Chile’s New Leader Heads to U.S., With Some Homework Unfinished

President Michelle Bachelet headed to Washington to meet today with President Bush and other admirers even as the gravest crisis of her young presidency continued to rage and generate fierce criticism of her leadership.

Thousands of striking high school students maintained their boisterous occupation of campuses Wednesday, rejecting a package of concessions that critics called too little too late.

Banners strung from schools proclaimed, “Prices for copper go through the roof, education falls through the floor,” capturing the anger of students enduring what they called second-rate schooling while an export-driven economic boom has left Chile flush with cash.

The protests, the largest by students since leftist President Salvador Allende was ousted in a military coup in 1973, underscore the deep rifts in a nation characterized by a well-heeled elite prospering alongside a disgruntled underclass. The children of this “other Chile” see vast improvements to public education as their best chance for social mobility, and have garnered considerable support from ordinary Chileans, polls show.

More than 600,000 high schoolers are skipping classes for a third week, and they have been joined in recent days by university students.

“We’re not backing down,” said Camilo Sepulveda, 17, who was among scores of students in front of the banner-festooned National Institute high school in Santiago, the capital. “I don’t know why the president is headed off to Washington for nice photos when this is not resolved.”

Some observers defended Bachelet’s decision to proceed with the trip, but others said her response to the crisis highlighted the lack of political skill in a chief executive who had never held a significant elected post before becoming president March 11. She served as ministers of health and defense in the administration of Ricardo Lagos, her predecessor and political mentor.

Analysts say the crisis could eventually taint Bachelet’s entire six-year term, perhaps even ushering in a wave of protests among Chile’s host of other aggrieved sectors -- among them pensioners, miners and health workers.

Not yet 100 days into her presidency, Bachelet -- the first female leader in Latin America who didn’t derive her power from a prominent spouse -- is facing a severe trial.

“This has been a very hard landing for Michelle Bachelet,” said Patricio Navia, a political science professor at Diego Portales University here and at New York University. “She needs a big success now to show she is still in command and not a lame duck.”

The walkouts began as localized protests last month but escalated into a nationwide series of school takeovers, sit-ins and demonstrations, marked by occasional violent clashes between rock-throwing students and police firing water cannons.

The unrest has underscored how even Chile, often cited as an economic role model by the Bush administration and other free-traders, is susceptible to the social turmoil so evident elsewhere in Latin America.

Chile doesn’t suffer the 50%-plus poverty rates and political instability of neighboring Peru and Bolivia, but the billions of dollars in surpluses it reaps from mining revenue have yet to be reflected in significant improvements to a public education system that is widely viewed as in need of overhaul.

“Developed countries see education as an investment, but Chile has always regarded it as a drain,” said Claudio Cofre, 43, who has two daughters among the striking high schoolers. “I tell my girls I am proud of them: This is a historic moment for Chile.”

Bachelet, 54, a lifelong socialist and a political prisoner during the 17-year dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, has had trouble finding the answers. Her first major challenge comes not from Chile’s still potent conservative bloc, but from the left-wing student activism of the sort she embraced in her youth.

Students are demanding free public transportation and college entrance exams, additional teachers, better facilities and reform of Pinochet-era laws that, in their view, favor private schools over public ones.

The students rejected the Bachelet administration’s offer of more than $100 million in annual funding, calling it inadequate.

Students also demanded majority representation on a new blue-ribbon panel set up by Bachelet to examine education.

“We have a historic and beautiful opportunity to embark on a great transformation as a country,” Bachelet said in a televised address Wednesday after naming 65 members of the panel, including 12 students. “We can advance toward a more egalitarian Chile, with opportunities for all.”

A student mobilization leader, German Westhoff, told reporters that the panel was “an advance,” but said students had so far decided to continue the strike. Others were less upbeat.

“Our views should be better represented,” said Felipe Fuentes, 24, one of the university students who have occupied a school administration building downtown and set up workshops, banner-painting brigades, kitchen teams and song groups inside the venerable colonial building. “We are prepared to continue.”

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Andres D’Alessandro of The Times’ Buenos Aires Bureau and special correspondent Claudia Lagos Lira in Santiago contributed to this report.