Translated by Sally Seward
Ernesto de Jesús Rea is one of the 2,000 teachers from Chiapas present at the encampment that the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers [CNTE] is holding at the Monument to the Revolution, in Mexico City, along with thousands of other teachers from different states. His presence there is not by chance. Ninety-five percent of the teachers from the state in the southeast of Mexico, belonging to Section 7 of the National Union of Education Workers [SNTE], have been on strike since August 28. Their colleagues from Section 40 stopped working 10 days later.
Chiapas is one of the main bastions of the coordinating committee. It was in that state where, in 1979, it was founded. It also achieved there, almost two years later, the recognition of its first democratic leadership in a union section. Since then, with highs and lows, they have played a central role in the national fight.
Like in the rest of the country, the teachers from the state demand the repeal of the constitutional reform on education and its secondary laws. And, faced with the government's stubbornness, they are radicalizing their actions with each day that passes. Since the beginning of the conflict they have held a sit-in at the main plaza of the state capital. On a couple of occasions they took the Chiapas Tower, the tallest building in the southeast of the country, a symbol of the local powers. It holds some government offices, the television studio of TV Azteca Chiapas and a heliport.
On two occasions, the teachers circled the Pemex [state oil company] Tower, not allowing fuel to come in or out. The first time the plant was isolated for three days, causing panic in the state because of the gasoline shortage. The second time, it lasted five days, and the authorities brought in gas tank trucks from Veracruz to supply the gas stations directly.
Their mobilizations have been the largest in the history of the state. On October 2nd and 12th tens of thousands of citizens marched beside the teachers. On three different days they blocked the large shopping centers in the state. They are controlling roads, highways and toll booths.
Facing the biased information that the electronic media has put out about their protests, the teachers occupied their facilities to demand the right to a response. The pressure was focused on the buildings of Televisa, TV Azteca and the radio stations of PRI congressman Simón Valanci.
The parents have offered the teachers large and generous solidarity. Even more, they have taken the fight against the educational reform into their own hands, as their own matter. They have contributed to the formation of an unprecedented teacher-popular movement in the state. Many of the protests are not the teachers' initiative, but that of other sectors of the population.
On October 6th, more than 3,000 representatives of the parents formed the Democratic State and Regional Committee of the Parents of Chiapas in Defense of Public Education and the Nation. Their first agreement was to not allow the substitute teachers, contracted by the state government to take the place of those on strike, to enter the schools. The second consisted of closing all the classrooms that are still having classes. In an unusual occurrence, on October 7th, thousands of parents and teachers took 59 municipal headquarters and, symbolically, the state Congress.
The students of preparatory and technical high schools are experiencing the same effervescent situation. They are the ones who are taking the classrooms.
The diocese of San Cristóbal expressed its solidarity with the teachers' movement. It believes that
"the focus on privatization of the educational direction seriously affects the interests of society."The government and business owners have driven a belligerent intimidation and defamation campaign. They have contracted groups of young people to put up propaganda in favor of the "rule of law" and against the teachers. They want to divide the teachers by starting all kinds of rumors and lies about their leaders. They withhold salaries, and they threaten to take up administrative proceedings and stop the strikers. None of that has worked for them. The movement is unfolding with power and belligerence.
Just yesterday, Monday, [teachers in] Zacatecas [a northern state] declared an indefinite strike. The teachers' fire is spreading through Chiapas and the whole country. And, instead of stopping it by repealing the punitive law, the lawmakers are focused on proclaiming, through people such as Fernando Savater, an old ally of Elba Esther Gordillo [imprisoned former union leader], the greatness of the educational reform, as if it were the modern Aztec version of The Sack of Troy.
Spanish Original