School teachers throughout Colombia went into panic mode on Saturday after a teacher from the northeast was assassinated and 25 received death threats in a war-torn village in the north.
Teacher Sandra Mayerly Baquero was assassinated in the northeastern Arauca province on Friday, the same day that classes were suspended in El Salado, a war-torn village in the northern Atlantico Province.
After teachers’ union Fecode had rung the alarm, a teacher and union representative survived an assassination attempt in the central Tolima province.
Teachers union Fecode
The union fiercely criticized the inaction of the government of President Ivan Duque and the consistent stigmatization of his far-right Democratic Center party that has claimed teachers are “indoctrinating” public school children with leftist political thought.
Followers of the party of Duque and former President Alvaro Uribe have gone as far as claiming that the teachers’ union “must disappear.”
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According to the United Nations’ Development Program, “the role of the education sector in the democratic task to build and consolidate the conditions that make sustainable peace with social justice possible is of utmost importance” in 2015.
Colombia’s peace process, however, is fiercely opposed by the so-called “Uribistas.”
In the last week alone, death threats were not just sent to the 25 teachers in El Salado, but also to 10 in Bello, Antioquia and eight in Soledad, Atlantico.
“This is the result of the hate and smear campaigns of the [government-sponsored political warfare campaign] #BodegaUribista against FECODE,” leftist Senator Gustavo Bolivar said on Twitter.
Despite evidence the car of the teachers’ representative was shot at, one influential Uribista said the attack “was a farce, these people will do anything to blame the government. This is how the left wing bandit operates, always lying, always trying to take advantage.”