Teachers on Hunger Strike, Union Fighting Wholesale Repression

dine — Tue, 17 May 2011 13:48:18 +0000

Hunger Striking for teachers

Tegucigalpa Before 8 AM on Monday morning we were greeting Jaime Rodriguez, the President of COPEMH (Colegiio de Profesores de Educacion Media de Honduras) in the parking lot of the Colegio and teachers’ union. Even as the lights left us in darkness drinking our sweet coffee in a sky lit waiting room, he told us stories that were shockingly current and contradicted the notions that the civil wars of the Honduras-Michelleti golpe government had ceased against its own people and their social institutions.

During the coup to usurp the elected government over the last several years in Honduras, the teachers unions had been among those in the forefront of the resistance and demand for a return to democracy. This period, hardly more than a year ago, saw several teachers involved in the almost daily marches in Tegucigalpa killed, one right on the street where we had exited the cab for this meeting. More recently in March in a protest against the government’s announcements of educational “reform” four teachers in march were brutally beaten by police. These were fresh wounds.

Rodriguez explained that the so-called reforms essentially were an effort to privatize the state educational system. Despite the constitutional guarantees of education and their definition of the state’s responsibilities to provide it, the government had ordered the educational system to be decentralized to the municipalities. Most municipalities not having the experience, resources, and capacity to actually provide education for the children would be forced to subcontract or privatize the system. A similar scheme had been seen several years before around water resources leading to privatization of water in many areas (see blogs from San Pedro Sula earlier this year). Around this same time teachers were already raw about millions that turned up missing from their pension programs being maintained by the government.

In the protest against these “reforms” 302 teachers were fired. In reaction teachers’ unions have launched a rotating huger strike maintained by five strikers at all times. We visited with the hunger strikers and listened to their moving stories, while standing under a tent where they were living, now evicted from their homes as well, but firmly planted in front of the Congress buildings.

All of this was coupled with frontal attacks on the union itself. In the “reform” effort the government declared a “state of emergency” in the educational systems thereby asserting extraordinary powers similar to what one would find in general martial law. In this emergencia the government suspended the right to strike (allowing it to fire strikers like the 302!), stopped all dues checkoff in this process on the transitional claim that the teachers were no longer state employees, and took other steps to defund and break the teachers’ unions. Rodriguez explained how the membership had dropped from 25000 in March 2011, hardly two months ago, to less than 2000 now who were paying dues by hand at the window next to the waiting room where we were huddled in our meeting.

Shockingly to Rodriquez and others, their story has not gotten attention, making their fight even harder. ACORN International’s board will take up a resolution of support on Friday and hold a press conference to announce our decision, if affirmative, but in the meantime this is a crisis that needs investigation and action. Now!

Colors and Dawn on the Marcala Mountains

dine — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:02:23 +0000

Marcala In an afterthought I had thrown a small flashlight in my bag. You never know. As Tim sings, “there’s the cowboy in us all,” and with me there’s still a boy scout deep down riding alongside I guess. Good thing. We had driven up the mountains from Marcala in pitch dark to where our team was being housed for the night. Arriving we could see the large porch of the recently finished brick and concrete structure until the car lights went out, then nada but the half-moon and stars. One lone candle was lit in the middle of the room where we enjoyed sweet tea – organico, as they kept saying – after plopping our bags on the bare concrete floor. A little later when we were led down a rough path to a cabin, the absence of running water and electricity faded next to the joyful surprise at finding a nice bunk bed with clean sheets. Hey, it’s the little things that count. I slept like a baby in the pitch dark until the predawn when I woke with the campesinos to see the morning light come over the green dotted fog of the mountain sides.

We had started the day at eight in a makeshift meeting room in the hotel chapel with many of our union brothers as well as several new companeros from NGOs and the University. For hours one after another listed the issues in and around San Pedro Sula that needed attention and organizational activity: water, remittances, housing, public services. It was a long list delivered in lengthy and passionate speeches listened to respectfully by all interrupted only by the appearance of a Channel 39 TV reporter who had heard the discussion was going on and that I was in town. At noon we drove through some of the colonias including one fascinating development some of my union brothers showed me where the union had built the houses and the school. This was only minutes away from a new highrise condo development abutting one piece of a small creek in San Pedro Sula. Another sign down the road indicated the future would be filled with these luxury developments, the first in the city. Another five minutes away and we were looking at a squatters development along a larger riverbank where families had been forced after Hurricane Mitch’s devastation in Honduras, as still remained. Driving away we could see children swimming as their mothers washed their clothes in the calmer pools of the stream

Next stop was a quick lunch and visit with a woman and her family who had graciously invited us over for pico gallo in the Honduran style with red beans. The reason in the interconnected world of organizing: her sister had been a member of ACORN in the Queens. Anything she could do to help, just ask.

Though there seemed to be no hurry to the drive, and it was a good thing since construction and 18-wheelers had us parking for long stretches as we crossed the mountains on the good highway from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, we parked in Marcala in one of the barrios and followed the noise and music into a giant structure just in time for a young political theater company to begin their presentation. There were several hundred children and a score of adults in the crowd, as the moderator shouted, “Silencio!” over and over to gain attention. Suyapa explained to me that this was part of a celebration for the women in the community, but the theater company brought much more to it.

This was a well acted and rehearsed production by a half-dozen enthusiastic late teen or early 20′s actors. In the beginning a “generalito” – small general – with his lieutenant wanted everything to be gray, gray, gray, and the three citizens, two women and one man, lived in gray huts in fear. As the play developed to great humor and passion from the actors and increasingly the crowd as they warmed to the theme, the caricature soldiers in the face paint of Batman’s Joker gradually lost control. Singing and dancing would erupt and pull the people off of their knees to find that they could walk and be happy again. At the same time their huts turned from gray to white, pink, and green. A giant bride dressed in white appeared on stilts and danced along as well. A toy cannon exploded and led the soldier to defect to the people until the generalito was deflated with the air escaping from him like wind from a bag. More singing ensued. Children were pulled from the crowd. Marching and dancing. My summary doesn’t do the play or the skill and quality of the actors justice for this hour long presentation, but it was one of the few times where one had the feeling people were staying for the action and not the frijoles and tortillas passed out to all of us with plastic cups of weak coffee at the end of the show.

There may have been a fake election in Honduras to try to rightsize the military coup, but the scars will wear deep among these people. When the elected president announced on my first day in country that he was agreeing to go into exile in the Dominican Republic there was no celebration about his volunteering to take the first step to “reconciliation.” It seemed hollow, and this children’s play with its well practiced themes and smooth presentation was hardly designed for this one show, but was traveling around the country.

All of these things were on our minds as our eyes closed in the dark last night. We were staying at the unfinished compound organized as a project to support the campesinos in this area.

It was an honor and a gift to have lived this day!

Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Honduran unions

Teachers on Hunger Strike, Union Fighting Wholesale Repression

Colors and Dawn on the Marcala Mountains