Mexico City: Do you wonder where the children's education funds are going? They've been washed out to sea.

If you can recall this post in which I state that the Mexican government spends 93.6% of all funding for basic and intermediate education on teachers' salaries and benefits, here is where some of that money is going.

The SNTE (national teachers union) leadership and their families, as well as past SNTE directors and their families, are all in Hawaii. And they got there on the cruise ship "Pride of Hawaii".

The "Pride of Hawaii"

The "Bistro" on board the "Pride of Hawaii"
While the exact number of SNTE brass, ex-brass and families on the cruise has not yet been published, you've got to figure that there are about a hundred of them, or so. At $3000 to $5000 each, that's $300,000 to $500,000 dollars, 3.3 to 5.5 million pesos. The SNTE spokesman claims that all of the money was "financed" and that the SNTE brass, ex-brass and their families have, "just like any human being, the right" to take an all expenses paid cruise to Hawaii.

Here is a group of Americans who are also taking a little respite from their daily cares. Only they are in Mexico building a school for the deaf in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas. This group is from, I think, Gulf Shores, Alabama.



Just cruisin' along.

I wonder if these good folks could have used a little of that 300,000-500,000 dollars.

The "Bistro" at Rio Bravo school for the deaf.

They finally had their own school! The excited children emerged from the school bus and dashed to the new classrooms. Their eyes lit up and smiles spread across their faces as they darted in and out of the three rooms. They discovered walls decorated with posters and pictures. There were desks and blackboards, cabinets stocked with school supplies and cubicles with a new set of school supplies for each student. This building even had an indoor toilet and a teacher's lounge.

An indoor toilet and a teachers lounge? That was surely a waste of money better spent in Waikiki.

The SNTE issued a press release attacking Reforma for divulging the Hawaii cruise, accusing the newspaper of "a long and intense campaign against the teachers union, its leadership and their families" for which "there is no good reason whatsoever."

It just never stops down here, does it?

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, Pale Horse Galleries, gifts, collectibles, Mexican arts and crafts, SNTE