Teacher Appreciation Day May 18, 2023
“If we do not know anything, then everything is complicated.”
Noam Chomsky
Monday is Teacher Appreciation Day throughout Mexico, and what better way to honor the teachers of our children than to close the schools. The Australian girls across the way just found out that they have the day off, as they sing from their rooms the songs they dream of recording. I suppose I have cause to celebrate as well, as Calle Colon is closed to car traffic, again. This occasion is to accommodate the legion of teachers that are coming to the city to gather, quietly protest, and enjoy complementary jamon-manchego tortas and water.
By noon, my street already looks like a refugee camp. I have to struggle just to step from my front door to the sidewalk. Beneath large makeshift tarps that have been strung across the street, teachers young and old find a seat on any available curb or step. I pardon myself as I displace a middle age woman from her stoop, but I get not even a nod, not from her nor any of the others sitting against my front door. They do not seem at all happy to be here. These teachers, here with small children in many cases, are definitely not feeling the appreciation. They look like they are waiting to get on the last ferry to Quien Sabe.
I say, “I am a teacher, too (I can only speak in the present tense), in a preparatory school. Science. Chemistry.” Exquisite Spanish.
One man nods slightly, then another one, but that is about it. When a man in blue jeans and a cowboy hat walks to the center of the tarp and pulls out a clipboard with pencil, I know it is time to take my leave. He starts shouting names. “Presente,” says a voice in the crowd. “Jimenez.” “Presente,” says another. The union leader is taking attendance.
The tarps and occasional tents continue for blocks, all the way up Calle Armenta y Lopez and as far as Teatro Alcala, stretching three blocks wide to the Zocalo. There must be more than a thousand teachers here, with plenty of tarp-shade but nowhere to properly sit. This part of the city is thick with urban grime, yet people adapt, spreading picnics, looking at cell phones, eating snacks, playing cards, but seldom reading a book. Even though tomorrow is a school day, no one here has apparently brought any homework. One or two groups have taken the opportunity for an impromptu faculty meeting; but, for the most part, folks seem to be just waiting and staring.
They assemble in clusters beneath handmade signs that indicate their district number back home. Tourists in regional costume with cameras, meanwhile, wander through the mess as if they are experiencing a native festival, but aside from the food stands that are always around, this is not in any sense a street fair. It is a temporary holding camp, and most are not leaving until tomorrow, school day or no.
It is likely that many feel coerced to be here for the entire day, but such is the life of a union member. Job security demands attendance because unions require numbers. As to what might be accomplished with such a mass action rally, I can think of an audience of one: AMLO will be receiving the drone footage, and he has already demonstrated his special fondness for the southern states. The new highway to the coast is almost complete, and Guerrero and Oaxaca are each receiving new hospitals, thanks to the recent sale of the presidential jet. Surely there are a few extra pesos left over for the teachers to take a bite.
The sale of that jet is its own ridiculous story. AMLO took an instant dislike to the ostentatious plane when he became president. As a man of the people, he prefers to fly commercial. So the Boeing 787, purchased in 2012 by a man AMLO detests, his predecessor Felipe Calderon, was placed on the auction block in 2018 and immediately had a buyer. But the winning bid evidently had ties to a Colombia cartel, so the sale was quickly scuttled. Then came a lottery, which also failed. Most people frankly do not want to own or maintain a Boeing 787—except, as it turns out, the proud and fully satisfied President of Tajikistan, who no longer flies commercial.
The next morning, there are still some teachers milling about outside the Palacio Municipal, while others line up on the sidewalk to sign their names to a list on a clipboard, manned by two union reps at a card table with a lady and a bicycle cart, in exchange for a half-kilo of tortillas for the long drive home. May the appreciations never end.