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The Snte, Elba Esther Gordillo and the Administration of Calderón Carlos Ornelas

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The Snte, Elba Esther Gordillo and the Administration of Calderón Carlos Ornelas THEMATIC ESSAY THE SNTE, ELBA ESTHER GORDILLO AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF CALDERÓN CARLOS ORNELAS Carlos Ornelas is a professor in the department of education and communication at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Xochimilco campus. Calzada del Hueso 1100, Colonia Villa Quietud, CP 04960. E-MAIL: [email protected] Abstract: Although the National Union of Workers in Education (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación–SNTE) no longer has the monopoly of representing the teaching profession, and in spite of movements that challenge the leadership of the group’s president, the group continues to be the most powerful union organization in Mexico. Its power extends to other areas of political life, bureaucratic institutions, and to an even greater degree, to the administration of basic education. One might believe that the SNTE and its president, Elba Esther Gordillo, have become more powerful under the protection of President Felipe Calderón, yet they face new challenges. This article analyzes the corporatist practices of the SNTE and the institutional consequences for the Secretariat of Public Education, especially in terms of the behaviors of the bureaucratic cadres. During the analysis, theoretical notions for explaining the case are discussed. Key words: basic education, power, unionism, educational policy, Mexico. Reason cannot become transparent to itself as long as men act as members of an organization that lacks reason.1 (Horkheimer, 1976:219) Introduction Many analysts believed that the wave of neoliberal economic reforms that appeared in Latin America in the 1980s would reduce the power of the unions, whose influence had grown through state expansion, economic protectionism, a rigid labor market, and political protection (Murillo, 2001). However, judging from the political evolution of Mexico during recent years, the National Union of Workers in Education (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación—SNTE) is successfully challenging that expectation. Although changes in union leadership occurred in the late 1980s, not only has the chain of reforms from the term of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari survived, but union members have also enjoyed improved income and benefits, and union leaders have more canonries. While the SNTE no longer has the monopoly of representing the teaching profession, and in spite of movements that challenge the leadership of the group’s president, the group continues to be the most powerful union organization in Mexico. Its power extends to other areas of political life, bureaucratic institutions (like the Institute of Social Security and Services and of Government Workers) (Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado—ISSSTE), and to an even greater degree, to the administration of basic education. The source of power for the SNTE or more precisely, for the dominant group that is concentrated in its National Executive Committee (Comité Ejecutivo Nacional—CEN) is illegitimate; although institutionalized, it did not arise from the organization itself but was granted by the regime of the Mexican Revolution. Even though the SNTE was created from borrowed power, it attained—because of Mexican corporatism, which is vertical and authoritarian—a notable degree of autonomy from government. In the 1950s, the SNTE implemented a long-term strategy to colonize the governing structures of basic education (Ornelas, 2006). This mediatized the action of the authorities, distanced teachers from education, and transformed teachers into colonizers who infused their tradition and nature into the bureaucratic functioning of the Secretariat of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública—SEP) and other organizations in the states. In spite of the employment and economic progress made during the administration of President Vicente Fox and the victory in the 2006 elections upon consolidating the registration of the New Alliance Party (Partido Nueva Alianza— Panal), sponsored by the SNTE, the political appetite of the Gordillo camarilla seems to be insatiable. One could believe that today, under the protection of President Felipe Calderón, the SNTE and its president, Elba Esther Gordillo, are in a situation that is close to perfect: their power seems to be unlimited and the agreement they made with President Fox has been extended and broadened in the new administration. Their collusion was made manifest in December of 2006, when President Calderón designated Fernando González Sánchez, Gordillo’s son-in-law, as the undersecretary of basic education, and appointed Luis Enrique Sánchez Gómez, another loyal follower of Gordillo, to the Federal Administration of Educational Services for the Federal District. If the argument is true that an alliance exists between President Calderón and the SNTE, one should ask if this alliance will be sustained during the president’s time in office, and if the government will be able to place limits on the ambitions of the group that controls the SNTE. This association could be ruptured by the old rivalry between modernizing sectors and traditional SEP sectors, the growth of dissident groups within the union, or the modernizing ideas of civil organizations. No coherent, complete theory provides plausible solutions to questions that imply speculation and reasoning more than empirical proof. It is not about being a fortune teller—a heretical profession in academia—but about carrying out an exercise in imagination and political sociology (Mills, 1961). In order to provide a basis for that exercise, an analysis is made of the corporatist practices of the SNTE and the institutional consequences in the SEP, especially the behaviors of the bureaucratic cadres. On the way, theoretical notions to explain the case are presented. Unique Corporatism and Political Colonialism No general theory of government offers satisfactory solutions to all practical situations subject to analysis. The abstract concept of state refers to a society’s type of political organization, to the institutions within that organization, and to the relations established among individual citizens as well as among the government bodies in that society. Academic essays refer to democratic, authoritarian, benevolent, evaluating, dictatorial, or corporatist states (cf. Carnoy, 1984). The postulate could be developed that no government exists without adjectives. The Mexican Constitution of 1917 incorporated many of the traits of the democratic state (or liberal democratic state, as defined by Bobbio, 1989). It instituted the separation and balance of powers (executive, legislative, and judicial), the election of government officials and legislators through universal, secret voting (the main demand behind the Mexican Revolution), and basic freedoms (of thought, expression, assembly, association, and movement). The Constitution of 1917 also ratified the notion of a secular, lay state. With the constitutional reforms of 1946, specifically the third article, the state specifies that democracy will be understand as “[...] not simply a legal structure and a political regime, but a system founded on constant economic, social and cultural improvement for the people”. But the winning group in the Mexican Revolution upset the democratic political organization embodied in the Constitution and implemented a corporatist regime. Although it has its origins in the Middle Age system of a layered society, corporatism as a method of political organization in government flourished in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, and in Falangist Spain (Incisa, 1981). In the western democracies, after the First World War and the consolidation of the so-called “benefactor state”, group interests, social classes, and regions began to be represented more by their leaders and less by elected officials. National government became the most dynamic agent of development, and within a few decades subordinated sub-national political entities. In Latin America, where democracy had not been consolidated, the model seduced dictators and charismatic leaders. In Mexico, the constitutional arrangements varied little. Corporatism, according to Panitch (1980:162), was not an ideology, but a way of organizing—the technology of power—the relations between employers and workers in advanced capitalism. Critics on the left describe corporatist institutions as promoters of “internal colonialism”, in which the head of state dominates (in the sense of bureaucratic subordination) the other powers and regions.2 From the point of view of social power, corporations (political parties, unions, schools, public institutions) were the principal elements of social cohesion and their representatives had preponderance over territorial authority. The populist regime of the Mexican Revolution fused the supply of certain benefits for organized workers, yet even more for its leaders, in exchange for submitting to the control of the official party machinery (Córdova, 1973). Real populism and corporatism subverted formal democracy. According to Schmitter (1974:93-94), corporatism is the opposite of democratic pluralism. In his words, corporatism is “a system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders
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