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Champagne. Cumbia music. Street parties. The Chilean student leaders who upended their nation’s political agenda in 2011 with dozens of street protests on Sunday transformed their activist power into a mini bloc of student activists. Four of the young students – Giorgio Jackson, Camila Vallejo, Karol Cariola and Gabriel Boric – won congressional offices and will take seats in the Chilean Congress in March.
“We have battled for some time for our ideals for what we think Chile deserves and the transformations that Chile needs,” said Vallejo, the 25-year-old former student body president as she celebrated on Sunday evening in Santiago. “It has been a long fight to open up the [political] spaces to win this via the elections process and the street fight. In those two environments we have advanced and won.”
“It is time for big changes in the economic model and the political system,” said Vallejo, who first came to fame as the charismatic leader of massive street protests calling for free university education for all Chilean students. “The right wing is in the Intensive Care Unit. You can see it in the polls and in the streets,” said Vallejo. “They are unleashing pure propaganda in an attempt to salvage the low turnout they maintain. It’s sad . . . they could have taken the high road and formed a serious debate and a discussion about political platforms.”
With four student leaders now holding power in Congress and tens of thousands of students ready to march and protest for free and quality public education, Chile is now recovering the spirit of community organizing long smashed by the Pinochet dictatorship.
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Story: http://truth-out.org/news/item/20114-4-chilean-student-leaders-make-the-jump-to-parliament