The role of CONFECH in the fight for education in Chile

In recent years, in Chilean society there have been various social demonstrations that question the prevailing neoliberalism and seek to change it. In these mobilizations, the role that students have played to push the state and the political system to legislate laws that guarantee the right to education stands out. In order to position itself against the challenges of higher education in Chile, the Confederation of Students of Chile (CONFECH) was founded in 1984 during the National Congress of University Students between October 26 and 28. CONFECH is made up of student federations from every part of the country that have carried out confederation processes (Statutes of the Confederation of Students of Chile, 2018). The Confederation engages in informal bargaining with the Government of Chile on educational policy, and its members, that allow its functioning, are involved in decision-making and management of campuses in formal or informal ways and with different institutional frameworks in each university. The CONFECH has been the backbone of student mobilization against neoliberal policies in Chile, in the educational sector, and in other social spheres, such as demands for pensions, access to health, among others. The confederation is conceived as a space of confluence between students, of organization, linkage, and political voice of young students. For the purposes of this study, our central question is: What is the role of CONFECH in the fight against neoliberalism in educational policies in Chile? For this reason, this chapter aims to make a brief recount of the trajectory of the struggle against neoliberalism and to present the organizational structure of CONFECH, based on information obtained through interviews with leaders of the Chilean student movement. CONFECH has mainly mobilized for better financing of higher education; access, universal gratuity, and a new educational model; effective measures to guarantee equity in access to education in the context of the Covid-19 health emergency; student mental health and an education free of violence (24 hours, 2022). Advances in these areas are key to understanding the political, articulating, and linking role that CONFECH has had in the fight against neoliberalism in education. For this reason, in the data collection for the construction of this chapter, a form was made following the model structured by SIHEG, Chile (2021), in addition to meetings with leaders of CONFECH itself, allowing us to know from the point of view of its members the political and articulating role that the organization has played. In relation to the ethical conduct and positionality used here, the data provided is for the exclusive use of the investigation, the interviewees being informed of the nature of the investigation and their confirmation or not of the linking of this information and subsequent publication of the information. same. The authors are student leaders with direct experience in CONFECH and scholars from other countries with a background in the student movement. Considering its positionality, the authors practiced a transparent data collection process to describe the Chilean situation reliably. The chapter is composed of three main parts. The first section analyzes the context of higher education in Chile, with a focus on laws, regulations, and services that allow an understanding of the student condition in the country, to get concluded with a resume of political standings of CONFECH with this regard. The second section describes the structure of the organization and explains its recent mobilizations, defining the peculiar Chilean systems of student representation and intermediation, and considering the involvement of CONFECH in nonsectoral mobilizations as well. The third section enters the local level, looking at the student unions that compose CONFECH, trying to give an idea of the variety of its membership and of how student voice is articulated in Chilean universities.