Oaxaca: a No Sweat background briefing

"Oaxaca Vive, La Lucha Sigue!"
Oaxaca Lives, The Struggle Continues!

November 2006

By Paul Hampton

The savage repression of the movement in Oaxaca state in Mexico at the end of October has cost at least 17 lives and hundreds injured. But the struggle goes on. This briefing outlines the events leading up to the repression and looks at the tremendous history struggle by teachers in Oaxaca and across Mexico.

Timeline: Oaxaca 2006

22 May: Teachers from Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) went on strike demanding pay increases, improved working conditions and increased spending for school meals, uniforms and supplies.

14 June: Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) sent over 1,000 state police into Oaxaca city centre before dawn to break up the teachers' protest camps using tear gas and beating protesters with clubs. The teachers regrouped and took back the town centre only hours later.

16 June – 25 July: Tens of thousands of people from Oaxaca city and across the state joined the teachers protest camps and massive marches, demanding Ulises Ruiz leave office. Trade unions, community organizations, and poor peasant groups formed the “Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca” (APPO). At one point, to advance the demand for Ruiz to resign, APPO has announced that it would take control of government within the state of Oaxaca.

26 July: APPO initiated a series of direct actions designed to paralyse the state government and force Ulises Ruiz's resignation, setting up protest camps outside of all state government buildings. It used creative tactics, like destroying parking meters and occupying road toll-booths to make transport cheaper for local people.

1 August: Thousands of women from the APPO marched through Oaxaca City and then took over the state television and radio station, CORTV.

7-22 August: State and federal police and unidentified gunmen shot at protest marches and encampments and arrested APPO leaders on the street. On 21 August the gunmen destroyed the CORTV transmitter; the following morning APPO members took over 12 local commercial radio stations (later in the week they released ten stations). On 22 August, the gunmen killed two protesters and wounded several more. Images of gunmen in police trucks driving through Oaxaca City aired on national and international television (Televisa and Reuters) on August 22. APPO organised over 1,000 barricades throughout the city to halt further incursions by gunmen or police.

29 August – 20 September: Members of the APPO travelled to Mexico City for talks with the Minister of the Interior, Carlos Abascal. The Interior Ministry offered to address education and social equity issues in Oaxaca, but the APPO turns down all offers, maintaining their singular demand that Ulises Ruiz resign or be removed from office. Talks stalled on 20 September.

21 September: The SNTE and the APPO initiated a march of over 4,000 people to Mexico City where they set up a protest camp outside of Congress. Teachers and APPO protesters walked over 300 miles through four states before arriving in Mexico City in early October.

24 September: APPO protesters clashed with gunmen after storming a hotel where Ulises Ruiz was rumoured to be conducting an interview. Gunmen shot one protester in the arm.

25 September: President Vicente Fox met with eleven governors from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to discuss the conflict in Oaxaca. Fox said that he would solve the problem in Oaxaca before November 30, the last day of his presidential term. Ulises Ruiz attempted to open schools, demanded that teachers return to classes and threatened to fire all those who do not return and hire scabs. The attempt failed.

26 September: The Minister of the Interior Carlos Abascal submitted a draft proposal for the use of federal police in Oaxaca. President Fox authorised the use of force.

9-10 October: A delegation led by SNTE general secretary Enrique Rueda Pacheco and APPO members held direct negotiations with Abascal.

14 October: Rueda Pacheco put the agreement to the delegates’ assembly of Section 22 of the SNTE (the union’s highest body). It was rejected until a Senate investigation was concluded.

19-20 October: Rueda Pacheco conducted a two-point "consultation" of teachers: Point 1 asked the teachers if they agreed or disagreed with the settlement proposed by the Ministry of the Interior. Point 2 asked the teachers if they preferred returning to work on 23 October or 30 October.

Teachers voted 26,000 to 17,500 to accept the deal and return to work on 23 October. But CNTE militants argued that the questions were confusing. The leadership told the media that no matter how the teachers voted on Point 1, they would be returning to work either the 23rd or 30th.

21 October: a full delegates assembly voted overwhelmingly to reject the deal, to hold local assemblies and ballot members again on the deal.

25 October: Teachers voted by 60:40 to end their strike and return to classes. The settlement made concessions to the teachers, because the government hoped to split them away from the rest of the struggle, organised in APPO.

27 October: Police in civilian clothing linked to Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, attacked protestors around the city killing four civilians including Bradley Will, an Indymedia journalist from the US.

28-29 October: Federal police carried out further attacks on demonstrators. But APPO continues to resist.

30-31 October: 180,000 teachers in five states across Mexico led by the CNTE came out on strike in solidarity with APPO and to demand the immediate withdrawal of federal troops, an end to the state-sponsored violence, the punishment of all those responsible for these crimes and the impeachment of Ruiz Ortiz.

1 November: the CNTE leadership called on the 250,000-plus teachers organised in the CNTE to carry out a two-day teachers' strike on November 9-10.

Background – rank and file organisation among Mexican teachers

The National Education Workers Union (SNTE) in Mexico represents schoolteachers, as well as administrators, cleaners and support personnel. It has 1.2 million members and is the largest union of any kind in Latin America.

Since it was founded in 1943, the SNTE has been subjected to control from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for nearly seven decades until 2000. For most of its history the SNTE was organisationally and politically tied to the PRI and run by a union bureaucracy known as the charros (cowboys). The government and the SNTE officials have used force to maintain their grip on the union: between 1970 and 1996, more than 150 teachers were killed or disappeared by SNTE thugs or by government security forces.

But throughout its history teachers have fought back against this control and asserted their independence. They have organised most of the biggest protest mobilisations in recent Mexican history.

For example between 1956 and 1958, teachers formed a new, democratic caucus to fight for better pay and working conditions and against the charros. Teachers made alliances with striking rail, oil and telegraph workers.

In 1972 amid infighting between the SNTE bosses, leader Carlos Jonguitud led an armed takeover of the SNTE national headquarters in Mexico City.

In 1979 despite the charros' constant campaign of abuses, dissident teachers formed the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE). After a debate, the caucus decided to focus on taking over the SNTE from within rather than trying to form a separate teachers' union. Protests spread throughout Mexico. Teachers in Chiapas carried out a 22-day unofficial strike in defiance of the charro leadership, and delegations from all over the country marched to Mexico City, where 100,000 teachers rallied in the Zócalo, the capital’s central plaza.

In 1981 the CNTE won positions on the local executive committees in Hidalgo, Guerrero and Mexico State, Chiapas and Oaxaca.

In 1989 protests again erupted nationwide. More than 500,000 teachers joined unofficial strikes in April, demanding wage increases and the ousting of Jonguitud from his role as union boss. Repeated demonstrations and sit-ins by hundreds of thousands of teachers were held in Mexico City. Finally the government forced Jonguitud out. Rank-and-file teachers celebrated the downfall of the old bosses but protested at the back room, undemocratic appointment of a new one, Elba Esther Gordillo. Three hundred thousand teachers filled Mexico City's Zócalo.

In 1992 the SNTE ended its 49-year formal affiliation with the PRI, becoming the first major union since the 1970s to break its umbilical cord. At the same time the Education Ministry started a decentralisation programme, aimed at balkanising teachers’ struggles. Henceforth the 32 state governors rather than the federal government would negotiate teacher’s conditions.

In 1994 the Education Ministry introduced a merit pay programme that could triple the pay of some teachers. The programme, known as “Teacher's Career” ranked teachers according to educational attainment, supervisors' evaluations and other criteria. It was supported by national SNTE officials but denounced by the CNTE.

In 1996 teachers’ protests erupted across Mexico. In May, unofficial work stoppages instigated by the CNTE were held. Thousands of teachers held a sit-in in front of the Education Ministry in Mexico City. Police brutally attacked the teachers, leaving 45 wounded. On 31 May, 150,000 teachers marched through Mexico City to the Presidential mansion - the largest teachers’ demonstration since 1989.

In 1997 the CNTE called out approximately 200,000 teachers on an indefinite work stoppage in four states: Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacan and Oaxaca.

In 1999 200,000 teachers again took strike action over wages. There were protests in 20 states and strike action in six states.

By the late 1990s, more than 250,000 teachers were CNTE members. The CNTE continues to emphasise the low pay of its members, demanding a 100% increase in wages in most negotiations. It estimates teachers’ wages have lost 70% of their purchasing power since 1980.

The CNTE has a militant tradition fighting for teachers’ pay and conditions. But it has also taken up wider educational questions and developed highly democratic forms of rank and file organising.

Democratic pedagogy

In the early years of the democratic teachers’ movement, pedagogical issues were virtually ignored. But in the 1990s, the CNTE placed new emphasis on taking progressive values into the classroom. In Oaxaca the union-run indigenous education department has adopted the ideas of French education theorist Celestin Freinet to design new textbooks and teaching techniques.

Freinet argued that all aspects of schools should be run democratically and that teachers should emphasise the students' own cognitive and creative abilities rather than rote instruction. CNTE teachers have fought to get these techniques established in schools across Mexico.

Bilingual education

In the 1980s and 1990s, democratic teachers forced the Education Ministry to expand its indigenous, bilingual programmes. For example, around two in five (38%) of people in Oaxaca are indigenous. Since 1994, teachers have forced the Oaxaca state indigenous education department to develop textbooks in the state's 16 indigenous languages crafted to fit the culture of each ethnic group.

How the CNTE is organised

The CNTE is a rank and file movement that retains its own democratic structures while fighting to transform the existing SNTE union. The CNTE's basic organisational forms are the "struggle committee" and regional "central councils of struggle". "Brigades," teams of teachers who carry information and support to other areas, play a key role.

In the local union branches that it controls, the CNTE does not disband as a rank-and-file organisation, but works within the official union structure to democratise it. It promotes individual school committees to anchor the local branch in the concerns of workers in schools. In addition, branches hold an “asamblea” (assembly) of all elected representatives as the highest authority, rather than the executive committee. In the assembly, the consulta is the rule - delegates must take the debate on important issues back to their local areas before voting and adopting a decision.

Sources

Mexican Labor News and Analysis http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
Narconews http://www.narconews.com
David Monroy, 1997, Mexican Teachers and the Struggle for Democracy, A Global Exchange report http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/resources/teache...
Granito de arena (Little grain of sand), a film by Jill Freidberg about the struggles of Mexican teachers http://www.corrugate.org/granito_de_arena/granito_de_arena