Today is election day in Chile.
Candidate posters plaster the streets and buildings, and every single business in the city of Santiago is closed so that everyone can have the opportunity to vote. Sadly for us, even the lavenderia (the laundry) at our hostel is shut down for the day. No clean socks for me, I guess. 
Elections are a time of change, a time when folks can voice their opinion, try something (some one) new. And while elections always hold some energy, the fervor around voting day here led me to investigate why the democratic process in Chile holds such a thrill and importance.
Turns out, the Chileans have a lots of reasons to celebrate a free and valid election day, as this certainly hasn’t always been the case. In 1974, Augusto Pinochet led a coup d’etat after the former president (Salvador Allende) apparently committed suicide. Although Pinochet instituted many economic policies that had positive effects for the Chilean economy, during his brutal military dictatorship thousands of people were killed and “disappeared”, more than 30,000 people were tortured, and over 200,000 people went into exile. (Most of these atrocities were committed against people of differing political beliefs, many of them students.)
Yesterday I met university student, Ana, who’s working to become a special education teacher at one of Santiago’s universities. She mentioned that during Pinochet’s rule, Chile’s education system also took a serious blow. While Pinochet never invested much in education during his rule (between 1970 and 1989, government spending on education dropped by more than 20%), Pinochet’s last official act in office was to dismantle and privatize the Chilean education system. The result was effectively a two-tier education system in Chile: a world class school system for those with money, an almost non-existent system for those without.
Although Pinochet’s rule is over (he stepped down in 1990), some of his legacy still lives on in today’s current education systems. Unlike Chile’s neighbors, which have comprehensive public university systems to provide cheaper quality education, many of Chile’s schools and universities are still privatized. Reading between the lines here, this means that most can’t afford them. In addition, the public school system has been so chronically underfunded that, in most cases, the public schools that do exist aren’t even up to the standards of Chile’s poorest neighboring countries. For one of the wealthiest countries in South America, Chile is far behind many of its less affluent neighbors in terms of equal access to education.
I also found these sobering macro-economic facts about the ongoing distress caused by Pinochet’s education policy:
“Overall, the impact of neoliberal policies has reduced the total proportion of students in both public and private institutions in relation to the entire population, from 30 per cent in 1974 down to 25 per cent in 1990, and up only to 27 per cent today. If falling birth rates have made it possible today to attain full coverage at primary and secondary levels, the country has fallen seriously behind at tertiary level, where coverage, although now growing, is still only 32 per cent of the age group. The figure was twice as much in neighbouring Argentina and Uruguay, and even higher in developed countries—South Korea attaining a record 98 per cent coverage. Significantly, tertiary education for the upper-income fifth of the Chilean population, many of whom study in the new private universities, also reaches above 70 per cent.” [read full article]
Ana is trying to raise money for school by offering her poems (for a tip) to passers by on the street. Her program is about $400/month, and she has another 2 years before completing it. She was quick to point out that the $400/month is just tuition and doesn’t include books or school fees etc.
When I asked about scholarships, she said that they are only for the very poor, who also score very highly on their entrance exams. When I asked Ana about taking out a loan for school, her reply was one that I’ve heard a dozen times before. Yes, there are loans available, but only if your family has a house and/or a car and/or property to leverage for collateral. In truth, it’s really only the most well off who can qualify for loans in Chile’s traditional banking sector.
While she didn’t begrudge those who receive scholarships or whose families are well-off enough to qualify for bank loans, her situation does point to an troubling conundrum that many students find themselves in. There are “two Chile’s” in Chile. One for the “haves” and one for the “have nots”. In a world that is trying to shrink this gap, higher education is a fail-proof prescription. Sadly, students like Ana, who are part of the deserving middle tier of students, have been left to their own ingenuity to find a way to pay for school.
After learning Chile’s history, and hearing Ana’s story, it’s no wonder that Chileans are out in force today, voicing their opinions and making their democracy work. With any luck, the tides will continue to turn in favor of a more egalitarian education system, so that folks like Ana can not only afford school, but have lots of great quality schools to chose from.
It’s a tough uphill struggle for Ana, and for Chile.
I wish them well.
{ 5 comments }
I would love to support Ana, and Chile’s education system. Why doesn’t Vittana set her up with a loan?
Thanks so much for this comment, and actually, it’s a really good question…
A few reasons, one — Ana was a young woman that I spoke to for about 10 minutes on the street in Santiago. I did give her my card, but I didn’t get any of her details, other than her name, in order to get back in touch with her. In retrospect, this was poor form on my part, but it wasn’t something that I thought about until later… and then it was a real forehead-smacker.
Second… Currently, Vittana doesn’t partners with any Chilean MFIs or banks, so we don’t have a conduit through which to get Ana a loan, even if I did have her details. That being said… I do hope that in the future, we make inroads with MFIs in Chile and partner with appropriate banks there in order to offer our products to young people there.
Thanks for your great question, and for keeping us on our toes!
I believe that Vittana is doing important work, and that education is key to upward mobility in general. I hope you will not mind, in that context, if I offer a criticism. The story of Ana would be more powerful if you included a detail about the consequences, if any, she has experienced as a result of the absence of student loans. When I got to the sentence in which you said that “Sadly, students like Ana, . . . have been left to their own ingenuity to find a way to pay for school,” the thought that came up in my mind was “What’s so sad about that?” She has a talent for writing poetry, and is able to sell some of her poems. Working is not a sad thing in itself. It’s only a bad thing that she has to work for tuition money, if she has been delayed in obtaining her degree because of lack of funds, or if she had to work so many hours she was unable to keep up her grade average, etc. — at, least, in my opinion. There are many, many students in the USA who have to work at least part-time while they pursue their undergraduate degrees, and that’s not a tragedy — those people are less likely to party their time away than their classmates. On the other hand, if Ana keeps having to take semesters off while she works on getting the funds together for her next set of classes, or something like that – Well, that would convince me that a student loan would really impact her life and the lives of the people she wants to teach.
Amy! Thanks so much for your feedback and interesting thoughts. Your points are well taken and exactly make the conclusion that I was trying to hit (but obviously strayed from).
To your point about the relative “healthiness” of many students working to pay their way through school — I couldn’t agree more. While I don’t know all of the details about Ana’s situation, I have met a number of other students working their way through school who did indeed have to take off not just semesters, but sometimes years in between working and saving enough up for school in order to be able to get back to their studies.
Thanks so much for keeping us on our toes, and helping us remember that we need to be sure to tell the whole story about the students we talk to and the work that we’re trying to accomplish.
Please stay in touch! – Katie
I just wanted to say a few things in response to Amy’s comment. It is very difficult in Latin America to work your way through school. I live in Peru and I feel like the situation here is very typical for the rest of the region. A full-time job here is about 10 hours of work per day, 6 days a week because most of the economy is informal and it is difficult to get a job on payroll that will respect your labor rights. The kinds of jobs you qualify for with only a high school degree won’t pay you more than $200-300 a month. That’s about what it costs to pay the bare minimum monthly payment at a private college here, which means your entire salary would go to paying your tuition. This does not include your books, materials, bus tickets, and food. But with a full-time job, you won’t even have time to go to school here.
There’s no way you can even work your way through school without having a stable home life where your parents give you significant help in making ends meet. Most poor, lower middle class families can’t afford to do that for their kids. Most kids upon graduation have to try to help their family instead. If you don’t have a scholarship to help you, it is really very difficult to try to get through school in a reasonable amount of time.
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