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Teachers Without Borders

Mexican Teachers Push Back Against Gangs' Extortion Attempt - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • ACAPULCO, Mexico — The message is delivered by a phone call to the office of one school, a sheaf of photocopied papers dropped off at another, a banner hung outside a third.
  • The demand is the same: teachers have until Oct. 1 to start handing over half of their pay. If they do not, they risk their lives. Extortion is a booming industry in Mexico, with reported cases having almost tripled since 2004. To some analysts, it is an unintended consequence of the government’s strategy in the drug war: as the large cartels splinter, armies of street-level thugs schooled in threats and violence have brought their skills to new enterprises. But the threat to teachers here in this tarnished tourist resort has taken the practice to a new level. Since the anonymous threats began last month, when students returned to classes after summer break, hundreds of schools have shut down.
  • “We are all scared,” said a high school drawing teacher who would give her name only as Noemi. “We are targets because we have a salary that is a bit more stable than the rest.”
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  • State officials have tried to play down the school closings, which are concentrated in public schools in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. But after an estimated 7,000 teachers protested on Wednesday, the Guerrero State governor, Ángel Aguirre, met with teachers on Thursday, promising a host of new security measures, including increased police patrols and the installation of panic buttons, telephones and video cameras in every school.
  • “Extorting teachers is risky; it generates a great deal of social disgust,” said Raúl Benitez, a security specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “It’s just a stupidity.”
  • On the first day of school at La Patria es Primero Elementary School (which translates roughly as “Country First”) in the Zapata neighborhood, three men sauntered in pretending to be parents and then drew guns on the teachers, making off with money, school documents and a laptop belonging to a fifth-grade teacher who would give only his first name, Ricardo. The school’s payroll officer received a message demanding that she hand over information about teachers’ salaries and has left the city, Ricardo said. “It could just be low-level kids taking advantage,” he said, “but they are spreading a psychosis among the population.”
Teachers Without Borders

Poverty News Blog: An attempt to save the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez - 1 views

  • The Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez is one of the deadliest in the world. Controlled by two waring drug gangs and a corrupt police, the town witnesses over 3,000 murders a year.
  • Investments designed to counter the poverty and disenchantment that supply cartels with foot soldiers are injected throughout the city: parks and new high schools in some of the poorest neighborhoods, new hospitals and clinics and more police patrols in commercial districts to stop the extortion that has devastated Juarez's local economy.
  • For every high school built under Todos Somos Juarez, the city is short another.
Teachers Without Borders

AFP: Fears of violence shake Mexico schools - 0 views

  • ACAPULCO, Mexico — Mexican schools appear increasingly vulnerable to the country's drug violence, with five human heads dumped outside one school and threats of a grenade attack on another in the past week alone.From northern border areas to Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, to the port of Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico, the trend has seen parents keep their children at home as both students and teachers see themselves as targets.
  • Beyond threats linked to drug gangs, violence threatening children and teachers has also occurred in recent weeks inside schools, including in northeastern Sinaloa and northern Nuevo Leon states.
  • "The community has organized itself and decided not to send children to school until we receive promises from the authorities," said Lourdes Sarabia, director of the National Union of Education Workers of Culiacan.
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  • Perhaps the biggest drama though has played out in violence-plagued Acapulco, where thousands of teachers have demonstrated and almost 200 schools in the area have been paralyzed by a month of strike action to persuade authorities to improve security amid extortion threats.
  • The fears appear excessive but are "part of the deterioration of daily life in some communities, as violence affects civilians in public places," according to Javier Oliva, an expert in security issues at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
  • Two weeks ago the government said classes would resume, after they promised to install panic buttons in schools and police patrols nearby, but the protest continued.Acapulco street seller Elizabeth Garcia, a 26-year-old mother of two, said she felt calmer keeping her kids at home."I don't know if it's better that they don't go to school, but at least I know where they are," Garcia said.
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