Chilean artist claims to steal, burn $500M worth of student debt papers

A Chilean artist has said he stole and burned around $500 million in student debt papers in a stunt aimed at publicizing the movement for education reform amid soaring costs for college attendees across the country.

“It’s over, it’s finished,” Francisco Tapia, aka “Papas Fritas” said in a video posted by the activist. “You don’t have to pay another peso. We have to lose our fear, our fear of being thought of as criminals because we’re poor.”

Tapia’s video, which was released May 12, came a week after tens of thousands of students took to the capital's streets to demand education reform.

Whether Tapia actually acquired and burned student debt paperwork could not be verified. But he claimed that the ashes represented hundreds of millions in debt from Universidad del Mar students. The university, which has 15 branches across Chile, came under fire last year for financial irregularities and students were told to transfer to another institution — while the school continued to collect loan debt.

“The action of visual artist Francisco ‘Papas Fritas’ has managed to expose the abandonment of thousands of students who were cheated by the owners of Universidad del Mar, who were left to their fates by authorities — although it was the state itself which gave legal status, authorized the operation, credited and finally closed this supposed 'private corporation non-profit' which was conceived by its owners as a screen for making millions,” The Clinic, a Chilean alternative news website, said. 

“Thus, while a handful of scammers … made a fortune, thousands of mostly poor families are indebted for substantial sums.”

Tapia's purported action, which was put on display at an exhibition in the form of ashes allegedly from the debt papers, came on the heels of a march of tens of thousands in which students demanded that Chilean Education Minister Nicolas Eyzaguirre sanction for-profit educational institutions — which are illegal under Chilean law.

Despite their illegal status, about half the country’s students attend schools that make profits. Chilean college costs are considered the second-most expensive in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States.

The protests hark back to the massive demonstrations seen in Chile in 2011-2013 demanding educational reform. In the wake of the social unrest, President Michelle Bachelet said she would make educational reform a top priority.

But some critics accused Bachelet of not doing enough to crack down on profit-making universities, and last week, Universidad del Mar students took over the campus — which is when Papas Fritas was able to burn the documents, the Santiago Times reported.

The school could individually sue each of the students who still owe debt, but that would be expensive and time consuming, and lawyers representing the students are seeking to void the loan contracts as fraudulent.