EDUCATION-ARGENTINA: Two Years Camping Out and Fasting

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 7 1999 (IPS) - Teachers from all over Argentina have been taking turns over the past two years camping out in front of Congress and fasting for periods of 15 days to protest low salaries and the small slice of the budget allocated to education.

The unusual measure was struck on by teachers as a form of protest that would not alienate parents – one of the problems with strikes, which lead to the loss of school days.

Two years on, the big white tent outside of parliament, which has become a fixture of the downtown Buenos Aires landscape, continues to enjoy widespread support.

According to opinion polls, 65 percent of the population backed the measure at the start, a proportion that climbed to 85 percent a year ago.

Nearly 800 teachers from as far away as the northwestern region of Puna or the southern province of Tierra del Fuego have had to adjust to sleeping and fasting for two week stretches in the tent pitched in the square in front of Congress.

At each assembly of Argentina’s national teachers union, delegates from throughout the country have stood firm in their commitment not to strike camp until at least part of their demands have been addressed.

A musical festival was held at the tent Tuesday, while teachers and university professors around Argentina held a strike – the first this year and the ninth since the protest began in 1997 – to mark the second anniversary of the unique protest measure.

Although Argentina’s federal laws stipulate that six percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is to go into education, only half of that proportion is currently earmarked for the sector.

Argentina has historically stood out for its low illiteracy rates and high level of cultural and scientific development, which manifested itself in the social prestige and economic well-being of its teachers and professors.

But over the past two decades, salaries have been steadily shrinking, along with the educational sector’s share of the budget. Today teachers earn a monthly average of 250 pesos (on par with the dollar), half of the minimum salary, and far below a living wage.

According to the national teachers union, the two-year protest has only been successful in getting Congress to approve a hollow law that has done nothing for the sector so far.

The law created a new tax on purchases of cars, boats and airplanes, and made wage increases in the sector dependent on the taxes collected.

But Education Minister Susana Decibe admitted that the state was having serious difficulties getting around evasion of the tax, and the general tax office said it had only been able to collect around 10 million of the 760 million dollars it had expected to pull in through the new tax.

“Please pay up!” Decibe urged Tuesday.

But she added that it was not feasible for the state to have been held accountable, as originally proposed, for the 760 million dollar sum – which would have meant a raise of around 100 dollars a month per teacher.

The secretary-general of the teachers’ union, Marta Maffei, responded that it was not up to educators to enforce the new tax. She also pointed out that it was President Carlos Menem who vetoed the clause that would have made the state accountable for the amount to be collected.

“If the state is not capable of preventing tax evasion, it should guarantee us that sum,” said Mario Montiel, one of the teachers fasting in the tent this week. “We cannot be held responsible for what is not collected.”

The fact is that five months after passage of the law, teachers continue to demand a raise that has not reached their pocketbooks due to the state’s inefficacy in levying taxes, and the lack of legislative oversight to ensure that the money does, indeed, reach the teachers.

The “teachers’ tent” meanwhile has become a battlefront trench for teachers, intellectuals, artistes, sports figures and politicians who believe that this Southern Cone country’s educational system is in serious trouble.

Popular radio and television talk shows on the problems plaguing public education have been broadcast from the tent.

And the tent has been visited by reknowned writers Ernesto Sabato of Argentina and Mario Benedetti from neighbouring Uruguay, near-legendary Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa and Spain’s Ana Belen and Juan Manuel Serrat, along with a spate of political, religious and human rights leaders from a number of countries.