The exterior of the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, Cuartoscuro
Anthropology has been on the warpath in Mexico in the face of an announcement of cuts. In a pulse that has escalated since the end of the year, the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) has risen up against the leaders of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the institution on which it depends. At the end of the year it was announced that the ENAH's hiring of temporary staff for 2022 would be terminated, which means some 350 employees without whom the center cannot function. Immediately the student community reacted massively against the measure, which has led to this Monday the director of INAH, Diego Prieto Hernández, has qualified his words and assured that there would be no layoffs.
But the damage had already been done and now students, teachers and workers have broadened the focus and denounced that they have suffered a precarious situation for decades.
On December 29, 2021, a letter signed by Pedro Velázquez Beltrán, the administrative secretary of INAH, announced that in 2022 "no person who has been hired as temporary staff as of December 31, 2021" may be summoned to work. Immediately, the director of the ENAH, Hilario Topete Lara responded with a letter in which he showed his "deepest concern" at the measure, which "would significantly affect the student, academic and worker community." With the statement, Topete Lara wrote more than sixty activities that, according to him, the school would be forced to stop doing. Among them, the dismissal of 350 professors, the suspension of new admissions, postgraduate registrations and scholarships or the approval of research projects.
The document released by the director of the ENAH, a public center that depends on the Ministry of Culture, was quickly deleted from all official accounts, but the exchange of letters caused great agitation among the student community, which has called a protest to this Wednesday.
Prieto Hernández has clarified this Monday in an interview with
Aristegui Noticias
that
"The hiring of temporary personnel is subject to an annual renewal and this implies endorsing what are the tasks that are being carried out, for that reason it was said that temporary personnel will not be called until they are authorized."
Wednesday, January 5: EVERYONE TO THE INAH OFFICES! 🔥
Mobilization of Students, Teachers and Workers of the ENAH against the attacks on our school
Not one more budget cut!
In defense of public education
Labor dignification already # YodefiendoalaENAH pic.twitter.com/eQJ1l5fp4v
- ENAH General Assembly (@AG_ENAH) January 3, 2022
In a statement, the INAH has assured that the measure they had proposed "is a control mechanism of the process of hiring temporary personnel that, in no way, implies cutting or dismissal of personnel." He has also insisted, despite what he said in the first letter, that the temporary workers of 2021 will be rehired in 2022, and that there will be "an increase of 93 million pesos in relation to the original budget authorized for 2021". The Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto, has declared that "we are governed by principles of austerity and responsible exercise of spending, which do not imply layoffs or cuts in personnel." But now, university students and professors do not trust and assure that the problem is not solved only by keeping the temporary workers of 2021. On the contrary,defend that the center is in a situation of structural precariousness - already in 2018 they made a great stop and seized the Museum of Anthropology in protest.
"The ENAH is the ugly duckling of the INAH"
“The school is dying and it is essential to increase the budget as a rescue injection, first aid, beyond the discourse of austerity. Besides that, it is necessary to find a way to stop being a legal administrative unit and be recognized as a free and public national school ”, argues Brisa Lara Durán (28 years old), Ethnology student and member of the ENAH General Assembly. For her, keeping the casual workers of 2021 is not a sufficient measure, since she argues that a budget cut has been carried out in a veiled way for years. “It has prevented the optimal performance of the students and of academic life in general. It seems unsustainable to say that there have been no cuts, in fact it has been seen that the school has deteriorated administratively,in terms of infrastructure… ”.
One of the ways in which the measure, if maintained, would affect students is that they will not be able to graduate, according to the director of the ENAH.
From the group of anthropological women
Las hijas de Coyolxahqui
state that “this affects us because if the thesis records are stopped we would be in limbo.
Many people have registered projects, they owe scholarships.
The INAH, the one in charge of giving the budget, is receiving it, but we do not know what happens when we arrive at the school.
I think the concern is there.
It would be very good to do an audit ”.
The eventual staff of @INAHmx and @ENAH_oficial who worked in 2021, whose functions and tasks are fully justified, will be rehired in 2022. That is our commitment.
- Alejandra Frausto (@alefrausto) January 3, 2022
“Some would call the ENAH the ugly duckling of the INAH, they receive little money. There are not enough teachers to be able to teach all the classes and especially all the topics. Anthropology is not a monolith, it is not a subject, there are many. That's where the 'hour-week-month teachers come into play, ”explains Ricardo Fagoaga, a graduate of the institution and head of media for the World Council of Anthropological Associations. At ENAH there are only about 80 full-time teachers for 350 temporary teachers: the so-called “hour-week-month”. "And there is a lot of difference in salary, the hour-week-month teacher contracts always depend on the number of young people who enroll and the budget we have," says Berenice Bravo (48 years old), a full-time professor at ENAH for 13 years and director of the historical archive of the institution.
Together with her, 34-year-old Daniel Rivera is in charge of managing the archive. The difference between them is that Rivera has a temporary contract, despite the fact that he has been with the ENAH for 10 years. At present he also teaches classes in the Ethnohistory degree. He charges 10,000 pesos a month since he started. “It is the only income I have. We have the need to pay the rent, the cards, buy food ... In my case the advantage is that I don't have a family, nobody depends on me, I live with dignity, but not comfortably, I can save a little and economize ”. For his work as a teacher he does not charge anything, since he already has a contract for the historical archive, and "there can be no duplication of contracts, but there can be duplication of functions", he laughs resignedly. "It is not just my case, it is a constant."
"The problem that teachers see is that the school operates 365 days a year, our temporary workers had to show up today [for this Monday] and they have not been able to because there are no contracts," Bravo adds. “We would be making a mistake by telling them to come because we don't have insurance that they will have their contract. Today important procedures such as scholarships and social services, professional exams ... we must think about the students: they are the lives of young people who are being trained and are subjected to great pressure. The ENAH is an institution in constant growth, we have a population of more than 2,000 students, each year between 600 and 800 young people enter. It requires budgets that allow it to grow because we have been many, many years without even having curtains in the classrooms [classrooms], we do not have internet,sometimes there is no paper, printer ... It is very difficult to operate a school in which there are not enough resources ”, he concludes.
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