An accountant and a mango farmer open a private school in a small Mexican town
Public schools in rural Mexico offer such a poor education that townspeople often take things into their own hands
During my days as a student of Grade 6, I watched life in el Colegio Patria unfold. In addition to classes, I saw students rehearsing plays, practicing charro (Mexican roping skills), playing basketball, learning folk songs and traditional dances, giving presentations on Mexico’s many revolutionaries and heroes, and staging food fairs and science expos.
These kids were having fun, and looking after each other — all part of a big family. I noticed that whenever a small child tripped or was upset, an older student swept him or her up to dry the tears. Teachers, I noted, were reserved for emergencies; the kids looked after small upsets themselves. Not to say the teachers weren’t affectionate. The children adored them and they treated the children as if they were their own. Mi hija (my daughter) they’d say, explaining a concept to a girl who wasn’t quite sure, or mi hijo (my son) to a boy who was acting a bit rambunctious.
Sometimes the children actually were their own. Armida and Lety Santillan, el Colegio Patria’s directors, can not afford to pay their teachers even the pathetic wage earned in public schools, so they offer teachers a place for their children in lieu of a better wage. Mexicans often work for barter, and schools are no exception.
I was coming to admire Armida and Lety, who seemed to have created something extraordinary. When I first met them, Armida was 47 and Lety 46. For a short period just before Christmas, they were both 47. Lety is quite round, with a hint of grey creeping in at the temples. She’s the shyer of the two, at least she appears that way at first, and has a school girl’s giggle.
Armida has better English, which is not to say a lot of English, and has an energetic nature. Of the two, she is always the one to explain an idea, with Lety constantly interrupting, as if she’s adding grace notes to embellish the theme. They both have dimples when they smile, which is often, and both of them know the story of every child in the school.
Lety spends the entire school day, 6:30 am to 2:30 pm, at the school, doling out tacos and tortillas and tortas (submarine sandwiches) behind the counter of the school’s tiendita (little store). “Lety! Lety!” the children cry, slapping down their pesos and putting in their orders. She also doles out the discipline when it’s needed, orders and receives all the supplies for the tiendita, and manages the school’s daily crises as they emerge.
Armida comes to school with Lety in the morning to greet the children as they arrive. Then she walks to her business, returning at various periods throughout the day to meet with teachers and parents whenever necessary. She’s back at the school when it closes, to ensure that all the children are safely on the school bus or picked up by their parents.
School tuition seems to be paid in dribs and drabs. Parents arrive with crumpled bills and their child’s receipt booklet and count out the payment to either director. Lety also gives the kids credit at the tiendita, and the children are constantly paying up small debts. Both Armida and Lety always have a wad of pesos stuffed into the breast pocket of their school uniforms.
“How did el Colegio Patria begin?” I asked them one day.
“Fue Edgar, ¿no? (It was Edgar wasn’t it?),” said Lety, checking with Armida.
“Sí, fue Edgar,” Armida confirmed, “when he went to Guadalajara for secundaria (secondary school, Grades 7, 8 and 9). We sent him there,” she explained, “because the secondary school here in Las Varas is no good. Las Varas is a pueblo olvidado (forgotten town) and the government does not look after the schools.”
“When Edgar got to Guadalajara, he was not able to keep up with the work,” Lety said. “It was very hard for him because he had not learned the basics. Malo, muy malo (Bad, very bad),” she scowled, referring to Edgar’s primary school in Las Varas.
Lety has two sons, Edgar and Carlos. Like many Mexican women, her husband is long gone. She raises her two sons with her sister Armida and their mother Doña Obdulia (fondly called Yuya). When the boys were young, the family lived together in the same house, which also holds Armida’s business.
Lety’s husband went to Chicago to seek his fortune, following the advice of his friend. He never came back, nor did he send money. Many Mexican men do, but Lety drew the short straw.
Lety and Armida’s father had been an enterprising man. Although he had only a few years of primary education, he read every morning and he taught himself many skills. He followed opportunity when he saw it, and eventually earned enough to buy a ranch where he grew mangoes and watermelon. Then he bought a truck to ship them. Lety’s husband might have joined her father in this business, but he chose the dream of America instead.
“Guadalajara?” I asked. “But it’s 4 hours by bus.”
“Yuya moved to Guadalajara to care for him,” Armida explained. “They live there still. Edgar is in university now, and Carlos has joined them for prepa (high school). Of course we talk with them every day, and they come home for holidays.”
“How did Edgar catch up with the other students?”
“We hired a tutor to help him,” Lety said.
“And then we opened the school,” Armida added, “so that what happened to Edgar would not happen to others. That was 1999, 13 years ago. Lety baked 100 cakes a week to sell in the market at La Peñita.”
“Casi ochocientos para el Día de los Madres (Nearly 800 for Mother’s Day),” Lety added.
“I am an accountant for the businesses in our area. Lety also manages our father’s mango farm. We are not teachers, but we could see the need.”
“At first,” Lety said, “we had only 10 students, Carlitos and the children of our neighbours and friends. The classes were in our house. Later we moved the school here. We had only one room when we started,” she pointed to the dark, cramped kitchen of the tiendita. “As more students came, we built the other classrooms.”
“How many students do you have now?” I asked.
Armida began to think, as if counting each classroom in her head: “2 classes of preschool, 6 classes of primary, 3 classes of secondary — 140 students in total.”
I’d experienced many of the problems of Mexican public education as a volunteer in the village school of Chacala, but until I looked up the stats on the net, I had no idea of their extent. Chacala’s school is lucky by comparison.
Mexico ranks dead last when compared to other OECD nations. According to the government’s own statistics, 75% of Mexican students won’t finish high school, 40% of secondary school teachers have never attended a formal teacher training institution, 48% of state schools have no access to sewage. (The Mexican National Institute for the Evaluation of Education, INEE, 2014)
“How can Mexico succeed when our young people are so badly educated?” Armida asked, in what may be the country’s most important question.
Realizing the grievous shortfalls of the Mexican public education system, I began to describe Armida and Lety to my friends as the sister saints. They don’t see it that way. They are simply doing what needs to be done, and I suspect there are many women like them across the country.
Mexico’s tragedy is that despite its riches, social initiatives like Armida and Lety’s are necessary. Its glory is that its people, many of whom have very little themselves, give so freely to meet the need.
This is the 14th story in the weekly publication A Remarkable Education: Lessons Learned in a Mexican Rural School. The next story describes a surprising turn of events for el Colegio Patria.
The previous story describes the school’s creation of an annual tradition for the small town of Las Varas.
Starting in the winter of 2009, Diane Douglas volunteered three years in the two-room school in the fishing village of Chacala, north of Puerto Vallarta. Since 2012, she’s been working to improve online learning at el Colegio Patria, a remarkable rural school in the poor, agricultural town of Las Varas.
