Tens of thousands of Chilean workers, students and teachers participated in a 48-hour strike on Aug. 24 and 25 initiated by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country's main labor federation, to call "for a different Chile." The demands included changes to the Labor Code, a reduction in taxes on fuel, and reform of the Constitution, created in 1980 during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The strike also backed the student protest movement that has paralyzed schools for three months to push for a reversal of the Pinochet-era privatization of education.

After a six-hour meeting on Aug. 13 at the University of Concepción in Chile's central Biobío region, leaders of the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) announced their rejection of a government proposal for talks to resolve more than two months of militant protests for reform of the educational system. Instead, CONFECH leaders said they would push ahead with a series of actions they had announced the day before: a nationwide one-day school strike on Aug. 18; participation in a 48-hour general strike on Aug. 24 and 25 called by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the main Chilean labor federation; and continued pressure on the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera at least until Sept. 11, the anniversary of the bloody coup that started the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Workers at Chile's Escondida copper mine voted on Aug. 5 to end a 15-day-old strike despite failing to win their demand for a bonus of 5 million pesos ($10,562). By a 65.5% majority they agreed to settle for a 2.6 million peso bonus ($5,492)—less than management's earlier offer of 2.8 million pesos ($5,916)—but the company,the Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton corporation, is to pay the workers for the days they were on strike. Union officials admitted the members were worn out after two weeks without pay.

Aug. 4 brought the most violent day yet in more than two months of protests by Chilean students determined to end a system of heavily privatized and decentralized education instituted during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. According to official figures, there were 874 arrests nationwide by the end of the day, and 90 militarized police agents had been injured.

Provincial police forcibly removed some 200 families on Aug. 5 from land they had occupied a month earlier in Villa 9 de Julio in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán. Acting on a court order from Judge Nora Wrexler, the agents destroyed homes that the 500 squatters had improvised out of canvas, cardboard and sheet metal when they moved in from different neighborhoods in the north of the nearby provincial capital, San Miguel de Tucumán.

Four people were killed the morning of July 28 when provincial police forcibly evicted some 700 families from land they had been occupying in the city of Libertador General San Martín in the northwestern Argentine province of Jujuy. The police and the squatters confronted each other with clubs and rocks during the eviction, and the police agents reportedly used tear gas and both rubber and lead bullets. Some witnesses said a few protesters were armed, but Enrique Mosquera—the director of the Jujuy branch of the leftist Classist and Combative Current (CCC) organization, which backed the land occupation—denied this. "Nobody was armed," he said. "We defended ourselves with rocks and stones, throwing them and then leaving."

In a report published on July 19, the Argentine branch of the environmental group Greenpeace charged that operations by the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation in the Andes at the border with Chile had already significantly damaged three small glaciers. Citing a 2005 technical study, Greenpeace said the surface of the Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza glaciers "diminished by between about 56% and 70% because of the activities carried out by Barrick" even before mining operations had begun. The regions on either side of the border are arid, and farmers in the valleys largely depend on Andean glaciers as a source of water.

Tens of thousands of Chilean students and supporters marched through downtown Santiago on the central Alameda avenue on July 14 in their fourth massive demonstration demanding a reversal of the system of privatized education instituted under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. As in previous days of action, there were also large marches in other major cities.