Chile riot police clash with protesting students

Chilean riot police fired tear gas and used water cannons Tuesday to disperse violent protesters on the fringe of an otherwise peaceful student demonstration in the capital Santiago. Tens of thousands of teachers, students, parents and sympathetic labor activists marched in downtown Santiago for the fifth time in two months to demand reforms from the conservative government of President Sebastian Pinera. Police said some 60,000 people marched. Organizers put the number closer to 100,000. Students want the state to take over the public school system, where 90 percent of the country's 3.5 million students are educated. It is currently run by local authorities, which protesters say results in deep inequalities. Chile has the highest per capita income of any country in Latin America, but the Andean nation also has the most skewed income disparity in the region. Students also want more affordable higher education: most Chilean college students take out loans to go to private for-profit universities because public colleges are few and underfunded. "I'm marching because I have two children and I can't make ends meet; they are going to be in debt for years" when they go to college, Graciela Hernandez, one of the protesters, told AFP. The peaceful protest came apart when a group of hooded youths hurled sticks and rocks at riot police near the presidential palace of La Moneda. Some of the youths smashed street lights and broke windows, and a car was set ablaze. "The government is not listening to us, we want a new education system in Chile and the government proposals do not address what we want," said Manuel Soto, a protester from the University of Santiago. "The protests will continue ... until the government gives us better education," Soto told AFP. Police authorized the Tuesday march, unlike a protest demo last Thursday that resulted in more than 800 arrests. Protests have been mounting since Pinera, the first right-wing president to govern Chile since the country returned to democracy in 1990, announced wide-ranging education spending cuts earlier in the year. Protests also occurred Tuesday in Chile's other main cities, including Arica, Valparaiso and Concepcion. Unions representing public workers and copper miners announced they would join the students, a sign that the social upheaval against Pinera -- in power since March 2010, and with a 26 percent approval rating -- is broadening.