Protests!

Thursday is the official protest day. This means that today was quite eventful and slightly tumultuous. I'm not saying that all American students should protest, but the Chilean students have really proved that there is strength in numbers. Thousands, and I mean thousands, of students are banding together to protest the increasing cost of education. A ton of the public schools are "en paro" and are not holding class. It's not just the Universities though, yes the Universidad de Chile is on strike, but so is the colegio (middle school-high school) across the street from my house. It really is a movement that is spread over all levels of education.

So what does official protest day hold in store? Thousands of marching students, tear gas, water cannons, the equivalent of SWAT teams, and a couple other random ingredients. Up until today though, the marches through downtown have been given the O.K. by the government. But, the lack of government backing did not stop today's marchers. This unfortunately caused the events to turn violent more quickly than on previous occasions. As a student who knows many people participating in the marches, I know the majority of people are trying to be peaceful about it. There are just the idiots who go just looking for trouble, for a reason to create mayhem, act all though and rebel against the government. You idiots are why people are getting hurt!

Anyway, the use of tear gas is unfortunately really common. I had my first encounter today on the metro. No, my train did not get bombed with tear gas grenades. The streets above, however, did. Even though the metro is super far underground the gasses still found their way down there. I stepped off my train to transfer to another line and it hit me. Just taking a normal breath I could feel the burning in my throat. I, like everyone else around me, quickly covered my mouth with my scarf and tried to filter the contaminated air. You can walk with a scarf over your mouth, but not over your eyes. It wasn't terrible but I could definitely feel the sting in my eyes and they started tearing up. I was on my next train quickly enough and my experience was over. Aside from being uncomfortable for a while, I was totally fine, I just know that I don't ever want to have a real encounter with tear gas.

Even though today's protests turned violent, there is a movement growing to promote more peaceful means of protests. Flashmobs, sit ins, marathons, and cacerolazos are just some examples. Even though in the past cacerolazos have been associated with violent marches, tonight they are being employed on front porches across Santiago. Men, women, and children are busting out the pots, pans, and spoons to make as much noise as possible. It's kinda neat because sitting in my room, I can hear my neighbors clanging away being accompanied by the honking of cars. After today's protests the students have given the government 7 days to make a decision about the education budget, so I'll let you all know how that goes.

The collectivity of the students here is something I really admire. Students in the U.S. could never band together enough to actually get the government to listen. These Chileans are demanding the attention of the government and they will not go away until some of their goals are reached.