The students can't be ignored.

• Author: Fisher, Eloy
• Position: CHILE

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A top the old colonial watchtower on Santa Lucia Hill, you could rack how the crowd flowed into Santiago Centro on August 9. As protesters clashed with police, who responded with water cannons, the sleepy demeanor of dogs roaming the touristy promenade seemed surreal.

Clumped around a tight-knit area, the student occupation of the University of Chile's central campus was a stone's throw away from the presidential palace, and thousands of students, teachers, and union members were bound to step beyond the preordained limits of the protest. That is what happens when public spaces shrink beyond the capacity (and patience) of those who occupy them.

Dubbed by the media the "Chilean Winter," the massive and protracted student protests that began in April bear a superficial resemblance to the protests of the "Arab Spring" and more recent anti-Wall Street demonstrations. Chilean students are demanding a new constitution and a complete overhaul of the country's neoliberal social welfare system. They are also demanding a dismantling of the education system set up under the dictator Augusto Pinochet, and in its place, they demand free higher education. The government's inability to get students off the streets and back into the classroom has had devastating consequences for rightwing president Sebastian Pinera, whose popularity rating is under 30 percent.

But these protests have roots in even more massive (though less protracted) student protests that rocked the Socialist government of president Michelle Bachelet less than a month after her inauguration in 2006. The so-called Revolution of the Penguins (the cute label referred to the high school students' uniforms) was derailed early on by the political establishment. The General Education Law the students protested for was signed with much fanfare, but satisfied virtually none of the protesters' fundamental demands, particularly an end to for-profit education at all levels.

Cristobal Lagos, then a high school student and currently secretary general of the University of Chile's Student Union, felt he had been fooled. A former penguin, he believes what unites the 2006 protests and the current ones is the "support of the people." Indeed a recent poll indicates 79 percent of Chileans agree with the students' demands.

On a beautiful spring day, fit for a lively march with music, water, and the undisguised smell of reefer, Lagos reflects on the students' place in the global...