Chilean Indignados: I'm Proud of Our Young Generation

I hope that all these protestas and marchas will help us to be a better country, a country more equal and with more social justice, a country where no poor kid will be left behind. Maybe from the developing world we may redefine -or even improve- the concept of development.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.


This year, almost every week, there's been a protesta in Santiago de Chile. Although our country is doing fine both in economic and social standards, something's wrong... And that is why thousands of students are marching every week in the streets of our city. What they are asking for is not only the improvement of the public education -which, by any means, is something we must achieve if we want to be a developed country.

They are looking for much more than this: they want a new model, a new way of living, of working and to relate to each other. Just like the indignados all over the world, our students want a huge change in our current model, with huge inequalities and enormous gaps between rich and poor.

For some politicians, it seems really strange that this is happening now in Chile. Many believe we are doing better as a nation than we ever have and that we are just a few steps away from being developed. Other say that it is because we have reached 15 thousand dollars income per capita and that when developed countries have reached this level, malaise is only natural.

Maybe that's true; it makes sense to me that when you have faced the urgencies of extreme poverty, lack of education, and unstable democracy, or you have partially won the battle against unemployment, then you have the time and the energy to adress urgent and important issues. And then appears this questioning of what we want to do as a society, in more depth terms.

I don't agree with all the proposals of the students -- because it seems to me to be maximalist and extremely idealist -- but I'm proud that the younger generation of Chileans is passionately interested in the future of our country, and that they really want to improve the state of the world. I prefer to see them marching in the streets for the rights of the underprivileged, than absorbed in the individualism of their own lives -- as we see in a lot of developed countries.

I hope that all these protestas and marchas will help us to be a better country, a country more equal and with more social justice, a country where no poor kid will be left behind. Maybe from the developing world we can redefine -or even improve- the concept of development.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot