MEXICO: EDUCATION REFORM PASSES SENATE
Last Wednesday September 4, the Mexican Senate passed a major education reform which was launched by President Enrique Pena Nieto in late 2012. The measure was overwhelmingly opposed by teachers of the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE), a dissident political fraction countering the SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, the mainstream teachers’ union).
Despite teachers’ demonstrations in Mexico City for the last two weeks, the Senate voted 102-22 in favor of the Law of Professional Teaching Service. The main parties´ lawmakers supported the measure (the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party –PRI-, the National Action Party –PAN-, and the Party of the Democratic Revolution -PRD-), while members from PT and Movimiento Ciudadano voted against it.
The plan was introduced within the framework of the Pacto por México, an agreement inked by Mexico’s three main political parties, and regards a standardized system of test-based hiring and promotion that would give the government the tools to break teacher’s unions controlling the school staff.
BRAZIL: CONCERNS AFTER SPYING SCANDAL
Last June, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed CIA documents showing that the National Security Agency (NSA) had access to the entire communication network of Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff.
On hearing the news, the national Brazilian government started to work out some possible solutions, such as developing a national “anti-snooping” email system that provides an alternative to the likes of Gmail and Hotmail, other solutions include creating an intranet to process sensitive information requiring social networks to keep customer data within Brazilian borders: installing network submarine cables to link Brazil with Europe and Africa (to reduce the transmission of data worldwide passing underneath the United States), and demanding a written response to Washington by the end of this week.
CHILE: 40 YEARS AFTER LAST DICTATORSHIP
Four decades after the Sept. 11 bombing of the La Moneda presidential palace by British Hawker Harrier jets aiming to topple Salvador Allende’s socialist government, Chile is fighting against old and new governmental structures.
The first socialist to become president in the West through open elections, Allende launched several measures –including collectivization of industries, agrarian reforms and the nationalization of the copper industry- that the military government disbanded in two decades.
Today, after 40 years, the entire country is shaken by protesting teachers, workers and students who continue to struggle with the legacy of Augusto Pinochet’s era.