Enrique Pena Nieto's government pretends to eliminate the few rural "normales" (teachers' colleges) remaining in the country. To execute his plan he has his best education henchman and purported ally of the "Poli" students: Miguel Angel Osorio Chong.
The history of Osorio Chong against the rural "normales" starts in 2005 in "El Mexe" (State of Hidalgo) when the current "Secretario de Gobernacion" was (state) governor.
The Luis Villareal "Escuela Normal Rural", with an 81 year history, was liquidated by Osorio Chong. To realize his plan he had the invaluable collaboration of teacher Elba Esther Gordillo. The argument of them both was non-appealable. "Rural teachers are no longer needed". But reality is overwhelming: 45 percent of basic education schools are rural and they need a "normalista" teacher that understands the surroundings. Therefore, why should the "normales" rural schools disappear? Would it be because they are hotbeds of social struggles?
Thusly would end, a process of harassment and violence against the "normalistas". When Osorio Chong was secretary of government, the "normal" initiated protest mobilizations. On February 19, 2000 , the police entered the educational campus violating its autonomy. The police under the command of Mr. Chong, expelled, tortured and detained students and heads of families that were trying to protect their school. The government's ire was unleashed, including against the "normalistas" that were in hunger strike in front of the government palace. The last generation of the "Normal Rural de El Mexe" was of 76 "normalistas" in 2008.
The plan to dismantle (Mexico's system of rural teachers' training colleges known as) "normales rurales" has worked out. Of the 30 that were remaining, there are now only 17, the majority with enormous difficulties for their survival. The objective of the (Mexican) state is to eliminate them all, to progressively close the rest.
Within this context, the current situation of the "Normal Rural Raul Isidro Burgos" of Ayotzinapa, shouldn't be surprising. (Translator's note: this is the teachers' school from which the 43 teacher-students disappeared on September 2014, and as of this writing they are unaccounted for). Upon entering the campus, any visitor can verify the poverty of its installations. The "normalistas" finish their studies, based on tremendous sacrifice. The majority are children of farmers, students between 17 and 18 years old and with a critical social conscience, that many public and private university students wish they had.
To stroll through the "normal rural" of Ayotzinapa, is to confront the history of exclusion and extreme poverty which envelops the state of Guerrero, birthplace of great social struggles and guerrilla movements. Under these conditions of misery, anyone can understand the existence of subversive groups.
The unofficial version now broadcast by the "Secretaria de Gobernacion" (of Mexico) under the helm of Mr. Osorio Chong, is frankly outrageous. Their intention is to connect the "normalistas" with the "Los Rojos" drug cartel, enemies of the "Guerreros Unidos".
The money (known to be spread among prominent journalists) has reached scandalous proportions, and it's impossible to hide. How many of the so-called "journalists" that now repeat the "Gobernacion's" version have visited the "normal rural" of Ayotzinapa? One must walk through its humble classrooms, its patios, its hallways, in order to discover the poverty under which they live.
If we go beyond the media parrots which repeat the official versions to discredit the "normalistas" students movement, the most interesting thing about this slanderous media strategy is, that Mr. Osorio Chong's main objective is to eliminate Ayotzinapa's "normal rural", a hotbed of leaders and social strugglers.
For this (Mr. Osorio Chong) counts with the invaluable collaboration of Mexico's Attorney General, Jesus Murillo Karam, whose ultimate strategy in turn is to discard the 43 "normalistas", into that bottomless black hole of impunity, where the victims of forced disappearances (usually) end up in.
It doesn't matter that the 28 corpses of the first common graves are recent, and they've been dead between eight and ten days, it doesn't matter that the versions and evidence that some involved in the forensic unearthing of the corpses, indicate that they could be the 43 missing "normalistas", nothing matters, (Mexico's) Attorney General's intent is to treat Mexicans like people without intelligence, giving assurances before DNA tests that none of those recent remains belong to the Ayotzinapa students.
But then who are they? One cannot consider that public opinion is stupid. The government should be ashamed of itself, betting on forgetfulness. Its plans are that those 43 "normalistas" become another statistic, in the endless list of some 300 thousand missing which exists in Mexico.
The government's other bet, is to obliterate from the map Ayotzinapa's "normal rural" (teachers' college). And the latest numbers demonstrate this. Of the 145 which graduated las year, only 11 of them obtained a teaching position. When one of the youngsters asked what the rest was going to do, the official at the "Secretaria de Educacion" smiled and blurted out a simple answer: "they will become farmers, landscapers, masons...."
Facing this strategy of harassment and dismantling (of the schools), a question immediately comes to the fore: What was the crime committed by the 43 "normalistas" to be subjected to forced disappearance? To educate themselves. To try and become teachers. To obtain social consciousness in order to become freethinkers.
The current criminalization policy against those students is grave. It reveals an enormous clumsiness on the part of the government, but also a throwback to times so dark when guerrilla movements surged to defend themselves from the state's opression. From the massacres at Tlatelolco to Tlatlaya and Ayotzinapa; is this what Mr. Osorio Chong aiming at?
To delay returning the bodies to their parents is a grave error, whether they are "normalistas" or not. To delay the DNA results of those family members of the 43 "normalistas", is a demonstration of an immense lack of scruples on the part ot the Mexican political class.
Where are the voices of the intellectuals protesting about this? Where are the teachers, academics, writers, artists, raising their voices for the 43 "normalistas" missing in Ayotzinapa?
Mexico needs the "normales rurales". It was (President) Lazaro Cardenas who guaranteed the right to a free and secular education through the "normales rurales". That army of educators has fought the temptation of the state to maintain a part of the population without education, in order to submit it to the arbitrariness of its decisions.
The existence of the "Federacion de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de Mexico (FECSM), or Mexico's Federation of Socialist Farmer Students, which gathers students of the few "normales rurales" that exist in the country, represent the spirit of the struggle for the survival of these important and fundamental study centers, which in many cases mean, the only alternative to break with the heritage of exclusion and poverty.
In times of the "PRI" (Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, now decades in power), the throwback is incredibly fast. Do you know who the "Osorio Chong" of 35 years ago was? Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, was the one who closed 15 "normales rurales", provoking the student riots which culminated in the "massacre of Tlatelolco".
Betting on obliterating the "normales rurales", Mr. Osorio Chong, could agitate the waters of student riots. We have already seen, that the state is capable of disappearing 43 "normalistas". Will it also be capable of committing more massacres against the young students, and will it without remedy repeat history again?
Maybe, the solution might be that all of us, from our comfort zone, from our spaces of struggle, will stimulate, and organize the army of educators that the government pretends to make disappear.
Our obligation is to combat the barbarity and the extermination camp in which we live, thanks to the (Mexican) political class rife with corruption and impunity which is governing us.
NOTE: The text above was a translation by Ariel Fornari, from the original article by Mexican journalist Sanjuana Martinez. http://www.sinembargo.mx/opinion/20-10-2014/28293 -
The plan to dismantle (Mexico's system of rural teachers' training colleges known as) "normales rurales" has worked out. Of the 30 that were remaining, there are now only 17, the majority with enormous difficulties for their survival. The objective of the (Mexican) state is to eliminate them all, to progressively close the rest.
Within this context, the current situation of the "Normal Rural Raul Isidro Burgos" of Ayotzinapa, shouldn't be surprising. (Translator's note: this is the teachers' school from which the 43 teacher-students disappeared on September 2014, and as of this writing they are unaccounted for). Upon entering the campus, any visitor can verify the poverty of its installations. The "normalistas" finish their studies, based on tremendous sacrifice. The majority are children of farmers, students between 17 and 18 years old and with a critical social conscience, that many public and private university students wish they had.
To stroll through the "normal rural" of Ayotzinapa, is to confront the history of exclusion and extreme poverty which envelops the state of Guerrero, birthplace of great social struggles and guerrilla movements. Under these conditions of misery, anyone can understand the existence of subversive groups.
The unofficial version now broadcast by the "Secretaria de Gobernacion" (of Mexico) under the helm of Mr. Osorio Chong, is frankly outrageous. Their intention is to connect the "normalistas" with the "Los Rojos" drug cartel, enemies of the "Guerreros Unidos".
The money (known to be spread among prominent journalists) has reached scandalous proportions, and it's impossible to hide. How many of the so-called "journalists" that now repeat the "Gobernacion's" version have visited the "normal rural" of Ayotzinapa? One must walk through its humble classrooms, its patios, its hallways, in order to discover the poverty under which they live.
If we go beyond the media parrots which repeat the official versions to discredit the "normalistas" students movement, the most interesting thing about this slanderous media strategy is, that Mr. Osorio Chong's main objective is to eliminate Ayotzinapa's "normal rural", a hotbed of leaders and social strugglers.
For this (Mr. Osorio Chong) counts with the invaluable collaboration of Mexico's Attorney General, Jesus Murillo Karam, whose ultimate strategy in turn is to discard the 43 "normalistas", into that bottomless black hole of impunity, where the victims of forced disappearances (usually) end up in.
It doesn't matter that the 28 corpses of the first common graves are recent, and they've been dead between eight and ten days, it doesn't matter that the versions and evidence that some involved in the forensic unearthing of the corpses, indicate that they could be the 43 missing "normalistas", nothing matters, (Mexico's) Attorney General's intent is to treat Mexicans like people without intelligence, giving assurances before DNA tests that none of those recent remains belong to the Ayotzinapa students.
But then who are they? One cannot consider that public opinion is stupid. The government should be ashamed of itself, betting on forgetfulness. Its plans are that those 43 "normalistas" become another statistic, in the endless list of some 300 thousand missing which exists in Mexico.
The government's other bet, is to obliterate from the map Ayotzinapa's "normal rural" (teachers' college). And the latest numbers demonstrate this. Of the 145 which graduated las year, only 11 of them obtained a teaching position. When one of the youngsters asked what the rest was going to do, the official at the "Secretaria de Educacion" smiled and blurted out a simple answer: "they will become farmers, landscapers, masons...."
Facing this strategy of harassment and dismantling (of the schools), a question immediately comes to the fore: What was the crime committed by the 43 "normalistas" to be subjected to forced disappearance? To educate themselves. To try and become teachers. To obtain social consciousness in order to become freethinkers.
The current criminalization policy against those students is grave. It reveals an enormous clumsiness on the part of the government, but also a throwback to times so dark when guerrilla movements surged to defend themselves from the state's opression. From the massacres at Tlatelolco to Tlatlaya and Ayotzinapa; is this what Mr. Osorio Chong aiming at?
To delay returning the bodies to their parents is a grave error, whether they are "normalistas" or not. To delay the DNA results of those family members of the 43 "normalistas", is a demonstration of an immense lack of scruples on the part ot the Mexican political class.
Where are the voices of the intellectuals protesting about this? Where are the teachers, academics, writers, artists, raising their voices for the 43 "normalistas" missing in Ayotzinapa?
Mexico needs the "normales rurales". It was (President) Lazaro Cardenas who guaranteed the right to a free and secular education through the "normales rurales". That army of educators has fought the temptation of the state to maintain a part of the population without education, in order to submit it to the arbitrariness of its decisions.
The existence of the "Federacion de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de Mexico (FECSM), or Mexico's Federation of Socialist Farmer Students, which gathers students of the few "normales rurales" that exist in the country, represent the spirit of the struggle for the survival of these important and fundamental study centers, which in many cases mean, the only alternative to break with the heritage of exclusion and poverty.
In times of the "PRI" (Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, now decades in power), the throwback is incredibly fast. Do you know who the "Osorio Chong" of 35 years ago was? Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, was the one who closed 15 "normales rurales", provoking the student riots which culminated in the "massacre of Tlatelolco".
Betting on obliterating the "normales rurales", Mr. Osorio Chong, could agitate the waters of student riots. We have already seen, that the state is capable of disappearing 43 "normalistas". Will it also be capable of committing more massacres against the young students, and will it without remedy repeat history again?
Maybe, the solution might be that all of us, from our comfort zone, from our spaces of struggle, will stimulate, and organize the army of educators that the government pretends to make disappear.
Our obligation is to combat the barbarity and the extermination camp in which we live, thanks to the (Mexican) political class rife with corruption and impunity which is governing us.
NOTE: The text above was a translation by Ariel Fornari, from the original article by Mexican journalist Sanjuana Martinez. http://www.sinembargo.mx/opinion/20-10-2014/28293 -
El plan de Osorio Chong contra Ayotzinapa
Por: Sanjuana Martínez - octubre 20 de 2014 - 0:00
El plan de Osorio Chong contra Ayotzinapa
Por: Sanjuana Martínez - octubre 20 de 2014 - 0:00
El plan de Osorio Chong contra Ayotzinapa
Por: Sanjuana Martínez - octubre 20 de 2014 - 0:00
