Mexico's Teachers Union, Bossism and Political Control: The Never-Ending Story

La Jornada: Jesús Martín del Campo

A short time after its founding in December of 1943, the SNTE [National Union of Education Workers]--on a par with most major unions in the country--began to be led by leaders who introduced all the vices of the official unions, known as charrismo.

MV Note: Charrismo is a political practice whereby the government appoints union leaders who will support the government; charros are union leaders appointed by, and thus in cahoots with, the government.

From 1952 to the present date, three cliques--each led by a jefe [boss]--have controlled the SNTE. The first, led by Jesús Robles Martínez, controlled successive union leaders from 1952 to 1972. The second, led by Carlos Jonguitud Barrios, controlled union life from 1972 to 1989. And the third, headed by Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, ruled from 1989 until February of this year.

As a pillar of authoritarian governments for the political control of workers, charro leaders have been licensed to enrich themselves, to sell teaching and union positions, and also to hunt down and kill dissidents. Such is the case of the SNTE, where jefes of the cliques have been removed in a sort of cyclic, twenty-year ritual over one or another disagreement with whomever is Mexico's current President. They have been removed and replaced by others who guarantee the desired control. Playing the role of the sacrificial charro.

The characteristic elements of pro-government SNTE departments are: 

• Personalized control over decision-making by the jefe [male] or the jefa [female];
• Shady deals between [SNTE] leaders and the authorities to negotiate the demand for delivery of votes for PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution] candidates to the Presidency (with Elba Esther for PAN [National Action Party] via fraud);
• Demands for an increasingly large share of political offices; and, in a marked way, the 
• Use of violent methods against dissidents.

Precisely due to the lack of democracy in the teachers union and the gangster methods employed by the charros to control [the teachers], democratic movements have emerged to recover their union as a tool for serving workers.

During the tenure [cacicazgo; boss rule] of Robles Martínez, the Revolutionary Movement of the Teaching Ranks, headed by Othón Salazar, developed between 1956 and 1960 and rocked the charrismo structure. A short time later, between 1968 and 1970, another integrated movement emerged made up of committees of struggle that included a good number of union delegations in the Federal District [Mexico City].

In December of 1979, during the tenure-bossism of Carlos Jonguitud, the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers [CNTE] emerged, an organization that is still alive and active today. In that period many democratic teachers were murdered at the hands of Jonguitudistas [Jonguitud's thugs]. Who can forget these events?

Under the control of Elba Esther the traits of charrismo were taken to the extreme. Her ambition to enrich herself, her numerous properties and crude explanation of an 'inheritance' as the basis of her fortune are both outrageous and demonstrate the corruption that prevails among politicians in power, some of whom have been her partners. Her obsessive concentration of personal control over everything done in the union created distrust. To name her [SNTE] 'president for life' was the last straw.

Her cleverness in aiding electoral fraud in 2006 [election of Felipe Calderón] and 2012 [election of Enrique Peña Nieto], far exceeded that of her predecessors. Her defeatism in asking that the normal schools might disappear was an atrocity, given that the vast majority of union teachers are [normal school] graduates. Against this cacicazgo [bossism], the CNTE developed a great capacity for struggle, and it managed to increase its influence in most sections of the country. The CNTE is the alternative for democratizing the SNTE.

When Robles Martínez fell, [President Luis, 1970-1976] Echeverría promoted Jonguitud to be the new SNTE head. The charrismo continued with a leader who took personal control of union life. Discontent with bossism was demonstrated in the 1989 teachers' strike led by the CNTE.

Jonguitud fell in April fell, and [President Carlos] Salinas placed Elba Esther Gordillo at the helm of the SNTE. That was twenty-four years ago. Elba Esther's excesses and the consent of the political leadership with her made her look immovable. Surprisingly, they threw her into jail and her cycle ended, but the current governing structure that she left behind remains intact, which is a source of the disquiet in the ranks of teachers who have always fought for democratization of their union.

Now we know that the government delivered the blow to give itself a righteous image, but actually it paved the way for implementation of the so-called education reform that has the clear intention of striking down job stability, ending collective management of working conditions and closing the normal schools [teachers colleges]. The democratic teaching ranks have already deployed a wave of struggle against the reform and its vanguard contingents in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Michoacán, Federal District [Mexico City] and Chiapas will gain the participation of many in defense of their jobs. Spanish original

MV Note: Following the Mexican Revolution and the writing of the Constitution of 1917, rural normal schools, teacher training colleges, were set up across Mexico to train youth from rural communities to become teachers who returned to their communities. Holding a position was a "right", guaranteed upon graduation, and the position could be passed on to another family member when one retired or died.