Oaxaca Expat Blog -- Oaxaca Teachers Strike
Oaxaca Teacher's Strike And Corruption
By Alvin Starkman
Expatriates are encouraged to submit columns about living in their various areas of Mexico or living in Mexico in general.
Alan Starkman is a long-time Oaxaca resident and submits some interesting and though-provoking material.
This installment is my first true foray into the political arena. You may already know that we are in our 6th week of a teachers’
strike, with our zócalo and a few blocks in each direction of it looking more like a tent city than the charming downtown core, with at any time 15,000 teachers sitting, eating and sleeping under tarps strewn across entire streets, impeding if not preventing traffic flow, certainly pedestrian and in some blocks vehicular. Apart from the so-called rioting of June 14th, there have not been any safety issues, and tourists have been able to see virtually all of the important downtown attractions with little if any inconvenience, and certainly tour the surrounding villages. In fact my tourguiding over the past few weeks has kept me at times busier than I want to be. Our downtown area doesn’t show as it should and generally does.
Nevertheless, the magic of Oaxaca can still shine through with a bit of understanding and a bit more patience than is generally required. None of our B & B guests over the duration of the strike have really been phased by it. Teachers who have been with us have been intrigued and commented about
the different approach to striking. A professional photographer for an
American daily newspaper was in his element, shooting perhaps upwards of 1,000 photos, on one occasion from the back of my pickup during a peaceful march of upwards of 100,000 people. The seeming complacency and ineffectiveness of police and authorities has been remarkable.
Regarding the election results, if it took the USA a month to declare a victor a few years ago, one can only wonder how realistic it is for Mexico determine who will be governing us, sometime this week as promised.
Next article will be sent in September unless political circumstances dictate otherwise.
Enjoy the summer.
Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike is Merely Symptomatic
by Alvin Starkman, M.A., LL.B.
The 2006 edition of the annual Oaxaca teachers’ strike, replete with the defacing of commercial and government buildings in the Centro Histórico, rotating blockades of thoroughfares disrupting essential services such as air travel, supermarket operations and access to medical facilities, and otherwise impacting both tourism and the ability of residents to carry on with their lives, is merely symptomatic of a more serious affliction which has befallen the city over the past two years…the ill-advised and unwarranted expenditure of public funds.
The paltry salaries which the teachers receive (I’ve been told between $600 and $1200 monthly [all figures in USD] ) assures us that we will continue to have sub-standard quality in the classroom. With graffiti in the city already at epidemic proportions, what kind of educator would permit our children to learn from seeing their maestros damaging and otherwise desecrating the formerly beautiful facade of the government building extending one full block of the zócalo? Our progeny must inevitably be witnessing their role models cutting off the lifeblood of the state---tourism---for months if not years to come, and their parents struggling to cope. The teachers are breeding in their students bitterness, despair and resignation to one’s lot in life, rather than hope towards attainable dreams and goals.
With virtually no concern about developing an education system which gives the next generation a vision with a view to breaking a third world mould, the government continues with unbridled spending where we don’t need it. Hiring truly qualified teachers both costs, and takes time in terms of seeing the fruits of the investment. And no one benefits other than society. Our present state system permits government to spend millions while at the same time lining the pockets of high ranking government officials and their friends and family. Kickbacks, an inflated and closed tender process, and unnecessary yet splashy public works projects is the order of the day, without any regard for necessity, fiscal restraint or consequence. Government and its officials seize a brief window of opportunity to rape the populace of as much as possible. The four main projects completed or started over the past year and a half are witness: the zócalo, Llano Park, Plaza de La Danza and now the Fuente de Siete Regiones. The results are quick and look impressive. But in each and every case the works have been both unnecessary and unwanted, and have taken away from the spirit, soul and ambiance of the city. Rumors abound about the amounts spent, $60 million being the popular figure for the zócalo facelift alone. The government talks transparencia, or public accountability, but it’s nowhere to be found.
If our current crop of maestros achieves anything significant, it will be their downfall, because if their salaries ever take a leap into the lower stratosphere as they should, all of a sudden brighter and more qualified applicants will appear, and that’s where our hope lies. But it won’t happen with the current lack of groundswell support. Teachers are supported by the poor and otherwise disenfranchised. They are the only ones who currently care enough to effect change. The middle class is afraid to do anything for fear of losing what it’s worked hard to attain. Wealthy residents, while occasionally supporting one side of the other, do not act because they figure that regardless of the outcome, their lot in life and that of their children will not be affected. But once the middle class begins to feel the erosion of their life’s energy, and the elite who have created wealth from tourist dollars come to fear that the security of their grandchildren is not guaranteed if the tourist gravy train slows, a uniting of socio-economic classes could occur, spelling, you guessed it. If the former Subcomandante Marcos had secured the support of the “haves” in Chiapas a decade ago, what would the outcome have been? Cuba? What’s its literacy rate?