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Argentina: Students chain themselves demanding a better school

Categories: Latin America, Argentina, Breaking News, Citizen Media, Education, Governance, Health, Protest, Youth

In the province of Rio Negro near the city of General Roca [1] in Argentina, the students of the CEM 106 are asking the government to follow through with their promises of solving the problems their school has. Videos of the open sewage drains in front of the school, of the 3 classrooms for more than 240 students and the septic tank which overflows in the backyard provide visible proof of their needs. In spite of the governments promises back in June to solve this issues, nothing has changed, and this has caused the students to chain themselves outside the regional office for Rural Education.

The description and the streaming captions on the video [es] [2] uploaded by emilioris [3] from CorteDirecto [4] website, tell the same story: students and parents of the 106 High School, located in the rural area of General Roca have chained themselves instants ago to the regional office of the Provincial Educational Council Delegation. We should remember that since June 11th the educational community resolved the buildings occupation under the agreement that the CPE would follow through their promises made in the last years and begin the expansion of their buildings, since currently they only have 3 rooms for 240 students.

Students also walked around the campus shooting this video [es] [5]: You can see the mud on the road, the open sewage, students having classes in the hallways, the tiny kitchen where milk is prepared for the students, bare rooms, and in the back, the area where they take physical education, which every once in a while gets flooded by the full septic tanks.

The following video [es] [6] is of the students decision to occupy the school as a way to show their displeasure with the way the regional administration is ignoring their plight. In one part of the film, the interviewer asks a student if the occupation of the school won't interrupt lessons to which the student answers that they've already lost many classes due to heaters breaking down, to lights not working, to flooding and lack of enough classrooms.