Educational struggles in Latin America: Everyday Protests and Shifting Movements in Chile and beyond

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

For decades, Latin America has been home to some of the most powerful social movements in the world, with a long history of educational protests and student movements (Meyer, 2008; Gould, 2009; Manzano, 2014; Tarlau, 2018). Protests occur daily, contributing to democratic processes in the Western world in what della Porta (2016) has called an “era of protests.” Students have also played a role in confronting U.S.-backed dictatorships (Rueda, 2019; Martins Filho, 1998) and challenging the neoliberal state (Campos-Martínez & Olavarría, 2020; Bellei & Villalobos, 2023) and the inequalities it produces. Although protests and movements take on specific dynamics and characteristics across and within national contexts, they also develop in relationship to one another in the region, influencing tactics, educational approaches, and ways that incidental forms of collective action grow into more sustained movements and shift over time.
Chile is a critical case in the region, especially in recent years. The massive student movements of 2006 and 2011 started a new cycle of protests in the country, turning students into the most important, well-known, and studied social actors of the last two decades. The educational protests in Chile have been a case of international analysis due to their reach, political impact, educational transformations, tactics, and strategies, spreading their influence beyond Chilean borders. As the title indicates, this panel analyzes the Chilean student movement, and its influence beyond its sectoral and national borders, focusing on interconnections in Latin America.
How can we characterize the student movement in general, and the Latin American student movement in particular? How are student movements distinct from other social movements? How do different social movements learn from each other across regional and national contexts? In what ways do the protests in Chile allow us to think about the next cycles of educational protests - or movements - in Latin America?
This panel seeks to answer these questions through four presentations. Seen together, these presentations allow us to account for theoretical, empirical and methodological debates relevant to the study of educational protests in Latin America. Even though they use different methodologies, the presentations are based on the idea that protests are produced from the dialectical interaction between social actors and structures, promoting analyses that account, at the same time, for the contexts and policies of the protests, but also for the resources, capacity and ideologies of the actors. Likewise, all the presentations use historical frameworks to understand protest processes, thus incorporating the idea that history is a fundamental component to explain social processes. Finally, all the presentations discuss the social, cultural and political impacts or implications of educational protests, visualizing them as relevant social objects of contemporary societies.
This panel begins by raising the problem of the absence of a theory of Latin American student movements, analyzing especially the Chilean, Brazilian, and Mexican student movements (Moraga). Itontinues by examining the dynamics and geographies of protest from the 1990s to 2019 in Chile (Villalobos, Pereira & Parcerisa), and investigates various processes by which protests developed and evolved, such as moving from protests to movements, and from the student movement and beyond (Reyes-Galgani and Taylor). The final article focuses on Brazilian youth movements, analyzing divergent and overlapping trajectories in relation to the Chilean context (Taylor).
Collectively, our papers speak to the CIES 2024 theme, “The Power of Protest.” In particular, they trace both histories of protest (Theme 1) and how the nature, form and politics of education protests changed over time in Latin America. Broader socio-economic and political circumstances also shape capacities to protest – and give rise to the movements, forms of organizing, and political shifts that emerge within and after those protests. We also speak to theories and methodologies of protest (Theme 3) by drawing from social movement and educational scholarship, and adopting differing methodologies to examine student movements, ranging from historical to ethnographic, and georeferenciated analysis. We each have approached these movements from distinct positionalities and with attention to ethical dimensions of researching protest and movements.

Sub Unit

• Latin America SIG

Chair

• Pamela Natalia Reyes Galgani, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Individual Presentations

• Mapping educational protests in post-dictatorship Chile (1990-2019). A geo-referenced analysis - Sebastian Pereira, CEPPE UC; Cristobal Villalobos, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile; Lluís Parcerisa, University of Barcelona

• Youth, citizenship, and activism in the Chilean uprising - Pamela Natalia Reyes Galgani, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Brazilian youth movements: historical shifts and interconnections with the Chilean context - Alice Taylor, University of Denver

Discussant

• Rebecca Tarlau, Stanford University