The frightened SNTE leadership is in the bag. On Tuesday, the president's office distributed a photo of the visit to Los Pinos ['The Pines', the Mexican 'White House'] by [Juan Díaz de la Torre], the timid successor of [the jailed] Elba Esther Gordillo. The alliance is being used to create an alleged legitimacy for the use of force against opponents and the tactical necessity to reinforce the perception that the restored Caesarism will stop at nothing.
Yesterday, Enrique Peña Nieto said he will not allow pressure against or setbacks in terms of the educational reform, such as those in Oaxaca and Guerrero where, especially, he is facing an overflowing activism that could become a broader and more durable social movement, or, at the first explicit opportunity, could trigger a "justified" federal crackdown against an opposition stronghold. (The first blow was struck on December 1, against #YoSoy132 and citizens of the capital who rejected Peña Nieto and the PRI, but which was not taken on by the authorities in an open and explicit way, but hidden in confusing circumstances which to date are still not clarified.)
The pompous air of the current occupant of Los Pinos was preceded by a speech by the head of the SEP [Secretariat of Public Education], Emilio Chuayffet, who had previously carried out the similar role of supporting player in a tragedy hours before the challenger, Elba Esther Gordillo, was put in prison. With solemn gestures of a rhetorical executioner, the former Secretary of Government Relations proclaimed ... that:
"he who argues that the struggle for education violates the rights of others lacks legal reason and, even more so, moral authority."The judicial games of words are unequivocally addressed to the organizations of Guerrero and Oaxaca teachers who have put the governors in check: Angel Aguirre [of Guerrero], always really a member of PRI and Peña Nieto's friend who was recruited ... to impersonate being a PRD ..., and Gabino Gone, sorry, Cué, [the Spanish words rhyme] [governor of Oaxaca]...
In addition to the annual routine of protest and negotiation taking place in their states and in the nation's capital, this time the teachers of Oaxaca and Guerrero have raised the level of confrontation because the risk they face with the Peña Nieto reforms is greater. In Chilpancingo [capital of Guerrero], angry that the local Congress voted against their proposals and in line with the national reforms, they threw stones [and broke windows] at the seat of the legislature and generated facts that were taken with delight by the traditional media to exacerbate the social mood against the "rioting" teachers.
During the administration just ended, under the command of Felipe Calderón, the country experienced a constant media manipulation that served to demonize opponents, creating conditions to attack the Mexican Electricians Union, for example. (They said it was a crusade against corrupt unions, while leaders and unions of an unacceptable sort remained untouched because they were aligned with the government of the day and didn't constitute a danger to the juiciest businesses, such as fiber optics.) Now the machinery that constructs social perceptions to suit government clients is against the teachers in resistance, without balanced information or a plurality of analysis.
And yet, strange hints from the business sector cause one to see that the alleged total nobility of the educational reform entails ingredients already warned of by some of the opponents but now unabashedly making their debut. The Confederation of Employers in Mexico, Coparmex, is presenting itself with an air of saving the country, offering to provide substitute educational services in case, in the coming days, the protesting teachers declare a work stoppage.
[Presenting themselves as] clean of any wrongdoing in the national catastrophe, without fiscal or political benefits, or that, by their injustice, they might have contributed to the poverty and social tension, as exemplary citizens who have never benefited from political corruption and partisan management of the national economy, the bosses now launch themselves with a belly flop into a kind of guerrilla education. They stand ready with their economic resources to enter when the teachers in protest are displaced, having decided to enter into the big business of the privatization of education that is at the bottom of the reformers' intentions. With the aim of weakening the secular approaches of the traditional teacher, which will now go, the entry of private capital into the classroom will also facilitate greater presence of the clergy in educational content and operation.
Mexican bosses are determined not only to make money through providing extramural classes such as stated in their announcement yesterday, but also to join the political work, seeking to get parents and civil society organizations to participate in being strike breakers. The entry of private capital into the education business could immediately provide candidates to fill the seats that are declared to be legally abandoned by the SEP, which is already urging state governors to begin proceedings against those teachers who do not attend schools because they are demonstrating against the Peña Nieto reform. Also, supported by the federal government and the Oaxaca and Guerrero governors, there is the growing demand by hoteliers, business people and civil society to start criminal proceedings against the activist teachers [for loss of income resulting from the teachers' blockades]. Spanish original
[Presenting themselves as] clean of any wrongdoing in the national catastrophe, without fiscal or political benefits, or that, by their injustice, they might have contributed to the poverty and social tension, as exemplary citizens who have never benefited from political corruption and partisan management of the national economy, the bosses now launch themselves with a belly flop into a kind of guerrilla education. They stand ready with their economic resources to enter when the teachers in protest are displaced, having decided to enter into the big business of the privatization of education that is at the bottom of the reformers' intentions. With the aim of weakening the secular approaches of the traditional teacher, which will now go, the entry of private capital into the classroom will also facilitate greater presence of the clergy in educational content and operation.
Mexican bosses are determined not only to make money through providing extramural classes such as stated in their announcement yesterday, but also to join the political work, seeking to get parents and civil society organizations to participate in being strike breakers. The entry of private capital into the education business could immediately provide candidates to fill the seats that are declared to be legally abandoned by the SEP, which is already urging state governors to begin proceedings against those teachers who do not attend schools because they are demonstrating against the Peña Nieto reform. Also, supported by the federal government and the Oaxaca and Guerrero governors, there is the growing demand by hoteliers, business people and civil society to start criminal proceedings against the activist teachers [for loss of income resulting from the teachers' blockades]. Spanish original