In 2011, elected student leaders in Chile took the streets to protest against the Chilean education system, which was in many ways for-profit and neoliberal. Unlike protests five years earlier, which became known as the Penguin Revolution and took place during the presidency of Socialist Michelle Bachelet, the 2011 iteration of student protests took aim at Sebastián Piñera, a conservative billionaire businessman. 

If this story seems to you at all similar to our current political moment, that wouldn’t be incorrect. While United States exceptionalism might lead us to believe that we are unlike Latin America, their history serves as a warning as we descend deeper and deeper into authoritarianism daily. 

As Kwame Ture – formerly Stokely Carmichael – writes, marginalized communities in the U.S. “see [themselves] as part of the Third World.” 

In the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) took aim at both U.S. organizations like the Black Panther Party and at governments around the world like Chile’s democratically elected socialist government and Patrice Lumumba’s Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

In 1973, Chile’s socialist government was overthrown by Augusto Pinochet, who quickly instituted a military dictatorship and began implementing a neoliberal economic model inspired by Chilean students who studied under Milton Friedman.

When students began protesting in the twenty-first century, this was the legacy they were trying to disarm. Pinochet’s policies, which had privatized the education system, were still being felt decades after the end of the dictatorship. With Piñera in power, who himself studied economics in the U.S., students took aim at Chile’s authoritarian and neoliberal afterlives. 

Piñera’s administration ran through four different education ministers and eventually met some student demands, including lower interest rates on loans. It was in the midst of a conservative government that students were able to make lasting change, something that was largely unsuccessful when a socialist was running the country. 

Back in the U.S., we’ve had no shortage of student activism on campuses in the last two years, largely due to the genocide taking place in Gaza at the hands of Israel’s apartheid state. However, it’s campus organizations with little institutional power leading the charge, not student governments that have access to resources and administration. 

At Whitman, the Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) divested their funds in an effort to find better alternatives for the more than $800,000. Subsequent arguments over what to do with the funds have allowed students to think about how we can best support our community, but there remain few long term solutions for the money. 

This, unfortunately, is due to the limited vision for ASWC. As Ricky Gonzalez, current President of ASWC, explains, ASWC’s political role is limited by the fact that every student pays a fee.

“It limits the political relationships or advocacy that you can do because you need to represent everyone equally,” Gonzalez said. 

Although everyone would be equally represented in an ideal world, or, as Gonzalez notes, there would be perfect equity in ASWC’s financial and political decisions, such a goal is idealistic and assumes an apolitical identity. ASWC is a political body, and it never makes a decision that is representative of every student or that every student approves. 

Thus, ASWC must be an aggressive political force that uses its full range of tactics to make change within and outside of the campus community. Passing acts and resolutions, actively supporting and taking part in student labor and activism, and expanding resources through systems like the emergency fund would all help ASWC meet the moment. 

In the Chilean context, it wasn’t just one college or university taking action, but a coalition of schools. Like Gonzalez points out, ASWC has a responsibility to its students first, but there’s also work outside our community to be done. 

“Learning shouldn’t just be between the four walls of your classroom … when that bubble is broken you can do a lot more outside of the campus,” Gonzalez said. 

While he pointed to the Tri-College Community Day as an example, Whitman College must also find solidarity with campuses that have had students detained by ICE, including liberal arts colleges like Tufts University. 

At this moment, it’s essential that we fight back and the student government has the capacity to help, but only if it has the political will. ASWC is not just a body that supports student clubs and funds campus activity. It’s inherently political, and the choice to remain quiet is as political as energetically meeting the moment. Now, more than ever, our community needs support, and students around the world have offered a blueprint. 

As President Donald Trump is continually inspired by Argentina’s President Javier Milei, we must learn to fight back from Argentina’s next door neighbor who have themselves lived with a conservative dictatorship and have fought to see another day.