In the community of Villa de Mitla, parents burned an irregular site installed by twenty-four teachers of Section 22 of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE), whom they charged had abandoned their employment and with whom they had had confrontations.
According to the version of the town council member for education, Vilma Martinez, the protesting teachers sought to install an alternative site for the "Benito Juarez" elementary school after they were replaced by educational professionals and substitute teachers appointed by the community assembly, composed of parents, and validated by the municipal authorities, given the teachers, members of union Section 22, chose to break the agreement they had signed that they wouldn't stop working.
According to the council woman, the teachers of came with drywall and began to build a parallel school structure, in which they sought to impose the classes of the school from which they had been dismissed. But parents were alerted to this wrongdoing and immediately destroyed and burned the infrastructure, confronting the teachers.
Parents also set up barricades at the entrances to the town and demanded the mediation of the General Secretariat of [state] Government to clarify the position of those dismissed.
"In this municipality we aren't going to allow teachers from Section 22 to return who broke the agreements not to suspend classes.
"We no longer want them and the governor knows this; here the people have already decided and we want to control who are named as substitute teachers or have them send us a new staff of teachers that will come to do their job. "She denied that anyone was injured or killed, and said that parents were guarding the teachers until they were rescued by the state authorities.
Two months ago, because teachers of Section 22 were blocking roads and attempting to recover a preschool, a confrontation occured with parents. Three faculty were retained by residents who threatened to lynch them. They were rescued by state officials who forced the teachers to sign an agreement not to strike. This was respected by most teachers until a few weeks ago when the teachers of "Benito Juarez" left to join the massive mobilizaton in Mexico City, where they supported the CNTE protests against the federal education reform. Spanish original