Venezuela: teacher conflict. Organization and mobilization of the base
The reality of the guild Venezuelan teacher, It is not different from that of workers in general. With a salary that is between 7 Y 9 dollars a month, the education sector through a deep crisis. This reality has made an important stretch of the Magisterium be outraged and mobilized, even so incipient, for their salary and contractual claims and defense of education.
We are teachers who subsidize public education
Nicolas Maduro's government has developed an anti-worker policies and faculty union does not escape that reality. Venezuelan public education is currently being subsidized by the teachers and teachers and schools they remain open despite being working for a "salary" with harsh penalties that the passages are covered to travel to their workplaces. This means that the national budget for public education is almost absolutely available to the high bureaucracy of the Ministry of Education, while in schools and colleges for teaching classes are held in utter precariousness, without learning resources and deep problems in school infrastructure.
indirect dismissal, massive and unjustified
These conditions are compounded by the persecution and harassment of labor which are subject teachers who rebel. The alleged "mass resignation" because of the "lack of vocation and professional ethics" as falsely argue from the heights of Power, they must be considered as they really are: Indirect firing, massive and unjustified. Today teachers are pushed to the lumpenproletarización inside and outside the country and are being replaced by staff that "form" within the government programs "graduating them" in record time and acting as an army of scabs. Notably, all this happens under de facto elimination of social benefits through the redenomination and removing five zeros from the national currency in August 2018. our so-called "future wage" for years of service accumulated stole.
federations, Unions and parties jointly responsible for the situation of teachers
The performance of federations and unions is complete and utter betrayal. During decades, the union bureaucracy entrenched in managerial positions has negotiated the conditions of educators behind. They left the union praxis and left no space for participation and exchange between them and the base.
Mobilizations and protests have happened in the last year and a half, They have emanated from teachers basis accompanied by some members of regional sectional. Federations presidents and general secretaries of unions have fiercely opposed the self-summoned protest based teaching. Thus the magisterium is struck with both hands: that of the government and the federations and unions have wide sample sold to the highest bidder. But the protests have come with considerable force, given the conditions currently facing the country.
Delegitimization of the government of Maduro and the absence of political leadership class that offers the magisterial base and workers in general an independent alternative and autómoma, plus the complete and utter disorganization and bureaucratization of the unions with their directives fossil, cause a dangerous cocktail. Thus we see how the traditional right parties aim to oxygenate our union mobilization through his arms and interventionist interventionist policy. They are the same parties that hide behind the Lima Group. Governments that were left bare as repressors and violators of the most basic rights, as Piñera in Chile, Duke in Colombia, Moreno in Ecuador.
In this fauna of bureaucrats and traitors, You can not miss the directive of the national union enfilada with government, in a left-turned lackluster camper who acts as executive arm of the policy against workers who orchestrates Maduro systematically and permanently. They also know as representatives and Venezuelan teachers.
Also we fought against the imposition of the single thought in schools
It is obvious that an authoritarian and totalitarian government responds with utmost brutality against protests. Nevertheless, is necessary to denounce before the national and international public opinion the way it seeks to impose a single thought in Venezuelan schools. At and teachers were methodically violated the autonomy in the classroom, imposing "school guidance" that disrupt the normal and regular development of the educational process and the promotion of critical thinking.
Imposing that we become bearers of all the false ideology that is imposed from the ruling party and the Ministry of Education is a reality we live day to day. There are few managers, supervisors and even "teaching staff confidence" who serve in the schools of thought and policemen engaged in pursuing, harass and blackmail teachers raise their voices, jurisdiction to conduct activities "order" that have established, to point them out of schools.
As serious as that, It is the de facto ban of the student organization. Media in Education, Students Centers were eliminated and imposed the Bolivarian Student Organizations (BOTH) in which the heads of the PSUV Youth, who are the only ones allowed to enter them in schools. So in "elections" rigged choose two students per classroom that capture the youth of the Party giving them government privileges over their colleagues study. They are the same boys and girls attending government events in which the government conducts propaganda acceptance among young people, how sad the "highlights" are educated in fascistic methods.
The membership administered UBCH, some students of the OBE, Community councils, members of CLAP, managers, supervisors and teachers pro-government, led by the PSUV tuck your batteries against any vestige of protest or promote critical thinking in Venezuelan schools.
It is therefore deplorable events that happen as the fact that armed groups have fired into the air in our mobilization professor at the 16 September juvenile or young Chamba, called "express teaching" have been brought to confront the same mobilization or, They are threatening to strike trade union grassroots leaders who are in this fight. Propaganda is that "organized people" teaching rejects the protest as "a maneuver Donald Trump to destabilize the Venezuelan government". Nothing is further from reality. More than chart is the fact of having beaten and robbed teachers amid the peaceful protest made this 15 from January, Teacher Day in Venezuela, and pulling urine and excrement while chanting slogans in favor of the government of Maduro.
Organization union in diversity
The movement arises in the context of the conflict teaching is based on concrete fact of reality that educate teachers and Venezuelan hunger as a crosscutting, with the permanent feeling of deprivation of the most basic things. The space is very broad, different, heterogeneous. Within it are expressed different political positions. But there are two main elements of coincidence: determining the salary demand that devengamos allow us to live with our food needs, goods, services, Health, intellectuals, recreation, footwear and dress is covered with our revenues in the framework of respect for our labor and contractual rights and the exercise of the teaching profession; and the other element is the defense of a quality education that promotes critical thinking.
Trying to impose the matrix of opinion that each and everyone who is attached to mobilize parties agglutinated around the figure of Guaidó meddlesome or the likes of Julio Borges, Antonio Ledezma or Maria Corina Machado, besides reductionist is to ignore the reality that the stomach of teachers and students in this country. It is so reductionist as those who seek to impose the view that any and all who do not attend the pro-government mobilizations.
The challenge is great, organize and mobilize the magisterial basis under an authoritarian government, repressor, corrupt, mafia, neoliberal, Antilabor and elements fascistoid; and a traditional right injerencista, interventionist and neoliberal openly corrupt and that rests not only in the US interventionism, but today governments that they have repressed, imprisoned, murdered and tortured his people mobilized against the strong adjustments imposed by global capitalism.
The call is to organize and mobilize at the grassroots
No to the anti-worker and hunger policy of the government of Nicolás Maduro!
Out with Aristóbulo Isturiz from the Ministry of Education!
Out with the directors of federations who act behind the backs of the teachers!
No to the parties that intend to use our needs as a platform for interventionist and imperialist policies!!
In defense of quality education and the promotion of critical thinking!
For the ransom of our wages, contractual benefits and social benefits!
Zuleika Matamoros
Member of Marea Socialista and the International Socialist League
Alternative Teacher and Communicator of the Aporrea.org portal
