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By Anahi Rama
April 13, 2011 5:41 PM EDT
Mexico's ambitions to become a top world economy are being held back by a corrupt public education system controlled by a powerful union boss known as "The Teacher" who politicians fear to cross.
One of the biggest exporters to the United States and home to the world's richest man, Carlos Slim, Mexico is grappling with alarming school dropout rates and some of the worst grades among industrialized nations, with pupils struggling to read and write even after years of instruction.
Often studying in crumbling schools in spite of increased spending on education, 15-year-old Mexicans were among the worst performers in a study of 65 countries published late last year by the Paris-based OECD group of leading economies.
"There's a general consensus in Mexico that the public education system is a catastrophe and that we are pawning off the country's future," said Ricardo Raphael, an expert in public education who has written widely about the crisis.
About half of Mexican teenagers between 15 and 19 neither attend school nor take jobs, according to the OECD, and thousands of teachers never show up for work, experts say. Only 45 percent of Mexicans finish secondary school, compared to about 75 percent in the United States.
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Such reports stand in sharp contrast to predictions by that Mexico could soon become one the world's top 10 economies.
Mexicans point the finger of blame at the lifetime president of the National Teachers' Union, Elba Esther Gordillo, a wealthy 66-year-old who one prominent political analyst once called the "Darth Vader of Mexico."
For many Mexicans, Gordillo is a symbol of the problems Mexico has yet to resolve a decade after ending 71 years of one-party rule, when the world's No. 7 oil exporter was run via a system of patronage with little regard for the rule of law.
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Known as La Maestra, a respectful term for a teacher in Mexico, Gordillo holds sway over a 1.2 million-member union and leverages the votes of teachers in classrooms extending from the U.S. border to the Guatemalan frontier to favor whichever political party benefits her fiefdom the most.
With union members, including her son-in-law, holding senior positions in the education ministry, the social security system and some state governments, her power is immense and she has resisted any attempts to modernize Mexican education.
"Mexican politicians cross her at their peril," said George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "Without the backing of Gordillo, (President Felipe) Calderon would not have won the last election."
Gordillo -- who declined repeated requests for an interview -- was born into poverty in southern Mexico and started working as a teacher at 15, following in her mother's footsteps.
Widowed at 18, Gordillo moved to Mexico City, befriended the union leader of the day and began her ascent through the organization's ranks. After Carlos Salinas de Gortari became president in 1988, teachers' protests broke out over wages, and he turned to Gordillo to bring order, naming her union boss.
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