SANTIAGO, Chile — Last week’s arrest of 11 Stanford students for sitting in at President John Hennessy’s office even after being asked to leave by law enforcement — about a year after three students were taken into custody for protesting President Bush’s campus visit — may have rekindled memories of long dormant campus activism. Once a mainstay of White Plaza during the Civil Rights movements and the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s, large-scale student protests have all but faded from the campus consciousness.

Such is not the case in Santiago, where memories of past repression linger amid current difficulties with modernization. Earlier in the quarter, a University-sponsored tour of downtown was canceled for the 43 students studying here as hundreds of Chilean students took to the streets in an often-violent display against a new public transport system and slow-to-come educational reforms.

Such demonstrations have become the norm in Chile, as reminders of the previous restrictions on assembly and expression during the 1970s and 80s under the autocratic General Augusto Pinochet have, until recently, drowned out calls for a nonviolent approach.

Fondly referred to as penguinos for their trademark navy blue and white uniforms, Chile’s high school students have emerged as a remarkably potent political force in recent years. When these penguins march, Chileans get out of the way.

Demonstrations began in March during the annual Day of the Young Combatant — which marks the deaths of two students who perished at the hands of police during an anti-Pinochet demonstration in 1985. This year, police used water cannons and tear gas to break up the protesters, who injured 38 police officers by hurling stones toward the authorities. At least 819 people were arrested.

Deputy Interior Minister Felipe Harboe called it the “day of the young criminal,” and officials said the majority of those detained were school-aged students under 16.

The young people leading their peers in the streets came of age during a time of prosperous democracy and cannot remember the years before the 1989 referendum that effectively removed Pinochet from power. But that has not stopped the penguinos from asserting themselves politically.

Meanwhile, their college-age counterparts — only a few years removed from penguino-hood themselves — have voiced their concern about the violent displays of activism witnessed in recent months.

“I think it’s stupid,” said Israel, a Chilean engineering and English student, of the violence during a colloquium between Stanford students and local university students last month. “That’s not a way to get things done.”

“They’re just destructive,” echoed Tiana, a linguistics major at the Catholic University in Santiago. “It gets to the point of protesting just for the sake of violence.”

Aside from qualms about their methods, the protests themselves have struck a chord in the heart of Chile. Such demonstrations have now appeared annually, a sign of acceptance toward public expression as much as discontent with the public transportation reforms that have left much of downtown Santiago in gridlock.

“I want our citizens to be critical, self-conscious and to express their ideas and demands,” President Michelle Bachelet told local press during similar protests in 2006, when hundreds of thousands of students rallied in the streets of Santiago. “However, the criticism must be expressed in a constructive manner, laying clear proposals upon a table and most importantly, with an unveiled face, without resorting to violence.”

Bachelet, who was elected in 2006 with a 53 percent majority, has seen her political base unravel as transit reform has become a dirty phrase in Santiago. The new network, which aims to modernize the ubiquitous orange buses notorious for their noxious fumes, instead has paralyzed mass transit as hundreds of routes have been canceled and the subway system overloaded.

During Pinochet’s 16-year reign, political parties and expression were formally banned. Abundant civil rights abuses — including the disappearance, assassination and torture of some 3,000 political dissenters and prisoners — effectively wiped political culture off the map.

But when Pinochet’s neo-liberal economic reforms faltered with the debt crises of the early 1980s, cracks began to form in the grip of military rule and calls for more openness gained steam. When the general’s term came up for reelection in 1989, he lost a popular referendum by a 14 percent margin, paving the way for democratic elections to choose his successor the following year.

Now, nearly 35 years removed from the 1973 military coup that brought Pinochet to power, Chile’s robust democratic legacy has reemerged with gusto. While social reform within a free market has been a constant give-and-take, the occasional bump in the road has failed to deter the consolidation of a democratic political culture, however imperfect.

“We may not agree with them,” said Fabia Fuenzalida, coordinator of the Stanford overseas program, while briefing University students on the protests, “but you have to acknowledge their right to do it.”