A canvas displayed on the front of the Central House of the University of Chile, the main state higher education institution of the South American country, in which the rector Rosa Devés appeared receiving a kiss on the cheek from the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, It has become a symbol – almost universally repudiated as sexist – of the tone of the pro-Palestine demonstration that a small handful of students have been carrying out since mid-May. The students (about twenty, according to the university) demand the revocation of agreements with educational institutions in Israel and the disengagement with economic entities “that are supporting Zionism,” according to them, such as some banks. Devés, who has said that he shares the rejection of the “massacre in Palestine,” as he expressed this Tuesday from Germany, where he is part of President Gabriel Boric’s entourage on his tour in Europe, rules out breaking ties with Israeli universities. considering them places where critical and dissident voices are expressed.
The first woman to occupy the rectorship of Chile since June 2022, fights a complex battle: “We will firmly insist on the peaceful solution of controversies, caring for an environment where the tolerance and pluralism that characterizes us are not threatened. We will defend our values: aggression and fear have no place in this university,” she said in a video broadcast on Thursday the 6th, a few hours before the offensive poster was hung.
The student demonstrations in different countries that demand their universities break any ties with Israel due to the war in Gaza – more than 35,000 dead and 10,000 missing – landed in Chile on May 15, even after the Boric Government had distanced itself with Israel in signals that, according to the local Jewish community, have reached “an anti-Semitic bias.” A group of students from the University of Chile stormed the Hall of Honor while the first vice minister of Ukraine, Yulia Svyrydenko, gave a keynote talk at the Central House. About 200 protesters – not all of them students – repudiated the invitation to a representative of the “fascist regime” of kyiv, they said, and forcibly entered the premises, leaving four officials injured.
After the incident, the event was moved to the rectory premises, in the same building. That night, Rector Devés stayed at the Central House to avoid a takeover and a group of students assigned to the Solidarity Committee for Palestine of the University of Chile, with the support of the Coordinator in Solidarity with Palestine, and the Student Federation ( FECh) installed tents in the Domeyko patio of the Central House, in the heart of Alameda. Since then, the protest in the courtyard has been known as camp. Almost a month later there are five tents left and, according to university sources, about 20 people participate in the activities. At night, a couple of students sleep in an auditorium at the Central House, which continues to operate regularly.
With the aim of “giving a channel to the mobilization”, the protesters announced this Wednesday that they will organize a plebiscite for the university community to adopt a position on the war and “end the agreements it has with universities and research institutes complicit in the war.” genocide of the Palestinian people”, as they indicate.
He camp It was installed a couple of days after the students of the Faculty of Arts, at its headquarters in Santiago Centro, took over the premises demanding, among other issues, the infrastructure. The Juan Gómez Millas campus, in Ñuñoa, where the Faculty of Sciences, Social Sciences, Philosophy and Humanities and Communication are located, joined the takeover as a sign of solidarity with the demand for Arts and the Palestinian cause.
On May 20, the rectorate responded to the students by showing their willingness to work together on an agenda that would give value and visibility to the Palestinian cause, but in the middle of the dialogue the votes took place to elect the new board of directors of the FECh. The lists of the Youth of the Communist Party with Social Convergence, the Boric community, and the Youth of the Socialist Party went to the second round. Of the 36,824 students eligible to vote on-lineonly 9% participated, well below the quorum minimum (30%). At the end of May, the FECh Election Qualifying Tribunal (Tricel) determined that the vote was invalid, leaving without head to the entity that sat down to talk with the rectory.
“The elected representatives of the organizations of the University of Chile stopped taking charge of the camping activities,” said Rector Devés in the video. In that same statement, she accused that “affects to personal dignity and verbal attacks on officials during admission have become progressively frequent and the humiliations have caused suffering.” She also stated that there have been “offenses from a gender perspective and damage has been caused to the mental health” of the officials.
The FECh is now in charge of about six student centers, mainly those on the Juan Gomez Millas Campus, – which are under siege – according to the university. Just this week a group of students sent two lists of spokespersons to the rectory. One representing the students and another of the camp from Central House. None of them were elected by vote of his colleagues. In its latest request, the Committee in Solidarity with Palestine accused the university authorities of repeatedly refusing to meet with its spokespersons and give “an adequate response” to their requests.
The canvas, a turning point
During a march in favor of the Palestinian cause last weekend, a group of protesters hung on the front of the Central House the canvas that read: “To break the Zionist relationship, 76 years of colonization, 80% of the population displaced “40,000 deaths in eight months.” The phrase was accompanied by an illustration of Netanyahu kissing Devés, emulating Dmitri Vrubel’s mural on the Berlin Wall. More than 500 members of the University of Chile community signed a letter in which they rejected the actions of the State of Israel in the Gaza Strip and the intervention against Rector Devés. Authorities and public opinion leaders also condemned the protest action against the first female rector of the public university in 179 years.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Gabriel Boric, Alberto van Klaveren, described the images on the canvas – which have already been removed from the front – as “crude and intolerable.” The head of the Women and Gender Equality portfolio, Antonia Orellana, published in The lawyer and law professor at the University of Chile, Salvador Millaleo, maintained that “the woke up “It delegitimizes those who do not emotionally adhere to their positions.” “Those who appeal to reason are treated as enemies. I have seen it with radicalized Mapuches when you question the violent path of Llaitul [líder de la Coordinadora Arauco Malleco, CAM] and company and now he sees himself with the Movement for Palestine reviling Rosa Devés,” he added.
From Germany, the rector stated that “it is not the way to express ideas.” “Less not in a public university like ours, in a house that is heritage, that represents not only the university, but the history of Chile and that we all have to respect very much,” she noted. Devés confirmed that the Faculty of Philosophy suspended a couple of agreements with the study houses in Israel, but reiterated her decision and that of the University Council not to adopt this measure.
On Saturday night, when the canvas controversy occurred, the FECh Instagram account made an “urgent” call to attend the Central House due to a “threat of eviction” that the university denies. About fifty people attended an extraordinary assembly and this Wednesday the protesters of the camp They published a statement in which they accused a “misrepresentation of concepts” by the canvas and criticized that “feminism and the rector’s position as a woman were used as a tool to divert the focus.”
The analyst and rector of the Diego Portales University (UDP), Carlos Peña, pointed out in his The Mercury titled Mistreatment of the university that “the worst thing is to remain silent in the face of these types of acts, trusting that boredom and time will extinguish them, because in this way the worst of lessons are transmitted to new generations: that one can pretend to be a university student and at the same time mistreat others.” the institution of which one is a part.”
“Security” control of the university community
To enter the Gómez Millas Campus, students, academics and officials must go through a “security check” of a group of students. Rodrigo Medel, academic and researcher at the Department of Ecological Sciences of the Faculty of Sciences, raised his voice on social networks to expose the situation: “I find it incredible that the professors who want to enter our workplace at the University, the students In taking, as a sign of authorization, they paint a letter on our hand. Whats Next?”. Medel did not want to comment to this newspaper.
From the university they say that the vast majority of officials see this admission system imposed by a group of students as “weary.” The National Federation of Associations of Officials from the University of Chile, for its part, issued a statement supporting the mobilization for Palestine at the Central House.
There are also teachers who support the students’ actions. Those of camp They have a room set up for academic and cultural activities where they invite teachers to discuss topics related to the war in Gaza. The professor at the University of Chile and national prize-winner for Journalism, Faride Zerán, who was vice-rector for Extension and Communications during the period of rector Ennio Vivaldi – Devés’s predecessor – has been one of the most critical voices with the house’s response. studies to the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, a cause he defends. In an interview with The secondZerán said on Tuesday that it seemed “an aggressive gesture” that the university authorities slept in the Central House “entrenched in their offices and closed to dialogue” and compared Devés with his male predecessors.
In a text in Leftist newspaper, Zerán pointed out: “It seems that Andrés Bello’s famous phrase that at the University of Chile ‘all truths are touched’ for some continues to depend on what that truth is, thus closing debate, critical thinking and everything that attacks against the dream of the technocratic university, blind and mute to the horrors and demands of its time.”
It is just an example of the internal struggle that Devés faces.
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