Teacher Strike

For the last couple of weeks or so the teachers at many schools throughout the country have been on strike. The strike, as far as I can understand, is mainly over a 28 year old debt and teacher bonuses for this year. The 28 year old debt occurred when Pinochet reorganized the educational structure in the country. During this transition, some teacher's paychecks apparently went missing. The situation is complicated in that the government and the teacher's union do not agree on the size of debt or how much of the debt has been paid. Because this debt occurred 28 years ago, 2/3 of the teachers who are on strike probably weren't teaching when the debt happened. They probably participate out of the notion of solidarity, which is a celebrated ideal here, but it is possible that younger teachers also hope to receive something out of a settlement. (or just don't want to work). This strike apparently occurs almost annually in Chile. Also interesting to me is that some schools have declared that they will be on strike for the rest of the year. This begs the question how do they know a settlement won't be reached by the end of the year.

My school unfortunately is unaffected by the strike because I work at a semi-private school and thus if they teachers went on strike they'd probably be fired and replaced (teachers here also earn more money then in the public schools). So I've been teaching away. I've got 6 more days of classes so I'm pretty pumped to started my South American traveling.