The ongoing saga involving teacher’s salaries is threatening to delay the start of the school term, which is scheduled to begin on Monday 25th February.

Teachers in both the city and province of Buenos Aires are demanding an increase in salary above the 22% raise that has already been offered to them by the government. Teachers described the proposed raise as ‘inadequate’.

Teachers from 17 unions in the capital yesterday rejected a city government proposal for a 22% pay rise delivered in three stages between March and October.

F.E.B. Meeting (Buenos Aires (province) Teachers’ Federation)

Mirta Petrocini, the President of the Buenos Aires (province) Teachers’ Federation (FEB), told Radio Continental, “We are aiming to reconstruct the basic salary of all teachers but up until now we have not had the chance to negotiate.” Petrocini added that the start of the school year depended on provincial governor, Daniel Scioli.

Other provinces are experiencing similar situations with regards to teacher’s demands. In Tucumán, teachers have declared a ‘state of alert’, insisting that classes will not begin until the provincial government increases their wage offer. Teachers from Santiago del Estero also warned that they will hold a 48 hours strike if their demands are not met.

National Education Minister Alberto Sileoni has asked for teacher’s union to be prudent, insisting that most provinces were not able to offer more than the 22% wage hike, and adding that some face difficulties even reaching that benchmark.

Sileoni noted that “last year salary negotiations also ended unsatisfactorily, but classes began anyway.”

A controversial proposal has been announced that would see schools and nurseries in Cordoba and Buenos Aires install surveillance video cameras, a move prompted by the recent San Isidro child abuse scandal.

The Tribilín Nursery School case has reignited the debate over surveillance in nurseries and schools after a concerned parent hid an iPod recorder in their child’s backpack to discover teachers regularly shouting and threatening violence against the children. Five of the teachers have been accused of child abuse.

Legislators in Cordoba and Buenos Aires have now raised proposals to place these devices in classrooms, of which a legislator said, “The project is being discussed in the Commission for Children, and I think this time it is going to pass because the Tribilín case has brought the topic into discussion again.”

The proposal was rejected last October at the Education Commission after being deemed as an attempt to turn nurseries into a kind of “Big Brother” environment.

The proposal would involve the installation of web devices in rooms with children between 45 days to 5 years old, and parents would have access via the internet to view the footage. Such controls are being applied in countries such as the US, Brazil and Chile, although this has led to much controversy and criticism. Patricia Cubria, deputy of the Front for Victory criticised the proposal by stating “Camera surveillance is not the solution… I think that is a repressive policy of control. There has to be a more comprehensive solution”.

A school that served the indigenous Mapuche community of Collipulli, in the southern province of La Araucanía, was set ablaze in the early hours of this morning by two armed and hooded suspects, according to local media.

The two men forcibly entered the building and proceeded to tie the caretaker to a tree on the property. The subsequent fire destroyed the school in which 25 indigenous children attended class. It also damaged the home of the caretaker. Both buildings were unoccupied at the time.

Malleco governor Erich Baumann lamented the act, stating that it “leaves the children with no possibility of educating themselves, furthermore the poorest children will no longer be able to receive food from the school cafeteria”.

The fire is the fifth to take place in La Araucanía since a similar blaze killed an elderly landowning couple in the town of Vilcún last Friday. Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), one of Chile’s largest Mapuche activist groups, denied having any ties to the fire which killed Bernard Luchsinger, 75, and his wife Vivianne Mackay, 69.

In a statement released after Friday’s fire, CAM denounced “the infiltration by certain rightist groups of Mapuche communities, by actors instigating and committing actions that serve as an excuse to repress and detain the advance towards the reconstruction of the Mapuche People and their national liberation.”

The conflict in southern Chile, which has pitted corporations and landowners against Mapuche activists, has escalated considerably in recent weeks, causing the national government to use a controversial anti-terrorist law in an effort to “stabilise” the area.

The Mapuche community, largely concentrated in La Araucanía and the southern provinces of Argentine Patagonia, will convene on 16 January in the Chilean city of Temuco to discuss development initiatives in the area, one of Chile’s poorest.

Today Police shut down and inspected a school linked to the Independiente football club due to a bomb threat by suspected football hooligans.

Claudio Ciancio, the club’s administrative secretary, reported that two employees of Independiente club were threatened there “would be a bomb concealed to explode in the morning,” by a self-identified male fan between 3pm-4pm yesterday.

Hooligans warned that unless flags carrying the colours of the club were returned to the Independiente fans, they would plant bombs in the school attached to the club. “If they don’t return the flags, we will make them fly,” the hooligans were reported to have said in Infobae.

A bomb squad raided the school around 8am this morning, looking for the device, but found nothing. Police are still preventing school children from entering the school.

The school, attended by 1400 children, is located on the crossroad of Alsina and Bochini, just metres from the stadium.

Relations between the BarraBravas (football hooligans) and club president, Javier Cantero, are becoming increasingly tense ever since he took leadership.

This evening, at 7pm, there will be a march to support Javier Cantero. The leader of the BarraBravas has organised a counter march an hour before at 6pm.

“The security agencies told us that they will take the necessary measures so that those who come will not suffer any problems,” said Caincio, talking about the march.

“Torturers are not born that way: someone educates them, trains them and supports them.” This statement belongs to a report by Amnesty International as part of its campaign to eradicate torture. The same report states that there are over 150 military training centres in the world whose job it is to provide training to foreign armed forces. Protected by secrecy and without any independent control, these centres have the potential to “facilitate human rights violations”.

Latin America and the SOA (image courtesy of N.ree.K)

Such is the case of the infamous School of the Americas, a US Army education facility aimed at training members of Latin American armed forces which has been operational since 1946. Many of its graduates have taken part in military dictatorships throughout the continent and have been accused of committing crimes against humanity using the counter-insurgency methods they were taught at the school. The School of the Americas is not an anomaly, but an integral part of US foreign policy that reached as far south as Argentina.

As we commemorate a new Día de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia (the anniversary of the 1976 coup d’etat) this Saturday 24th March, it is worth remembering the role the School of the Americas played in the country’s recent history.

The Cold War And The National Security Doctrine

“America for the Americans” is a phrase commonly used to summarise the so-called ‘Monroe doctrine’. In his State of the Union address in 1823, US president James Monroe set out what would become the US policy towards the rest of the American continent to this day: by rejecting the intervention of the European powers in the continent, America would become part of the US’s sphere of influence.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the political, cultural, economic, and military influence of the US on the continent expanded. The onset of World War II accelerated the process, already underway, of military cooperation, and favoured a common defence policy based on continental solidarity. Thus, the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance stated that any foreign attack on one of the signatory states would be deemed an attack on all of them.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Fostor Dulles, mastermind behind the 1954 coup d'etat in Guatemala (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In the 1960s, US policy towards Latin America shifted as the Cold War intensified and the success of the Cuban revolution brought the communist threat to its backyard. The fight against communism -or any political movement identified as such- became the number one objective for the US. The role of the Latin American armed forces within the continent and even within their own countries was then redefined to achieve this objective: their main aim became to guarantee internal stability.

The National Security Doctrine, whilst not written down or systematised, is considered to be a military doctrine developed by the US government and instilled into Latin American soldiers through training centres such as the School of the Americas. Many trace its origins to the counter-insurgency teachings of the French military, who developed their own doctrine to fight against the resistance of the independence movements from their former colonies in Algeria and South East Asia.

The most important aspect of the National Security Doctrine, the one which shaped all the policies developed under it, was the idea that social conflict and armed struggle in Latin America (and the so-called Third World in general) was not the result of internal factors, but of communist infiltration by groups backed by the USSR. This way, all internal conflicts were redefined as being part of the bigger threat of the Soviet Union against the US, thus justifying US intervention. This intervention, however, was not direct. As military involvement by the US was generally not supported at home, especially after the Vietnam War, the training imparted to Latin American soldiers and the redefinition of the role of the armed forces sought to prepare them to carry out their job as regional ‘police’ within their own borders.

‘Torturers Are Not Born That Way…’

Leopoldo Galtieri (Argentina), Roberto Viola (Argentina), Hugo Banzer (Bolivia), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Juan Velasco Alvarado (Peru), Omar Torrijos (Panama). What reads like a ‘who’s who’ of Latin American dictators is but a small fraction of the long list of graduates from the School of the Americas.

Leopoldo Galtieri, graduate of the School of the Americas and Argentine dictator during the Dirty War (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The School, ran by the US Army, first opened its doors in 1946 in Panama. Back then, it was called Latin American Training Center, Ground Division and its objective was to train Latin American soldiers in war and counter-insurgency techniques. In 1950 it was moved to its definite location in Panama, Fort Gulick, and Spanish was adopted as its official language. It would remain in Fort Gulick until 1984 when it was relocated to the US. In 1963 it was renamed United States Army School of the Americas, the name by which it would become internationally known.

According to the NGO SOA Watch, since 1946 the school “has trained over 64,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics”. Many of these were involved in military regimes across the continent in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. More recently, graduates from the school participated in the attempted coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2002, and the coup that deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

What exactly did the soldiers learn in their visits to the School of the Americas? In 1991, seven Spanish-language Army manuals, based partly on lesson plans used by instructors since 1982, were released to the US Congress and in 1992 two CIA manuals used for training in Latin America were added. These texts included material from CIA and US Army manuals written in the 1950s and 1960s and had titles such as ‘Revolutionary War and Communist Ideology’, ‘Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla’, ‘Handling of Sources’, and ‘Interrogation’.

One of the most striking features of these texts is the lack of distinction between legitimate and legal opposition movements and armed guerrillas. The ‘Counterintelligence’ manual defines as potential counterinsurgency targets any groups or political parties “that have goals, beliefs or ideologies contrary or in opposition to the National Government” or the US. It then recommends the creation of black lists to include “enemy agents” and “subversive persons”, including political opposition leaders and “collaborators and sympathisers of the enemy”. The suggested solutions to the enemy presence include infiltrations into enemy groups and population control techniques such as curfews, military checkpoints, house searches, issuance of ID cards and rationing. Detention procedures compliant with the rule of law are ignored. According to the analysis carried out by NGO Latin American Working Group (LAWG), “throughout the manuals there is discussion of detaining suspects without mention of proper procedures for arrest, obtaining admissible evidence, trial and conviction. There is no mention of warrants or the right to contact an attorney or any comparable local laws. In fact, it is recommended throughout that detainees be kept in isolation and not be allowed to contact anyone.”

WHINSEC Change of command ceremony in 2010

The declassified CIA manuals are even more crude. Whilst the Army manuals try to keep up appearances by making references to documents such as the Geneva Convention, the CIA’s “Human Resource Exploitation Manual” has an entire chapter dedicated to coercive interrogation techniques. The aim of these techniques, they explain, is to induce psychological regression in the prisoner, defined as “a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioural level”. The “three major principles involved in the successful application of coercive techniques” are physical weakness, dependency and intense fear and anxiety. To achieve this, the manuals indicate that suspects should be held incommunicado and should be deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets. Causing fear by threatening the prisoner is included as a technique in this chapter, as the manual indicates that the threat to inflict pain is often more effective than the feeling of pain. Other coercive techniques discussed in the manual include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, deprivation of food or sleep, disruption of routines, solitary confinement, deprivation of sensory stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or placebos.

This type of training has had serious consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. US backing for Latin American dictatorships has been widely documented, but what the manuals from the School of the Americas show is the true and chilling extent of the intervention. It did not only consist of political support: it went as far as teaching the soldiers how to torture prisoners.

Even those who did not suffer the application of these ‘coercive techniques’ on themselves or their loved ones, those who were oblivious to it all or those who had not been born yet suffered the consequences of State-sponsored terrorism. The social and economic outcomes of the Latin American dictatorships are still being felt by many to this day. The techniques taught at the School of the Americas were but a means to an end: to subjugate the opposition to the massive social and economic changes introduced by the dictatorships from the 1970s onwards.

‘Different Name, Same Shame’

In 1984, Panamanian president Jorge Illueca denounced the School of the Americas as the biggest base for destabilisation in Latin America and evicted the US army from Fort Gulick, a step which was part of the broader process put in motion by the Panama Canal Treaty and which involved the progressive withdrawal of US forces from Panama.

Protesters hold up crosses with the names of the disappeared at SOA Watch's annual vigil. (Photo: Carolyn Scorpio)

The School of the Americas was then reopened in Fort Benning, in the US state of Georgia. In 2001, and after the public outcry caused by the release of the training manuals, the school closed down and was replaced by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). SOA Watch and other human rights NGOs have been publicly denouncing WHINSEC ever since, as they consider it to be “the School of the Americas under a different name”. There has been no critical assessment of the way the school was conducted and therefore no real changes to its objectives, procedures and lack of independent control.

Many NGOs advocate for the closing of WHINSEC, with SOA Watch at the forefront of the struggle. The sole purpose of SOA Watch, based in Washington DC and with offices in Latin America, is to push for the closure of the School of the Americas, under whatever name it may be called. Founded in 1990 after the massacre of six priests and two women by School of the Americas graduates in El Salvador, this NGO has been working relentlessly through demonstrations and nonviolent protest to achieve their goal. Last November, during a yearly vigil, a SOA Watch activist was arrested for breaking into the grounds of WHINSEC in Fort Benning, and later condemned to six months in prison. Unlike the school educators, hundreds of anti-WHINSEC activists throughout the years have had to face justice and serve prison time.

Despite their efforts, an average of 1,000 students per year (mainly Latin American) continue to attend WHINSEC for training on counterdrug, urban terrain, major combat and joint operations. The school receives a budget of US$14m annually.

The most promising gesture regarding the School of the Americas has not come from the US, but from the Latin American governments. Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia have all decided in recent years to stop sending soldiers for training at Fort Benning. This goes to show that, whilst changing the 200-year long foreign policy of a world super power may not be easy, only the autonomous decisions of a strengthened and united continent can save millions from being at its mercy.

A meeting between Buenos Aires Education Minister Estaban Bullrich and representatives of the Union of Education Workers (UTE) to discuss a raise in salary has ended with no agreement in place.

In a brief exchange, Bullrich offered an annual increase of 17.6%, which would bring the base salary of teachers from $2,400 to $2,850.

The teachers, represented by 17 local unions, are seeking a 29% raise in salary with a new base of $3,100.

There has been discussion that a second meeting will take place this afternoon at the ministry headquarters in San Telmo, however this will depend on whether any advances toward further negotiation take place in the meantime.

“If there is a new offer, we will come. If not, no,” said Eduardo Lopez, who is secretary general of the UTE.

With classes set to begin on 28th March, the current state of negotiation leaves some doubt whether the problem will linger long enough to disrupt the beginning of the school year.

“The decision to begin classes is for the Ministry of Education. Our aim is to negotiate constantly,” Lopez said.

Students at 'Nacional Buenos Aires' celebrate the end of the year with 'La Pintada' (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Buenos Aires’ children will finish school this week after a restless couple of months, which saw hard confrontations between the City government and the teachers’ unions. After five days of teacher’s strikes in October and November, Buenos Aires Education Minister Esteban Bullrich announced that the school year, which was originally supposed to end on 16th December, would be extended until the 23rd to make up for the lost days. The main bone of contention this year revolved around the proposed changes to the teachers’ designation process, but it was one more dispute to add to a long list of controversial educational government policies.

The Boards’ Debate

Public school teachers and the City government have never had the best of relationships, but the situation reached a peak of tension between October and December this year as 15 out of the 17 teachers’ unions (including Sadop, the private teachers’ union) reacted against the government’s proposal to modify the Teacher’s Statute, the law that regulates teachers’ labour relations, rights and obligations.

The current statute goes back to 1986, when it was passed by the City Council (which preceded the current City Legislature) after a series of debates in which the education community was involved. It regulates the designation of teachers of all levels by establishing Classification Boards, whose job it is to organise and oversee the selection process through a system based on competitive examination. The Boards are in charge of examining teachers’ qualifications and experience, giving them a score based on these items, rank them and appoint them to the available positions. Currently, the Classification Boards consist of nine members, six of whom are elected by the teachers and three are appointed by the government. The aim of the system is to have the entire selection process conducted and overseen by peers, and it is a method that, with some variations, is used throughout the country.

The bill put forward by Bullrich proposed to eliminate Classification Boards and instead set up a Unified Office of Teachers Classification, appointed by the Minister of Education and responsible for conducting the selection process. It also created a Teachers Classification and Designation Control Board, whose members would be elected by the teachers, which would only intervene in case of a dispute.

Finally, and after many days of strikes, meetings between the minister and the unions’ representatives and some serious incidents of physical violence outside the Legislature, an alternative project was approved by the City Legislature in the early hours of 2nd December. The new law, put forward by now former Coalición Cívica legislator Sergio Abrevaya, seeks a middle ground by establishing a new Commission for Registering and Evaluating Professional Qualifications, which will be in charge of ranking the applicants. The Boards’ new role will be to approve the score given to each teacher by the Commission and to put forward the designations to the minister. The new Commission will have three members appointed by the executive, while the Boards will be reduced to five members: three elected by the teachers and two appointed by the government (except for the Primary and High School Boards which will have eight members, six elected and two appointed).

A young student studies even as the school infrastructure isn't supported. (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

The Reasons Behind the Opposition

The unions opposed the original bill introduced by Bullrich for various reasons. On the one hand, they opposed the way the bill was drafted by the Minister without any input from those involved in the day-to-day running of the education system. On the other hand, they feared that leaving their peers out of the selection process could increase the possibility of discretionary behaviour by those in charge of the designations. The government, through Bullrich, claimed that the reforms were aimed at streamlining the selection process and unifying selection criteria, since the current system can be, in practice, fairly inefficient.

It was only last year that, in the context of teachers’ and students’ strikes demanding for better infrastructure conditions, Mauricio Macri’s government was accused of setting up “black lists” of teachers and students who had taken part in the protests. Furthermore, the alleged espionage activities by which Macri himself has been charged, were channelled through the Ministry of Education, as alleged “spy” Ciro James was on its payroll. These precedents also account for the opposition by the unions and the Human Rights Observatory to the proposed installation of security cameras in schools, a measure that was finally canned last August after judicial intervention. Considering the government’s recent record, then, it is not surprising that teachers feared the possibility of abuses under the new law, and reaffirmed the need for their delegates to be involved in the selection process.

Throughout his first term, Macri has been accused by unions and the opposition of showing nothing but contempt towards public education. Like other social services, the budget for education has one of the highest levels of under-execution. That is, the money is assigned in the budget but it is not spent. According to a report by the City Ombudsman from June 2011, the yearly budget execution for schools’ infrastructure has been consistently under 50% between 2007 and 2010. The latest publicly available data shows that, as at July 2011, only 28.5% of the school’s infrastructure budget for this year had been spent. Even though it is to be expected that a great part of the expenditure will take place towards the end of the year, the execution level remains low.

Macri with students handing out netbooks via 'Plan S@rmiento' (Photo courtesy Mauricio Macri)

On the positive side, this year the government rolled out Plan S@rmiento BA, a policy which consists in the handing out of netbooks to all primary school students. However this measure, widely considered as a step forward towards student integration, was also surrounded by controversy. Legislators from different opposition parties denounced that the government had paid an excessive amount of money for the netbooks to the only bidder to take part in the public tender, Grupo Clarín-owned Prima SA. In comparison, the netbooks bought by the City cost almost three times as much as those bought by the national government for its own netbook-delivery plan for high school students. The issue even made it to the judiciary as telecommunications expert Ariel Garbarz (professor and researcher at UBA and UTN universities) pressed charges against the government.

What’s next?

Everything seems to indicate that the relationship between government and teachers’ unions will remain as rocky on Macri’s second term as it has been on his first.

Although it is expected that the changes to the Teachers’ Statute will not come into effect until 2013, it remains to be seen whether the unions will accept the changes passively. It is expected that just before the start of classes in early March, the yearly wage negotiations will take place. This is usually a prickly affair and, in 2011, the beginning of classes was at doubt due to the difficulties in reaching an agreement.

Teaching high school students (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Furthermore, the recently approved budget for 2012 has already been the subject of controversy. A report by NGO Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ after its name in Spanish) shows that even though there is a nominal increase of 26% in next years’ education budget compared to this year’s -barely above unofficial inflation figures- the amount destined to subsidise private education, a portion of the budget that does not suffer from under-execution, will increase by 32%. The report also shows that the money will be spent in an inequitable fashion, favouring students from the northern, richer area of the City. Additionally, and despite the grave infrastructure problems in public schools, the budget for school infrastructure will be reduced in absolute terms, from 513 to 501 million pesos. The budget also fails to include previsions for works that the government had commited to undertaking in order to solve the chronic lack of spaces for kindergarten and pre-school students. The amount that goes towards special education will also be drastically reduced by almost a half.

It is likely that the unions, then, will remain alert and draft their action plan as the next term unfolds. In the words of María Cristina González, deputy headmistress of school no. 9, school district 2 and member of UTE (the largest union representing teachers in the city), they will keep fighting in order to maintain their gains. She feels that the changes to the Teachers’ Statute were a test to see how much the government could push for reform and, even though the original bill was not passed, she believes that they achieved their goal. “They were testing the waters and they won”, she says. “And now they are coming for more”.

Police and firemen were called to evacuate a high school in the neighbourhood of Once this morning, after a gas leak sparked fears of an explosion.

A vehicle working on a construction site on Jujuy street nearby is said to have broken through a high-pressure underground pipeline while clearing rubble on the ground.

“[The vehicle] clipped the gas line… and gas started to escape” – Samuel Zisterman, the architect responsible for the construction site, told the press. Although, according to him, “it was an exaggerated scare.”

Zisterman suspects that the line was an illegal connection, as Metrogas has no record of it on their system.

Police sources have now confirmed that the leak is under control, although the gas supply to the area currently remains cut off to prevent more gas escaping.

It’s the fifth school day of the teachers strike and 350,000 students remain without classes. It has been decided by Esteban Bullrich, the minister of Education of Buenos Aires, that the school year will continue until the 23rd December, to make up for the lost classes.

In addition to classes ending a week later than planned, teachers that were on the protest will not be paid for the days they missed.

The protests are against new legislations that are being discussed currently by government. It is currently being decided whether a new teacher rating board should be put in place. The proposed rating system would be computerised, changing how teachers get employed and promoted.

Hundreds of teachers and students crowded in the centre of the capital and 17 individuals participated in the tearing down of security fences.

Last Friday many teachers stormed into the building in an attempt to join the debate. Seven were injured and one with a knife, which led to a suspension of the discussions.

Some teachers remain outside the building now and a 48-hour strike has been announced for later this month.

A strike called by the Bonaerense Teachers Union (FEB) yesterday called for more laws to combat violence against teachers.

The event followed the extreme case of Richard Fusco, who was hospitalised after being attacked by a pupil’s mother earlier this week.  Some 90% of public schools in the Province of Buenos Aires were affected by the strike, during which two more cases of severe attacks were reported.

A primary school teacher was attacked outside her house in Villa Luzuriaga after giving a child a low grade. The mother of the child hit her in the face.

Last week a head teacher, Mónica Crivelli, was attacked by two parents whilst students slashed the tires of her car in Tres Arroyos. Crivelli is now on sick leave. The school was one of the many that were closed yesterday due to the strike.

The events have raised concerns around Argentina about the climate of schools in the country.

According to UNESCO, Argentina is the worst in the region for violence in classrooms. “There is a clear denial of the daily violence that teachers have to live and work in,” leader of the FEB, Mirta Petrocini, told Clarín.

“This is needs to be stopped, this [violence] is unsustainable,” Mirta Danunzio, FEB spokeswoman, told Clarín. “Cases go unreported for fear of retaliation, but we urge teachers to not remain silent otherwise the violence will increase.”