Mexico City’s “School-Wagon” offers education to poor children

To teach in a train wagon is no easy task. One must manage time and handle extreme weather in a classroom that is made of metal and wood to take students in a journey through knowledge, stated Abisaí Cruz Álvarez, director of the Lic. Adolfo López Mateos elementary school .

The school wagon operates near the impoverished neighborhood of San Bartolo, where it has been parked for more than three decades on a railway line that once connected Mexico City and Acámbaro, Michoacán.

For 42 years, the school courses at the wagon were taught by professor Jaime Mayolo Contreras , who retired on February after mentoring 42 generations of students , 16 of which went to school on a moving train, specially in northern Mexico.

Facing the San Bartolo train station , where the wagon has remained for the last 26 years, The Adolfo López Mateos elementary school offers education to families living in poverty.

Following the retirement of Mayolo Contreras, 25-year-old Abisaí Cruz Álvarez took charge of the school wagon.

“This is an entirely different school operating on the railroad just a few meters away from the north Periferico. In here, one tends to forget they’re in the Naucalpan municipality,” claimed Abisaí, who does not lose hope, despite the fact that he works in one of the most dangerous and marginalized neighborhoods in Mexico City.

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