Chile's 'Penguin Revolution'
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2006, hundreds of thousands of school children in Chile took over their schools and marched in the streets, in a protest about inequality in education.
It was known as the "Penguin Revolution" because of their black and white school uniforms.
The students were demanding good quality education for all children, regardless of whether they were rich or poor.
Grace Livingstone speaks to Karina Delfino, who was a 16-year-old school girl and one of the leaders of the movement.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.
For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: Riot police block an avenue in Santiago during clashes with students, 5 June 2006. Credit: David Lillo/AFP via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.8 | Hello, welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service, with me, Grace Livingstone. |
| 0:19.2 | I'm taking you back to 2006, when more than 600,000 school children in Chile took over |
| 0:26.7 | their schools and marched in the streets as part of a nationwide protest. |
| 0:36.0 | There were lots of placards saying, no more profits, quality education for all. |
| 0:41.2 | There was a feeling of change in the air, a desire for social transformation. |
| 0:46.1 | I would say it was a kind of, I don't want to say chaotic, but kind of hectic, you know, |
| 0:51.8 | in terms of mobilization and the shutdown of all schools. |
| 0:56.2 | Karina Delphino was a 16-year-old schoolgirl and one of the leaders of the protest, |
| 1:01.7 | known as the Penguin Revolution, because of the color of their school uniforms. |
| 1:09.2 | The boys wore black trousers and a white shirt and usually a dark tie and a black jacket. |
| 1:15.5 | And the girls, we were an avid blue jumper and a white shirt. |
| 1:19.9 | So we were black and white penguins, or let's say blue and white penguins. |
| 1:24.6 | Or black and blue and blue-marino, say. |
| 1:26.1 | No, no, securion. |
| 1:27.4 | Perguesa national. There's a rat for coimba and white penguins. The nationwide shutdown was the culmination of |
| 1:34.1 | months of protests against inequalities in the education system. |
| 1:39.0 | The protesters said that children from poorer backgrounds |
| 1:41.8 | were taught in badly equipped, overcrowded classrooms |
| 1:45.3 | and were far less likely to go to university than children from wealthy families. |
| 1:52.7 | It was the parents' ability to pay that ultimately determined the children's opportunities. |
| 1:57.9 | That's what was put up for discussion by the Penguin Revolution. Why is it |
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