The life in poverty that characterizes Venezuelan teachers today is a recurrent problem whose origins go back to colonial times. From there comes this issue, from those centuries when from Madrid the monarchs treated with pettiness these overseas territories, which among other policies, imposed the disregard of the costs inherent in the educational process that took place in these American colonies. Of the Venezuelan colonial education the catholic church and the cabildos were in charge, but of the expenses the relatives of the students were in charge, interested that their offspring studied First letters and also university. Nowadays, this same policy continues: to mistreat the exercise of the teaching activity, for which the people dedicated to this profession, like yesterday, live in very deplorable socioeconomic conditions. Thus, the mistreatment of Venezuelan teachers is a colonial policy reproduced by the Republican State and their respective governments.
On a few occasions in the history of Venezuela, the work of teachers has been well paid. The extraordinary years in this respect stand out in the years between 1960 and 1980, when the salary received by education professionals was enough to live with dignity. But the rest of the time of republican history teaching has been a very poorly paid activity and, consequently, the people dedicated to this profession, have had to suffer a life of hardship and suffering.
So poverty is the distinctive sign of living conditions in the midst of which the teachers and professors of our country have developed since the first school and the first university were installed here. There are several centuries of economic abuse that have had to endure the people dedicated to this job. Such abuse has been lavished by the different types of rulers who have ruled the destinies of Venezuela, beginning with the colonial officials, continuing with the military leaders, heirs of the glories of the war of independence, and the generals of the Federal Revolution, the Andeans of Castro-Gomecism, by the Adecos and Copeyan governments, until now ending with the government headed by the worker president Nicolás Maduro.
