Frontera NorteSur   2006

The Winds of Oaxaca

A conflict over the management of a Ciudad Juarez technical college is set to enter its second week. Professors and students at the federally-operated Technological Institute of Ciudad Juarez (ITCJ) halted classes and briefly took over the school's administration offices to protest the sudden sacking of Director Angel Rafael Quevedo Camacho and his replacement by Jesus Armando Logoria Gandara last week. Angered by the removal of an administrator widely regarded as competent and progressive, some protestors warned that "another Oaxaca " could result from the conflict.

As the week wore on, protestors were removed from administration offices, allegedly by pro-administration students organized by Longoria, who nevertheless offered an olive's branch to his opponents.

"I will continue respecting the right to demonstrate freedom of expression, but always as it conforms to the law," Longoria said. "I am convinced that we all want the best for the Tech.” In the hot seat, Longoria pledged to relay campus grievances to Mexico City .

At the beginning of the protest, pro-Quevedo staff and students said they did not have anything personally against Longoria, a native of Delicias , Chihuahua , who worked as a professor for many years at the federal technological college in the Torreon , Coahuila, area. Initially numbering in the hundreds, protestors were upset at the top-down removal of former Director Quevedo, whom they praised for putting "lazy" teachers to work and bringing under control the so-called "aviadores (flyers)," or teachers who collect paychecks but do not work.

Although Longoria appeared to have consolidated his appointment by week's end, some teachers and students vowed to press forward with their movement. Another round of class boycotts could happen on Monday, November 13.

Jorge Gonzalez Rodriguez, spokesman for the ITCJ's strike committee, said protestors will maintain a "permanent assembly" and push for campus autonomy in decision-making authority.

"We believe that we are in the right, that (the movement) is for the institution," Gonzalez added. "We're subject to scrutiny, public opinion, criticism, and also the actions the administration and authorities, but this is the risk one runs when deciding to participate in these types of conflicts."

An institution that's in high demand among prospective students, the ITCJ is part of a federal Public Education Ministry system that trains students in accounting, computer, engineering and other professional careers.

While conflict raged at the ITJC campus in Ciudad Juarez last week, labor-management discord also disrupted another segment of the national education system. Originally walking out on October 23, an estimated 20,000 striking teachers from the National Bachelor's Colleges (Cobach) in 13 states escalated their protests for higher pay. In some cases supported by students and their parents, the Cobach teachers conducted vocal protests in Tijuana , Mexicali , Mexico City and elsewhere.

Unlike the Oaxaca teacher's strike, which the outgoing Fox Administration argued was the responsibility of a state government to settle, the Cobach strike involves issues that are squarely in the federal government's corner. Similar to Oaxaca, however, the Cobach struggle has acquired international dimensions. In Mexicali , Baja California , more than 100 Cobach teachers held a demonstration November 8 at an international crossing with Calexico , California . Contending that the Mexican government does not respect labor agreements, Cobach teachers staged protests outside Canadian and US diplomatic quarters in Mexico City last week.

In the northern border state of Tamaulipas, meanwhile, Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores rejected suggestions that political winds blowing north from Oaxaca state were reaching the entity. Gov. Hernandez said the state administration has good relations with teachers, and that Tamaulipas maintains quality public schools. "Tamaulipas is not anything like Oaxaca ," remarked the PRI governor.

Messages in support of the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People (APPO) have been spray painted in Tamaulipas, and a pro-APPO demonstration on November 4 drew about 100 people, including foreign nationals, to an international bridge between Matamoros and Brownsville , Texas . In addition to shouting slogans against the Mexican Federal Preventive Police, which stormed Oaxaca City last month, and Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz, demonstrators protested the Bush Administration's immigration policies and called for the return of the borderlands ceded to the US more than 150 years ago.

Souces: Norte, November 9, 11 and 12, 2006. Articles by Pablo Hernandez Batista and Salvador Castro. Diario de Juarez, November 7 and 11, 2006. Articles by Rocio Gallegos. Proceso/Apro, November 10, 2006. Article by Gabriela Hernandez. Frontera, November 10, 2006. Article by Fausto Ovalle. La Jornada, November 9 and 10, 2006. Articles by Carolina Gomez Mena and Jose Antonio Roman. Lapolaka.com, November 7, 8 and 12, 2006. Enlineadirecta.info, November 4, 2006. Article by Federico Zuniga Garcia.

Coping with the High Cost of Public Education

Under the Mexican Constitution, children are guaranteed a free, lay public education through middle school. In practice, however, more and more parents are digging deeper into their pockets to keep their young ones in the classroom. As school children flock back to schools in Mexican border and other cities, stationery stores, clothing outlets and street vendors are doing a brisk business with customers like Rosa Velia Perez. A mother of three school-age children, the Ciudad Juarez resident said that on a recent shopping day that she had spent $50 dollars even before making the most expensive purchases.

The back-to-school shopping season is a busy time for merchants like Ciudad Juarez stationery store owner Manuel Robles, who was recently forced to have customers form lines in order to serve them, but the start of the school year can translate into bouts of economic anxiety for factory and other low-income workers, especially those with more than one child in school.

A pre-school year survey by the Diario de Juarez newspaper estimated that public school parents in the Chihuahua state border city could spend up to $350 dollars per child during the 2006-2007 academic year for a variety of school-related costs including registration fees, uniforms, clothing, supplies and year-round transportation. The estimate doesn't include monthly tuition costs and other "voluntary" donations sometimes solicited throughout the school year.

Across the border region, parent complaints are widespread about having to fork out their hard-earned pesos to pay for a “free” public education. Some Mexican immigrants in the United States cite high educational costs in their home country as a motive for moving north.

Parent advocates charge that families are frequently pressured to pay registration fees and tuition. "The main problem we have is that (school) directors meddle in the affairs of the boards of directors of the parents' groups to force non-mandatory tuition payments," contended Marco Antonio Elejarza, the president of the Tamaulipas State Association of Parents.

Elejarza's complaint is a familiar one on the other side of border region in Baja California . In the first few weeks after registration got underway for the 2006-2007 school year, the Baja California Office of the Attorney General for Human Rights (PDH) accepted 54 complaints about illegal, mandatory tuition charges in public schools. Tijuana registered the majority of cases, with 36 separate complaints filed by early August.

Parents' organizations, elected officials and state authorities are tackling the problem of education costs in different ways. In Baja California , for instance, the PDH has launched a publicity campaign to inform parents where they can denounce legal violations. The official state human rights agency is also organizing a network of school-based parents' groups to monitor their schools' compliance with the law.

"Counting on this network of school observers, the PDH calls on the citizenry and mothers and fathers to join in and denounce improper charges, obligatory acquisitions of uniforms in certain businesses and mandatory retentions of documents during the start of classes," said Francisco Javier Sanchez Corona, Baja California's state human rights ombudsman.

Legislative action to bring educational costs in public schools under control has been under consideration in both Baja California and Chihuahua . This summer, the educational and scientific commission of the Chihuahua State Legislature discussed a proposal to establish an emergency fund so schools can assist needy families with uniforms, books and other supplies. A commission of the Tijuana city council recently passed a proposal urging the Baja California State Legislature to pass a law that sanctions schools for forcing parents to pay registration and other fees.

"The purpose of this (resolution) is to avoid the excesses, the abuses and the violations of rights that the directors of many schools in this city and state commit in collusion with members of parents' associations, in flagrant violation of Article 3 of the Constitution," said Carlos Mejia Lopez, a city councilman for the PRD party.

At the federal level, the Federal Office of the Attorney General for Consumer Protection (PROFECO) helped organize back-to-school fairs in Tijuana and other cities where shoppers were offered opportunities to purchase necessary school supplies from private businesses for discount prices of up to 50 percent. Children were also offered haircuts and physical exams for half the normal prices. Meanwhile, the PROFECO office in Tamaulipas state announced it was conducting store inspections to make sure businesses are complying with price norms for school-related articles and not gouging customers.

Sources: Diario de Juarez, July 26, August 2 and August 20, 2006 . Articles by Guadalupe Felix and Ramon Chaparro. Frontera, August 2, 8, 11 and 19, 2006. Articles by Ana Cecilia Ramirez, Manuel Villegas, Fausto Ovalle, and Norma Valenzuela. Enlineadirecta.info, July 27 and August 11, 2006 .

Articles by Hugo Reyna and Gaston Monge. Norte, July 27 and August 6, 2006. Articles by Hugo Hernandez Jauregui and Moises Tabares.

Sonora Governor Censors Textbook

Characterizing passages from a new textbook as not suitable for young eyes, Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours has ordered the reediting of the biology text. Carrying the stamp of approval of the federal Health Ministry, 40,000 copies of the book were slated for distribution to 636 public middle schools in Sonora . But Gov. Bours, who is a member of the Institutional Party of the Revolution, said sections of the controversial book that discusses human sexuality were objectionable.

"I don't have anything against anybody, (people) can do whatever they want," said Gov. Bours, commenting on supposed references in the book to homosexuality. "But for the love of God, it seems to me that certain things have to be undertaken with care, especially when it comes to a child of 11 or 12 years of age."

Anticipating public heat from his decision, Gov. Bours added that the book discusses reproduction outside the context of couples and family. "They can accuse me of whatever they like," he said, "but that book, that section, is not going to go out in Sonora ."

Horacio Soria , Sonora Secretary of Education, backed up Gov. Bours' decision. The border state education czar contended that the book contained "inappropriate" references to masturbation and homosexuality. According to Soria, the Sonora state government will spend about $140,000 dollars to have the biology book reedited before the acceptable version is sent to schools.

Sonora Archbishop Jose Ulises Macias Salcedo praised Gov. Bours' stance. "It's good that our rulers saw the opportunity and took the decision, which was risky and costly, to weigh in more on the side of principles and education," Archbishop Macias said. The Roman Catholic Church leader charged that the book presents the issue of sexuality in a difficult, coldly scientific manner without proper treatment of values.

The embattled biology textbook is part of a series of new texts that are generating cultural fights reminiscent of similar conflicts in the United States . In Mexico , opposition to the textbook series is being organized by the Catholic Church and conservative parents' groups. The Baja California state government, which is governed by the National Action Party, has also rejected use of at least one of the textbooks in its public middle schools.

Representing Catholic bishops, the Mexican Episcopal Conference, recently called upon the Public Education Ministry (SEP) to withdraw the disputed textbooks. An August 9 statement from the bishops upheld the family as the proper place for sex education. "School has a secondary function in this regard, and in education in general," the bishops said. In remarks last week, the SEP the textbooks would not be pulled from the schools.

Charged with approving and disseminating the new texts as part of a national middle school reform program, federal officials express puzzlement and frustration over the mounting controversy. Jorge Velasco y Felix, chief of the National Free Textbook Commission, disagreed with contentions that new text books are slipping through without proper reviews of their contents.

Contending that Mexico has real problems with life-threatening pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases in minors, Velasco y Felix said many families drop the ball when its come to educating their children about sex. Some even prefer to introduce male adolescents to the world of sex by dragging the youths into whorehouses, Velasco y Felix said.

While maintaining that he was respectful of all opinions, Health Minister Julio Frenk said the state has an obligation to give priority to scientific evidence. Frenk said, "It is well demonstrated that sex education based in the science of experts, as is done by the SEP, and with well-evaluated texts, is an essential tool for struggling against sexually-transmitted diseases and giving the youth and adolescents of Mexico a better preparation for their development."

Sources: Cambio Sonora , August 14, 2006 . La Jornada, August 9, 10 , 11, 12, 14, 2006. Articles by Angelica Enciso, Emir Olivares Alonso, Cristobal Garcia Bernal, Karina Aviles, and editorial staff.

The Privatization Boom in Post-Secondary Education

A recent controversy that involved a dispute over the academic credentials of a Chihuahua City branch of the CNCI University spotlighted the growing spread of privately-owned institutions of post-secondary education in Mexico . At the beginning of the 1980s, Mexico counted 87 privately-owned post-secondary schools. By May 2003, the number had soared to nearly 1,000 institutions nationwide. According to Mexico 's National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education, 33 percent of Mexican students enrolled in bachelor-level programs attended private schools during the 2003-2004 school year. Chihuahua City alone counts at least one dozen, privately-owned schools of higher education.

Varying considerably, the educational quality of private schools ranges from the deliverance of world-class, cutting-edge curriculum to classroom instruction of a dubious character. Many schools focus on preparing students for one or two professional careers. The federal Ministry of Public Education (SEP) officially recognizes studies in schools that can demonstrate the existence of a rigorous, high-quality educational program. But in Chihuahua City and other parts of Mexico , students have sometimes charged that they were duped into believing their studies had SEP recognition. According to the SEP, only 2,947 out of the 7,845 private, post-secondary educational study programs in the country had the federal agency's accreditation in July 2003.

Critics of the privatization boom trace the phenomenon to the economic crisis of the 1980s, when pressures from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other international institutions encouraged the Mexican government to restrict public spending. Educational decentralization, in which state education agencies assumed more authority from the federal government, is another factor in the proliferation of private schools. Schools that do have SEP recognition might, nonetheless, operate with the approval or knowledge of local officials.

Since the privatization shift, the non-public educational sector has become a new industry. Ironically, some of the private schools have received government subsidies to pay students' tuition. Helping fuel the boom is the inability of existing public institutions to accept all applicants. One estimate calculated that about 1.5 million youths were rejected admission to universities during the first five years of the Fox Administration

For the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, a country is competitive when between 40-50 percent of young people in the post-secondary education age bracket are enrolled in a program of higher learning. In Mexico , only 24 percent of youth in the same category attended a post-secondary school in 2004. What's more, many students in post-secondary schools drop out during the course of their studies. In Baja California , for instance, an estimated 60 percent of higher education students leave school prematurely. Attributed to economic reasons, the drop-out rate is especially pronounced for students in social sciences programs. "This is worrisome," said Oscar Ortega Velez, Baja California 's assistant secretary of higher education.

Sources: El Diario de Chihuahua, May 7, 2006 . Article by Erika Perea. Frontera, March 17, 2006 . Article by Manuel Villegas. La Jornada, March 30 and July 28, 2003 ; December 13, 2004 ; May 5, 2005 . Articles by Jose Galan, Jesus Saavadera Lezama, Karen Aviles, and editorial staff.

Two Worlds Divide School Drop-Outs

A recent study of high school drop-outs in the United States cast additional light on the reasons students abandon school early while, unintentionally, contrasting the economic, educational and public policy gaps that persist on both sides of the US-Mexco border. In a study of 467 high school drop-outs conducted by Peter Hart Research Associates for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nearly half of all young people pointed to boredom as the principal reason for leaving the classroom without first graduating.

New Mexico Education Secretary Veronica Garcia said the study coincided with anecdotal evidence about the motivations for New Mexico high school drop-outs, who include large percentages of both Latino and Native American students. "I think it fits in with what I've been hearing from kids." Garcia said.

Youth interviewed in the Gates Foundation study gave other reasons for dropping out, including having babies, needing to work and falling behind in school work.

Across the state line in Chihuahua , Mexico , meanwhile, education officials in the border state recently said economics is still the driving factor behind the high drop-out rate. Guadalupe Chacon Monarrez, the Chihuahua state education secretary, said the pull of work, favored by the availability of jobs in the maquiladora assembly plant industry, lures many drop-outs who enter the workforce early to contribute to the family income.

Chacon said that many drop-outs are from hard-to-serve rural areas, where economic realities compel many children to leave school early. "The people in the Sierra are not very interested in finishing elementary and middle school," Chacon contended. "They are not interested in learning to read and write as they should, because their priority is to survive."

Another possible reason for high drop-out rates not mentioned by Chacon is insecurity. Some parents in the Sierra Tarahumara are reportedly disallowing their children to attend school out of fear they will be accosted by drug traffickers and exposed to drug abuse, which now is reported at the elementary school level.

Eva Trujillo Rodriguez, a technical advisor to the Chihuahua state education ministry, said other forces account for school drop-outs, which she added are not always accurately tracked. According to Trujillo , a high internal mobility rate, out-migration and deaths all enter into the picture. Statistics gathered by Mexico 's National Women's Institute report that only 26.8 percent of males and 25.2 percent of females finish high school in Chihuahua state. The graduation rates are below the Mexican national averages of 28.8 percent and 26.4 percent, respectively.

New Mexico , which hosts a large number of immigrant students from Chihuahua in its public schools, reported a 5.2 percent high school drop-out rate for the 2003-2004 school year, a number many observers consider far below the real dropout rate-especially for Latino students.

Sources: Albuquerque Journal, March 4, 2006. Article by Gabriela C. Guzman. Reuters, March 2, 2006. Article by Patricia Wilson. El Diario de El Paso /El Diario de Chihuahua, February 23, 2006. Article by Oksana Volchanskaya. Profile of Women and Men in Mexico , 2003 and 2004. Study by the National Women's Institute