Conflict Between Mexico Goverment and Dissident Teachers Urgently Needs Easing La Jornada
go to original June 3, 2016

Mexico: Teachers Believe Reform is Discriminatory (teleSUR English)

Far from abating, the labor conflict generated by the implementation of the education reform has widened and deepened over the recent weeks. Between last Tuesday and yesterday nonconformist teachers [of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers, CNTE] and their supporters occupied the municipal offices in Chiapas and twenty-two offices in Michoacán, where they also staged road blocks and seized toll booths [a common protest action]. They are staging a permanent sit-in in the central square of Villahermosa [Tabasco].

MV Note: The National Coordinating Commitee of Education Workers, CNTE, and the federal government, led by the Secretariat of Public Education, SEP, continue to be in conflict over a the reform of education laws passed in 2013, at the beginning of the Peña Nieto administration. The law requires that teachers take a standardized exam as part of an evaluaiton of their fitness to retain their jobs or gain promotions to administrative positions. In the past teachers jobs were for life and were, de facto, controlled by the teachers' union,the National Union of Education Workers, SNTE. One motive of the reform was to take that control away from the union.

The CNTE protests that this change violates their rights as workers, guaranteed by the Constittuion, and that a standardized exam doesn't address the widely varied economic and social differences across Mexico. The CNTE's main presence is in southern, poor, indigenous states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacán.

Teachers marched in Mexico City and in the capital of Guerrero [Chilpancingo], where they blocked access to the municipal hall; blocked a highway in Oaxaca and held seven state police officers who had tried to infiltrate their demonstrations. In addition, a confrontation took place on the outskirts of Tuxtla Gutiérrez [capital of Chiapas] among teachers from section 7 of the CNTE.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Related: Police Keep Protesting Teachers Away from Mexico City Airport (EFE)

Related: Mexico: Teachers Tonsured for Defying Union Strike (The Quint)

Translated by Rebecca Nannery

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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