3/4. #NewWorldReport The most powerful unions in South America are the teachers’s unions. Senadora Maria Fernanda Cabal. @MariaFdaCabal. Joseph Humire @JMHumire @SecureFreeSoc https://www.securefreesociety.org

Photo: Guatemala, carved stone

3/4. #NewWorldReport  The most powerful unions in South America are the teachers’s unions. Senadora Maria Fernanda Cabal. @MariaFdaCabal. Joseph Humire @JMHumire  @SecureFreeSoc    https://www.securefreesociety.org  
 

". . . The demands made by the teachers—better salaries, more resources, a rejection of school privatization—in many ways mirror the seminal issues raised by teachers’ unions in the United States. But the aggressive, confrontational public acts embraced by many labor organizations in Central and South America as a way to sway government policies reveals a type of militancy rarely seen in teachers’ unions in the States. Some experts, in fact, believe that teachers in Latin America are becoming more radical."

". . . Last year in Guatemala, about 60,000 public school teachers went on strike for more than a month, calling for salary increases, as well as more textbooks and repairs to crumbling school buildings. At the height of the walkout, students, families, and indigenous groups joined teachers in shutting down the main airport and border crossings for several days.

       "The frequent teachers’ strikes and level of populist anger against some governments in Latin America is being driven in part, some observers say, by a broader convergence of social movements resisting “neoliberal” economic policies."