There is a rumor that former President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva, when he was a candidate for his first presidential term, the big
international companies had forced him to sign a series of compromises that
would limit his social programs once he became president. So I was worried that
Brazil, being the economic power of Latin America, would be greatly affected by
the incidence of holding companies, if this were so, then what could be
expected of other countries with much less financial capacity and Political
weight as Colombia for example?
This situation brings me to
the memory of what is happening in Colombia, this is one of the longest teacher
stoppages of recent years, and the fundamental reason is not the salary, which
should be the reason for national unemployment, but Which has to do with
requesting greater contributions to the participatory system in education, and
this contemplates addressing other needs such as food for children, arrangement
of educational infrastructure such as school improvements, classroom expansion,
educational tools, The information and many other resources that are needed.
That's the problem. The
teachers are not facing President Santos or the minister of education, they are
facing nothing more and nothing less than the famous International Monetary
Fund and, as the cartoonists would say, their cronies, which are the World Bank
and the Inter-American Development Bank. Development.
Not only do these entities
exert pressure on heads of state in Latin America, but also the world's largest
investment firms such as Allianz Global Investors or JP Morgan, which, if not
controlled by governments, do have decisive influence over time To take
economic policy measures.
So the teachers in Colombia
are facing a monster, and although the union organizations have made calls
inviting the society to participate in the strike, the response has been as
usual warm, not to say cold, against the expectations and results that can be
generated from negotiations between teachers and the Colombian government.
If Santos continues to
reiterate that there is no money to meet the demands, it is simply because it
follows the guidelines of external entities for the effects of financial risks,
or, as an expert economist would say, to avoid a hypothetical quiebracracia,
that is, that the State must intervene when financial institutions go into
crisis.
Is it a utopia that the
teachers are pursuing? A socialist utopia, the neoliberals would say, a
capitalist utopia, the Socialists would say.
