Insumiso sacked from teaching post

<*> A village kindergarten teacher in Spain has been sacked under one of Franco's laws because he is an anti-militarist. The Spanish Ministry of Education has invoked a 1964 law to dismiss Jos<130> Casquero Cabreros, an insumiso (a resister to both military and civilian service), by declaring him "unfit".

Anti-militarist campaigners fear that this use of inhabilitacion (unfitness) could be a taste of things to come as "civil death" is the main punishment the new Penal Code will prescribe for insumision.

This sacking came in January, several months after Jos<130> Casquero had been released from prison, where he was serving a 28-month and one day sentence. However, he had carried on teaching throughout his time in prison: Category 3 status required him to spend nights only in the prison, so every morning he would drive the 50kms from the prison to the school in the tiny village of Avila, Navarredonda de Gredos.

Parents at the school protested at the sacking by keeping their children off school until Casquero advised them to return, and unions and anti-militarist groups are now campaigning for his reinstatement.

In an eloquent letter to the ministry, Casquero quotes the fine sentiments of the LOGSE (the law governing education), including its section on Education for Peace which testifies to the value of disobedience in the face of injustice:

"Why does the ministry declare me unfit when it should help me in a hard and difficult job? Why condemn me under a pre-constitutional law, used by the dictatorship to repress opponents of the regime? Why not take an interest in my work in and out of school in marginalised rural communities? Why punish me more strictly--for life--than the judge at my trial? "Perhaps it's because I am insumiso, to the militarisation of society, to the destruction of human beings, to authoritarian and hierarchical ideas... Perhaps because I neglect to punish children, to turn them into automatons, to make them consumers of violent films and toys, to rob them of their culture."

Protest letters to Alvaro Marchesi, Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, C/ Alcala 36, 28014 Madrid (fax: +34 1 5213775/5229256, or your nearest Spanish embassy).