Traces of symbiosis: Teacher positionality amidst criminal intimidation and bureaucratic inertia

• In Event: Reframing Threat: A comparative analysis of attacks on education

Proposal

Across the Andes region, in the interstices of the illicit drug trade and long-standing armed hostilities, many communities find themselves living under some form of criminal governance. Criminal organizations assume a range of governance roles that order daily life, such as settling disputes, taxing local businesses, dictating freedom of movement, and, even, determining access to education. These practices, however, do not exist in a vacuum of state presence. As recent research shows, there is often a symbiotic relationship between state and criminal governance, in which state (in)actions and policies contribute to the roles played by criminal organizations, and, in turn, criminal organizations take up tasks which the state does not have the capacity (or will) to carry out (Denyer Willis, 2009; Lessing 2020). This relationship “does not require affinity, aligned preferences, or a division of mutually desired resources; it does, however, imply entanglement, a growing together, and mutual dependence that may deepen over time” (Lessing, 2020: 15). Education is one arena through which this relationship occurs, raising critical questions regarding how the current configuration of education systems may contribute to the presence and continuity of criminal governance.

Teachers, the street-level bureaucrats of the educational system, occupy a complicated role in this entanglement. Often the only state actor with direct presence in such settings, teachers can become caught between the mandates of a distant education bureaucracy and the pressures of local armed actors. This paper examines one trait of this positionality: attacks. Drawing on qualitative work with teachers in Colombia and Ecuador, the paper unpacks the gradual processes of intimidation exerted by criminal organizations on educators. These encompass a range of actions, from context clues and subtle insinuations to direct threats and harms, that result in a climate of insecurity and repression for teachers. The paper also examines how these processes of intimidation intertwine with inadequate institutional support. In both cases, teachers have denounced these conditions: in Colombia, since 2017, there have been 2537 registered reports of direct attacks on teachers, and over 10,000 requests for protection measures for educators due to threats (Bermeo et al, 2023); in Ecuador, teachers have taken to the streets to denounce extortions and harassment from criminal organizations (El Universo, 2023). However, institutional responses have largely been limited to teacher relocation efforts, without addressing the underlying conditions that shape and sustain teacher vulnerability. Teacher narratives suggest that the lack of institutional capacity (and will) to address these situations reinforces the chilling effect of criminal intimidation. In the absence of effective protection, many teachers comply with the demands: they stop teaching their students to plan for alternative futures, they stop interrupting drug sales in schools, they give students an unearned grade, they stop teaching critical histories and human rights.

This study shows that scholarship on attacks on education needs to consider the concatenation of multiple modes of attack and examine the governance entanglements that sustain them. Raising the question of complicity with violence, this paper calls for deeper reflection on what collective and systemic resistance might entail.

Author

• Maria Jose Bermeo, Universidad de Los Andes