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News » August 21, 2006

Teacher Rebellion in Oaxaca

Thousands of teachers go on strike in Oaxaca.

By John Gibler (Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico)

Oaxacan teachers take it to the streets.

Thousands of protestors have forced the Oaxaca state government into a bizarre sort of roaming exile, floating between luxury hotels on the outskirts of the capital. Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz worked from the guarded Hacienda Los Laureles Hotel before he went underground. No one knows where he is now. The dispossessed state senators declared the elite Hotel Misión San Felipe as its “alternate headquarters,” only to be booted after protesters warned the hotel management that they would “peacefully take over the hotel” if the senators were allowed to hold sessions there.

Oaxaca is a city under siege, but strangely so. In Oaxaca’s occupied town center, tourists browse through hand-woven skirts, wool blankets and painted wooden turtles as they walk amidst the tents and improvised kitchens of the city’s rebels. Shoppers on their way to outdoor cafés duck under posterboard signs calling for the governor’s ousting while marimba players compete for listeners with loudspeakers broadcasting the also-occupied university radio station.

Since May 22, tens of thousands of teachers and administrative workers belonging to Oaxaca’s Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers have been on strike, camping out in the colonial town square, shutting off highways, blocking government buildings and marking their territory—all of downtown Oaxaca—with political graffiti, reading, “The movement has no leaders; it is from the grassroots!” The teachers’ demands include school uniforms and shoes for all students, more scholarships, and an increased budget for school buildings and equipment.

On June 14, Ruiz Ortiz sent riot police into the town square before dawn to disband the teachers’ encampment. Police fired tear gas grenades from helicopters while more than 1,000 officers charged in, swinging their batons at anything that moved. Most of the 600 sleeping teachers scrambled out of their tents and retreated down side streets to seek cover; many were caught and beaten. Shortly after dawn the teachers regrouped, gathered reinforcements of up to 30,000 teachers and outraged residents bearing rocks, sticks and iron rods, and made their way back into the town square. The police apparently did the math and fled without a second round.

The failed attempt to violently uproot the teachers—coming only five weeks after police brutality in San Salvador Atenco erupted in a national scandal—backfired dramatically: It led disenchanted local residents to hit the streets and thicken the teachers’ civil disobedience encampments. On June 16, teachers and locals organized a massive march to demand Ruiz Ortiz’s immediate resignation. With one day’s notice, they put half a million people on the streets in a metropolitan area of one million inhabitants.

“As of June 14, our movement ceased to be a teachers’ movement, and became a social movement, a movement of the people,” Juan de Dios Garcia Santiago, a Section 22 union representative, told me outside of the blockaded entrance to the state attorney general’s office. The burgeoning movement’s first show of political strength was to promote and carry out a statewide “punishment vote” (voto de castigo) on July 2 against the presidential candidate of the governor’s party, Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (or PRI). The PRI had won the presidential vote in Oaxaca since the party’s creation in 1929. This time, however, they got punished.

Emboldened by having humiliated the PRI, on July 5, representatives from Section 22, towns and villages across the state, indigenous communities, religious groups, collectives and non-governmental organizations—all spontaneously pulled together into a horizontal organizing bloc called the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO)—declared their citizens’ assembly to be the governing body of the state. The teachers then agreed to suspend their original list of demands and join with the APPO in fighting to bring down Ruiz Ortiz.

The APPO is explicitly trying to “create ungovernability” in Oaxaca to force Ruiz Ortiz to either step down, or be ousted by the Mexican Congress. In addition to the months-long occupation of downtown Oaxaca, beginning on July 26, the APPO set up encampments outside of every major state government building, including the state legislature and the governors’ offices. They have all been closed since.

On August 1, more than 3,000 women—all members of APPO—marched through town, banging on pots and pans with spoons and meat tenderizers, chanting into the blanket of sound: “Whether he wants to go or not, Ulises is out of here!” The women went to the studio of the state television station, CORTV, and demanded an hour of live transmission to tell their version of what happened on June 14. The director of the station denied their request. But the women walked right past her, pots and pans in hand, took over the station, and broadcast live for over an hour. And they are still there, showing documentaries and broadcasting live daily.

“The struggle in Oaxaca is, in many respects, a precursor of other struggles yet to come,” says Luis Hernandez Navarro, an early member of the teachers’ movement and now the opinion pages editor of the national newspaper, La Jornada. “Oaxaca contains the core contradictions in Mexican society and anticipates conflicts that will surge in other states.”

Electoral fraud, authoritarian rule, and the combination of the teachers’ highly organized protests and the governors’ unsuccessful raid led to a governance crisis with the teachers becoming the backbone of popular resistance, Navarro says. “This fight will continue; it will not fade away.”

John Gibler is a Global Exchange Media fellow who writes from Mexico. He is the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, forthcoming from City Lights.

More information about John Gibler

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  • Reader Comments

    Why can’t we get that kinda movment in this country?  Were too lazy I guess, or maybe just not desperate enough yet.

    Posted by Vanella on Aug 21, 2006 at 8:50 AM

    Vanella -

    I think you have it right on both counts.  Oaxaca is an extremely poor and oppressed state.  Over 70% of the citizenry is indigenous, which in Mexico means dirt poor.  The governor and staff are extraordinarily corrupt, and the military acts as a murderous and suppressive force, particularly post-Zapatista uprising, circa 1994.  Those who organize resistance in southern Mexico are among the bravest people you’ll ever meet.  Disappearances of protest leadership are common. 

    In short, we don’t know how good we have it.  Or, we do know, and don’t feel like risking it anytime soon.  I wonder, though: if a group in the US - say the NYC Teachers’ Union - tried to pull something like this, would the people even support them?

    Posted by rocco on Aug 22, 2006 at 1:53 AM

    A movement like this would be difficult to establish in this country. One reason is because we lack a true opposition on the political front that can effectively organize and support social movements. I would also say that Mexicans are much more aware of the fact that mainstream media is usually propaganda and know to distrust it. In the U.S. the media controls opinion and conceals truth.  A supposedly “liberal” New York Times has never supported labor in a strike or condemned a foreign intervention. ANd the third reason has already been mentioned : ingorance is bliss...life seems fine to most americans and they don’t want to risk changing that.
    That said, it is possible and will happen in time. The government and media suppressed the civil-rights’ movement for years before it the nation embraced it.

    Posted by kevin on Aug 22, 2006 at 4:03 AM

    Our government is notoriously corrupt, just that the corruption is called legal bribery. There is a great deal of inequality but the poorest are a relatively despised minority.  Political fascism is strong in our society and many of the potentially radical have been co-opted.  However, there is a tradition of political liberty and as our liberties are taken away many people will be pissed.  We have a capitalist system and it is always potentially unstable so the chances are about 60/40 against a revolt, but there is still a chance.

    Posted by Spinoza750 on Aug 23, 2006 at 9:33 PM

    I was on a trip in Oaxaca and we were there the night that the police tear gassed the Zocalo. A couple of the people on my trip were staying about two blocks from the Zocalo and they were awakened to screaming, police lights, and a room full of tear gas. Later that day we had to pick up part of our group at thier hotel for fear of the protesters and we were unable to go to Casa Hogar because the teachers were planning on protesting close to there and our oganizers decided not to put us in jepoardy by having us close to there. Although we were unable to go to the orphanage we sent the supplies to them and they sent us a letter of appreciation.

    Posted by mauricia on Aug 25, 2006 at 10:38 AM

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Appeared in the September 2006 Issue
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