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Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo This interview for the Swiss fortnightly SolidaritéS was conducted on October 13 by Jean Batou and Juan Tortosa . Sebastian Farfán Salinas, 23 years old, is president of the Student Federation at the University of Valparaiso and a member of the national executive of the student movement. He belongs to the radical wing of the Confederation of Chilean students (Confech). Coming from a poor family, he is the first to go to university, where he is studying history.
SolidaritéS : What is the situation of the anticapitalist Left in Chile today?
Sebastian Farfán Salinas : The Chilean anticapitalist Left of the 1960s and 1970s has largely disappeared, not only because of the repression of the dictatorship, but also, after the struggles of the 1980s, in particular those of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodriguez [ 1 ], because of very brutal repression by the successive governments of the Concertation [ 2 ]. To that, it should be added that the social and ideological consequences of the triumphant neoliberalism of the 1990s was to the advantage of the Dialogue, which painted a glowing picture of the future. From the 1990s, the revolutionary Left was thus maintained in a kind of marginality, organizing small circles in the universities. However, since the middle of the last decade, the situation has gradually changed, with a certain accumulation of forces and an internal reorganization which enabled it to approach the “penguin revolution” of 2006 [ 3 ] in a much better position, relaunching the discussion on an anticapitalist perspective.