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Guatemalan Teachers: No
Privatization
Teachers took to the streets of
Guatemala City on Wednesday to
demand socioeconomic
improvements and protest
government plans to privatize
education.
At least 10,000 teachers took
part in the largest
demonstration of the year,
staged from the Ministry of
Education to the Congress of the
Republic.
Union leader Hugo Efrain Bareda
described a government-promoted
Education Reform bill currently
under discussion in Congress as
a violation of the Constitution.
Romualdo Maldonado, from the
teachers union in western
Quetzaltenango, said the
education reform is part of
neoliberal measures to curb the
State s role.
Guatemala has about 90,000 state
teachers in the 17,000 public
schools countrywide.
State teachers have declared
themselves in permanent assembly
and threatened new steps if the
government fails to back down
from its neoliberal, privatizing
program.
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