Arrest of Mexico Teacher Union Boss Seen as a Warning to Foes of Reform Tim Johnson - McClatchy Newspapers
go to original February 28, 2013

In this photo released by Mexico's federal court system, the head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union, Elba Esther Gordillo, stands behind bars as she appears for a hearing at a federal prison in Mexico City, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Mexico's most powerful woman was formally charged with a massive embezzlement scheme on Wednesday, standing grim-faced behind bars live on national television in what many called a clear message that the new government is asserting its authority. (AP/Juzgado Sexto de Distrito en Procesos Penales Federales)

MONTERREY, Mexico - By jailing Mexico’s most powerful woman, President Enrique Pena Nieto removed a potential political obstacle and fired a warning shot at other union leaders not to get in the way of the ruling party.

Mexico’s political world still rippled Wednesday from the imprisonment of Elba Esther Gordillo, the 68-year-old “president for life” of the 1.5 million-member national teachers’ union, the largest such union in the hemisphere.

Gordillo’s arrest Tuesday on corruption charges heartened Mexicans who widely envied her opulent lifestyle, feared her power as a political kingmaker, loathed her stranglehold on the struggling public schools and referred to her by her nickname, La Maestra, or The Teacher.

“Elba, the Teacher, was toppled,” wrote a columnist for the newspaper Tabasco Hoy, Leobardo Perez Marin. “Nothing is impossible!”

Gordillo, who’s ruled the powerful teachers’ union for nearly a quarter century, was the mightiest of the union bosses opposed to education, financial and energy reforms that Pena Nieto proposed when he took over the presidency Dec. 1.

Her detention in the Santa Martha Acatitla women’s prison may galvanize support for the government as it implements reforms, enacted Monday, that give it the ability to hire and fire teachers from the union and set minimum standards for classrooms.

But some analysts and education reformers saw the arrest as more about sweeping away opponents of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party – known as the PRI, for its Spanish initials – than about changing education.

Read the whole story at The Miami Herald

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