Brazil & Southern Cone - May 2026

The Chilean government has announced a new security initiative known as the ‘Escuelas Protegidas’ (Protected Schools) plan, which aims to reduce the risk of violent attacks in schools. This plan came amid rising security concerns driven by high-profile incidents in recent months such as a fatal stabbing and threats of school shootings.  

An attack in late March that received significant media attention took place in the city of Calama, in the northern region of Antofagasta. On 27 March a student brought several bladed weapons into school and started to attack other students, resulting in four injuries and the death of one staff member who sought to intervene and restrain him, before the police arrived on the scene and detained the attacker. Authorities were quick to react to the violence. President José Antonio Kast condemned the attack and said he would send government ministers, such as the public security minister, Trinidad Steinert, to Antofagasta to oversee the response and investigation into the crime.

On 7 April Kast, Steinert, and the ministers for education, María Paz Arzola, and justice and human rights, Fernando Rabat, held an event to announce plans to address the problem of school violence. The government has submitted two bills to congress, one which proposes updating the penal code to add aggravating circumstances for crimes committed in schools, while the other bill lays out the Escuelas Protegidas plan, which includes measures such as the authorisation for school staff to search students’ bags; protocols for suspending classes in response to the threat of an attack; and restrictions on clothing such as caps and hoods which could be used to cover a student’s face. At the time of writing, the government’s bills have not yet been fully approved by congress. The Escuelas Protegidas bill passed the lower chamber of congress on 21 April and has been submitted to the senate.

The programme was approved by a comfortable margin in the lower house, with 103 deputies voting in favour and only 43 opposing it. According to a congress press release, supporters of the plan highlighted the urgent need to assuage the fears of families and denied that the plan was violation of privacy or a step towards authoritarianism, as some critics have maintained, given that the proposed rules allow bag searches but do not allow full body searches of students.

Critics of the plan argued that a problem as complex as school violence must be solved by addressing its root causes rather than by merely reacting to the symptoms. Another major concern over the plan was a proposal disqualifying a person found guilty of committing an act of violence in a school from receiving free university tuition, which is a benefit offered to students from poorer households. Deputies who opposed the plan warned that denying free tuition might aggravate the problem by limiting the opportunities for social rehabilitation through education.

Experts on education cited in the national and international media in April have raised similar criticisms about the reactive nature of proposed measures such as bag searches or metal detectors at school entrances. They maintain that there could be a wide range of deeper causes driving up the risk of school violence which bag searches fail to address, such as crises of mental health or the impact of social media.

Provisions to offer psychological support to students, measures to reduce the risk of bullying or social exclusion, or regulations on the online sphere are notably absent from the government’s proposed plan, which is more akin to a hardline policing approach of increased patrols and surveillance rather than crime prevention strategies.

The importance of social media and public discourse is relevant to the Calama case given that the perpetrator had reportedly posted content online regarding his premeditated attack which indicated that he took inspiration from school attacks in other countries. Although Chile does not have the same level of school violence as countries such as the US, there could be a risk of imitations of high-profile school shootings or acts of violence perpetrated abroad.

However, experts cited by the news website of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) have downplayed the possibility that school violence in Latin America might be an imported phenomenon from the US, highlighting several social and cultural issues prevalent in Latin American countries that could drive young people towards violence, such as social inequality or attitudes and problems that begin at home and are carried over into a school environment.

Rise in threats

According to daily newspaper La Tercera, over 60 schools across 14 of Chile’s 16 regions suspended classes in response to potential threats of school attacks or shootings in the two weeks following the 27 March attack in Calama. However, it is unclear how many of these were false alarms and how many were genuine threats by students who felt emboldened by the high-profile incident in Calama.