Saturday, July 6, 2013

Días de escuela, días de escuela

In Chile (in which, in the southern hemisphere, it's winter) there is nothing like dear old golden rule days about toma (from the verb tomar; to take) in some high schools;
On Tuesday, students from Liceo Arturo Alessandri Palma, Liceo Carmela Carvajal, Liceo 7 and Liceo José Victorino Lastarria returned to continue their“tomas,” or occupations, following the weekend’s [presidential primary] vote.
After achieving their goal of gaining press attention during primary elections, students continue to push their internal demands, which include improvements to infrastructure and increased student involvement in executive decisions, as well as their overarching demands of free, superior education and nationalization of the country’s natural resources [¿Cómo, 'internal'?].  
Had the students, instead of being allowed to control their schools, been being taught some history, they might have learned that they only enjoy their freedoms thanks to the army restoring it after ousting a Marxist, Castro-ite, would-be-dictator, who'd been attempting to nationalize not only the country's natural resources, in 1973, but almost all productive endeavors in the country, including that of its independent truckers.

Those truckers were on strike, refusing to move any goods, including food, because Salvador Allende had ordered their trucks expropriated in exchange for Chilean government bonds which were being devalued by an inflation rate of several hundred percent per year. I.e., without just compensation. The truckers were joined by the nation's shopkeepers, its doctors and dentists, and ordinary housewives, in protesting Allende's actions. In March 1973, the Chilean Supreme Court ruled Allende was acting unconstitutionally. In August the Chamber of Deputies voted 81-47 (63%) to oust el presidente, for the same reason.

With Allende defiantly vowing to continue with his actions, the legislature invited the nation's military to rid them of him, in September 1973.  Which they did, with much anguish following for many people. Now, these reactionary high school teenagers are calling for a return to that kind of turmoil. And their supposedly wiser elders are allowing it to continue.

¡Qué lástima!

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