Killed for Being a Teacher – Mexico’s Corporate Education Reform
In Mexico, you can be killed for being a teacher.
Correction: you can be killed for being a teacher who opens her mouth and speaks her mind.
You can be killed, kidnapped, imprisoned – disappeared.
That’s what happened to approximately six people a week ago at a protest conducted by a teachers union in the southern state of Oaxaca.
The six (some of whom were teachers) were gunned down by police and as many as 100 more people were injured near the town of Nochixtlan, about 50 miles northwest of Oaxaca City.
Conflict between teachers and governments has become commonplace across the globe as austerity and neoliberalism have become the policies du jour. Tax cuts for the rich lead to shrinking public services. And investment in the next generation through public education becomes a thing of the past.
Even here in the United States, educators are taking to the streets to protest a system that refuses to help students – especially poor and minority students – while blaming all deficiencies on one of the only groups that actually show up to help: teachers.
Though in America educators have been ignored, unjustly fired and even arrested for such protests, the Mexican government has resorted to all out murder.
How did it come to this? Follow the trail backwards to its source.
The activists in Oaxaca were protesting because several union officials had been Killed for Being a Teacher – Mexico’s Corporate Education Reform | gadflyonthewallblog:
