By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Jun 17 2003 (IPS)

Teachers have been going on strike in many countries of Latin America – a symptom of one of the worst crises facing the educational systems of a region where teachers earn salaries on which they can barely survive.

Teachers in Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru have been holding walkouts and even hunger strikes demanding salary hikes and the payment of back wages.

With few exceptions, teachers in Latin America earned between 100 and 300 dollars a month in the 1990s, when economic growth held steady at between three and seven percent a year in many countries, and in the wake of the economic crises that have shaken the region since 1998.

Teachers today earn monthly salaries of 120 dollars on average in Argentina and Brazil, 170 dollars in Bolivia, 200 dollars in Peru and Uruguay, 250 dollars in Ecuador, and 300 dollars in Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela.

Educators in Costa Rica and Chile are relatively better-off, earning 500 and 650 dollars a month, respectively.

The widespread discontent among teachers is a result of inadequate spending on education, ”precarious working and hiring conditions,” and the lack of ”stable careers,” Brazilian parliamentary Deputy Carlos Abicalil, with the education office of the governing Workers’ Party, told IPS.

He blamed the situation on ”poor administration, and corruption, a common problem in Latin America that reduces the efficiency of resources and should be attacked” by increasing public investment in education and paying decent salaries.

Most Latin American countries spend the equivalent of 2.5 to four percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education, although Mexico spends 6.6 percent, close to the minimum recommended by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

UNESCO’s recommendation to earmark the equivalent of at least seven percent of GDP for education is only exceeded in the region by Cuba, which assigned 8.1 percent of GDP to the budget for education in 2001.

Although the proportion of GDP spent on education in Mexico is among the highest in Latin America, calls for a higher level of spending and a wage raise are among the central demands put forth by the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), which wants investment in the sector to be increased to 12 percent of GDP in order to overcome years of under-spending.

Around 5,000 public school teachers from Mexico’s provinces, members of the CNTE – which says it represents around 300,000 of the country’s 1.5 million teachers – converged on the capital nearly two months ago to hold a protest demanding a 100 percent increase in wages.

The CNTE refused a nearly eight percent wage hike agreed in early May by the government and the main teachers’ union, the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE).

Although the protest continues, the number of teachers camped out in the capital has dwindled to 500. The rest have returned to their provinces, and to their classrooms.

But the most visible recent teachers’ strike in Latin America took place in Peru, where the government declared a state of emergency after a month-long walkout by educators demanding that their monthly salaries of 200 dollars be raised by nearly 60 dollars. The strike triggered protests and demonstrations of solidarity around the country, which were cracked down on by the armed forces.

Peru’s Economy Minister Javier Silva responded that a wage hike of more than 28 dollars was impossible, because it would compromise the government’s ability to meet the targets agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

Peru allocates three percent of GDP – similar to the proportion that goes to servicing the country’s foreign debt – to an education system that serves nearly eight million students. The salaries of Peru’s 280,000 teachers are among the lowest earned by any of the country’s public employees.

The teachers, who reached an agreement with authorities on Jun. 11 that put an end to the strike, want the education budget to be doubled ”to at least six percent of GDP, which is still less than the minimum recommended by UNESCO,” trade unionist Olmedo Auris told IPS.

Some 200 teachers in Ecuador, meanwhile, declared a hunger strike on Jun. 9, after nearly a month during which the schools were closed by a stoppage, because teachers were demanding a wage hike of 20 dollars a month, compared to the 10 dollars offered by the government.

In Costa Rica, which abolished its army in 1949 to reallocate defence spending to education, teachers remain on strike, after walking off the job on Jun. 2 to demand the payment of back wages.

Paychecks had fallen behind due to changes in the computer system.

The teachers held a march in San Jose on Tuesday.

The conflict, which includes demands for changes in the pensions system and improved labour conditions, triggered the resignation of Education Minister Astrid Fischel.

”The education system has been in decline for 20 years, and especially under the last two governments,” said teachers’ union spokeswoman Gilda González.

Nevertheless, Costa Rica continues to stand out in Central America. In the late 1990s, Costa Rica dedicated the equivalent of 5.4 percent of GDP to education, compared to just 1.6 percent of GDP in El Salvador and Guatemala, 4.1 percent in Honduras, 4.5 percent in Nicaragua, and 4.9 percent in Panama.

The teachers with the most optimistic outlook for the future are those of Argentina and Brazil, because the new governments in the two South American nations have indicated a willingness to address educators’ demands.

Just a few days after taking office on May 25, Argentina’s centre-left President Néstor Kirchner took immediate steps to overcome a teachers’ strike that was keeping thousands of students in the western province of San Juan and the eastern province of Entre Ríos out of school.

Through a World Bank loan that had been on hold for a year, the back wages demanded by the teachers were paid, and the work stoppage was called off.

Teachers’ salaries in Argentina have plunged 42 percent over the past year, and spending on education has shrunk by a similar amount. Since the late 2001 political and economic meltdown, nearly 70 percent of the country’s minors have fallen into poverty, and 33 percent into extreme poverty.

Gustavo Frutto, secretary of the Union of Argentine Educators, told IPS that teachers are calling for ”a basic unified salary for the country’s 24 districts.”

Frutto also complained about the poor conditions of schools and other infrastructure, and the dismal labour conditions of administrative and other non-teaching personnel in the country’s educational institutions, many of whom have been earning 50 dollars a month for the past 10 years.

In Brazil, teachers hope that tax reforms set to be approved by Congress will include an expansion of the education budget.

The leftist government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva now has the chance to overturn the previous administration’s veto of a law that stipulated that education spending must be equivalent to at least seven percent of GDP.

”We hope President Lula will set a minimum wage for the sector,” which should be around 1,300 reais (440 dollars) a month, the secretary of the National Confederation of Education Workers, Eduardo Ferreira, pointed out to IPS, referring to the income necessary for a typical family to meet their minimum needs.

The low incomes earned by teachers partly explain why Brazil has 254,000 less fifth to eighth-grade teachers than the necessary 711,000.

In Venezuela, meanwhile, primary school teachers earn a maximum of 250 dollars a month, while secondary school teachers can earn up to 400 dollars a month if they teach math for 36 hours a week, high school teacher Lucila Romero explained to IPS.

”Teachers’ strikes in Venezuela have almost always been held to demand the payment of back wages,” she pointed out. Although the government of populist President Hugo Chávez has brought payments nearly up to date, and has increased education spending to the equivalent of five percent of GDP, ”payments of several benefits are still behind,” Romero added.

Chile is an exception in the overall regional panorama, even though it has not returned to the quality of education seen between 1960 and the start of a 17-year dictatorship in 1973.

The education system suffered ”an unprecedented” decline under the de facto regime that remained in power until 1990, according to the high school teachers’ association.

In 2001, spending on education amounted to 4.2 percent of GDP, around half of the proportion dedicated to the sector in 1972.

Due to reforms of Chile’s educational system in the 1980s, many more students now attend private schools.

Today, 53 percent of students are in schools run by municipal governments, 36 percent attend private schools that receive state subsidies, and nine percent are enrolled in private institutions.

* Abraham Lama in Peru, Diego Cevallos in Mexico, Mario Osava in Brazil, Viviana Alonso in Argentina, Néfer Muñoz in Costa Rica, Humberto Márquez in Venezuela and Gustavo González in Chile contributed to this report. (END/IPS/LA/ED/LB/TRA-SO SW/DM/DCL/03)

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