)

Source: REUTERS

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