Teacher-Student Exchanges on World-Wide Protests and Discontent
I teach a diverse group of 12 and 13 year old 8th graders in Social Studies in Durham, North Carolina. As part of our weekly current events in recent months, we discussed the large protests moving across Latin America. Since I lived and worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina between 2003-2010, I often share stories with them and we reflect on the plight of a large majority of citizens south of the US border and elsewhere. As a class, we considered the political and social crisis raging in Venezuela, the violence in Bolivia after disputed presidential elections, and the large protests in Chile over mounting public grievances against the government. Public discontent then boiled over in Columbia. They also looked at the presidential election in Argentina that returned a left-wing party to power amidst another possible economic crisis in that country. I observed in Argentina and throughout the region that common citizens were fed up with their persistent economic hardship, poverty,