Better schools to stop shouting “enough to kill our students”

The situation in Rosario is dramatic. The drug gangs seem to own the territory. The shooting at the Messi family’s supermarket gave the issue global significance. The burst of a machine gun fired from a car against four children playing on the sidewalk and claiming the life of Maxi Jerez, a pupil of school 1344 who was just 11 years old, showed a degree of brutality and contempt for life that fills us with distress. There are already six minors murdered this year and in 2022 there will be more than thirty.

On Monday, the flags were at half mast in the schools and also at our flag monument. In the schools, a letter was read which tried to put words in the face of so much violence. In the afternoon, after the child’s burial, a group of residents held a town hall in the neighborhood of Los Pumitas and did what the police and the authorities do not do: they confronted the gangs drugs, destroying neighborhood bunkers. Then, various threats circulated on the networks.

Government authorities reiterated condolences, regrets and known explanations. On Tuesday, President Alberto Fernández announced the dispatch of new contingents of gendarmes and the arrival of the army to take over tasks in the neighborhoods. As teachers, we are compelled to express our deep concern.

In September 2014, we were moved by news that came from Mexico. A group in which 43 students traveled from Ayotzinapa to the Federal District he had been detained by army troops and police. In a fact that is difficult to explain, the 43 students disappeared and were never heard from again.

The following year, a group of parents were in Rosario as part of a caravan through the countries of the region in search of solidarity in the struggle for the students to appear alive.

Talking with these family members and reading various documents gave me a better understanding of a terrifying reality: in Mexico, the drug cartels had taken control of the situation. The complicity of the political power (with the then president Peña Nieto at the head) and the judicial power was evident. The various police departments were an important part of the business.

Everything had taken a leap since 2006 when the president Felipe Calderón ordered the army to be part of the fight against drug traffickers. Then the death toll reached devastating levels. They already total more than 300,000! In some years, the figure exceeded 30,000. Today, the military is Mexico’s main partner in the massive drug smuggling business to the United States.

A few days ago I was interviewed by a radio station in Córdoba about the situation in the schools of Rosario and they recalled a 2011 report to a Mexican teacher: the classmate recounted a school day during which she had to throw herself on the floor together with her pupils who were barely 7 years old for the shootings they received and that on this occasion it occurred to her to contain the little ones squatting under the desks in singing the song they learned for those days.

In this painful parallel with this sister country which appears to us as a terrible “moving mirror”, it would no doubt be necessary to incorporate, as a fundamental and structuring element, the irresistible growth of poverty and inequality at the two extremes of our Latin America in the veins more open every day.

Drug-related violence has long taken hold in the streets of Rosario. Some places are particularly punished (usually the poorest neighborhoods) but the whole region suffers from the gravity of the situation as shown by the widespread shooting at the Rocuzzo supermarket.

The first claim, natural, almost automatic, was the one with the greatest police presence. To protect themselves, the city locks up their house, leaving only the essentials. And the person who is forced to travel to get to work, school, shopping or elsewhere needs to see a patroller who will take care of them in the face of the immense feeling of helplessness.

The political power was not deaf to this assertion. Investments in new police mobiles are announced every year, the incorporation of hundreds of agents into the police, the purchase of sophisticated weapons and, on several occasions, the “landing” of federal troops (Federal Police, Gendarmerie , Prefecture). With this announcement from the president, the eighth national system is complete. But the result is clear: The growth of security forces has been in clear parallel with the growth of drug gangs.of violence, insecurity and death. In 2022, two records coincided: the 288 deaths that occurred in the year with the greatest presence of national security forces in our region. How not to draw conclusions? How can we think that the same logic of intervention will bring different results?

No one can ignore the full role of the police in crime. Every neighbor knows where the bunkers are. And the arrival at the bunker of the patrolman who comes to seek his part in the affair is a repeated postcard. All the gangs in the area are drug police gangs.

But the chain of responsibilities does not stop at the neighborhood. The entire police hierarchy is part of the company. Also, inevitably, there are responsibilities and complicity in the political power and in the judicial power.

We demand that they take care of us. To us, to our boys. Getting in and out of school cannot be a risky task. But we don’t want to see an escalation of the repressive response that will only bring more deaths. The answer must be sought elsewhere.

In many areas of the city, there is a lack of everything. There is a lack of water, a lack of light, a lack of paving, a lack of hygiene, a lack of lighting, a lack of public transport.

There is also a lack of schools in good conditions, there is a lack of clubs, there is a lack of recreational and cultural opportunities for our children, there is a lack of health, there is a lack of decent work for young people.

We don’t want to continue moving forward in the mirror of Mexico. We don’t want to mourn another boy who falls under the bullet of drug traffickers. In our neighborhoods there is no need for more police or soldiers, we need conditions so that our boys and girls live better and can imagine building another future.

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