THE LABOR AND EDUCATIONAL SITUATION IN LATIN AMERICA IN THE CONTEXT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
The situation of teaching in the context of the pandemic The almost total closure of educational establishments as one of the main responses of states to the pandemic meant setting up a general alternative proposal for educational maintenance and continuity in a context of non-face-to-face learning. This involved the transition from regular institutional work with continuous presence in schools to the performance of tasks in the homes of educators, almost exclusively using their own personal and family resources. This passage involved the comprehensive transformation of the work conditions and organization of teachers, impacting on all possible dimensions of these. Similarly, a series of unprecedented demands were generated for teachers, on whom fell a large part of the actions aimed at sustaining the presence of the state in communities and homes, even going beyond what can be strictly considered as the field of education. In the different countries of Latin America, states made various responses to the situation generated by the pandemic. In this regard, it can be noted that in some countries the health and social emergency provided a framework favoring the imposition of regressive measures and the adoption of regressive social laws for the population as a whole. In these countries, working relations in the public and private sectors have been altered, and the national policies of social protection and rights in force have been weakened, opening the door for the incursion of private companies, especially in strategic areas such as education. Both the neoliberal reforms initiated long ago (Peru, Colombia and Chile) and the recent dismantling of the welfare state (Brazil, Uruguay, Honduras, Paraguay) brought as a consequence the erosion of social rights related to work in much of the region; while, on the other hand, also bringing the progressive establishment of a more segmented, polarized (according to the proportion of formalized employment in each country and its stability) and, in many cases, ever more precarious labor structure. This has led to increasingly differentiated access for workers to health, education, social protection, labor rights and social security rights. In ¹³ We refer to a shift in the policies in the region that began with the overthrow of the former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, in 2009, and continued in Paraguay with the case of Fernando Lugo in 2014, and then in Brazil with the former president Dilma Rousseff in 2016. In the case of Uruguay, in March 2020 a right-wing government assumed power when it won the elections after 15 years of Frente Amplio governments.
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