Photo: Emergentes. Used with permission. This article was written by written by Jeff Abott originally published on Waging NonViolence under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. It is hard to deny the authoritarian tendencies that Donald Trump has shown in his first 100 days as president of the United States. These tendencies have drawn comparisons to the classic image of a Latin American dictator, and more specifically the caudillo—or strongman leader—by commentators from across Latin America. From his taste in decor and his adversarial relationship with the media, to what critics say is his fundamental assault on human rights, the similarities are hard to contest. Americans’ neighbors to the south have a long history of resisting authoritarian and fascist regimes, which often were supported by the U.S. government. They were able to survive under difficult situations and, thanks to social movements, move the region in a more progressive direction. After decades of struggle, here are four lessons that movements in Latin America can teach those in the United States organizing against their own authoritarian leader. Today, as Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos move to dismantle the public education system further and impose a neoliberal model of education, the Chilean mobilization against the U.S.-imposed dictatorship offers a guide for the defense of public services in the United States. In 1973, the CIA sponsored a coup d’état led by General Augusto Pinochet against the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Following the coup, led by economists who studied under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, Pinochet began to implement the first neoliberal economic reforms to the economy, privatizing public institutions like education, healthcare, and pensions. María Loreto Muñoz Villa was just a year-old baby when Pinochet seized power. By 13, she became the president of her class, and eventually participated in the student movements of the 1990s. Today, she continues to work to challenge neoliberalism in Chile. “Neoliberalism creates an illusion of well-being that is really not there. In Chile, the debt and the long work hours require that people mobilize,” Muñoz Villa said. However, it's difficult for people to “mobilize because of debt, because if they stopped working, they couldn’t pay their debts. Since 2000, the movement has worked with people to see this as the product of neoliberal politics.” Pinochet's neoliberal reforms led opponents to organize around certain slogans, such as free education. In 2011, tens of thousands of students took to the streets to demand a free public education. The movement challenged the privatized educational system that was established by the Pinochet dictatorship that denied an affordable quality educational system to the majority of Chileans. Chile’s student movement has produced concrete changes in Chile’s educational system, as well. In 2013, socialist Michelle Bachelet won the presidential election and delivered free higher education for half of the country’s poorest citizens, funding the program with a 25-percent corporate tax. Faced with increasing poverty, pensioners and other community activists also began organizing during Bachelet's administration to demand an end to the Pinochet-era privatized pension system, arguing that the current system provides very little to pensioners, while the companies that manage the pensions earn massive profits. Massive protests drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, prompting the Bachelet administration to announce recently that it will begin overhauling the pension system. These campaigns and movements all arose from a shared understanding that neoliberalism is at the root of social inequalities in Chile. According to Muñoz Villa, the rise of Trump means that movements must organize against both his more overt repressive policies and the social impacts of neoliberalism. Efforts to defend public services like education are already well established in the United States. Teachers of the Chicago Teachers Union have led the charge to protect the public education system, and their movement has grown stronger thanks to connections with teachers in Mexico and South America. These relationships need to be stronger still, and they need to spread more across the U.S., as the struggle to defend public services heats up in the coming months. The historic dispossession of indigenous lands and territory in the United States has continued into the 21st century. In just the first few weeks of his administration, Trump systematically dismantled legislation to protect the environment from extractive industries.