Mexican Drug War
The SNTE has been accused of indirectly supporting the cartels against the federal government in the Mexican Drug War. As the World Economic Forum pointed out, Mexico invested, as of 2009, a relatively high 5.3 percent of its GDP in education, yet its primary education system is ranked poorly. The WEF's report blames this underperformance on the SNTE's opposition to reforms which could increase the effectiveness of education funding. This resulted in the appearance of the "ninis" ("ni trabajan ni estudian", "neither work nor study"), an underclass of several million dropouts, of whom many ended up as combatants on the side of the cartels in the Mexican Drug War.