"We hear the shootings too close": the horror of violence shrinks a small school in Tamaulipas

Army elements in the streets of the border city of Reynosa (Tamaulipas State), in May 2014.Saúl López (Cuartoscuro)

The proximity of the shootings has kept teachers at the Reynosa 76 Rotary Club in constant tension in recent months. "We have had to listen to it too close [to the shootings]. What we do is shelter the children on the floor, try to calm them down, make them feel calm. It's something that happens year after year," says the school's director, Jorge Garrido, by phone. Reynosa's strategic location, on Tamaulipas' border with Texas, is conducive to the development of organized crime. The classrooms of the school have been marked in recent weeks by the lack of their teachers, who sometimes prefer not to risk traveling to the delicate rural area in which the school is located, south of the municipality.

Part of the small border, which goes from Matamoros to Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa is a victim of the violence that different parts of Mexico have been experiencing, with greater or lesser intensity, for years. Kidnappings of migrants are common in the area, as are assaults. Crime usually holds its power with some regularity, such as the kidnapping a couple of months ago of several US citizens, in broad daylight, in Matamoros. The same goes for shootings, which can happen anytime, anywhere.

"Right now, before I left school, they were reporting shootings about 800 meters away," explained the director without surprise on Thursday, giving an account of the daily life of the critical situation. The Rotary Club Reynosa 76 is a small school, with only 15 teachers and 265 students. The situation it is going through is not an isolated case in Mexico. A few months ago, the Melchor Ocampo Federal High School, in Michoacán, had to stop teaching precisely because of the lack of teachers due to violence. "90% of the normalistas want to go to Morelia, they don't want to continue living this violent way of life," the school's director, Gandhi Renteria, told the Heraldo de México.

In Reynosa, teachers have been pressured to return to the classroom even if the violence continued in the vicinity: "The demand of my most immediate authority [the Ministry of Education] was that we present ourselves, and I already said that it was very difficult. The most important thing is to safeguard integrity and human life," continues Garrido, the director. The pressures of the Administration were joined by the demands of parents, who want their children to go to classes.

Reynosa is one of the border municipalities where the maquila has developed, the huge manufacturing industry that prepares goods with cheap labor for export to the United States and other countries. "We have very difficult conditions for parents. They work in the maquiladoras, they earn the minimum wage and the first thing they are thinking about is food. They are not thinking about studying. They want their children to have the studies that they did not have," concludes the teacher.

An attack on schooling

Most of the teachers at the Reynosa school — 80%, Garrido says — come from places far from the municipality. Some teachers have suffered physical violence and robberies, a fact that complicates the filling of vacancies that remain free. "We are always lacking everything, honestly. But hey, that already corresponds to the Administration. We ask them in writing, they just tell us that there are no teachers, that nobody wants to go to teach in this community, because there is a lot of violence," he laments.

The month of May began with a total closure, having to rely on distance education, as during the covid-19 pandemic. They have not been able to complete any week in the entire month. Garrido says that this situation has "totally" affected the performance of school children. The coronavirus led Mexican schools to close for 48 weeks, being one of the countries that was in this situation the longest. The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness stated in 2021 that the most recent evidence showed that during the pandemic "Mexicans lost, on average, learning equivalent to two years of schooling." "There is no mastery of content. We are a month and a half away from finishing and the children still do not have the level required by the SEP. They are far behind," concludes Garrido.

The residents of Reynosa have learned to live with violence. 73% consider that living there is unsafe, according to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). They are no longer surprised by the violence, and have even normalized the sound of gunfire.

"How have the last few days been?"

There has been a small decrease in clashes near the school. From Monday we can enter quietly. If gunshots are heard about five kilometers. But they even seem to be told 'stop him at six or seven'. We entered with fear.

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