Support for Families of Victims Pours in Following Massacre in Nochixtlan, Oaxaca Jeff Abbott - Upside Down World
go to original July 14, 2016

Support has come in from across Mexico’s social movements and civil society for the victims following the latest state repression against Oaxaca’s teachers and their supporters on June 19, 2016. That day, federal police opened fire on protesting teachers and supporters in Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, leaving 9 dead and well over 170 injured.

This support includes direct aid from the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), Mexico’s dissident teachers union that is especially active in the southern states of Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, and Tabasco. On July 2 this direct support for the victims continued, with nearly 50 teachers from Oaxaca’s Section 22 of the CNTE set out with food, medicine, and water from Oaxaca’s capital Nochixtlan, which suffered from the violence. This was just the latest of nearly 14 of such caravans that have been organized by the teachers.

Other caravans have traveled from all parts of Mexico since the massacre carried out by Mexican Federal Police.

“We all feel like brothers in this struggle,” said German Salinas, the representative of delegation 1-159 of the Periphery Sector of Oaxaca’s Section 22 of the CNTE. “We’ve organized support for the families of those who have fallen, or were injured since they are not currently able to provide and sustain their families. Some still have the bullets from June 19 still inside them. In whatever form we can we need to be in solidarity with them and their families.”

Support also came from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation of Chiapas (EZLN), which delivered nearly 3 tons of food supplies for the teachers of CNTE. This continues a long relationship of support between the Zapatistas and the teachers of CNTE in Chiapas.

Members of Mexico’s dissident teachers unions, which are organized within the CNTE, have a long history of fighting for social justice within the country that goes back to the formation of the dissident branch of the National Teachers Union (SNTE) in the 1980. The current response to the state violence continues this legacy.

The outpour of solidarity for the community of Nochixtlan following this tragedy has surprised residents of the quiet town, which sits an hour north of the capital city of Oaxaca Juarez.

“All this is for the families members of the injured and for the family members that were killed,” said Miné, a member of Section 22 in Nochixtlan, as she shares the classroom in the primary school that has been transformed into the popular dispensary. Inside the classroom rows and rows of food, oil, sugar, coffee, toiletries, line the room where months before a teacher like her was giving classes to the children of Nochixtlan.

“We are also using these supplies to make the food for the parents that are coming to help out in the dispensary, as well for the comrades at the barricades,” she adds.

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