Head of Mexico's Powerful Teachers' Union Arrested

[The Straight Story]

The head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union was arrested at an airport near Mexico City Tuesday for alleged embezzlement, with federal officials accusing her of using union funds to pay for plastic surgery, to buy a house in San Diego and even to pay her bill at Neiman Marcus.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said that Elba Esther Gordillo, who has led the 1.5 million-member National Union of Education Workers for 23 years, was detained in Toluca on charges that she embezzled 2 billion pesos (about $160 million) from union funds.

The office didn't say whether Gordillo, a colorful woman long seen as a kingmaker and power-behind-the-scenes in Mexico, was arriving or leaving Toluca airport, or whether she was handcuffed. Murrillo said two other people were also arrested by did not name them.

The arrest of the 68-year-old Gordillo marks the downfall of a woman who rose from being a school teacher to one of Mexico's most powerful political operators, displaying her opulence openly with designer clothes and bags, bodyguards, expensive cars and properties including a penthouse apartment in Mexico City's exclusive Polanco neighborhood. She has been widely lampooned for her many plastic surgeries and depicted in political cartoons as ghoulish.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/head-mexicos-powerful-teachers-union-detained-18603413


...
Showdown over Education Reform

While supporters of the law maintain that it will bring professionalism, order and higher standards to a teacher placement system notorious for graft and nepotism, educators counter that it will tie their job rights to standardized testing while failing to offer new pedagogical approaches to an educational system widely considered as riddled with gaping deficits.

Sailing through Congress prior to last year’s Christmas holiday break, the reform passed without the input of teachers, Patricia Meza Rendon, member of the executive committee of the Guerrero State Coordinator of Education Workers (CETEG), told FNS. “(Lawmakers) aren’t taking into account the teachers, researchers or parents who are in involved in education,” Meza charged.

In interviews with FNS, representatives of both the SNTE and the CETEG, which is affiliated with the National Education Workers Coordinator (CNTE) and functions as a large dissident group within the official SNTE, also asserted that the reform could entrench the fees Mexican parents pay to enroll and keep their children in public schools, even though free primary education is guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution, and further pry open the doors to privatization by giving school principals more power over fundraising and budgeting.

“You want an English teacher, Coca Cola might be the sponsor,” said SNTE activist Jose Nava.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february232013/mexico-education.php

[frazzled]

1. Are you suggesting these two stories have anything to do with each other?

Or is this just random tidbits of Mexican education news?

[The Straight Story]

3. It puts in it more context (nt)

[frazzled]

4. Sorry, but I'm not clear what that context is

Except for the fact that the head of the union got arrested for embezzling $160 million shortly after a new education reform bill was passed.

Are we going to discuss whether or not the woman was rightly arrested for embezzlement and corruption?
Or are we going to discuss whether the new Mexican education bill (the details of which are completely missing from the story) has merit?

They're two separate issues, as far as I can tell.

[The Straight Story]

5. I believe timing is interesting

Why so close to the change and not well before? It sounds odd, like maybe they sat on it.

Even the ABC news article picks up on it:


Gordillo's arrest recalled the 1989 arrest of another once-feared union boss, Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, known as "La Quina." The longtime head of Mexico's powerful oil workers union, Hernandez Galicia was arrested during the first months of the new administration of then-President Carlos Salinas.

In 1988, he criticized Salinas' presidential candidacy and threatened an oil workers' strike if Salinas privatized any part of the government oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. On Jan. 10, 1989, — about a month after Salinas took office — soldiers used a bazooka to blow down the door of Hernandez' home in the Gulf Coast city of Ciudad Madero.

Like Gordillo, Hernandez Galicia's power was believed to represent a challenge to the president, and his arrest was interpreted as an assertion of the president's authority. He was freed from prison after Salinas left office.

Murillo denied that Gordillo's arrest was politically motivated and said it could not be compared to Hernandez's case.

[frazzled]

6. Knock yourself out ...

I'm fresh out of tin foil myself.

I guess all those plastic surgeries and Neiman Marcus bills and condos and stuff were just made up?

[The Straight Story]

7. Ummmm nope...I am saying that it probably is true

but am guessing they knew long before now and waited for political reasons - so they weren't really that concerned over arresting her until it helped them the most. Not to mention it might put a chilling effect on those opposed.

Of course, it is up to a court to decide guilt in this case.

[frazzled]

9. Well, she's been on the job for 24 years, under different ruling parties

And this administration (PRI) is not even a few months old. Sure, maybe they wanted to finally put an end to her corruption, but didn't want it to affect the legislation. But unless the charges are baseless, it looks really bad. More details:

Some of the money was wired to accounts in Switzerland, he said, while other funds were used on plastic surgery. Some $2.1 million was spent at the Neiman Marcus store in San Diego, Calif.

Authorities arrested Gordillo, 68, when she arrived near Mexico City on private jet from San Diego. Gordillo maintains a $1.6 million home in La Jolla, a San Diego suburb. Among the questionable expenditures that caught the attention of investigators, Murillo Karam said, were hangar rental and aircraft maintenance in San Diego.

...

Opinion polls often rank Gordillo as the least popular of major political figures in Mexico. While not holding elected office currently, she has been both a senator and deputy in Congress. She's widely blamed for an educational system that has kept Mexican children scoring lower on standardized tests than most other countries of its size or importance.

Gordillo, who holds the lofty title of “president for life” of the 1.5 million-member teachers’ union, abandoned her unconditional support of the PRI in the last decade, when the PRI was out of power, and became a political broker, delivering votes to the parties and candidates of her choice.

...

Under Gordillo, who’s been in her position for 24 years, the union controlled the hiring of teachers. In some parts of Mexico, teachers’ jobs have been bought and sold, and the union rakes off money from salaries of phantom teachers.

Often called simply La Maestra, or The Teacher, Gordillo rose from humble origins in rural Chiapas state. She became the mistress of the then-boss of the union, Carlos Jonguitud Barrios, and was named to head the union in 1989 by then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

...

Murillo Karam said the investigation against Gordillo began when the financial intelligence unit of the Finance Secretariat detected irregularities in two of the 80 bank accounts linked to the union.

He said auditors later traced movements from those accounts to accounts in Switzerland and Lichtenstein listed under a shell company once controlled by Gordillo’s deceased mother. Some of the money was sent from Europe to pay bills at plastic surgery clinics and art galleries, he said.

Murillo said auditors had traced “only 10 percent” of the money that may have been siphoned off from union accounts.

...

Gordillo spent lavishly on her top underlings in the union. In 2006, she is believed to have taken 125 of them and their children on a seven-day Pacific cruise from Hawaii. In 2008, she bought 59 Hummers to give her aides in 2008, only to raffle them off when the media brought the purchase to light.

In December, Gordillo planned to take scores of union leaders on an all-expenses paid cruise to the Caribbean from Miami, but cancelled at the last minute when Pena Nieto’s supporters pushed approval of the educational reform through Congress.


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/26/3255893/mexico-arrests-elba-esther-gordillo.html#storylink=cpy

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. I will give yu more context.

This is not the first powerful union leader brought down with charges of events that at times the Federal government has trouble actually proving. The last one was the head of the electrical workers before the CFE central division was privatized and the Union busted.

The teachers union has been a thorn on the side of both PRI and PAN governments for at least 30 years...and leaders of the Oaxaca, Michoacan and Tabasco units have been brought down after leading strikes lasting quite a while demanding better pay and end to this privatization.

There is more, there is a planton Permanente, think Occupy, in the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City from the SNTE ongoing for three years.

Like that context?

Yes, Mexico has a stronger and more active union movement, and yes Fidel Veazques, the head of the Pemex Union for decades, became a wealthy man, but the story is far more complex than just corruption. Union busting is accelerating in Mexico, and changes to art 120 of the Constitution, weakening labor, are the result of neo liberal policies.

So how about some dose of gray to go with that back and white certitude there?

[OceanEcosystem]

2. Not all teachers' unions are good. N/t.