Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Dia de la Mujer

Yesterday was International Women´s Day, in case you were unaware. I went to a march in downtown Santiago to support this day. Historically, this demonstration starts off the year since it is when everyone returns from vacation. There were a few thousand people there- men and women, old and young. I went with Adrien, who is a total feminist and an active protestor in the United States.

It was pretty calm but it took us about an hour to march six or seven blocks since it was the busiest street in Santiago that we were marching on. All of the traffic had to be stopped. I bet it sucked to be in a car for an hour watching all of the protestors.

At the end, there was a band and various people who stood up and talked about the need for Chile and the rest of the world to continue the fight for women and to raise the standards politically, socially, and especially within working conditions.

It was interesting in the fact that since it was a demonstration, there was obvious poltical parties out in full force, including the Communist party. Even more interesting was that they were all young people in this party (about my age) and were passing out propaganda (well, everyone and anyone was passing out some sort of propaganda, whether it be a political party or info about women´s rights). And after reading the propaganda, I collected that they are more of a socialist party rather than communist, so I don´t yet understand why they had the Communist sign painted on their faces and on their banners. I need to investigate more...

First Day of School

Today, I went to classes and it is a very good thing that I don´t have any first-year classes because my day would have sucked. The old students have a tradition of pulling out any and every first year student out of their classes and hazing them. Today, during my International Economics class, they were hazing inside the business building.

Although I didn´t see it take place, I definitely heard all the screaming and shouting. And I definitely saw the aftermath. All the kids were painted on with blue paint, their hair was messed up, the guys only wore shorts, and they were all tied together. No one had shoes on. Apparently, they take everyone´s shoes and make them pay to get them back. The only good thing that comes out of this is that they pool all the money together in the end and pay for a big barbecue on campus. I should try to find out where so I can eat some free food....

posted by Rebecca @ 3/09/2004 02:16:00 PM