Chiapas Support Committee
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Chiapas People of Faith march in support of the teachers
IF THE REPRESSION CONTINUES, “ALL THE PEOPLE OF GOD WILL RISE UP,” THE BELIEVING PEOPLE WARN
Religious leaders from the region of Los Bosques, at the front of the Pueblo Creyente (Believing People)
By Isaín Mandujano
This Wednesday (June 8), thousands of indigenous Tsotils from different communities in the municipios of Simojovel, El Bosque, Huitiupán, Amatán and Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán, carried out a procession in the state capital in order to demonstrate their support for the teachers’ movement in Chiapas against the education reform.
Headed by the parish priest of the Church of Simojovel, Marcelo Pérez Pérez, the men, women and children that left their communities and went down from Los Altos of Chiapas and started a pilgrimage from the east side of Tuxtla and walked several kilometers to the central plaza where the teachers of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) have their encampments.
With the music of drums and whistles, with the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the hands of Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez and with the Mexican flag that an indigenous woman at his side carried, the indigenous left their communities in the early morning hours to reach this city and realize the procession in the midst of a human wall of teachers that welcomed them with applause and signs on which they thanked them for the support.
Along their route the teachers like neighbors in houses in the city’s center were giving fresh water and sandwiches to the indigenous. Some teachers were in tears with emotion as the march passed.
Upon reaching the central plaza, CNTE leaders Alberto Mirón and Pedro Gómez Bámaca received the Believing People and thanked the more than 4,000 indigenous that came from from the region also called Los Bosques for this gesture.
Father Blas Alvarado from the parish of Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán and Father Gustavo Andrade from the Venustiano Carranza parish were with Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez.
In the message read to the teachers, Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez asked the federal government, President Enrique Peña Nieto and Aurelio Nuño for: “no more repression because that generates revolution.”
“If you continue sending police to repress the people, we will come again to march not only with representatives of the church communities, but that would animate us and we will rise up all the people of God,” he said in the letter he read.
He demanded that a real and dignified dialogue be established between the teachers and the federal government, with the mediation of some of society’s groupings that enjoy a moral authority.
They came here as a church, not to generate violence, but rather they came in peace and to demand peace, but a peace founded on truth, justice, freedom and love as Papa John XXIII expresses.
“We say “No” to the mass firing of the teachers, because this is doing violence to their labor rights, for which they have been fighting for so many years. We demand that the deputies don’t approve laws that generate institutionalized violence. Now, the deputies have a crisis of credibility and of being representatives of the people, because they are not passing laws under the true principles and needs of the people, but rather under the stimulus of money that the President of the Republic gives them to approve what he wants, and the legal initiatives that he sends to the Congress is under the interests of foreign investors, which is therefore treason to the Homeland,” he indicated.
The priest sent a message to the police forces: “You come from simple families, you are also poor, you are human, each teacher that you hit with your clubs, with rubber bullets, hurt with tear gas, you are hurting your brothers, because all of us are children of God, you are not obliged to obey an order to repress that you receive from your superiors.”
“The teachers are not criminals, they are not kidnappers, drug traffickers, murderers or traitors to the country; we see that the government sends them to repress innocents, but traffickers of arms and drugs are the real criminals and you don’t say anything to them, although you find the drugs and arms; the government responds to them with stopping criminal action. A concrete case if the Gómez Family of Simojovel, who have stolen so much from the people,” he added.
“Police brothers, you have relatives in the teaching profession, you received classes thanks to the teachers, you have your job because of the studies that you got from teachers. Police brothers, you are protectors not repressors” he emphasized.
“And if the repression doesn’t stop, Pope Francisco tells us: “A Christian, if he is not revolutionary, at this time, he is not Christian! He must be a revolutionary for grace,” he concluded.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Beyond Chenalhó
Members of Las Abejas of Acteal, December 22, 2014.
By: Rafael Landerreche*
What’s happening in Chenalhó (I use the present because the fire has not been put out) must be examined beyond the obvious dimension of post-electoral conflicts or of the undeniable but partial component of gender. But to get to the bottom of the issue it’s necessary to go back in history to something that’s not about this moment nor exclusive to Chiapas, but that, nevertheless, is the deep root of what happens here and now.
The big lesson of the last century for the Mexican political class was that in order to maintain themselves in power it was necessary to make concessions to the people; not isolated and circumstantial, but rather, so to speak, of a permanent and structural character. That was the social policy of the “governments that emanated from the revolution,” which permitted the PRI to stay in power for 70 uninterrupted years of relative social stability. We all know of course the vices that accompanied and corrupted this social policy: a lack of democracy, paternalism, corporatism, electoral patronage, application of an economic model that was incompatible with those demands, corruption, etcetera. The system had its clear limits and anyone who would attempt to exceed them would abide the worst consequences (Tlatelolco is not forgotten). However, that social dimension was real and one of the proofs of that is the void that appears now that it’s dismantling.
The new generations of the political class formed in the rarified heights of neoliberalism, didn’t know or didn’t want to see the difference between social policy and the vices that were parasitic to it. They placed everything indistinctly into the same bag, put the ambiguous label of “populism” on it and threw it in the trash. It’s like the saying that they threw the baby out with the bathwater, but we could modify the image saying that in this case they threw out the baby and were left with the dirty water, because the social and nationalist policies have gone away, but the corruption, vote buying and lack of democracy continue. For a sample, the button of the SNTE: what has been fought is every attempt at political independence –including its independence from the teacher Elba Esther– what has been maintained is the absolute political, bureaucratic and electoral manipulation.
Upon disavowing the great lesson of the 20th Century, to which it owed its stay in power, the new political class was sustained by just three props, rigid but not solid: media manipulation, colossal vote buying but in drips (in the end, vote buying on scales that reduce to insignificance the old practice of a sandwich and a soft drink) and brute force, as a last resort, the Army. In places like Chiapas, with high social marginalization and very incipient political awareness (lights that aim in the opposite direction like the work of the Diocese of San Cristóbal and the lightening of Zapatismo should not impede seeing this sad generalized reality), the media manipulation assumes tragic-comical characteristics of the daily exaltation of a governor in a permanent campaign, the vote buying with government supports and programs has the subtle efficiency of a steamroller and the Army and other forms of repression are always around the corner.
One must add to this a fact that is more specific to Chiapas. It turns out that the governor and a sector of the political class that accompanies him, with an incredible blindness, the product of unmeasured ambition for power (that hubris about which Javier Sicilia speaks so much, which inevitably brings about its nemesis) decided to throw over the edge not only the social policies of the old PRI, but even the very cover and party name, ignoring that, if there was anywhere it had taken root and they had to thank for their stay in power it was among the indigenous communities of Chiapas. They shook the hand of the Green Party, which was born to be on the stage with others, and they converted it into the center of their political project. So, nothing else than their pistols imposed the Green candidates on communities of the old PRI roots. Chenalhó it nothing else that the last of a long list: Chamula, San Andrés, Oxchuc, Chanal, Altamirano and many more. Practically all the post-electoral conflicts that have devastated Chiapas since last year’s elections are like that, the creation and exclusive responsibility of those that now suffer their consequences. In the case of Chenalhó it is complicated by a combination with the survival of the paramilitaries responsible for the Acteal Massacre, but that merits a separate analysis.
Division in the communities and destruction of the social fabric is now, unfortunately, an old and sad story in Chiapas, the fruit in good measure (although not exclusively) of the counterinsurgency plans for confronting the Zapatista insurgency. But with these actions, the political class has taken division to the interior of its own support bases and has given a new twist to the destruction of the social fabric. The confrontation in Chenalhó has nothing to do with independent forces in the municipio, the Zapatistas, Las Abejas, not even with the relative of so-called opposition parties. They are simply the old governing sectors, arbitrarily divided by their own state bosses into PRIístas and Greens, who dispute the municipal budget booty, period. But they are taking the whole municipio between the legs (not to speak of the old Secretary of Government and now leader of the Congress). Las Abejas members of the Colonia Puebla are now displaced from their community again (for the third time since 1997) and two people, including a female minor, died there in the crossfire between PRIístas and Greens (for sure, neither the deaths or the displaced angered the authorities as much as the teachers haircuts). Even the Zapatista communities, clearly foreign to all the party fights, feel worried about a violence that could be directed against them at any moment.
At first blush this situation is a product of the blindness and incredible political insensitivity of the ruling class, more than of a deliberate plan to create greater destabilization; the fate run by the leader of the (Chiapas) Congress, would seem to corroborate it: they have not even been capable of protecting themselves. But, who knows? Chiapas is the site and destination of important megaprojects and we know about the increasing pressures throughout Latin America to bring about transnational projects, cost what it may. A churning river is an advantage for fishermen. And the third prop; will it be the Army like they claimed with Ayotzinapa, right there, watching?
*Advisor to alternative education projects on Chenalhó.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Fear of the teachers
Police confront teachers in Mexico City.
By: Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
The teachers are right and the State is afraid. Rejection of the labor reform, which is not educational, is in the streets. The mobilization of Friday, June 3 demonstrated the health of a movement that grows despite the aggressive campaign of discrediting. The desperation of a government that has renounced dialogue and opted for the threats and blows that led to a dramatic and televised criticism of PRI members who shaved the heads of teachers and then forced them to walk barefoot through the streets of Comitán, Chiapas, an action for which the CNTE was blamed. The fact that the victims exposed the lie only strengthens the movement and its demands. It was not the CNTE; it was the PRI and its allies.
Even if one were not in agreement with the teachers’ demands, the teachers have the right to walk and march through the streets of Mexico City and any other state; to protest and to demonstrate like in any democratic state. Not in Mexico, where they are treated like dangerous criminals that one must encapsulate to impede free transit. This Friday, the Federal Police boarded public buses, went into the Metro, literally took over the city, in an operation in complicity with the Mancera’s police.
“Distinguished visitors,” the rector of the UACM, Hugo Aboites, called them and thus would receive a population for whom public education is fighting. Therefore the UACM University Council, without any ambiguity, receives them with the highest of honors. “We are doing what concerns us: that the university shows that it’s in favor of the best social causes,” the rector said.
The threats and harassment in the media play in favor of the teachers. Until a few weeks ago one could think that they didn’t have citizen support, but in recent mobilizations people have come out in the streets to show their support. They are the common people, but also from organizations that are filling the streets. The day laborers from San Quintín; the parents of the normalistas from Ayotzinapa; the Mexican Electricians Union; the students from the UNAM, the Poli, the UAM, the UACM, and the Zapatista National Liberation Army, among many others, are openly supporting the demands.
The reform “is trying to provoke a catastrophe in the education system in such a way that the families will turn to private schools, working double shifts (to pay for tuition); or resort to educating their children through television, radio and digital media; or in the street, or not even that,” warned the Zapatistas.
The wave of teacher insurgence is on the rise. La CNTE insists on its will to dialogue, while the State sends thousands of police to encapsulate them like cattle, which does nothing but inflame the indignation.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, June 4, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/06/04/opinion/012o1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
2 Dead and 250 displaced after Chiapas mayor is ousted
Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar, president of the State Congress of Chiapas, dressed as a Tsotsil woman, listens to residents’ demands in the municipio of Chenalhó, Chiapas.
In the midst of a militant Chiapas teachers strike, part of a national teachers strike over the education reform, some other Chiapas news tends take a back seat. The story that follows seems, however, to merit telling; first, because it reflects the violence that lies just beneath the surface in many parts of the state, and also because of the recent history of violence in Los Altos (the Highlands) of Chiapas.
On April 27, a Chiapas blog reported that 7 police were injured while in the process of evicting indigenous Tsotsils from Chenalhó who held members of the State Congress and its workers (some 300 people) hostage for eight hours on April 25. It turned out that this was the third time the commission from Chenalhó had visited the Congress to ask that it accept the resignation of Mayor Rosa Pérez Pérez of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM). And, for the third time the president of the State Congress, Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar, refused to approve the resignation, claiming that it was signed under duress. It was after this third refusal that the Chenalhó residents closed off the doors of Congress and held all those inside hostage.
This may not have made the news were it not for the fact that in the hour-long process of removing the Tsotsils from the Congress, some of the police were beaten up and then used tear gas. The tear gas drew the attention of people in the area near the Congress and soon there were groups looting nearby merchants, which resulted in the arrest of more than 20 people.
On May 2, the group from Chenalhó held a press conference in front of the San Cristóbal de las Casas Cathedral. They talked about what they termed the “violent” April 25 eviction and again demanded that the State Congress accept the mayor’s resignation. They accused Rosa Pérez of not completing the public works she promised during her campaign and of claiming 70 million pesos in personal expenses.
The group’s spokesperson, Tomás Pérez, stated that Chenalhó residents were determined to remove the mayor and held a plebiscite in which they voted to replace her with a current member of the municipal council, Miguel Sántiz Álvarez. He warned that if the Congress doesn’t accept her resignation on May 3, there would be thousands of Chenalhó residents from 100 towns going to the State Congress on May 5.
The next news reported was not about thousands of Chenalhó residents that marched to the State Congress on May 5. They apparently changed their minds and resorted to another and more drastic tactic: kidnapping.
La Jornada reported that on May 25, some 30 or so masked Chenalhó residents burst into the installations of the San Cristóbal Diocese and forcibly removed the president of the State Congress, Eduardo Ramírez, and the Deputy Carlos Penagos. They were meeting with Father Gonzalo Ituarte, the Vicar for Justice and Peace for the Diocese. Ituarte said that he, in the name of the San Cristóbal Diocese, members of the Peace and Transparency Commission of Chenalhó and a representation from the Legislature, headed by Ramírez, met to find a resolution to the conflict.
The following day, Chiapas Paralelo reported that Ramírez and Penagos were taken to Chenalhó, where Ramirez was dressed in the traditional skirt and blouse of an indigenous Tsotsil woman of Chenalhó (to represent the absent mayor) and taken to the town square where they both had to listen to the residents’ demands. They accused the mayor of diverting 50 million pesos (to her personal use) during her seven months in office and demanded not only her resignation, but also the return of the public funds. By now, we had learned the name of the dissident group: Movimiento Pedrano Chenalhó (Chenalhó Pedrano Movement). They have a Facebook page too!
It was somehow resolved overnight; the mayor submitted a request for permanent leave, her resignation was accepted and the new mayor was officially installed. Ramírez and Penagos were released and whisked back to the state capital by plane, while the Chenalhó Pedrano Movement celebrated its victory in the municipal capital. But, that’s not the end of this rather unusual Chiapas story.
However, when members of the Chenalhó Pedrano Movement were returning to their homes in the Colonia Puebla from celebrations in the municipal capital, supporters of the now ex mayor, Rosa Pérez, violently attacked them in the Puebla Ejido, also known as the Colonia Puebla. The attack left 2 people dead, 2 disappeared, several injured and 250 members of that movement displaced to an auditorium in the municipal capital of Chenalhó. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission issued precautionary measures on behalf of the displaced.
As if this political tale were not already sufficiently intriguing, former mayor Rosa Pérez filed a court action on June 1 asking to be reinstated to her position as mayor, essentially claiming duress. She also asked the National Human Rights Commission to issue precautionary safety measures for herself and for all the residents of Chenalhó!
June 6 Update: Las Abejas of Acteal reports that that 14 families, a total of 81 people, belonging to Las Abejas (The Bees) were among those displaced from the Colonia Puebla in the attack that followed the installation of the new mayor. Las Abejas and its members are adherents to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration. In a June 4 communiqué, Las Abejas says it believes that the conflict is a dispute for power among the political parties and reminds us that the their members were displaced from the Colonia Puebla in 2013, also due to violence. In an article about the 2013 death threats and displacements, La Jornada quoted members of Las Abejas as saying, in reference to the Colonia Puebla: “it is where the first paramilitaries emerged, those who spread the conflict and incited para-militarism in various Chenalhó communities in 1997.” [1]
By: Mary Ann Tenuto-Sánchez
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[1] For background on the paramilitary violence in Colonia Puebla see:
https://compamanuel.com/2013/09/02/paramilitaries-re-emerge-near-site-of-acteal-massacre/
May: Between authoritarianism and resistance
The calendar? May 2016
The geography?
Well, it could be any part of this country, scratched open and bleeding with forced disappearances, impunity made institution, intolerance as a form of government, corruption as the modus vivendi of a fetid and mediocre political class.
But it could also be any part of this country healed by the persistence of the families who do not forget their missing, their tenacious search for truth and justice, their rebellious resistance in the face of blows, bullets, and clubs, and their eagerness to construct a path without masters, bosses, saviors, guides, or caudillos; through defense, resistance, rebellion; through the strength of pain and rage making the crack deeper and wider.
“Mexico” as this country is commonly called, reflects in its own way the crisis that is shaking the entire world.
It seems that at some moment in the brief and intense history of the 20th century, this country was an international referent for tourism. One heard about its landscapes, its gastronomy, the hospitality of its people, the perfection of the perfect dictatorship.
But both before and during this travel agency pamphlet image, what happened happened. No, I won’t ply you with information on what has happened in the immediate past, say the last 30 years.
The thing is that over the past few years, “Mexico” has become a world referent for governmental corruption; for the cruelty of narco-trafficking; the full complicity and cohabitation, not merely infiltration, of organized crime and the official institutions; the forced disappearances; the army out of the barracks and into the streets and onto the highways; the murders and imprisonments of opposition figures, journalists, and others; the “warning” signs on the paths of tourists; the cynicism as idiosyncrasy in the media and social networks; and life, freedom, and personal possessions gambled in the deadly roulette of daily life (“if they didn’t come for you today, maybe tomorrow”). If you are a woman, of whatever age, multiply the risks. The feminine, along with any difference, is ahead only in this respect: more likely to suffer violence, disappearance, death.
But you already know all of this. It is enough to have lived here, in these lands and under these skies, a little, not much, let’s say from just a few months old to less than five years old, which was the age of the little girls and boys murdered in the ABC Daycare in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, June 5, 2009, almost seven years ago.
What crime did those children commit? Were they victims of bad luck, of a dark divine design, of chance? Or were they victims of a political class that allows itself anything (such as the fact that one of those implicated—and not investigated—in this crime is a pre-candidate for the Mexican presidency for the National Action Party)?
So the place could be Sonora, where nevertheless, neither the crime nor the shamelessness of those responsible were able to defeat the families of the toddlers of the ABC Daycare.
Or the place could be Mexico State, where the Ñatho community of San Francisco Xochicuautla is at risk of being destroyed and buried by one of big capital’s highways. Their crime? Defending the forests. But, on the ruins of their homes, the community members maintain their resistance.
Or the place could be Oaxaca, in the Binizza community of Álvaro Obregón, in Juchitán, where the population was shot at by paramilitaries of the National Action Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution. What is their offense? Opposing the privatization of the wind, imposed by big capital in the Isthmus as “wind farms.”
Or it could be Veracruz, already a territorial hunting ground targeting women, young people, and journalists, whether or not they are oppositional. Or the Yucatán, where the government has implemented the so-called “Escudo” [shield] against the population of Chablekal as a way to protect its own acts of displacement. Or Guerrero, where all of Mexico is renamed “Ayotzinapa.” Or Morelos, converted into a gigantic clandestine cemetery. Or Mexico City where opposition protests are prohibited because there the automobiles rule, including over the Constitution. Or Puebla, bastion of water and highway privatization. Or Tamaulipas, where, like everywhere in the country, the PRI is the institutional arm of organized crime. Or anywhere in this republic called “United Mexican States” with its waves of firings, displacements, theft, disappearances, destruction, death…war.
But it turns out that it is Chiapas. And in Chiapas, we see…
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital city. May 2016. Average temperature: 37 degrees [Celsius] in the shade. Altitude: 522 meters above sea level. Date: May of the teachers in resistance and rebellion. But before we go further, allow me a few corrections:
- The deceptively named “education reform” is not about education but rather about labor. If it were about education it would have taken into consideration the perspective of teachers and families. When the government refuses to dialogue about the reform with teachers and families, it is acknowledging that this is not about improving education, but about “payroll adjustment” (which is how capital refers to firings).
- The law isn’t being applied, it is being violated. Those who say they are defending the constitution (through the educational reform) are violating the constitution (the laws that guarantee basic rights such as gathering, petition, and free movement).
- What the paid mass media are doing is useless. They declare back and forth: “everything running normally,” “the majority of schools are still functioning,” “over 90 percent of teachers are working.” But there is no referent in reality for these declarations, because the teachers are in the streets. In the villages the families already said clearly that they would not accept substitute teachers, that they won’t let them in or will run them off.
- The teachers aren’t defending their privileges, they are fighting in the last trench any human being has: for the minimal life conditions for them and their families. Are you surprised that someone is willing to defend the little they have left? A despicable salary, a few classrooms that look like they have been bombed (and they have been, but by economic bombs), not one but multiple work shifts, excessively large classes? In sum: little pay, bad working conditions, and a shitload of work. Sound familiar? And yet, the teachers show up at their schools and teach the little boys and girls the ways of the arts and sciences.
- The objective of the supposed education reform is to destroy those teachers who prepared for years and dedicated practically their whole lives to this profession. Of course, due to the perseverance of the media, which gets bonuses for their trouble, the teachers’ movement has been given the image of corrupt leaders. But this image is just a decoy, an attempt to get people to take the bait. The objective [of the reform] is not the leaders, but all of the teachers, including the servile National Education Workers Union [SNTE]. Now, if you want a model of corrupt leaders, you have the leadership of the SNTE.
- Yes, the objective of the education reform is to privatize education. In fact, this privatization is already in process. The attempt to abandon and defund the schools didn’t finish off public education in Mexico for one reason: the teachers. So now the teachers must be destroyed. They [the government] are trying to provoke a catastrophe in the education system such that families turn to private schools, working double shifts to pay for tuition, or resort to raising their daughters and sons on television, radio, and digital media, or in the street, or not even that. The teaching profession is not improvisational, nor is it a question of intuition. It requires study, preparation. Not just anyone has the capacity and the knowledge to educate. Because in school students are educated, not just taught. Not just anyone can successfully take on a group of school-age or preschool-age children. That is why the Escuelas Normales [Teachers’ Colleges] are necessary.
- Have you been told that what’s going on is that the teachers are lazy and don’t want to study? That’s a lie, any teacher wants to be better, better prepared and better trained. Do yourself what the government hasn’t done: talk to a teacher. Even better, listen to them. You will see that when they talk about their situation, it will seem like they are describing yours.
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We Zapatistas try to understand. And in order to understand one has to listen. Whenever we can, we rely on direct information. In this case, we sent a group of “Los Tercios Compas” (Zapatista media that isn’t paid, or autonomous, or free, or alternative, but they are compas) and we listened to the Zapatista bases of support that are part of the teaching profession. We took the following from one of these listeners:
“Compañero Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, I greet you and hope that you are in good health and doing the work of the struggle.
Having given this brief greeting, I offer my report: Well, we saw the teachers’ march. It wasn’t just male teachers; there were also many female teachers. The damned police attacked them and also attacked the people nearby. They even beat children. Later we saw a sign, well a sign painted on a wall, that said: “The police: such bad asses against the people, such pussies against the narco.” We saw that the teachers were happy in the march. As if they didn’t care that they were being beaten and pursued and sprayed with that gas that doesn’t let you breath. The teachers [male and female] just kept going, along with some of the mothers and fathers of the children that go to the schools and whose families support the teachers. It was clear that no one had forced them to go, but rather that they had come because they wanted to. They were excited. And the people in the houses along the street were shouting their support to the teachers. And in the streets people gave them water and fruit. You can tell that the people love those teachers who are in struggle. So then the teachers would shout the chant, “we see your support” and well, I thought there’s probably support that isn’t seen also, but there’s no chant for that.
Later we went to see the damned police who were following the teachers in order to harass them. We saw the police looking very defeated. There were just a few who were enthusiastic and who were beating their batons on their plastic shields, supposedly to frighten people, but it’s not frightening. The majority of the police could barely walk, I think because of the heat. The sun is strong in Tuxtla. And the teachers, well you can tell they’re used to it because they were happy. They sang songs and yelled chants. They sang that one called “We shall overcome” and I even started to sing too, but then I remembered that I was there in the role of “Tercio compa” and so better not. Every time the police paused for a moment they would all run for the shade. Their commander would scold them because they didn’t stay in formation. We heard one police officer telling another about how he pursued a little girl and a teacher, and that the teacher ran faster than the child. And that damned officer laughed like it was a joke to pursue a little girl. And when they got the order to advance, the police went dragging their shields behind them. Some were wearing metal boots. Others carried clubs. As they went by, the people in the street would say things to them, telling them to leave and not to bother the teachers anymore. Some people straight up cussed them out. The police looked at them with anger in their eyes but they didn’t stop. And these are families that are yelling. In some houses and buildings there were signs, like homemade posters expressing support for the teachers. On the radio stations people called in to comment, but not like other times when they complained that the teachers were blocking roads. Now they were complaining about the federal police, that they are just creating trouble, that it looks like we’re at war, that not even during the Zapatista uprising were there so many police in the streets of Tuxtla. No one was thanking the government; they were all saying clearly that this is all the fault of the government. And the radio stations would cut the people off, you can tell they didn’t like what the people were saying. And the newspapers have no shame; they publish stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. The journalists are worried because in Chenalhó some partidistas [people affiliated with political parties] kidnapped some other partidistas. But the teachers do politics, they explain their struggle and the people hear them and understand them. We heard what the people say. They don’t listen to or understand the governments. They call Velasco “the kid” and complain about how “the kid” is only good for getting his picture taken and going out for a stroll. And the rumors say that he’s not even in charge anymore, that there is fighting to see who will take the governorship. They say that “whoever gets it is a shameless thief.” They don’t respect the government.
They respect and love the teachers, they give them water and fruit, they applaud them. Even the cars, when they drive by the march, honk and wave. But the police only get insults. We heard one teacher explain their struggle: “This is now about putting food on the table for our children.” In one place close to Tuxtla, called Chiapa de Corzo, the people organized themselves and ran the federal police out of there. They weren’t teachers, they were families. The police hit them and threw gas at them, but the people didn’t give up and they ran off the federal police. Once we had seen all of this, we came back to give our report.
What we think is that who knows what will happen, but the governments already lost.
That’s all I have to say.
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Now, questions for the exam on the federal government:
If a government isn’t willing to dialogue and negotiate with the opposition, what path does it leave the opposition? If the government only employs argument via the use of force, what does it expect as a counter argument?
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Subcomandante Insurgente and Moisés Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano
Mexico, May 2016
From the notebook of the cat-dog:
The Hour of the Police 2
That vendor of deodorant for metrosexuals, the postmodern version of Gordolfo Gelatino, Aurelio Nuño Mayer, should stop his campaign for the presidency and recognize that the reform he purports to defend is neither a reform nor is it about education. It’s merely a shameless personnel switch. A boss badly dressed in institutional clothing uses a perfumed foreman to get rid of jobs.
To be an idiot foreman that longs to be a good policeman, follow these instructions: write 100 times, “public education in Mexico is a business and that’s how it must be managed.” Ah, and don’t study history. Forget that the National Coordination of Education Workers was born in 1979, in Chiapas, Mexico. And it was born as a response to government brutality.
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The battles that the teachers and the families wage do not end with May. They are just the beginning of many months and struggles that will come, and not only for the teachers. In the geographies and calendars below, history doesn’t happen; it is made.
I testify. Woof-Meow.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista on May 30, 2016
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/05/30/mayo-entre-el-autoritarismo-y-la-resistencia/
EZLN supports the teachers in their fight against the education reform
[Here’s a sneak peek at the the new comunicado from the Zapatistas. We’ll publish the entire comunicado when the official English translation is available.]
A member of the EZLN in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Photo: Isaín Mandujano.
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chis. (apro). – The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) today came out in favor of the teachers fight against the education reform and asserted that with the repression and the closure to dialogue and negotiation, the Mexican government does not seek to apply the law, but rather to do violence to it.
The government: “is not applying the law, the law is being violated. It says it is defending the constitution –the education reform–, violating the constitution -the laws that guaranty fundamental rights such as the rights of assembly, petition and free movement,” it accused.
By means of a comunicado called “May: Between authoritarianism and resistance,” it pointed out that the battles that the teachers, as well as their families unleash now, do not end with May: “They are barely the beginning of many months and struggles that will happen, and not only with the teachers. In the geographies and the calendars of below history doesn’t elapse, it is made.”
At 16 days from the start of the fight of the “teachers in resistance and rebellion,” Subcomandante Galeano and Subcomandante Moisés, spokespersons and military leaders of the EZLN announced today their position on what’s happening in Chiapas and other parts of the country where battles against “the misnamed education reform” are taking place.
“The misnamed ‘education reform’ is not about education, it’s about labor. If it were educational the views of the teachers and families would have been received. When the government refuses to dialogue about the reform with the teachers and families, it is recognizing that we’re not dealing with improving education, but rather with ‘adjusting the roster –that’s how capital calls the firings,” says the missive signed by both masked men.
To the EZLN, what the paid communications media do is useless. Statements come and go: “everything’s normal,” “the majority of the schools are working.” “Ninety something percent of the teachers are working.
“But those statements don’t know the reality, because the teachers are in the streets. In the towns the families already said clearly that they are not going to accept the substitutes, that they are not going to let them enter or that they are going to run them out,” the leaders of the rebel group said.
It clarifies that the teachers are not defending privileges, they are struggling in the last trench for any human being: the minimum living conditions for themselves and their families.
“Does it surprise you that anyone is willing to defend what little is left to them? An infamous salary, some classrooms that appear to have been bombed (and they have been, but by economic bombs), not one but rather several shifts, excessively numerous groups? In sum: little pay, bad working conditions and very fucked up. The EZLN questions: sound familiar?
In the comunicado the spokespersons for the EZLN say that: “the objective of the alleged educational reform is to destroy that teacher that prepared for years and has dedicated practically all of his or her life to that craft.”
With perseverance “which in the media is paid with banknotes,” they said, the image has been constructed of corrupt leaders, but that image is the lure for biting the fishhook: “No, the objective isn’t the leaders, but rather all the teachers, including those in the servile National Education Workers Union. Now, if you want a model for corrupt leaders, you have it there in the leadership of the SNTE.”
According to the EZLN the objective of the education reform is to privatize education and that in fact, that privatization is already underway, because leaving the schools without attention or a budget won’t finish off public education in México for a human reason: the teachers.
Now the other objective, the guerrilla group abounded, is to destroy those teachers. “It tries to provoke a catastrophe in the education system so that the families tend, doubling shifts, to private schools; or are in agreement that their daughters and sons are formed consuming television, radio and digital media, or in the street.
“The teaching profession does not improvise, nor is it a question of intuition. It studies, demands preparation. Not just anyone has the ability and the knowledge to educate. Because one is educated in school, one doesn’t just learn. Not just anyone can successfully face a group of school-age or pre-school age children. Therefore, the Teachers Colleges (escuelas Normales) are necessary,” the EZLN’s leaders add in their missive.
Galeano and Moisés ask:
“Have they told you that what occurs is that the teachers are loafers and that they don’t want to be prepared? They lie, any teacher aspires to be better, to be better prepared. Do what the government hasn’t done; speak with a teacher. Even better, listen to her! You will see how, when he or she talks about their situation, it seems that they describe yours.
“If a government is not willing to dialogue and negotiate with its opponents, what path do they leave them? If only the argument of force is used, what do they expect as a counter argument?”
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Indigenous win lawsuit against the San Cristóbal-Palenque Superhighway
ANNOUNCE COURT ORDER AGAINST THE SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS-PALENQUE SUPERHIGHWAY
No to the destruction of our mother earth because we live on it and we die for it. No to the Superhighway! Zapata Vive! La Lucha sigue!
From the Editors of Desinformémonos
The amparo [1] against the San Cristóbal de las Casas-Palenque superhighway project, in Chiapas was granted to the Tsotsil community of Los Llanos last January 18 after imposition under government threats and intimidation over the construction of the highway, by means of the municipal council and the secretary general of government in Chiapas since November 2013, residents of the Los Llanos ejido and San José El Porvenir reported.
The community stressed to authorities of the three levels of government that their land is not for sale, not “at present or in the future,” besides stressing their rejection of the highway project that dispossesses the indigenous communities of what’s “most sacred in this life:” the land.
In the amparo decision it orders the cancellation of the field line of the construction project or any other expansion of the San Cristóbal de las Casas-Palenque superhighway in Chiapas, in the mileage comprised inside of the municipalities of San Cristóbal de las Casas and Huixtán, and in particular on the community’s land. [2]
Besides, they reported that in fulfillment of the constitutional and international norms, and stipulated in the sentence, the authorities are obliged to respect the right of free, prior and informed consultation through the traditional representatives and leaders of the community, to thus provide complete information that contemplates the environmental and health risks that derive from the project.
“We are natives of these lands, our grandparents were born here and died here, therefore we demand respect for the life of our community and of all the indigenous peoples that are threatened with being dispossessed by private and government interests in exploiting their natural resources,” pointed out the residents of Los Llanos, who invited all the communities and peoples to continue organizing in defense of territory to not fall into divisionism.
Finally, the ejido demanded respect for all the rights of the indigenous peoples recognized in the Federal Constitution, international treaties and in the San Andrés Accords.
[1] An amparo is a court order granting protection to someone against something. It functions like a permanent injunction.
[2] This court order does not affect other municipalities located between San Cristóbal and the city of Palenque; such as, Oxchuc, Ocosingo, Chilón, Salto de Agua and Palenque; the court order would, however, seem to set an important precedent regarding prior, free and informed consultation.
Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformémonos
Monday, April 4, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Teachers and police clash in Chiapas
The confrontation between teachers and police in Tuxtla. Photo: Chiapas Paralelo
By: Isaín Mandujano
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chis (apro). – Federal and state police confronted this morning with members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) that tried to block east and west accesses and exits of this capital, with a result of one police agent and several teachers injured.
The police arrived at the point known as La Pochota, at the exit for Oaxaca and Mexico City, and they took up positions. Almost immediately the teachers blocked vehicle movement, while helicopters flew over the zone.
Minutes before, at the eastern exit from this capital, on the stretch known as Parque Chiapasiónate, which connects with the state’s Highlands and Jungle regions, the teachers threw sticks and stones at the police, and they responded with tear gas and threw back the stones.
The incident took place near “Dr. Gilberto Gómez Maza” hospital, where relatives of the patients, who were spending the night outside of the hospital, suffered effects from the gas.
Various vehicles that were parked nearby also got damaged, among them one belonging to the Megacable Company.
The following teachers were injured in the brawl: Blanca Nelly Agustín Argueta, of Huehuetan; Verónica Vilches Espinosa, of Tuxtla Gutierrez, and Juana Maria Solís Gómez, of Chiapa de Corzo. It was also reported that one police agent was injured by a firecracker that exploded in his face.
Parallel to that clash, bureaucrat workers that demonstrated in front of the government palace withdrew from the place before the possible arrival of federal and state police to evict the teachers from Sections 7 and 40 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) that have been posted at the place for 11 days to demand the overthrow of the education reform.
————————————————————————–Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com
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FEDERAL POLICE REPRESS PARENTS THAT SUPPORT TEACHERS WITH TEAR GAS IN CHIAPAS
In Chiapa de Corzo parents of school children march to demand that the Federal Police leave!
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Chis. (apro). – Federal Police repressed parents with tear gas. They were going with their children to protest in front of a hotel in Chiapa de Corzo, where the agents were lodged.
Hundreds of parents gathered this afternoon in the central plaza of Chiapa de Corzo and, upon adding up to some two thousand people, they started a walk to the La Ceiba Hotel, some 500 meters away.
Upon reaching the establishment they shouted slogans and, with signs, repudiated the repression against the teachers perpetrated this Wednesday morning in the state capital.
The response with tear gas came from inside the hotel when someone in the crowd threw a rock that broke a window. When the tear gas bomb was launched, the parents ran hugging their children to then disperse among the streets of that colonial city.
Some parents protested to the police about the use of the tear gas bombs because there were children in the march, students of the teachers that fight against the education reform.
Another march of parents with their children took place in the state capital. From the Diana Cazadora fountain, to the city’s east, a contingent departed, dressed in white and with signs, to arrive at the central plaza.
The demonstrators passed through the teachers’ camps, where the teachers gave them ovations and thanked them for the gesture of support for their struggle.
The parents with their children repudiated the police repression against the teachers of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE).
They also clarified that the teachers are in their fight, it doesn’t matter to them that their children miss classes if it stops the education reform.
During the confrontations that took place in the center of the city, between 11 am and 2 pm, hundreds of families took buckets with water to deliver to the teachers that confronted federal and state police.
Men and women opened their doors and took out bucket of water to leave in the street. The teachers that were opposing the police used the liquid to wash themselves and to lessen the effects of the tear gas.
Many people threw pieces of cloth or T-shirts for the teachers to wet and clean their face. Other people put out empty soft drinks cases or empty beer boxes that were used as projectiles against the police.
In some streets the neighbors and business people of the zone where the confrontations took place went out to ask the police to withdraw from the place, because there were children and elderly people in the streets.
After several hours of battle, the police and the teachers finally went away and returned to their camps.
A burned municipal Transit and Streets patrol car was left in the zone, as well as barricades that the teachers used, where they also burned tires. In fact, the proprietor of a nearby mechanics shop brought out all his old tires to deliver them to the teachers to be burned.
Personnel of a self-service store even started to give the teachers and neighbors bottled water and soft drinks so that the demonstrators could have a drink and clean their face given the heat from the gas that entered several homes.
In a missive, the CNTE condemned this Wednesday’s police repression and thanked the parents that marched and went out in the street to protest against the police and in support of the teachers’ struggle.
For his part, the secretary general of Government, Juan Carlos Gómez Aranda, made a new call for dialogue to the teachers to attend to the themes of the state education agenda and, at the same time, to discuss how to reconcile the right that they have to demonstrate with the rights of the citizenry.
The president of the State Human Rights Commission, Juan Oscar Trinidad Palacios, also called for order and for the peaceful alleviation of differences and, faced with the different events that have been presenting themselves in different parts of the state, principally in the Chiapas capital, the ombudsman announced that he is in favor of the way of dialogue for solution of the problems that are presented in relation to the education reform.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Sad conflict in Las Abejas of Acteal
By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Postcards from the revolt
In the mountains of Chiapas “friendly fire” has created a conflict that can only be seen as lamentable. The Civil Society Organización Las Abejas, founded in 1992, an expression of Liberationist Theology framed historically with the exodus of Tsotsil communities in Chenalhó and the Acteal Massacre in December 1997, has been a referent with a vocation of peace in the tumultuous river of insurrection, resistance and autonomy that overflowed in the mountains of Chiapas in January 1994. In October 2014, a group within the organization founded 28 years ago with the encouragement of Bishop Samuel Ruiz García, decided to separate, adopting the name of the Counsel of Pacifist Planters for Peace; the key difference was that the second group wanted to change the strategy with respect to the demands for justice and reparations that Las Abejas have maintained in relation to the terrible massacre that they suffered 18 years ago. “Since that date they have carried out violent actions against members of our Organization and especially against the Executive Board,” Las Abejas declared on April 20, 2016.
It’s not the first crisis of division in Las Abejas. In 2008 a group got close to negotiating with the Chiapas government of Juan Sabines under cover of the PRD, when that cover then was already not what it had meant a decade before. In the beginning, the group attempted to confuse the media and other organizations, but its own actions soon put them in their place. They kept the name of Las Abejas, but differentiated it.
A while later, towards 2011, in the United States, unidentified complainants, alleged victims of the massacre belonging to Las Abejas undertook a noisy demand against former president Ernesto Zedillo for his responsibility in the genocide that occurred in Chenalhó in 1997. They also demanded economic damages. The ambiguity of the process, from which Las Abejas opportunely set itself apart, culminated in something worse than a defeat: the confirmation of unrestricted impunity for former Mexican rulers at the international level.
The Pacifist Council’s split, with its particularities, has been less clear, and with daring supplanting elements (theft of seals, a dispute over the space called “Sacred Land” in the hollow of Acteal, Chenalhó, where the massacre occurred and where the victims are buried, headquarters of an independent and active organization, which has never yielded in its resistance, its pacifism, or in its demands for justice and reparations (in that order and not the reverse). They have never before put forward the negotiation of economic resources, indemnifications or “supports” as their central demands, for more that the mendacity and the State’s impunity it will continue ridiculing the Tsotsil Pedranos that a government as PRIísta as the current one massacred.
According to information in the weekly magazine Proceso, members of the current Pacifist Council could have been promoters of the complaint against Zedillo in the United States; they have denied it.
Also against the Frayba
Another component of this rupture is the animosity of the Pacifist Council against Las Abejas and against those who work with the organization since its origin lending legal support and diffusion. The Pacifist Council sued the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) and Bishop Raúl Vera López, its president, in the courts, and although the unheard of complaint had nothing with which to support it, it leaves a painful precedent. The Frayba considers it “risky,” in that it opens a new flank in the incessant siege that centers like the Frayba and organizations like Las Abejas suffer, like the targets that they are in the low-intensity war that it doesn’t stop delivering every day in the mountains of Chiapas.
It has continued a declarative offensive that seeks “to discredit” this labor. The Pacifist Council, maintains the Frayba, “undertakes a disparagement campaign that seeks to delegitimize the process of autonomy of Las Abejas of Acteal,” and the denial of information or any discriminatory treatment are not accredited.
On May 12, the Frayba Center, with offices in San Cristóbal de las Casas, expressed itself fully in that regard. “The Frayba faces daily campaigns of defamation and disparagement of its work in defense of human rights in Chiapas. An actor that was recently added to these disparaging acts of is the Pacifist Council.” The Frayba has accompanied the Civil Society Las Abejas of Acteal Organization since its foundation in 1992 and its process of seeking and constructing justice after the Acteal Massacre in December 1997. During these more than 23 years of accompaniment, the Frayba has respected and recognized the work of this organization, its representation bodies, its decision-making and its authorities like the Board of Directors. At the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, the Frayba attended as an observer a three dialogue meetings between members of Las Abejas of Acteal. Those present were: the Board of Directors of the organization, the only organ of authority and representation of Las Abejas of Acteal, representatives and coordinators of different work areas, and the members of Las Abejas de Acteal that afterwards would form the Pacifist Council.”
The meetings, the organism adds, “had as their purpose that the parties find a dialogued solution to the problems stirred up by part of the now members of the Pacifist Council.” The invitation to the Frayba was as an observer, not as a mediator.
The Board of Directors, together with representatives and coordinators of Las Abejas of Acteal, attended to the Pacifist Council members. When it was time for the Authorities of Las Abejas of Acteal to speak, Pacifist Council members refused to listen, then they proposed their withdrawal from the organization, and they terminated the dialogue.” Nevertheless, the Frayba “encouraged a both parties to continue the dialogue,” without success.
Accusations before a federal tribunal
“In January 2015, Pacifist Council members and their legal advisor, who previously worked at the Frayba, requested a copy of case record 12.790 Manuel Santiz Culebra and others (Acteal Massacre), a case presented on behalf of Las Abejas of Acteal to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) with the Center as co-petitioner,” which consulted the petitioners, Las Abejas of Acteal, “who by means of its General Assembly agreed that the Pacifist Council would have to obtain the information requested via the IACHR, because the right of access to information was safeguarded there, it being the instance with jurisdiction for that.” Not in agreement, folks from the Pacifist Council asked to talk to Frayba’s Council of Directors, “a meeting that took place on May 15, 2015.” The position of Raúl Vera López and the Council of Directors was “to respect the decision of the Civil Society Organization Las Abejas de Acteal as well as the survivors in their role of petitioners to the IACHR.”
The document emphasizes that: “the historic and legitimate interlocutor” that the organism accompanies in the Acteal Massacre Case before the IACHR is The Civil Society Organization Las Abejas of Acteal “through its only authority, the Board of Directors, the legitimate leadership organ for the organization’s communities, as well as for the survivors of the Acteal Massacre that continue recognizing the Board of Directors as their proper instance for representation and thus for establishing its own internal regulation.”
In June, Pacifist Council members and their legal representative Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca filed a complaint with federal government bodies against Vera López, in his role as president of the Human Rights Center. They presented a complaint for a protective order (amparo) to the Second District Court in Chiapas, “pointing to Frayba as the responsible authority” insisting on delivery of the cited case record that, it reiterates, “is found in the IACHR”.
As they also alleged “discrimination and denial of the right to information,” Vera López, the Directive Council and Frayba’s director “were requited to answer by means of a justified report, equating us to a government agency.” On January 25, 2016, the Board of Directors of Las Abejas of Acteal was required (to answer) in the same way.
On April 20, Las Abejas issued a pronouncement with respect to that, and now the Frayba elaborates a characterization of such acts, which “turned out to be arbitrary on the part of the federal court because it wasn’t credited as a civilian human rights defense organization, nor was the Board of Directors of Las Abejas of Acteal; they were equated to a responsible private authority, with the risk of setting a precedent for human rights defense organizations in the country and creating one more mechanism for persecuting the Defenders.”
The Pacifist Council and its legal representative at the same time asked the IACHR for: “its incorporation as co-petitioners in the case and a copy of case record 12.790.” On December 10, 2015, the IACHR informed about its acceptance of the new co-petitioners. “They obtained the case record that they requested from Frayba in this way, as Las Abejas of Acteal pointed out at the time.”
On March 16, the Pacifist Council’s suit for amparo was thrown out, because the Frayba “is not a responsible authority.” Nor was it accredited that it denied the right the information or committed any discrimination.
The Center considers “contradictory” that the Pacifist Council would decide to go to the federal judge complaining against Frayba and the same organization that they renounced,” although during the trial “they said they belonged” to it. A “usurpation of functions of community authority,” to which is added “the undue use of logos, seals and the figure of the organization’s representatives.”
Hostility and threats
In April, Las Abejas denounced that the Pacifist Council has carried out actions “contrary to the pacifist, autonomous and non partisan spirit” that they profess, and “they maintain a double discourse: in their public word they talk about conciliation, peace and that they want to agree on a dialogue, but their word is false because they behave with threats and harassment” because “they want to appropriate our organization’s physical and symbolic spaces in Acteal, the House of Memory and Hope.”
To that, the Frayba points out that the Pacifist Council realizes “actions similar to those of the Mexican government against our work within a national context of criminalization and judgment of defenders.” Besides, with its actions, “it generates confusion, deepens division, fragments and weakens the process of construction of autonomy of Las Abejas of Acteal.”
The situation, Frayba concludes in its argument, “is an effect of the wear and tear of the Mexican State’s war,” and therefore “it’s lamentable” that the Pacifist Council confuses, deceives and twists the “dignified, historic and legitimate struggle” of the Civil Society Organization of Las Abejas of Acteal, who we continue to accompany in its radical demand for truth and construction of The Other Justice.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, May 21, 2016
http://desinformemonos.org.mx/triste-conflicto-en-las-abejas-de-acteal/
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas parents will reject substitute teachers
PARENTS WILL REJECT SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS IF THE SEP FIRES CNTE TEACHERS
Parents hold assembly in Chiapas. Photo: Chiapas Paralelo.
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chiapas. (apro). – After nine days of the work stoppage, teachers of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) and parents’ committees from at least 60 municipios of Chiapas formed alliances for continuing the teachers movement in the state.
After an assembly held on Sunday and the big march held this Monday morning, parents promised the teachers they would close all the schools that are still holding classes and said that they will not accept substitutes that arrive in the classrooms in case there are mass firings of teachers. [1]
Representatives of at least 60 Chiapas municipalities arrived at the assembly of parents that was held in the installations of Section 7 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), with the attendance of at least one thousand personas.
On the weekend the mothers and fathers held different marches in support of the teachers in diverse municipalities. In Huixtla, on the Chiapas Coast, they closed the doors to the doors to the Municipal Palace; in San Cristóbal and also in Comitán they initiated the collection of provisions to take to the encampment of teachers. In the capital of Chiapas they held a large mobilization today, and they have constantly been taking food to the ones that are in the occupation.
The resolutions that the assembly of parents announced after the meeting with the teachers are: the closure of schools, public acts of support and not permitting substitute teachers to arrive in the classrooms; also “to seek the intervention of the UN and to promote a political case against Enrique Peña Nieto and Manuel Velasco Coello.”
Translator’s Note
[1] On Friday, May 20, 2016, the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) announced the firing of 3,119 teachers in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoacán that had 4 consecutive absences due to the strike. The next day, the SEP announced that 1,134 striking Chiapas teachers would be fired for having four or more absences due to the strike.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com.mx
Monday, May 23, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 