Chile and the social outburst while in CEMS
2019 was a hard year for Chile, when on October 14th the social outburst began. First, a little introduction of what and why it happened, so then we can relate it to the CEMS program.
These social demands, initiated with a rise for the public transport price, which broke the camel’s back of a lot of previous other problems that were happening and the middle class of Chile felt the government never cared for them. This continued with people destroying and burning subways, buildings, looting supermarkets, and overall a reign of terror in the country which almost end up looking like an anarchy at times.
So, you may wonder what does this has to do with CEMS right?
Well, CEMS as you may know for being an international Master in International Management brought a group of over 20 exchange students August of 2019 to December of 2019, in which they were on a new, foreign country which almost was having a revolution. We´ll divide the main issues we had and how we overcame them as follows:
1) Classes
First issue we had was how we were going to assist to classes, most of them were living in the outskirts of Santiago since it was cheaper, but also meant they had to use the subway which was now nonexistent. At the beginning there was a lot of struggle, from really expensive Uber rides to fear of how to get home, so most of the Chilean CEMSies who owned a car, offered to ride their exchange classmates to their homes. Eventually assistance requirements were taken as the situation aggravated.
2) Travelling
CEMS is very well known for people wanting to travel and getting to know as many cultures as possible, and this might sound unusual but actually the outburst helped most of the exchange students! Since classes no longer had mandatory assistance, they were able to schedule their time and traveled around South America, getting to know Bolivia, Perú, Argentina and we even had a seminar in Brazil!
3) Uncertainty
Overall, if you asked most of the exchange students (and local ones) we all LOVED that term, even though the outburst brought some uncertainty to what was going to happen and how the events were going to resolve, we were able to overcome this issues by being together and help each other which is what CEMS is all about, we formed last longing friendships with them and even met with them and travel with them in Europe! (Until the virus spread and we were forced to go back home, which is a story for another day).
Overall, even though it had its bad days, the social outburst was a blessing in disguise for this students which were able to experience a full immersion of South America, with a revolution and everything! Jokes aside, we all had one of the best months of our lives, and without a doubt would do it again!