In Guerrero's Acapulco Schools, Math is Hard; Gunfights Are Harder Daniela Pastrana - InSight Crime
go to original December 26, 2015

A solider stands guard at a school (AnimalPolitico.com)

In Acapulco, Mexico, access to school grounds is limited, and children share the playground with uniformed security personnel carrying automatic weapons. Black ribbons adorn doors to mourn teachers killed by organized crime, and children are trained to take cover from gunfire. It's all part of living with "El Narco."

"Access to the campus is only permitted with official identification," reads the cardboard sign at the entrance to the secondary school Tecnica 117, a school in Acapulco, Guerrero.

There are two more messages inside the gate. One is for the parents of the 700 young people who study there: "For reasons of security, we inform you that attention to parents is from 7 to 9 o'clock. After that time the door will be closed."

The other is for the kids: It shows a bald man with dark glasses, a pistol at his side and holding a machine gun. There is a line running through him that indicates "prohibited" and he is accompanied by a phrase written in English: "Don't bring any kind of weapon."

The school consists of a two-story building that is noticeably orderly and void of vegetation. The scarce funding that it receives is barely enough to cover the basic needs of the 18 classrooms of full-time students. It offers food service and technical classes in accounting and computing.

It is located at the border of the Simon Bolivar and Zapata neighborhoods, two of the most dangerous areas on the periphery of Acapulco, which is itself the most violent city in Mexico and the third-most violent in the world, behind only Caracas, Venezuela and San Pedro Sula in Honduras, according to the Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice.

This periphery zone, the most densely populated part of Acapulco, is where many of those who work along the coast live. It has a murder rate of 104 per 100,000 residents. This area, "the other Acapulco," contributes between two and six homicide victims per day to Mexico's murder count. Here the people have learned to fear going to school as much as going to the doctor.

"What we've implemented is 'chest to the ground,'" says Paula Davila, a team leader and assistant director of Tecnica 117, describing the school's security protocol when there's gunfire. "There are periods of calm, but in this neighborhood there are deaths almost every day. The majority of parents live near here, and when there are shootouts they want to come and get their kids. But we tell them, 'How are you going to take them now? It's more dangerous taking them out."

Classes don't start at the usual 7 a.m. in this school, but a half hour later. That's a security measure put in place for the teachers who come in from other neighborhoods and would otherwise be arriving when it's still dark. Another security measure: Home visits by social workers for children with behavior or absentee problems have been suspended.

Read the rest at InSight Crime

InSight Crime is a foundation dedicated to the study of the principal threat to national and citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean: organized crime. We seek to deepen and inform the debate about organized crime in the Americas by providing the general public with regular reporting, analysis and investigation on the subject and on state efforts to combat it.

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