THE “COLLEGE OF PROFESSORS” AND A FRUSTRATED ATTEMPT TO DIVIDE THE PERUVIAN TEACHING PROFESSION Background It is impossible to count all of the attempts that have been made to destroy the teacher’s guild. They date all the way back to the early days of the Sindicato Único de los Trabajadores de la Educación del Perú (SUTEP). First were the attempts of the military government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado, who went so far as to create his own union, the Sindicato de Educadores de la Revolución Peruana (SERP). Then, in the aprista government, the Asociación Nacional de Trabajadores Apristas de la Educación (ANTAE) was promoted, continuing the vane attempt to divide teachers and their fraternity. In these times of deepening of the neoliberal project and amidst the unleashing of the greatest aggressions against the teaching profession and education, they mistakenly attempt, through installation of the “College of Professors,” to erode the unity of a fraternity that for many decades has been the defender of the public school and of teachers’ rights. Crédito SUTEP The elections Almost two years after the elections of the first National Directive Board of the Colegio de Profesores de Perú (CPPe), and after the overwhelming election by more than 113,000 votes of Professor Soledad Lozano Costa as National Dean of the CPPe, Professor Soledad remains unrecognized by governmental administrative and bureaucratic entities and functionaries embedded in the Ministry of Education (MED). However, despite those difficulties and the systematic refusal on the part of the government -first the Toledo and then the García government- to recognize Professor Soledad as Dean of Professors, she points out that the elections of 30 April 2006 served to expose the strategy traced by the enemies of the teaching profession and of the SUTEP, who imposed an electoral process plagued from its origins, and that intended to install in the position of Dean, Carlos Gallardo Gómez, candidate of the Movimiento Democrático Magisterial (MDM) and aggressively promoted by the pro-government press and by Education Ministry functionaries. The strategy of the government was to destroy the country’s most representative teachers’ union, which had its primary representative in the candidacy of Lozano. The objective was to win under any circumstance, legally or illegally, with or without the support of the profession. The infrastructure and the logistical resources of the MED were even used, without the slightest hesitation to use those mechanisms as publicly demonstrated in reports in several communications media. Lozano points out that the irrefutable verdict of thousands of professors expressed on 30 April 2006 was to elect the Frente Amplio Gremial Magisterial (FRAGMA) to head the Professional Teachers Order, and as proof of her support cites the more than 113,000 votes she obtained, representing 44.4% of validated votes. “This popular will of the teaching profession has not been and is not accepted by MED bureaucrats and functionaries who have paralyzed the entire administrative transfer process since that year, reason for which exist difficulties to attend to teachers and the normal development of the activities of our professional order,” affirms Lozano. In the legal sphere Following the elections, and refusing to acknowledge its defeat, the government promoted the illegal recognition of Professor Carlos Gallardo in the position of Dean of the College of Professors. Gallardo surprised many teachers with the publication of a Resolution of the National Electoral Committee of the College of Professors, issued by only one of its members, Yeny de los Ángeles Gamarra Díaz, its ex-president. This Resolution appeared in the notices section of the official daily newspaper El Peruano, as part of a paid press publication. It certainly generated some confusion in the national teachers’ body. Divide and conquer This is the maxim which has been consistently followed by the successive governments to liquidate the SUTEP, one of the bastions and important force of the popular movement. The aprista government is no exception, and part of its strategy has been oriented to liberalize or undermine the labor conditions of the education workers, imposing a new Public Teaching Career Law which practically eliminates labor stability. The enactment of DS 004-2006, which restricts leaves and eliminates the union discount, as well as the disregard of the workers’ right to strike, declaring education as Essential Public Service, thereby infringing UNESCO provisions and norms stipulating that education is not considered in this category, follow the strategy to destroy the union or all form of labor association. At their root, these provisions have only served to hide the government’s lack of interest in the education budget and its insensitivity and incompetence in leaving children without professors for the beginning of the school year. In the same way, the “census evaluation,” a test applied to teachers, and the so-called “upper third” measure which stipulates that only teachers who obtain a grade of 14 in their pregrado studies would be accepted for public school contracts, are both discriminatory and anti-technical provisions. Detaining neoliberal policy in education is one of our priorities and it is in that direction that we orient our action, parallel to our demand for validation and respect for the autonomous and democratic decision of the teaching guild. This new struggle for institutional legality will be hard, full of obstacles and extremely long, but those of us with undaunted spirit will continue without neglecting any space in our defense of the legality which is our corresponding right. The teaching fraternity has granted us that legitimacy, and of that we are certain.