The National College of Teachers convened the strike. It has the support of six other union groups, including non-teaching workers, retirees, and students of the Catholic University of Valparaíso.

A statement from the teachers assures that violence in its different forms has taken root in society and is also commonplace in schools, where education is becoming a high-risk profession; it also stresses that there are numerous incidents of physical, verbal, psychological, and work-related aggression exercised against teachers and other functionaries, which doubled in recent years.

Recently, two teachers took their lives due to the harassment suffered by students or their parents and the indifference of the authorities, who did not provide them with the necessary support and protection.

The union organizations called on the entire society, workers in the sector, family members, and authorities to make a common cause to eradicate the scourge of violence in the system.

The strike also has the objective of demanding a response to the problem of the so-called historical debt, which has affected more than 60 thousand teachers throughout the country for 43 years, and which no government, after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), has solved.

The compensation of the historical debt is considered an act of social and labor justice, still pending to be achieved. The current government, led by President Gabriel Boric, promised to find a solution, but after more than half of its term, there is still, nothing concrete.

jrr/llp/car/eam