Teachers under fire. Repercussions of criminal violence in public schools in the Valley of Apatzingán, Michoacán

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the implications and effects of criminal violence on teachers working in public schools in the Apatzingán Valley in Michoacán, Mexico. In order to understand this emerging phenomenon in the field of school education, we use press information sources and some ethnographic fieldwork data with the aim of contextualizing the conditions of insecurity and violence produced by the presence of multiple armed actors in the contexts where educational institutions are immersed. Thus, we seek to describe the socio-political transformations derived from the “war on drugs” as a turning point of the conflict, which poses new problems and challenges for the work of teachers in Michoacán, due in part to the increase of armed confrontations, which has permeated the regions with different intensities in the last decade. Therefore, we seek to make visible the experiences of educators in the face of multiple violence by legal and illegal armed actors that put at risk the lives of those whose socio-educational processes take place there.