Scared, but not surprised.

Recent crimes committed in schools are shocking the country. Private daycare centers and schools are making headlines. But this time, it wasn't in the outskirts – almost always neglected and forgotten. The targets are elite schools, with their stratospheric tuition fees, air conditioning, internal gardens, and equipped with everything money can buy, including security cameras and – our surveillance. 

Unfortunately, this is a prediction we made years ago, since the 2016 coup. 

We cannot forget that it all began with the infamous "non-partisan school" proposal, which not only affronted our academic freedom, enshrined in the Constitution, but also served as a free pass to hunt down teachers. We were targets – not that we aren't still – of reactionary, unfounded, and inflated speeches by a pseudo-leader who promoted disorder and chaos in the country.

Yes, dear parents (or not so dear!), everything is politics!

We warned that his speeches and "jokes"—making gun gestures and defending hatred and the politics of death—would have an effect on society. But, as always, we were labeled, discredited, and persecuted. And today, society is reaping what it has sown.

And, to the dismay of the elite class, the rotten fruit has spread beyond the walls and electrified fences of their schools, making their wealthy children the next targets.

You could say it's our revenge, but we're not like that. As much as we've been persecuted and suffered during these years of misrule, it's not in our nature to wish the same suffering, much less death – especially not the death of children and young people who are not guilty or have the blood on their hands that their parents helped to shed.

However, I am certain that what you are going through these days is a small sample of what we have experienced in the last 6 years. The fear, the uncertainty, the insecurity, the tension. The suffering was greater when the educators were leftists and, even though that is not a crime, we were treated as such. “Criminals” who believe in a just, emancipated, critical society.

Today, it is these families, generally considered "respectable," who are victims of this fear. In their case, it is the fear they helped to plant and spread.

The same schools, parents (or mere guardians) who saw us as enemies, who restricted our freedom, who persecuted and watched us to intimidate us, are now hostages of this society destroyed...by themselves.

A social failure that gained strength with the prohibition of liberating education (forbidden words associated with Paulo Freire's "communist threat"). The irrational and reactionary prohibition against the formation of empathetic, tolerant, critical citizens who know how to analyze the real problems of the country and who are, above all, truly human. But no. This was – and continues, in a way – forbidden. Afraid of dismissal, and without the meager salary we receive given the enormous workload outside the classroom and, consequently, the fear of not being able to pay our bills, they managed to turn us into mediocre teachers, repeaters of content and followers of a banking education. They took away our educational soul. And the rotten fruits spread.

How long will it take us to correct this mistake? I couldn't say. And, honestly, I don't know if we, true educators, will have the mental health – or even be alive! – to see this reorganization.

But as the optimist I try to remain, I hope that the sleepless nights these people will spend, plagued by constant nightmares and worry about their sons and daughters, will make them reflect on the mistake they made in the eyes of society.

I don't expect an apology – hypocrites never repent because they don't admit any guilt – but I hope they no longer see educators as enemies, but as allies who are on the front lines fighting this barbarity they caused.

Today I write this to try to vent and calm down, because at the school where I teach, a threat occurred and frightened us. Fear haunts us, but it doesn't surprise us. Today I write and hope that better and normal days will return to our reality. Today I write because tomorrow, I don't know if I will be here to write all that I would like to.