Translated by Julie Kawamura
The manifestation of a dissident teachers’ protest yesterday in Mexico City lead to an attack by shop owners in the Tepito neighborhood against the teachers. Three people were injured. According to the version of some local proprietors, the bitterness of the tepiteños [those from the working-class neighborhood of Tepito] toward the teachers is a result of the declining sales in the local market due to the teachers’ sit-in at the [nearby] Zócalo [central plaza of Mexico City] up until September 13.
The episode has many worrisome aspects, and at the same time, it reveals the social deterioration that the country is experiencing. In the first place, keep in mind that the demonstrators as well as those who attacked them pertain to sectors traditionally discriminated against, excluded, and abused as to their rights and liberties. Both groups have been neglected, mistreated, and criminalized for their forms of social expression by authorities at different levels.
Nevertheless, these commonalities were not enough to encourage minimal empathy, not to mention solidarity from the tepiteños toward the teachers in conflict. Instead, the first aggressors let themselves be carried away by immediate interests affected by the teachers’ demonstrations. In such circumstances, the annoyance would have been understandable but not the aggression.
The incident is alarming, not only because it takes the discontent of some capital population segments to the degree of direct aggression against the teachers in conflict, but also because of what it evidences: the erosion of a social cohesion without which Mexico’s last three decades of uncertain political stability could not justify itself, despite the current initiation of a neoliberal period.
It would be very serious given the current national situation, when diverse sectors resort to demonstrations in defense of what they understand to be their legitimate rights under question or threat by structural reforms in the process of approval, for other citizen groups to proliferate attacks against those demonstrating by virtue of their constitutional rights.
It would be equally serious had the aggression been instigated by some governmental branch with the purpose of “ruining the movement,” given that actions of that nature irritate and complicate teachers’ protests, rather than deactivate them.
On the other hand, yesterday’s incident offers the occasion to analyze the impact of media demonizing that has been brewing for months against dissident teachers. It is worth mentioning that while passing along North Axis 1 [a main east-west thoroughfare] in the capital, the teachers of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE) were received with racist and offensive epithets – “lazy good-for-nothings” and “Indians” for example – that seem so similar to the lynching campaign operated from much of the political class and the majority of news mediums.
What occurred yesterday in Tepito, in short, arises from a harvest of social phobia launched by the powers that be and actors against a teachers’ fight that – while recognizing the impositions and setbacks provoked by their prolonged presence in the capital streets - is fundamentally peaceful and legitimate.
It’s necessary, whilst confronting the risk that an event like that of yesterday reoccur and grow in explosiveness and bitterness, for the capital authorities to serve as an element of stability and easing of tensions and act with full adherence to the law. Society in general, for its part, but especially its working-class sectors, should understand that the ongoing teachers’ fight is a worthy and legitimate exercise of defense of labor rights and of an idea of public teaching. It is not a mere whim of lazy, privileged public employees or, a worse characterization, of a group of provincials determined to cause disturbances among the capital population. Bearing that in mind, reflection, stability, and moderation should take precedence in society. Spanish original
See also: Street Merchants of Tepito Unfazed by Police Presence After Shooting