A school-age child in Guayaquil. Miguel Canales
Estefanía walks at an accelerated pace with her books close to her chest. She is 10 years old and lives in the Recreo neighborhood, on the same street where a child and his mother were murdered the day before. She wears a red hem skirt, sneakers and a white T-shirt with the logo of her educational unit. He has not been able to go to school because his center is included in the list of 34 establishments that the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education has decided to close face-to-face classes on grounds of organized crime in the city of Durán, which has been taken over by organized crime, in the wake of the wave of violence, at where children also became victims of brutal crimes at any time of the day.
He enters the house with homework that he copied from another classmate who lives a few blocks away because there is no computer in his house, the only cell phone cannot be charged, and his mother cannot afford it to pay for the internet service. It’s eleven in the morning and at this time she was playing ball or hot potato with her friends. “It’s like playing catch so the one with the potato doesn’t catch us,” she smiles as she explains the dynamics of the game and dictates the names of all her friends and her teacher, who says she likes that better than her be the right one. I explained to him mathematics, his favorite subject.
Lourdes, her mother, does not agree with classes being held virtually, although other mothers and fathers of students at Durán schools have been protesting for several months to demand that classes not be held in person. “Although it’s very scary that something could happen to the children in a shooting, they don’t learn in class as they should, they have to be there with a blackboard and their teacher,” says the mother because she The other son José, nine years old, barely writes his name and a few sentences. “What should happen here is that the authorities guarantee the safety of the children,” he added. Lourdes talks to her children about taking care of themselves, what to do in the event of a shooting, “getting on the floor and crawling into the room under the bed, as far away from the windows as possible.” It is the daily lesson they learn from living in Durán.
The measure ordered by the Ministry of Education comes after a wave of unstoppable violence in Ecuador, which has seen 5,320 violent crimes recorded so far this year, including 1,900 in the cities of Guayaquil and Durán. Education authorities had resisted the virtual teaching measure because they believe children are better protected in school than in neighborhoods where criminal groups use bullets to enforce their laws and recruit children and teenagers. According to police, they have found that 16% of students in the most dangerous area of Guayaquil, the Nueva Prosperina sector, have ties to a criminal gang. “Each educational institution has more than 200 students,” explains Roberto Santamaría, head of the Nueva Prosperina district.
“The recruits are children between the ages of 12 and 17. It is the ideal age for these criminal groups because this minor is not responsible, the worst thing they can give him is a socio-educational measure,” he adds. Police have also found that these students are indulging in extortion of teachers and other students within the schools. “For example, they charge them a dollar not to beat them,” says Santamaría.
In a distorted scene of what a school should look like, a group of police officers have invaded the classrooms of nine schools in the Nueva Prosperina sector. They search the students’ backpacks, look for drugs, weapons of any kind or explosives and collect evidence. “There is micro-trafficking and gun trafficking, and we have videos of an armed student shooting at school,” the district leader added.
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Protocol prohibits them from entering with weapons, but according to Santamaría, the Ministry of Education has been asked to deploy a school police officer in the centers where high levels of violence and infiltration by criminal gangs have been identified. “A police officer in the schools who trusts the teachers because they are the ones who are being blackmailed,” says the district leader, explaining that they charge teachers up to $2,000 to be allowed to work and that it gets even worse at the end of the year. School with the so-called “annual ticket”, where they have to be issued with a certificate confirming that they have completed their schooling, even if they never went to class.
“We are currently living in fear in Durán, it is like a war,” says Consuelo, a teacher at a school in this city, describing the fear in which school hours pass. “The worst moment for many of my students is when the end of school is approaching,” says the teacher, who is worried about the anxiety symptoms that many of her students are experiencing. It happens suddenly. Or because they tried to rob them when they were going to school, or because they hear sounds that resemble gunshots, or because they mistake the sound of a balloon exploding and the children panic.
“One of my students came in one day with his hands shaking. She was crying, she was short of breath, she couldn’t breathe properly. We helped her with a few exercises at the time, but no one cares about children’s mental health either,” says Consuelo. “When we refer the cases to the Ministry of Health, they give them an appointment with a psychologist every three months. How are they supposed to help them like that when their body is asking for help because they are already somatizing the fear.”
The residents of Durán feel paralyzed by the violence, their statements reflect the failure of the security policy of the government of Guillermo Lasso to confront criminal gangs, which, as in the case of Durán, focuses on the imposition of states of emergency. The president extended the military’s presence for 30 days without achieving positive results.
The violence in Durán was already frightening when the bodies of two men were found hanging from the footbridge at the city’s entrance almost two years ago. Then at any moment the kidnappings of bus drivers, vendors and shootings began. “It’s a shame to see 12- or 14-year-old children walking through the streets with guns, calmly, as if it were nothing serious,” says Lourdes, describing what she sees from the window of her home in the Recreo neighborhood.
“Virtuality is not the solution,” claims the teacher. “Does having the children at home mean putting an end to hitmen or criminal gangs? The problem here is that the institutions are not doing their job and as a teacher I cannot do the job of the police. “I believe that the police must do their job, which is to provide the security that we currently do not have.”
Yet they did it, even risking their own lives. Teachers take turns guarding the outside area of the school when students arrive and are dismissed. “One day a man appeared at the exit and threatened with a knife that they would give the cell phones to two of our boys. They had none, they screamed and the teacher closest to them had to defend them. Luckily the thief ran away,” says Consuelo, who claims that children are being deprived of their right to education through violence in a small town no longer under government control.
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