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| Photo: Luis Castillo |
This
past May 15th the dissident teacher’s organization (CNTE), created in 1979 as
an offshoot of the National Teachers’ Union (SNTE) to fight for union
democracy, began a strike and protest action in Mexico City and various other
states of the country including Oaxaca, Guerrero, Zacatecas, Michoacan, and
Chiapas, (some of the poorest regions of the country) and threatened to disrupt
the inauguration of the FIFA World Cup Soccer matches which began on June 11.
In
terms of Public Relations and winning public support for the teachers’ demands,
the strike action, that has now lasted seven weeks, has been, to all
appearances, a complete failure.
In
Mexico City, the striking teachers blocked highways and streets, set up
barricades and tent cities in the historical center of the city, prompting the
city government to set up large metal barriers essentially cordoning off the
entire city center. Merchants in the center of the city complained that they
were losing millions of pesos each day that the city was sealed off and even
had physical confrontations with the striking teachers. Videos emerged of the
teachers trying to gain entrance to the central square in the city center and
trying to occupy the area around the stadium where the soccer games were to
open ending in confrontations with riot police. There was film footage of
teacher’s wrecking cars, and damaging the offices of the Department of Education
and other private property. A bus transporting “normalistas” (students of the
normal school system) from Guerrero to the city to participate in the
demonstrations was found at a police check point to be carrying over 50
homemade pipe bombs.
The
political condemnation of the teachers from both the left and the right was
strident. There were rumors, which President Sheinbaum of Morena, her leftwing
populist party, embraced and disseminated, that the CNTE and its strike actions
were being secretly supported and financed by one of Morena’s most prominent
rightwing opponents, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a Mexican business magnate, the
third richest man in Mexico, whose Salinas Group owns a large portfolio that
includes a national bank, (Banco Azteca), a chain of popular appliance stores
(Elektra), a major TV station, (TV Azteca) and a grocery store chain (Neto). In
2025, Salinas Pliego formed his own political party with the aim of competing
in future national elections. He is also under investigation by the government
for large scale tax evasion amounting to billions of pesos. The President in
her morning public addresses on TV maintained that the extreme left and the
extreme right were conspiring against her leftwing populist party, and its
progressive program called the 4th Transformation, which enjoys very high
ratings of public support.
At
least two surveys of public opinion showed that less than 20% of the population
unconditionally support the teachers’ strike action. Rightwing media and
political commentators pointed out that the CNTE comprises only 80,000 teachers
nationwide, only 5% of the 1.5 million members of the SNTE. They accused the
CNTE of coercing its own members into supporting and participating in the
strike action and even falsifying the results of union votes. They pointed out
that the union itself was undemocratic and corrupt and controlled the hiring practices
and promotion of teachers. President Sheinbaum herself maintained that the CNTE
did not really represent its membership at all and proposed that the government
negotiate directly with their members.
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| Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum |
The
rightwing accused the government of being too lenient in its treatment of the
teachers’ behavior. The government, in turn, responded with its usual policy
statement that they would not repress the exercise of free speech and protest
or fall into provocations. Morena and their progressive program of the 4th
Transformation, Sheinbaum has insisted, would not repeat the errors that
characterized the past repressive rightwing governments of the PAN, under
Felipe Calderon, or the PRI, under Enrique Peña Nieto.
And
this is perhaps President Sheinbaum’s most convincing argument. The repression
not only of popular leftist movements and the CNTE but of the drug cartels
under those rightwing parties that governed the country from 2006 to 2018 was
particularly vicious and perhaps more than anything else created the political
conditions for the rise of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the founder of the
Morena Party, and the predecessor of Sheinbaum, elected in 2018 after a long
struggle against the rightwing political establishment.
Even
the supporters of the teachers strike agree with Sheinbaum and admit that the
times have changed and the political situation in Mexico is different from what
it was before Morena rose to power. Perhaps the aggressive and violent tactics
that CNTE has used to protest and express their demands, which actually date
back to the guerrilla movements of the 60’s led by teachers, are outmoded and
counterproductive. It would appear that the FIFA World Cup, which is now
underway in Mexico, and all of the mass hysteria and euphoria that this has
aroused, have successfully and effectively consigned the CNTE and their strike
action to the dustbin of history.
Or
perhaps the World Cup has only been a temporary distraction. Bread and
Circuses. The CNTE’s strike action has ended and their contingents have
withdrawn from the capital and returned to their various rural schools. But the
CNTE leadership, represented by Jesus Hernandez Gejales, has vowed to continue
their struggle, insisted on meeting personally with the president and correctly
argued that the CNTE supported both Sheinbaum and AMLO in the national
elections that brought them to power on the condition that their long-standing
demands be met. Indeed, many of CNTE’s critics admit that the teachers’ demands
are justified even though they may not agree with or accept their tactics. The
reform of the state workers’ pensions fund (the ISSSTE law), passed in 2007
under Calderon, which privatized the pension system, and the Education Reform
Law, passed by President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012, which sought to impose
policies on the teachers that limited their autonomy and undercut some of the
basic principles of public education, are very problematic. The teachers are
demanding that these laws be repealed. The Morena government, on the other
hand, has said that repeal is simply impossible for budgetary reasons.
July
2
Mexico
City, Mexico
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