Mexico: Teachers Protest in Oaxaca · Global Voices
David Sasaki

While much of the country remains focused on the daily football happenings across the Atlantic, a small insurrection of protesting teachers and their sympathizers has taken to the streets of Oaxaca demanding for higher pay and the resignation of state governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
Those protests turned violent last Wednesday prompting black and white photoblogger Juan Calavera to take to the streets and document the forced eviction of teachers and their supporters that had been occupying Oaxaca's main plaza.
La primera noticia que tuve fue por teléfono, me llamó la directora de la escuela. “La policía está desalojando a los maestros, hay helicópteros disparando y lanzando gases lacrimógenos, ya avisamos a los alumnos que hoy no va a haber clases, no salgas de tu casa, la cosa está muy fea…”
He then describes the tension in the air as he approached the plaza where helicopters were flying overhead. The eviction of the protesters began around 5 a.m., according to Calavera, but three hours later, the police were still firing tear-gas.
Las versiones corrían cada vez más insistentemente: dos maestras y un niño habían muerto en la intentona represiva. Otro compañero había perdido un ojo a causa de los golpes policiales (más tarde los maestros lo reportaban muerto). Una mujer embarazada sufrió un aborto. Oficialmente aún no se reconocen las bajas. Algunos maestros en autos y motonetas distribuían coca-cola y agua para menguar los efectos del gas que, incluso horas después de haber sido lanzado, producía efectos sobre ojos y vías respiratorias. Otros llegaban con comida. Otros más intentaban reorganizarse. “Busquen a su sección… Vamos al zócalo, ya lo recuperamos”
Mark in Mexico, the weblog of an American ex-pat running an English language school in Oaxaca, took a break from its usual sardonic, conservative commentary on American politics to focus on the protests.
About 3 1/2 weeks ago, some 5000 or so teachers from throughout the state arrived and set up camp in the zócalo in Oaxaca. The zócalo is the main square in the center of the city and is a tourist magnet, or at least it was. All of the public school teachers from throughout the state, some 70,000 of them, walked off the job leaving some 1 million kids with no school and only 6 weeks left in the school year. As the days went by, more and more teachers arrived, especially on the weekends, to augment the original 5000 or so. They pitched tents in the zócalo, set up a half dozen porta-potties, cooking installations and just generally settled into about 50 square blocks in and around the center of the city. This effectively shut down the tourist trade in Oaxaca. And believe me, tourism is all this place has got.
Last week, they blocked the entrance to the airport and shut it down for a day. This forced President Vicente Fox to threaten to send in federal troops to keep the airport open. He said later that the reason he didn't send in troops immediately to remove the teachers was that there were no troops in the area. Very strange, since there is a military installation (fort) here and one can see soldiers moving in and out of the city almost every day. Hmmm.
Augmenting his descriptions of the violent protests with powerful photographs, readers are left with a portrait of a battle between tear-gas-wielding police officers and rock-hurling protesters. In the end, it was the striking teachers who “counterattacked with some 10-15,000 bodies against the force of 3000 policemen” and retook the city square. But just what are they so fervently demanding? According to Mark, who has since written three updates with new developments:
The teachers are demanding a 100% pay raise. They are demanding that governor Ruiz step down. They are demanding money be spent in the countryside for schools where children cannot afford a pair of shoes, let alone books, utensils and uniforms. They are demanding that the schools in the countryside, many of which are tin-roofed shacks, be updated with at least the bare minimum of accomodations, like windows, blackboards, desks and chairs for the poor indian kids. And they are right. Destroying the center of Oaxaca and its tourist trade is, however, pretty stupid. From where, exactly, do they expect the money to come? On the other hand, the authorities were probably right to try to retake the city. But the government should have realized that a failure such as has occurred would be worse than no attempt at all. The teachers, however, have watched as the government of Governor Ruiz has spent, in the past year alone, some $200,000,000 USD to remodel the zócalo and many other historical sites (unfinished) in and around the city, the Guelaguetza amphitheater (unfinished) where the world famous festval is due to start, uh, next month, the main drag into the city from the north (unfinished), and a myriad of other public works projects, most unfinished and almost exclusively here in the capitol city. The teachers see little or nothing being spent in the outlying areas of the state where money is so desperately needed
Ariadsol, a new LiveJournal user and self-described Backstreet Boys fan from Oaxaca, agreed that the improvised protesters’ camp did little for the city's aesthetics:
Today in Oaxaca things were difficult specially for the city, there was some problems with the teachers of the public schools and the goverment, the teachers had been in strike for 24 days and all the students were missing classes, the goverment gave them all they could have, because some stuffs they were asking were impossible because there is no money to do that, so the goverment got tired of them and the fact that they were blocking the whole city and causing traffic and other problems because they (the teahcers) closed several streets and stoped the cars, and closed stores and everything they could like the airport, and they were living in the center of the city, they put up like a camp,and the center of the city which is one of the atracctives of the city (for tourists) was looking horrible since almost the 24days of their strike and besides they said they weren't going anywhere until the elections on july 2nd so it was also a political problem,they were also removing posts from all the presindecial candidates escept one and saying they will not aloud people to vote on the elections,
As often happens, the situation turned ALT1040 into a public town hall. On Thursday Eduardo Arcos posted an email from “marcosmh.”
Hola que tal, escribo en un momento de emergencia, vivo en la ciudad de Oaxaca. Como se habran enterado por las noticias, el desalojo de maestros plantados en las calles del centro de la ciudad el dia de hoy miércoles 14 de junio de 2006, se ha llevado a cabo de una manera totalmente violenta por parte de la fuerza publica, aunque algunos miembros a pesar de negarse a llevar a cabo esta orden, fueron obligados a llevarla a cabo , las noticias solo muestran una parte, tv azteca y televisa, así como los noticieros locales de tv (canal 9) han sido comprados por el maldito gobernador Ulises Ruiz, un gobernador déspota, sin ningún tipo de consideración, mando a sacar mediante fuerza publica a maestros, hombres, mujeres y niños, desgraciadamente ya han habido muertos por estos enfrentamientos, el gobierno oculta estos hechos, la única forma de comunicación era la radio pero esta fue callada a partir del medio dia, una sola estacion de radio ha quedado en pie, pero esta ha cedido a las 6:30 pm, el gobierno ha callado a los medios de una forma agresiva.
No tengo a quien mas escribir, confio en ustedes como medio de comunicacion en internet para que este mensaje lo hagan llegar a todo el mundo, que sepan la situacion tal cual esta pasando y no solo la version de los medios.
I don't have anyone else to write to, but I trust you guys, as a media outlet on the the internet, to help get this message out to the whole world so that they understand the situation as it is really happening and not just the media's version.
But not all of the commenters are so quick to agree. Hector Cruz of the local news agency Adnsureste.info (ES) writes:
Yo tambien soy de Oaxaca, y estoy en total desacuerdo con lo que el compañero marcosmh comenta, radio universidad es una radio cuya caracteristica principal es de apoyo a las luchas magisteriales, eso durante los 23 años que llevan los maestros haciendo sus paros, si 23 años!!!, la ciudadania de Oaxaca ya esta arta de esto, no es que se apoye la violencia generada por el gobierno, si no que la manera en que los maestros alteran la vida de Oaxaca no es la adecuada.
Nor does Carlos find much reason to sympathize with the striking teachers:
Mira, yo entiendo que haya gente que no esté de acuerdo con lo que pasó en Oaxaca y lo que ha pasado en otros lugares de la Republica Mexicana; pero muy pocas veces oímos a alguien que critique a los maestros, o a cualquier otro grupo que se pasa la ley por debajo del arco del triunfo afectando a comercios, traunseuntes, conductores, y a la sociedad en general.
Debemos recordar que estas personas son las que comienzan el problema al no sentarse a la mesa de negociaciones y se van directamente a atacar diferentes sedes del gobierno como Cámara de Senadores, Diputados y hacen desmanes por los cuales nadie les responsabiliza. Hay estan las pintas y los graffitis de los sindicatos de la UNAM y de otros nefastos alborotadores. La gente ya está harta de que le fastidien el dia con sus manifestaciones. Hay que hacer valer el estado de derecho a como de lugar.
We must remember that these people are the ones that start the problem by not sitting at the negotiation table and instead go directly to attacking the senators and deputies and commit abuses that no one holds them responsible for. There is the graffiti by the unions of the National Autonomous University of México and other unruly troubles. The people are already tired that they disrupt the day with their protests. The state of the law and of the city needs to be valued.
Commenter “Silent_hill,” however, says it is the politicians who are to blame:
Efectivamente, debe renunciar, el dice que en estado no hay dinero, pero yo me pregunto ¿Cómo es que hay dinero para las campañas?, mucha gente dice que los maestros ganan mucho y que son unos webones, webones los diputados, senadores y servidores públicos que van a calentar asientos en las cámaras y que ganan 80,000 al mes. Cuando hay maestros que sólo ganan 2,000 a la quincena, y hay que resaltar que no solo piden para ellos, sino también para los niños como son desayunos escolares, uniformes, mejores condiciones para las escuelas, no crean que las escuelas están como ahí en los estados del norte, no, aquí, la mayoría de las escuelas están en condiciones deprimentes.
Sobre el desalojo, a Ulises no le importó que hubiera niños (los hijos pequeños de las maestras), que las patearon, que les dijerón cosas horribles, no saben el daño sicológico que el “Flamante” Ulises le hizo a eso pequeños.
Ojalá y reflexionen, que esta forma de gobierno autoritaria no la podemos permitir, nosotros tenemos derecho a la libertad de expresión, a defender nuestros derechos.
With regard to the forced evictions, [Governor Ortiz] doesn't care if there were children (the small children of the teachers) that [the police officers] kicked, that they told the children horrible things. You don't know the psychological damage that the “Brilliant” Ulises has done to these small kids. Hopefully you will all reflect that this form of authoritarian government is something we cannot permit. We have the right to the freedom of speech and to defend our rights.
For more background information on the strike, Nancy Davies, writing from Oaxaca, has a good explanation of the various players involved at The Narco News Bulletin. Liza Sabater begins her post “Oaxaca is Burning” by asking, “Is this the first true grassroots insurgency of the 21st century?” Her post includes eight videos of the protests.