Mexico: those teachers on war

Thousands of teachers are protesting in Mexico these days. They march down the streets towards plazas that soon turn into tent encampments, shouting out loud their rage.
The Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE), the survived dissident trade union against wild neoliberalism in defence of the working class, led a mass demonstration against the “slaughter” – how they call it – that took place during the recent clashes between police and protestors. Members of Sección 22 in Oaxaca, the toughest teachers group, with 74 thousand affiliates, are yelling at Radio Platón:
«We want the guilties to be punished and the 22 people still reported as missing to reappear».

At Oaxaca centre, stronghold of the radical protest, teachers have set up barricades and checkpoints. The situation does not differ much elsewhere in Mexico. Protests have been ongoing for months in Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacán, Juchitan, Pinotepa Nacional, Puerto Escondido, Rio Grande and Mexico City as well. And none of them had ever turned into such a violent armed conflict before. At least not in the last three years.

But in Asunción Nochixtlán, state of Oaxaca, on June 19, 800 members of the federal and state police attacked the demonstrators with tear gas, in order to break the barricade that interrupted the regular traffic for over a week. The clashes ended up with eleven dead and over a hundred wounded. The victims, including a minor, were all civilians. The government has so far rejected any dialogue, while the Chief of the National Police Enrique Galindo announced that the armed action has been accomplished only against some violent extremist groups still to be identified.

The Mexican teachers have been protesting against the education reform approved in 2013 by President Enrique Peña Nieto. The law details the rules of teaching careers, the access to high positions and the implementation of educational policy in the primary and secondary school. Among the changes, new pay cuts are expected, while teachers’ positions will be now assigned by the Government and no longer by the Unions. Yet, according to rumors, the law has been issued without considering people directly involved, without any agreement nor negotiations with the Unions. The Government states the reform’s purpose is to raise the level of standard education “still too low in the country” and to erase those privileges that give professors a too easy access to the profession.

Not surprisingly, the thorniest point of the reform is the implementation of an evaluation test for teachers and their results, in order to increase educational quality and meritocracy. The problem, according to the teachers, is that the assessment does not take into account those pretty huge social contrasts existing in the country. For instance, one of the skills to be assessed is the Spanish language, which is not fluently spoken among the natives. «There are social differences among the counties. In Oaxaca some communities and regions are totally cut off by their poverty. How is it possible, then, the comparison between a highly malnourished student and a student grown up in a social context which is far more developed and high-tech?» told CNN México Clemente Jesus Garcia, teacher at middle school.

On the other hand, the Unions claim that the evaluation test is just an excuse that facilitates the layoff of the workers and paves the way to a partial privatization of the public education in Mexico.

The government has already proceeded to the dismissal of over 3,000 teachers who refused to take the test. But according to Mauricio, a 25-year-old law student in Mexico City who has never missed a demonstration in the past three years, the reason is different: «What they say is true: the Government does not want to take responsibility for the layoff of thousands of teachers and is using these tests as an excuse».

The radical teachers’ union movement, the CNTE, is being a spanner in the works against the implementation of this policy. After the outbreak of the latest violence, police officers have been accused of secretly infiltrating in the demonstrations and “shooting without mercy” at the protestors. The CNTE asked the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights to investigate the facts and the Minister of Education Aurelio Nuño to give his resignations.

Two CNTE leaders have already been arrested and charged of stealing funds from the Unions, money laundering and corruption, but the threats of violent repression of the protests made by some PAN members (Partido de Acción Nacional) do not make teachers give up.

Marches and riots are more and more frequent. The very many checkpoints, together with the militarization of the territory are still ongoing, while protestors announce their intention to move to the capital to start new negotiations with the Government. Farmers in San Quintin in Baja California, families of the disappeared students from Ayotzinapa in Guerrero, and the Popular Front in Defense of the Earth from Atenco, State of Mexico, are in the meantime supporting the teachers. Students of the Faculty of Medicine of the State of Oaxaca (UABJO) set up a first aid section to help protestors during the clashes.

In June 2006, a hard battle started by the CNTE against the shortage of funds to schools and lasted one year ended up with the death of twenty people. Among the victims, there was the US journalist Bradley Roland Will, killed while covering a demonstration. His case has been referred to as an “extrajudicial execution” and the Truth Commission denounced acts of torture and reported disappearances at the hands of Mexican authorities.

@MichelaCan