{"id":281981,"date":"2016-09-24T14:13:54","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T18:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=281981"},"modified":"2020-11-03T14:24:24","modified_gmt":"2020-11-03T19:24:24","slug":"chilean-artist-steals-500-million-worth-of-student-debt-papers-and-destroys-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/chilean-artist-steals-500-million-worth-of-student-debt-papers-and-destroys-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Chilean artist steals $500 million worth of student debt papers and destroys them"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
Wonderful!<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

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Here\u2019s one inventive way to deal with the student debt problem. Late last week, Chilean police arrived at Santiago\u2019s\u00a0Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral and removed a white bin of gray ash \u2014 allegedly all that remained of $500 million worth of\u00a0student\u00a0debt notes.<\/p>\n

The case of the destroyed student debt traces back to a hastily shot home video, a half-smoked cigarette, and a disheveled artist named\u00a0Papas Fritas.\u00a0In the video, which went viral last week in Chile,\u00a0Papas Fritas\u00a0confessed he had recently stolen the documents from the for-profit Universidad del Mar. Then he set them ablaze in a defiant, brazen act of art.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s over,\u201d\u00a0declared\u00a0Papas Fritas, which means \u201cfrench fries.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s finished. You don\u2019t have to pay another peso [of your student loan debt]. We have to lose our fear, our fear of being thought of as criminals because we\u2019re poor. I am just like you, living a sh\u2014y life, and I live it day by day.<\/p>\n

French Fries finished his screed: \u201cThis is my act of love for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matters of love aside, the artist\u2019s destruction of the loan documents illustrates a years-long opposition to Chile\u2019s for-profit universities, a remnant of General Augusto Pinochet\u2019s dictatorship. Before his tenure, education was considered a public good, but after he came to power in 1973, education was commoditized and privatized. Soon, the per capita cost of education in Chile was\u00a0among the highest in the world.<\/p>\n

It fostered a highly-stratified education system, with incredibly expensive schools geared toward the wealthy and \u201cleaving public schools with shrinking budgets to educate the country\u2019s most vulnerable and disadvantaged students,\u201d according to this staggering Boston Review analysis on Chile\u2019s education.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone in Chile can recite the following facts: adjusted for income, Chile has the most expensive higher education in the world,\u201d the essay begins. \u201cPer student, the country spends less than any other, and the student spends more. These facts were once a point of pride.\u201d<\/p>\n

But pride quickly gave way to desperation. Student protests ripped across the country\u00a0in 2006, demanding education reform in the face of crippling debt.\u00a0\u201cWe have to say once again that education is not a consumer product, education is a right,\u201d\u00a0one student leader told Fox News Latino in 2012. \u201cAnd to make it so, we need a state that ensures adequate regulation of the private sector and which also permits the strengthening of the public sector.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Michelle Bachelet\u00a0entered office\u00a0in March promising to radically reform Chile\u2019s education system and stop universities from profiting too much. At the same time, the government was continuing its shutdown of the Universidad del Mar following a discovery of \u201cfinancial irregularities,\u201d according to the\u00a0Santiago Times.<\/p>\n

Fueling the existing discontent was a\u00a0student march\u00a0two weeks ago that incorporated thousands of students and bolstered a petition to the government to sanction for-profit schools, which today are technically illegal but manage to work around the law.<\/p>\n

Enter\u00a0Papas Fritas,\u00a0whose real name is Francisco Tapia.\u00a0Fritas claims he was involved in a recent student takeover of Universidad del Mar, where he devised a piece of artwork that he says would strike back at student debt and free its prisoners. So he allegedly stole the documents, burned them and poured their ashes into a bin for an exhibit.<\/p>\n

The theft has created a bevy of headaches for the embattled university, which must now sue each student individually to secure a repayment of the debt,\u00a0reports the Santiago Times.\u00a0Students, meanwhile, argue the incurred debt was illegal anyway and are refusing to pay it.
\nAnd what\u2019s to become of\u00a0Papas Fritas?\u00a0According to the Santiago Times, he may be going to jail for one to five years for lifting the documents.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/morning-mix\/wp\/2014\/05\/19\/chilean-artist-steals-and-destroys-500-million-worth-of-student-debt-papers\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: Wonderful!  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":281982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}