Chilean artist steals $500 million worth of student debt papers and destroys them

A Chilean artist known as Papas Frites (French Fries) stole and destroyed $500 million worth of student debt contracts.

“It’s over,” he said. "It’s finished. You don’t have to pay another peso [of your student loan debt]. We have to lose our fear, our fear of being thought of as criminals because we’re poor. I am just like you, living a sh—y life, and I live it day by day.

“This is my act of love for you.”

Fritas recovered the papers and set them on fire, leading police to a bin of ash, formerly known as contracts.

 

Chile's student debt began to go out of control in 1973 when General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship took power of Chile.  Since then, the system was privatized and made for-profit and Chile's educating now ranks among the highest in the world.

“Everyone in Chile can recite the following facts: adjusted for income, Chile has the most expensive higher education in the world,” according to an essay from the Boston Review. “Per student, the country spends less than any other, and the student spends more. These facts were once a point of pride," it goes on to say.

The population has boiled over and it showing signs of throwing over the insane debt.

As one Chilean student protester reminds us, “education is not a consumer product, education is a right."