What can we learn from dis 23yr old "sexy,bold,courageous & new revolutionary folk heroine" of latin

As the Friday afternoon sun dipped towards the horizon, some students at the University of Chile played ping pong or football and couples lounged and kissed in the last warmth of the day. But others had more serious matters on their minds: the wildly popular student uprising that has transformed the nation's political agenda. And for many of the protesters involved and those who sympathise with its aims, the face of the uprising is Camila Vallejo.

Vallejo, a 23-year-old geography student, was singing and marching with a handwritten sign when a squad of military vehicles closed in and attacked her with jets of tear gas. A pair of trucks mounted with water cannons unleashed a barrage of water fierce enough to break bones and scrape a person across the pavement. Vallejo was soaked, a cloud of tear gas was then blasted on to her body. With her skin wet, the chemical reaction was massive and incapacitating. Vallejo was paralysed. Her body went into an allergic reaction and welts from the gas erupted over it.

"At first, we resisted, but it was intolerable," she told the Observer. "You could not breathe, it was complicated, we had to run away from the police then another water cannon hit us in the face with a different chemical, this was much stronger … my whole body was burning, it was brutal."

As squads of police attacked students, pedestrians and even an ambulance, Vallejo huddled up in an office, receiving medical care and monitoring the situation through mobile phone reports from a team of scouts at the edges of what quickly became a riot.

Vallejo, an eloquent and attractive young woman who exudes self-confidence and style, took the violence in her stride and focused on what she sees as the positive achievements thus far. "For years, Chilean youth have been consumed by a neo-liberal model that highlights personal achievement and consumerism; it is all about mine, mine, mine. There is not a lot of empathy for the other," said Vallejo in her office, decorated with a large photograph of Karl Marx."This movement has achieved just the opposite. The youth has taken control… and revived and dignified politics. This comes hand in hand with the questioning of worn-out political models – all they have done is govern for big business and powerful economic groups."

In just a matter of months, Vallejo has been catapulted from anonymous student body president to Latin American folk hero with more than 300,000 Twitter followers. Type her name into Google and there are more than 160,000 results just from the past 24 hours. Brazilian students now parade her as a VIP guest at their marches, the Chilean president invites her to negotiate a settlement and when she calls for a show of strength hundreds of thousands of students throughout Chile take to the streets. As an adept and wildly popular social media phenomenon, Vallejo has risen to become the most recognisable face of the student protesters.

A civilised society has only two goals. To provide 1) health and 2) education for the population. There is enough money to provide for those basic rights. Everything else is a political preference.
We and all the other IMF/World Bank controlled Western countries have been swindled of these rights for years.
I wish Camila Vallejo every wish and support for her brave fight. Far braver than any of us will ever know.Particularly when you remember that Chile is not so far removed from a torturing and killing military state. [Much admired by the Thatch, as I remember it..

She has something to teach us cynical and tired lot.

Don't give up on the idea of sharing; it's the only proper way out of our current financial system.