Indigenous Mexican Migrants Reject Education Privatization Efforts Back Home

from IQ Multimedia:

by Bertha Rodríguez Santos

   The members of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB) of California made a stand in Los Angeles on Saturday, in solidarity with a movement of teachers throughout Mexico. The FIOB, many of them Mexican, teachers are mobilizing in opposition to so-called education reform in Mexico, which is perceived by FIOB as a measure imposed to privatize education. This could, the group fears, bring an end to independent thinking and the educational unions which are essential to anti-privatization efforts in Mexico and abroad. The lack of these groups would, according to FIOB, result in an end benefit for the proponents of privatization.

   In the view of FIOB, the term "education reform" is actually an organized effort by the Mexican government to lure private companies into the for-profit sector. This begins from the from the application of student assessments on down to the production of teaching materials. The end result is a system which relegates the roles of teachers and facilitators, reducing the education of students to mere videos content acquired social media networks, for example.

   Teacher testing is often a maneuver that pits the benefits in labor matters made by the teachers organized by the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), and achieved on the basis of great struggles over three decades, against a national guild unionism represented by the SNTE, created by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and whose leader has been Elba Esther Gordillo several decades. Gordillo was previously jailed on charges of organized crime.

   As indigenous migrants, Mexican citizens and Mexican migrants, are still involved in raising funds for the operation of schools in their home communities. Parents in Mexico pay electricity, water and maintenance bills for the schools. In most indigenous Mexican communities, the people build and manages school facilities and acquire the resources that are supposed to be allocated to education. Many times they are lost along the way or become part of the fortunes of the rulers.

   Teachers are the ones who have historically been closer to local communities in Mexico and actively participate in the defense of the rights of indigenous peoples.

   The struggle of the teachers in Oaxaca, Guerrero, Chiapas, Michoacan and the rest of the country, affects migrants. With great concern they see the Mexican federal government, led by Enrique Peña Nieto, seeking, in their eyes, to simply impose all costs without taking into account the views of the teachers and their educational model. Peña Nieto's administration does not lend itself to dialogue with teachers and their representative,s but on the contrary, has used violence and other heavy-handed techniques. The Secretary of Public Education, Aurelio Nuño Mayer, has earned the nickname "Sergeant Nuño".

   The FIOB believes that if the Mexican government seeks to disqualify teachers with evaluation testing systems, which teachers consider full of irregularities, then the government should also undergo assessments, which the groups believe government leaders would not pass. Many indigenous migrants in California condemn the government of Enrique Peña Nieto due to the government's inability to the "Missing 43" of Ayotzinapa Normal School. The Mexican government itself has pointed this tragedy out as a record human rights violation.

   In the eyes of the FIOB, the current Mexican administration is tainted by thousands of people massacred, tortured, executed, missing, and thousands of acts of violence against journalists, women, migrants, indigenous and teachers. In the end, it is a reprobate administration.

   Members of FIOB demand that the government respect the rights of teachers to freedom of expression, demonstration and transit. The current educational "reform" must stop and an education policy that does not meet the interests of companies must be implemented. Instead, science education must be enabled for Mexican citizens, to provide skills in line with the times. Also, a vision for humanity must be kept which is not only in favor of the interests of the greedy, corrupt and capitalist-only ideals of the minority.