The sale of teaching jobs, a longstanding practice in Mexico’s education system, was a lucrative business for organized crime in Michoacán, the governor revealed this week.
Silvano Aureoles Conejo told an education conference that the head of the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar cartel) was involved in the practice.
Servando “La Tuta” Gómez Martínez, a teacher himself who was even on the state payroll until 2011 while running his criminal operations, sold teaching positions for as much as 300,000 pesos (US $16,000), Aureoles said.
Organized crime sold thousands of job in what became a lucrative business, he said.
Gómez’s involvement came to an end when he was arrested in 2015.
Eliminating the practice, and that of inheriting positions of teachers who died, was a key element of the 2013 education reforms.
The focus of the governor’s speech was the state’s education funding crisis, which came to a head earlier this year when protesting teachers shut down the railway system, causing billions of pesos in losses.
He said it began in 2014 when the state’s share of teachers’ salaries shot up from 10% to 40%. Aureoles called the situation unsustainable and said the state’s teachers were justly dissatisfied because they were not always getting paid.
Source: El Universal (sp)
