IMPACT OF FTAs ON PUBLIC EDUCATION
AND THE PEOPLES OF CENTRAL AMERICA
PART I
Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica
Synthesis of interviews of leaders of teachers’
organizations united in the Federation of Teaching
Organizations of Central America – FOMCA
San José, Costa Rica. January 2008
HONDURAS
Participants from Honduras:

Lina Pineda. College of Middle-Education Professors, Ministry of Cultural and Professional Affairs (LP);
Xiomara Lourdes Quirós. Professional Union of Honduran Teachers (Sindicato Profesional de Docentes Hondureños-SINPRODOH), General Secretariat (XLQ);
Milton Bartales. President [acronym illegible] (MB);
Miriam [last names illegible]. Ministry of Feminine Affairs of the First Professional College of Primary School Teachers of Honduras (M);
Nelson Méndez I. Member of COPROSUMA (NMI)


1. How has FTA implementation impacted public education and the people in Honduras?

Lina Pineda – Through the implementation of certain types of projects that have to do with privatization of education, initially it was in rural areas, but they later included the urban regions. This program is known as PROECO.

Xiomara Quirós – PROECO has come to reduce enrollment in the public education centers. We know that not only teachers work in PROECO, but also experts, secretaries, persons with high-school level certificates, who are not providing the foundation necessary for quality education. PROECO promotes privatization among the teaching profession. It has become a political field with each government in turn opening different PROECO educational centers to fill the posts with people who have worked in politics, taking coverage away from the existing educational centers. PROECO was initially designed for those distant locations where there were no official schools, and now PROECO is very close to official educational centers, taking away enrollment from those centers.

Milton Bartales – The saddest part of this whole project is that it definitively leads us to privatization. That means that when the intention emerges to municipalize education, the poorest will have no more opportunities to study. In the poor locations, in municipalities where they simply do not have the budget funds themselves either to pay teachers or to purchase school supplies for the students, there will be chaos in our country. It is for that reason that the teachers’ organizations are definitively opposed and we are trying to find the way to present new alternatives so that this does not occur.

Mirian – PROECO is financed with international support. The governments establish these agreements with foreign institutions because they are economic funds that are received and diverted for other things, resulting in a corrupt use of the money to cover other expenses they have in the political sphere. Here is where they come to spend these moneys: instead of investing in education, what they do is invest in political propaganda. In addition, the teachers are not qualified because they are not primary education teachers but rather hold high school certificates or are experts or others who have only passed a few levels. We the teachers’ colleges are fighting so that the schools no longer be one-teacher, because with these budgets, posts are approved for teachers who in reality have their titles and their teaching curriculum adequate to teach class.

Nelson Méndez – The neoliberal model and FTA implementation have arrived in our country with the intention to annihilate public education. We have seen what is happening across the entire country in terms of implementation of private schools in large quantities. Year to year, private education is being fomented, debilitating public education. In turn, this has allowed the State to neglect its obligations to implement and assist public education. That is the effect that the FTA and the neoliberal model have had in our country: the poor no longer have the right to education.

Lina Pineda – The municipalization consists in the Townships being the ones who are going to pay these teachers. But this is what happens: there is a commitment, there is a contract, in other words, a permanent agreement is not established but rather a job contract, but soon it is October and these teachers have not been paid. Then many professors abandon this type of work, because they cannot live without pay. That implies that many children and schools are left abandoned. On the other hand, that same municipalization is also reflected in the assumption that the commitment to improve infrastructure conditions belongs to the Townships, but that does not occur. It used to be a governmental commitment, through a dependency dedicated to infrastructure construction. But that dependency today no longer exists, and no one assumes the commitment to build, maintain, or improve conditions in order to provide quality education. That quality education remains only in the speeches and political propaganda of the traditional parties, ignoring the fact that quality education requires improving conditions at the teaching level and at the labor level, and even improving the environmental conditions existing in children’s surroundings.

Milton Bartales – The importation of educational reforms, in terms of educational plans, has been to the detriment of our education, in the sense that because it is imported, it has nothing to do with our culture and much less with the way of working of teachers here in Honduras. Why? Because we have not been asked which reforms we want to implement, and much less have they seen or taken into account our culture in Honduras.

Nelson Méndez – It is important to add that in private education, the teachers who are exercising –if we can call them teachers– do not have the credentials or the title to exercise education … The relatives, siblings, husbands and children are the ones giving classes in these private centers.

It is also important to highlight and affirm –the world should know– that in this private education the educational centers do not have the teaching requirements, they operate in private homes, in places inappropriate for development of education.

Xiomara Quirós – There has been a lot of poverty relief support in Honduras, and those millions in Debt Condonement have gone to other things, not education. For example, very good projects that used to exist in the Education Ministry have been terminated, such as the text books that were produced in a Center located in Hatillo, in Picacho, which has now closed. Now they are produced by EDUCATODO, another program with foreign international-assistance finance from the government of Spain. In reference to school building constructions, now we have to go begging to a political representative if we want to build an educational center. In other words, education has been politicized, and even more so with globalization, which has resulted in more privatized centers in which a private company opens a center even in the proximity of public educational centers. The field of Teachers Training has also been commercialized. They are manipulating education, trafficking in titles, through which they invent a mountain of professions which in the end have no teaching curriculum but rather are invented with the sole purpose to do business. This is occurring even in the National Teaching University.

Xiomara Quirós – We know that we, the poor, are those who most suffer and are most damaged by the above, those who do not have the means to access those universities and private entities. The wealthy have the greater benefits.

2. How do the teaching organizations respond to this nefarious impact of the FTAs?

Mirian – At this time, we in the teaching guilds are fighting, through a 12-point agenda, where we address free education, because the Constitution of the Republic of Honduras itself establishes that it is a State obligation to provide free and mandatory education. For that reason, the State must give everything necessary so that every school-aged child is enrolled in the educational centers and is not begging in the streets because he or she does not have food or education. We are fighting for that, and our agenda includes the demand that enrollment be free, and that the text books be free. The Ministry has been neglectful, promoting commerce of text books. The reading books are extremely expensive!

Lina Pineda – Unfortunately, free cost of public education in Honduras extends only to enrollment, when it should mean that children have all the academic, scientific and educational tools they need for a quality education. The teaching organizations have been very concerned in the sense that several rural and urban schools have not received their funds. The Central office accuses the school Directors of failing to specify the bank account for said deposits, which is a lie, and in fact the funds have never left the State coffers. This has been to the detriment of the schools, kindergartens, and colleges.

Milton Bartalos – Through FOMCA we are also attempting to take a proposal to our Government to improve public education.

Xiomara Quirós – We struggle not only for basic education, but also in favor of public universities. We only have two public universities where there is now an admissions exam to exclude the low income. We the poor are excluded from the universities, the National University and now the Teaching University, where this exam appears to be to privatize university education.
GUATEMALA
Participant:

Ramiro Eduardo Herrera Cienfuentes. Leader of the Union of Education Workers of Guatemala (Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educación de Guatemala- STEG)


1. How has FTA implementation impacted public education and the Guatemalan people?

It is important to highlight the obstacles we have faced as Guatemalan Teaching Profession resulting from the assaults of the privatizing program that the different governments of our country have wanted to implement.

The problem we face is that the intention to privatize public education, with the Government provoking some situations with the purpose to make people believe that its utmost interest is in expanding educational coverage in our country, but what they have least said and clarified is that this coverage is without quality. Their only intention is to make the international community believe that they are complying with the quality parameters to which they have committed in different international events.

We have clear and concrete problems, such as PRONADE for preschool and primary education. PRONADE is a State organization which has implemented this project supposedly to “broaden coverage with quality” and that is what has been least accomplished. What we do have is the greed of the business sector. Of the national education budget, which ranges between 5.5 and 6 billion Quetzales, covering from preschool through to university education, the educational services institutions under PRONADE receive 1.6 billion, or 25% of the national budget, while addressing less than 3% of the population. And a large percentage of that money goes to the pockets of the powerful businessmen who represent the institutions, including the different foundations such as Fundación Bautista Gutiérrez, Fundación Castillo Córdoba or Castillo Lobo, FUNDASUCA, and Fundación PANTALEÓN. And many other “foundations” whose interests are clear: steal the funds from the Guatemalan people who make great sacrifices to pay their taxes.

2. How do the teachers’ organizations respond to this nefarious impact of the FTAs? What are we doing as Organization to counter this scourge?

We have politically achieved certain contacts in the National Congress, with the different seats that today and thanks to the Teachers’ Project have been generated dating before 2003. We have accomplished Congresses without steamrollers –as we say in Guatemala– in other words, without absolute majorities, and therefore more plural. This has allowed us to negotiate non-privatization with the different representatives through reforms that they want to implement to the National Education Law and by overturning the Statute – in this case the Law to Dignify and Catalogue the National Teaching Profession.

Another form of struggle has been the streets, protest in the streets. An article in the Constitution of the Republic of Guatemala gives us the right to peaceful and unarmed protest and gathering, the right to peaceful resistance, and we have used this right to be able to detain this onslaught that leaves the Guatemalan population more and more excluded in educational matters.

We call on the countries who are friends of Guatemala, asking that before conceding money to strengthen the national education project, they try to investigate where the Education Ministry has taken this money. I had the opportunity to attend an event in the United States in January 2007, where I was able to denounce that part of the money sent by the State Department for professional department or ongoing teachers education, does not fulfill its objective. What the Education Ministries do is organize a few one or two-day courses or workshops and say that the money was invested there, while they divert it to other things.

It is also sad and regrettable that since 2003 our agenda has changed, our plan of struggle has changed as we see that the money established to strengthen children’s and young peoples’ programs does not reach its destination. Then our struggle is to keep watch so that the children’s programs are duly completed. We have more than 700 million that the movement was able to secure in 2003 for school meals, school supplies, and scholarships, money which has not arrived. Back then we negotiated with the Government of the Republic that a minimum of 3 Quetzales should be given every day to each child for their school lunch. With the last government we had, under Oscar Berger and the Education Minister who was a Systems Engineer who entirely ignored the National Education Project, that amount was reduced to 45 and 60 cents per student.

This is our struggle, our purpose is nothing more and nothing less than the defense of public education. That it transform into free and mandatory, quality public education. Our own Constitution establishes the obligation of the State to provide free education with absolutely no discrimination to all inhabitants. We therefore demand hat education must be free for all boys and girls and young people at all levels, not only preschool and primary education, which is where they claim to have concentrated their efforts. In reality, it is sad to have to internationally denounce that, of the money earmarked to boys and girls to address social programs, 350 million were transferred last year to remodel Aurora International Airport.

3. How is it possible that they play with children’s hunger and nutrition, in exchange for better transportation and living conditions for those who have always fleeced us, the big businessmen?

We also call on the international community and in particular on solidary organizations, reporting that another struggle we have initiated is the correlation of forces with the different union and popular organizations in Guatemala. We are part of the Unity of Union and Popular Action (Unidad de Acción Sindical y Popular-UASP), whose vice-presidency is the responsibility of the teachers’ organization. But today we are faced with the situation in which, as punishment for having denounced the tax evasion of the large businessmen of our country, our head leader, Nery Barrios, is now in prison, accused of a crime he never committed. In addition, a political prosecution is underway against our leader Joviel Acevedo with the goal to remove him from office. The persecution is headed by the previous Education Minister herself, in response to a petition by the country’s businessmen. The case of Joviel Acebedo is currently in the courts, and even though we know that there is no independence in Guatemala, we are hopeful that the clarity of Joviel’s situation will result in a favorable ruling for him and for our organization by the Judge responsible for the case in the coming days.

We are also working in the implementation of a struggle with the global unions, and the greatest struggle was to demonstrate to this business class in the recent elections in our country that the Teaching Profession has very strong power to convoke and mobilize because we said NO to the candidate they were proposing, an ex-military official, a General who has a very dubious and dark past. And we said NO to him to support a social-democratic project that took office 12 days ago. But we are already seeing the negative posture emerging regarding education and –no sense denying it- against the teaching profession. Nevertheless, we have threatened to go to the streets again and this next Friday we have a meeting called by them to begin negotiations.

We think and we continue to recognize that dialogue and communication is the most certain route to be able to resolve the problems we have in our country. But if they leave us no alternative, we will certainly take to the streets again and do what is necessary to make heard the clamor of the people who need greater social justice, greater equity, because the abysms between the powerful class and our country’s most vulnerable sector are too vast.

Therefore, the only thing we need is that they understand that Guatemala is going to change, that peace in our country is going to occur if and when they respect human rights in all their conception.

Our teachers’ organization has thereby had to present itself in the struggle in different ways, politically and within the Congress of the Republic, and definitively, in the streets.
COSTA RICA
Participant:

Floribeth López Ugalde, General Secretary of SEC.


1. How has FTA implementation affected public education and the people in Costa Rica?

While it is true that the text of the free trade agreement does not include a direct chapter in reference to education, chapter 11 refers to public services, and for the World Bank, education is a public service, for which it is necessary to pay.

This situation provoked the full involvement of the Costa Rican Union of Education Workers (Sindicato de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores de la Educación Costarricense), since the first rounds of negotiations, in direct work in the educational centers and communities, promoting and forming part of a framework of alliances with other strategic sectors.

Since the year 2000, this has generated implementation of some guidelines that, one way or another, accentuate the tendency toward privatization of education. Nevertheless, according to the Ministry of Public Education, said guidelines have the intention to open specific projects as lateral outlets for marginalized young people and adolescents.

The problem is that these projects do not only reach marginalized youth but also allow students fresh out of primary school to enroll in those programs, without taking advantage of the opportunity to access cycle II and Diversified Education of the Basic General Education program.

In this way they promote the labor flexibility of teaching colleagues, whose naming is neither interim nor tenured, but rather through a March-to-November contract. It has also produced a drop in enrollment at formal colleges, leading to abandonment of many subjects, in turn leaving teachers without work. The loss of decent work has generated impoverishment of the working class, which directly influences quality of education.

In political campaign, the current government spoke of the increase of the education budget from 6 to 8%. This is a promise that cannot be fulfilled, given that the process of tariff reductions leaves international companies free to enter the country, and leaving the country without tax revenue. On the other hand, the transnational companies do not pay their taxes on profits generated, which they transfer to their countries of origin.

The collapse of the internal market (national small and medium businesses) results in increasingly lower tax revenues.

The dismembering of the public sector also provokes this decrease, given that the wage tax we pay is continually lower.

The large gaps that already exist between rural and urban education, far from narrowing, are drastically widening. This is another factor directly influencing public education.

The high cost of living means that the investment made each day by mothers and fathers so that their children remain in the education system, implies greater and greater effort, and in turn, less result.

The dismantlement of the traditional farming sector has generated immigration toward the city, widening poverty belts, and social chaos.

The absence of State education policies has generated a regression in Costa Rican education, which I could dare to estimate at 40%.

To conclude, Costa Rican education responds today to the interests of a neoliberal model, oriented to lower performance standards and massification of education to prepare cheap labor for the large transnationals.

2. How are the teachers’ organizations responding to this nefarious impact of the FTAs? What is the attitude of the teachers’ organizations to confront this situation?

In response to this overwhelming spiral, the National Teaching Profession falls short in posing a true strategy of struggle to address the problems.

The lack of unity to face this situation provokes weakening of the teaching profession in the opinion of the public and affiliates and members themselves. The union and guild organizations have been unable to come to the solid realization that this is an institutional and national problem which cannot be defended only from the trenches of one organization.

I believe that today the national teaching profession should be undertaking an awareness-building and information effort among the population in general, so that people understand that defense of education is an issue pertaining not only to the education sector, but in fact concerns us all.