El Mundo es un Pañuelo: The World is a Handkerchief
Handkerchief display at Museum of Drug Policy lobby. Photo credit: Open Society Foundation
Deyanira Castilleja (Deya) had been a TWB member for several years before she inquired about volunteering to translate our teaching materials into Spanish. Two years later, she was changing lives and leading our emerging Maestros Sin Fronteras network. She adapted our Certificate of Teaching Mastery to meet regional needs. She developed our Peace Education program in partnership with the Baja California Department of Education to create Zones of Peace for 12,000 teachers at 1500 K–8 schools. And she founded a nonprofit organization, Instituto Mejores Niños, in Saltillo, Mexico, to promote early childhood education for economically disadvantaged families. Let me emphasize, once again, that she did this as a volunteer.
I was sitting with Deya in a café. I had just seen her brilliant presentation about the power of Mexican teacher networks at a conference sponsored by one of Mexico’s most prestigious universities, Tecnológico de Monterrey. Deya had described how Mexico’s rapid rise in educational enrollment was encouraging, but its alarming dropout rate felt like an educational sieve. “Getting them into school is one thing. Keeping them in school and fostering skills they need to pursue education for a lifetime is something else entirely. We’ve accelerated double shifts to accommodate more students, but we pay a steep price: schools can no longer be local hubs for after-school activities. I don’t want that picture outside my window.”
She had challenged the assembled: “Where’s our energy for change? Why do people always volunteer to travel to Mexico to help poor Mexicans? Our brains are here. I am not going to settle for the pity of others, handouts, stagnation or apathy.”
Deya described the unacceptably low number of students aged 18 and older in Mexico who held a bachelor’s degree and were considering a teaching career. She worried aloud, “Too many pre-service teachers fail their job-placement exam. Even more, a tiny percent of working teachers pass an exam that would give them a pay raise!”
Mismanagement or extortion of funds distributed to states was rampant, she explained, mincing no words. She bristled when she spoke about the teachers’ union, Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE). Mandatory membership required 1% of one’s salary. Elba Esther Gordillo, the union president, was reputed to have been appointed for life and could make or break a presidency. Money laundering, embezzlement, wire fraud, Swiss bank accounts, plastic surgery, private planes, mansions, Hummers handed out like trick-or-treat candy in return for loyalty and favors, a seven-figure credit card bill at Neiman Marcus. No teacher believed Gordillo or the teachers’ union had teachers’ best interests at heart.
As far as Deya was concerned, allá donde fueres, haz lo que vieres. Wherever you go, do what you see. There was plenty of injustice in plain sight. Teachers and students did not feel safe on their way to, or at, school. Drug-related violence led to an unprecedented number of school closings. Mexico’s homegrown version of implosive terrorism was rapidly reversing gains in every area of education. “Teachers say they’re being extorted, kidnapped and intimidated by local gangs. They’re refusing to return to their classrooms until the government does something to protect them.”
Over our coffee, I asked Deya about Mexico’s ambitious new national plan for education in areas in desperate need of attention: curriculum reform, greater autonomy for schools to focus on student learning, new governance structures that emphasize stakeholder participation and school-level planning, multiple pathways for teacher career development, and a greater focus on equity and inclusion. The plan ticked off all the checkboxes for promising educational research: twenty-first-century skills, critical thinking, digital competency, socio-emotional sensitivity, and the education of the whole child.
Lavar puercos con jabón es perder tiempo y jabón. Washing a pig with soap is to lose time and soap.
“Empty promises,” she said. “It’s trickle-down rhetoric. Education is political and Mexico’s parties run the show, so it’s ridiculous to hold our breath and expect change to come…They say we’re decentralized, but the union controls 31 of the 32 states. I’m all for career pathway reforms. They’re long overdue, but top positions are bought, sold, traded and handed down. They say they are reforming teacher preparation, but when? Where? Stakeholder governance? Great idea. They will never let that happen because officials would have to be held accountable, so they turn the tables and evaluate teachers on artificial appraisals. This is a special type of cruelty: don’t prepare teachers, don’t support them, don’t foster innovation, don’t solve problems. And when it does not go well, you have a scapegoat: teachers.”
Creerse la última Coca-Cola del desierto. To think of oneself as the last Coca-Cola in the desert.
“Deya,” I said, “this sounds like an impossible mountain to climb.”
She smiled. “Absolutely not,” she said. “We must vent, even rage, against hypocrisy and inequality. Next, we climb that mountain together.”
Teachers passing the café noticed her and waved. She waved them in. “Getting mad together, that’s when the fun starts!” Teachers pulled chairs to our table. She continued, “There are some real efforts to support reform. More transparency. More equipment in schools. More resources for girls to study science. More parent education, early-childhood programs, literacy programs.” I was confused. I thought she was about to continue her rant about more of Mexico’s problems.
She shifted to, “But they’re just pilots. They have no intention to scale them. The day after the cameras leave, in comes the steamroller of old habits, influence, fear, corruption and indifference. The emerging reform efforts are promising only if teachers are at the table.” Teachers nodded. ¡Así es! ¡Exacto! Yes, exactly!
“Deya,” I said. “For someone so outspoken about the problems here, how come you come off as so optimistic?”
She beamed. “Ella habla sin pelos en la lengua.” She speaks without hairs on the tongue (i.e. speak candidly, frankly). “Just because I am angry, that doesn’t mean I am unhappy. I am happy because we’re making progress.” A teacher gave her a high-five.
Teachers have embraced the Spanish version of the Certificate of Teaching Mastery because it is theirs. In turn, they have created self-paced and online learning opportunities fortified and reinforced by peer support and mentorships. Because of Deya, they search within their communities for cultural and contextual gems. If school leadership does not support them, their social networks serve as a platform for professional development.
* * *
Deya had prior plans to see her parents the following day, but had already arranged a visit to Plaza Hidalgo in downtown Mexico City. Sima Yazdani, a senior technology leader and Chief Data Scientist at Cisco Systems, joined me. Sima is an expert in collaborative knowledge building and discovery, and a pioneer in information modeling, machine learning and semantic ontologies.
So, what’s a multiple patent holder and technology superstar like her doing in a place like this and with a ragtag organization like Teachers Without Borders? As part of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, high-level employees had been placed in local and global community organizations to provide strategic guidance, promote best practices, and build capacities that help these organizations have a greater impact. Cisco had partially funded this project in Mexico and provided Flip Video cameras to teachers to record and share their lessons. It is one thing to offer a grant to a community or nonprofit organization. It is another to immerse oneself in an organization’s daily life for a year.
Sima combines technical brilliance with a deep commitment to global inclusion and diversity, social justice, and global awareness about humanitarian crises affecting women and youth.
Ringed by shops and restaurants and anchored by an imposing municipal hall and a majestic church, the Plaza was alive with shoppers, lovers and families, people stooping down to hand their children ice-cream cones. Police paced about, their automatic rifles bouncing from their bulletproof vests. Pigeons typed on discarded cobs of grilled corn.
The public square was a soundtrack of public conversation, popular songs hand-cranked by organilleros (organ grinders), baritone sax riffs from a free jazz concert, and children chasing each other in their parents’ T-shirts smeared with paint.
It was the week before Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). To celebrate the holiday, Mexicans mourn those who have passed by visiting cemeteries, where they sweep away debris from a special plot and leave marigolds. Families gather and eat sugarcoated, doughy pan de muerto (bread of the dead). Neighbors visit each other, gossip, and honor La Calavera Catrina, “The Elegant Skull,” by making clothes to fit tiny skeletons that often satirize contemporary political figures.
This year in Hidalgo Square, Día de los Muertos took on a different tone. As we rounded a corner, we heard strident pronouncements from a megaphone about gang deaths, unsafe communities and drug wars. We navigated around pop-up libraries, bins of free clothes, a circle of tents, and cardboard signs reading:
Si no nos dejan soñar, no les dejaremos dormir. If they don’t let us dream, we won’t let them sleep.
Me indigna la promesa y no sucede nunca. I’m outraged by the promise that never happens.
An assembly line of teenagers stapled and whitewashed crosses and tossed them onto a pile for others to space evenly on the sidewalk to represent a two-dimensional graveyard. Volunteers handed out water.
Sitting in an arc of benches, a group of people were embroidering messages on handkerchiefs for each person killed by gun violence. Many told an individual story, along with the birthday, date of death and the handkerchief maker’s phone number. Some included flowers, lyrics or a favorite symbol. Upon completion, each handkerchief was passed along the line. People nodded, smiled, cried and clipped them to a clothesline crisscrossing a section of the square. There were dozens of them, fluttering in a light afternoon breeze like a Mexican version of Tibetan flags:
[Nombre] que transitaba por las calles de la colonia altavista y fue ultimado a bolazos por un grupo de sujetos armados. [Name] was walking through the streets of the Altavista neighborhood and was shot to death by a group of armed individuals.
Some made statements:
No son cifras, tienen nombre: hijos, abuelos, hermanos, hermanas, amigos. They are not numbers, they have names: children, grandparents, brothers, sisters, friends.
One asked:
¿Dónde estás? Where are you?
A young woman noticed our curiosity and approached us. She explained that she was a member of the organizing group “Rojas Fuentes” (Red Sources), a group organized “to build a collective memorial made by citizens and a culture of peace.”58 She encouraged us to sit with the others and sew one of our own. Her voice was kind, solid and accessible.
She held up one of the linen handkerchiefs by its corners. A wooden hoop stretched the fabric in place, revealing a blood-red stitch halfway through a poem. She told us that her group would continue its project every day through the end of the year, then replicate it elsewhere. She offered me a starter handkerchief. I asked for the name of the person I would honor. I struggled with the stitching. A grandmother came to my rescue. She whispered something to the others, who promptly held their hands over their mouths to keep themselves from breaking out into uproarious laughter at my incompetence. Sima, of course, took to it instantly.
Laughter, yet so much pain. Personally, I do not know of someone cut down in Mexico’s drug wars. It did not seem to matter. Over my shoulder, a sign read: “Todos somos Juarez” (We are all Juarez). Edward Steichen would have been pleased.
We called Deya. “Get her name and phone number,” she said. “I’ll talk to her. We’ll put this activity in our curriculum and share their messages and pictures of the handkerchiefs.”
I asked the organizer, “Are you a teacher?”
Over the years, I’ve often popped this question to strangers: truck drivers in Vietnam, Pakistani scientists, South African salesclerks and American servers at diners. Some respond with, “How did you know?” Others are surprised, say they have never considered the idea and ask why I raised it. She answered cordially, “I’m not a teacher in the formal sense. It was kind of you to ask.” I explained that she had a plan she had executed beautifully.
Not a formal teacher, I thought, but someone with valuable information to share. A neighborhood group gathered to read these white flags of despair. And yet, there was a palpable sense of tragic, collective intimacy here, even hope. We too are a multitude. This is our world, our pain. We shall not be defeated. We shall wipe our tears and educate for safety and peace. El mundo es un pañuelo: The world is a handkerchief.
Deya found her in Hidalgo Square the next day.
* * *
Years after my conversation with Deya, Elisa Bonilla-Rius, an Antonio Madero Visiting Scholar with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, acknowledged the research-driven scholarship that has underpinned Mexico’s educational reform initiatives and the challenges that remain.59
Progress, indeed, is underway, yet one must ask: how might measurable change take hold in a country of a quarter-million schools, where 62% of children reach secondary school, but 45% drop out? Where inclusion has been a protracted barrier for communities speaking 60-plus Indigenous languages? How might Mexico enlist the wisdom of the nonformal education sector? Address gender and poverty inequality, inertia, intransigence, corruption and entrenched power? Chart student achievement within the situated realities of their lives? How to engage the teachers’ union to protect those who take risks?
Deya has been all over those questions but always returns to: “It has always been about the teachers. Find the great ones and the promising ones and remove obstacles so they can do their jobs.” She has been doing just that, ever since, convinced that teachers can fling open their windows onto a world they have created. All they need is a leader from among their peers. Deya is one of many such leaders.
In 2018, the winner of the Mexican presidential election campaigned on “canceling the education reform.” In 2019, a rollback initiative was underway. In 2020, COVID-19 stopped everything in its tracks. Setbacks mean nothing to Deya. The years ahead are promising indeed.
La vida empieza al final de tu zona de confort: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
