June 14 Symbolic Strike
On June 14, this thursday, there will be a megamarch at 10:00 am (daylight savings time) from the crucero of the aeropuerto to the zocalo.
There will be a symbolic strike encampment in the zocalo, the teachers say 10% of their number, which mean 7000 people. There is no info on how long they plan to stay.
Barricades, installed from 17:30 to 21:00, will be installed in commemoration of last year’s blocking of several major streets.
The Popular Guelaguetza will take place on Cerro del Fortin on July 16.
Tourists!!!: Come for the Popular Guelaguetza, it’s free!
Below is an excerpt from the historic chronicle of the movement, translated by Nancy Davies from the book by Victor Raul Martinez Vasquez.
The teachers movement in 2006 and the 14th of June, 2006 (book text page 60)
by Victor Raul Martinez Vasquez
As in every year, in 2006 Section 22 on the first of May presented its annual document of demands, this time containing 17 general points and others relative to each specific education level and methods.
On this occasion, as in the previous year, the movement centered its attention on the demand for re-zonification for the high cost of living, asking to be moved from zone two to zone three, as has already been achieved, for example, in the state of Chiapas.
To attend to this demand, the union asked for direct intervention by the executive of the state. Other requests were: more positions, hours for secondary school, loans, housing for teachers, grants, and uniforms, shoes and materials for students with scare resources. The principal demand of the teachers represented a very significant amount, 1,400 million pesos, of which the union said it was disposed to contribute 680 million.
It should be mentioned here that the secretary general of government, Jorge Franco, was vetoed by the teachers in the negotiations on being accused of promoting a dissident group within Section 22, the self-named Central Council for Struggle, (Consejo Central de Lucha), headed then, among others, by two ex-secretaries general of Section 22, Humberto Alcalá Betanzos and Alejandro Leal Díaz, who at the close of 2005 demanded the departure of Enrique Rueda Pacheco, accusing him of having received a Volkswagen Jetta automobile from the State Government, and of doing personal business.
In regard to the accusations, at that time the State Assembly of the teachers decided to form an investigating commission which met to study said accusations against the secretary general and the technical secretary, who was accused of having received another Jetta. [1]
The internal division encouraged by the government cast a shadow on Section 22 when it was discussing its plan of action to win satisfaction for its petition. The plan included, among other measures, carrying out a state work stoppage and a massive encampment in the center of the capital city. This division also generated the resignation of the secretary of finances of the Section’s Executive Committee (Comité Ejecutivo Seccional), who afterward would unite with the dissident Central Council for Struggle, the base for the present Section 59 approved by the SNTE, to fracture the Oaxaca teachers movement.
May 1, the Section’s Executive Committee formalized the handing in of their petition. May 13, the government initiated a strong media campaign by press, radio and television against the Oaxaca teachers movement and its leaders. The strike erupted on the 22nd of May.
In the campaign against the teachers, the membership of the Association of Parents of Families (Asociación de Padres de Familia) was used first. The teachers were accused of being responsible for the backwardness of education in the state because of their twenty-six years of union struggle. In a (TV) spot, a group of children defied their teachers, shouting at them: “Teacher to the classroom/not to the encampment” (“Maestro al salón / no al plantón”); in another, the children accuse the teachers of being naughty. Afterward, the most prominent organizations of the business community, like the Association of Hotels and Motels, the Chamber of the Restaurant Industry and the Chamber of the Industry of Transformation, entered the media campaign against the teachers.
On the fifth day of the encampment in the Historic Center of Oaxaca, the Government of the State offered 60 million as a response to the demand for re-zonification, an amount less than offered the previous year which was 105 million pesos, and threatened that if the encampment wasn’t removed salaries would be withheld for the days not worked.
When the teachers rejected the government offer, the government threatened to fire them for abandoning their jobs, and to replace the teachers with others, in the classrooms. The hard and aggressive media campaign against the teachers continued on television, public and private radio and also in the local newspapers.
In reply to the threats, on May 30 the secretary of credit of the Section 22 Executive Committee, Carlos Villalobos Antonio, announced publicly that if the governor did not attend to the demands of the teachers and civil society, the teachers union would declare their refusal to recognize the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. [2]
He added that “the drums of war” which the governor launched with his declarations on radio and the television were intended to generate conditions for repression. He asked the governor to reconsider, because “if he tries a campaign to pit society against the education workers, it could generate a climate of ungovernability”.
On the 31st of May the teachers blockaded the gasoline stations and hauled away the bases of the parking meters and the iron tubes that obstructed the entrance to the streets of the Historic Center. The remains were deposited in front of the ex Government Palace.
The first of June, the State Congress approved as a point of agreement, to demand that the teachers “return immediately and without pretext to the classrooms; if not” –they read– “we ask the Government of the State to apply corresponding withholding of salaries to those teachers who persist in suspending their teaching duties”, that “the State Institute of Public Education in Oaxaca proceed to apply the corresponding acts of abandonment of employment to those mentors who persist in the labor stoppage, and at that time, declare rescinded their labor contracts, without detriment to the state or federal governments”. And as the final agreement, they decree that “the organs of national public security, in the provenance of their jurisdiction, proceed without delay to open the public roads and federal installations, establishing protection against future attempts”.
The petition was supported afterward by a group of municipal presidents of the same PRI, brought together in the State Coordination of Municipalities in favor of Education (Coordinadora Estatal de Presidentes Municipales a favor de la Educación, A. C.) For the first time in 26 years, the government was organizing and using the municipal presidents to openly confront the Oaxaca teachers movement.
On June 2, the teachers carry out the first megamarch in which, according to the leaders’ count, about 80,000 persons participated. The planning began for “the political judgment against the governor Ulises Ruiz”.
The business people belonging to COPARMEX for their part demanded that the teachers lose pay for days not worked and that the offer of 60 million pesos be withdrawn.
That same day, public radio and Chanel 9 broadcasts a spot in which Ulises Ruiz gives the teachers until Monday the 5th to return to the classrooms or if not, they would forfeit pay because of absence. He states afterward that if the teachers don’t accept the 60 million pesos offered to them for re-zonification, “the freed-up resources are going to education infrastructure and a fund to stimulate academic excellence”.
June 7 the second megamarch takes place, in which it is estimated that about 200,000 people attend. I want to point out the presence of mothers and fathers of families, schools, civil society and social organizations. The event concludes with a popular trial against Ulises Ruiz, where organizations of neighborhoods, unions, and communities which had already suffered repression by the State Government, also participated.
Meanwhile, as the governor himself confirmed, the Federal Attorney General (Procuraduría General de la República) was putting together the previous inquiry about the occupation which occurred some days before, and was initiating criminal processes against the leaders of the movement for the alleged commission of several crimes such as affecting the Historic Center, the theft of surveillance and security cameras, the destruction of parking meters and also for the accusations lodged by the merchants “affected by acts of vandalism”. Ulises Ruiz mentions at least 15 criminal complaints presented in the local and federal spheres against the members of the union directorship.
Those same days, the Enlarged Negotiating Commission of the Teachers (Comisión Negociadora Ampliada del Magisterio) arrive in Mexico City and ask for an interview with the then Secretary of Government, Carlos Abascal Carranza, who refused to receive them.
Faced with the attitude of Ulises Ruiz and the disrespect of Government, the teachers began to plan a possible boycott of the federal elections of July 2.
On June 14 the eviction attack against the teachers began. First, at 4:30 in the morning, a heavily armed troop burst into the Hotel del Magisterio and another into the union building with the objective of destroying the radio broadcast station of the teachers identified at that time as Radio Plantón, as well as arresting the leaders.
One of the testimonies about the entrance into the union building reports the following:
They came in smashing the door with a sledgehammer and they threw us down, 50 cops armed with high power weapons and gas masks came in, and then we were terrified, some came in from the right side and others in the center, they went up where the Radio Plantón station was and where minutes before the leadership was meeting, they threw acid at us, and a lot of smoke and you couldn’t see anything, with the acid burning bad on the skin, face, hands, everywhere. We were knocked down and they aimed at the teachers, many had their small children, a cop said to me, “son of your screwed mother, you’re going to die”, and one of my companions confronted him and they gave him a savage blow and after that I didn’t know any more because they had us face down on the ground and you couldn’t see for the smoke, I managed to see that they left him knocked down, they were coming directly toward Radio Plantón, then they got in right away to where the equipment is… they beat mercilessly teachers with recently-born babies.
Rueda Pacheco a short while before the invasion of the union building had alerted his companions over Radio Plantón. He called on them “to resist organized the repression which this Governor of the State is operating irrationally. Let’s face this onslaught organized, with a cool head and burning heart. Prepare rags or handkerchiefs against the teargas, wet them with water to resist the teargas and defend this space, as we have done during 26 years of struggle.”
Then minutes before five in the morning, the announcer Eduardo Castellanos Morales, el Güero, managed to say in the same microphone “I hear bombs, it’s five in the morning; the troops are approaching, they are entering the building to repress us, one can hear the explosion of the grenades …”. El Güero was arrested that night.
Regarding the destruction of Radio Plantón, one of the announcers reports specifically:
They entered our radio station and began to beat us, destroying everything, breaking windows, breaking glass, the audio console, our equipment where the audio is generated they completely destroyed. Likewise with the transmitter, they broke it and they smashed the equipment until it was unusable. When we were already completely broken…still a policeman carried off the equipment and what remained of our radio station was taken away….
In regard to the operation in the Hotel del Magisterio, one of the witnesses reports:
A troop entered heavily armed, with assault rifles, telescopic lenses, laser, when we were motionless we began to see the laser on our chests and we saw them on the faces of our companions, just like they saw us. They were assault rifles of high power, carried by a special unit. That was a special unit operation, with men one hundred eighty (note: centimeters, about 5’9″. Oaxaqueños of indigenous ancestry tend to be slight) tall, heavy, with bullet-proof vests, gas masks they put on, radios, knives, pistols in their belts, in short, all soldiers armed for war.
Although the objective of destroying Radio Plantón was achieved, they could not stop the teachers’ leaders because they managed to get out of the union building. One of the members of the Section Executive Committee who was found in the Hotel del Magisterio, yes, he was arrested.
The other objective of the police action, as we have said, was to evict the encampment. The entry into this was highly violent and carried out through several streets in the Historic Center of the city of Oaxaca. The Preventative Police went in shooting teargas grenades, pepper gas and firearms, without giving time for the encampment people to leave calmly. According to several testimonies “it has been possible to determine that some of the police units were carrying AR-15 38 and 45 caliber rifles. [3]
In the eviction of the teachers the Police Unit of Special Operations (UPOE) took part, the Canine Unit, the Group for Special Operations of the City (GOE), The Auxiliary Bank Institute Police (PABIC), the Municipal Police and the Youth Police.
Although the director of public security José Manuel Vera Salinas, who commanded the operation together with Aristeo López, declared to the press that 870 units participated, some newspaper sources have come up with different numbers. There are those who say that the count was between 2,000 and 2,500.
The attack on the teachers with clubs, teargas, dogs, etc. resulted in hundreds of wounded, in different hospitals. 113 were (officially) reported by first and family name. One of them suffered a perforated lung from the impact of a teargas bomb launched from a helicopter; another, a bullet wound in the right foot with fracture of the cuneiform bones; another in the forearm with injury to the palm tendon of the right wrist. Some women aborted during the eviction and others did so days afterward as a consequence of blows suffered.
Furthermore, the police arrested about ten people, among them two broadcasters from Radio Plantón, one of them already mentioned, Güero, a secondary school teacher, and the other a communications student.
At dawn the police intervention was assisted from the air by two private helicopters, from which masked police launched teargas and pepper grenades which affected not only the teachers but also the neighbors and hotel guests, many of whom left Oaxaca terrified that same day. The gas affected many residents. These images were disseminated by several media, and without doubt affected tourism more than the teachers encampment which had recurred every year.
During some hours, the stalls and tents were destroyed by the police and then burned in great bonfires in the city zócalo. The police seemed to have achieved their objective and were in possession of the Historic Center of the capital of Oaxaca.
Nevertheless, around eight in the morning, after regrouping, the teachers with new forces began to take back the site with sticks and metal bars from the same structures of the destroyed encampment, and with the rubble of the paving stone they broke up to make “throwable” material.
Then after two hours more of confrontation, at ten in the morning the teachers recaptured the Historic Center of Oaxaca. The police, seeing themselves outnumbered by the teachers, decided to abandon the site and run, leaving behind even their own commanders, one of whom, along with other police, was captured by the teachers who held them guarded for some hours in a school in the capital. After the events, the urban landscape of the Oaxaca Historic Center really looked like a “battlefield”.
The teachers then formed guards armed with sticks, bars, and tubes. They formed brigades guarding entrances to the zone, to avoid and repel another eviction attack. By the afternoon the governor announced the arrival of three Hercules aircraft with at least 500 Federal Preventive Police, to retake the zócalo and dislodge the teachers, but they never arrived. For their part, the teachers decided to retreat to some nearby schools. During the night they handed the captured police over to the Red Cross. The following day they returned to reinstall the encampment in the center of the city. The Government declared later that they had not sent PFP troops.
Many rights were violated the 14th of June: the right to personal integrity as in the case of the wounded; cruel and inhumane treatment of persons who were deprived of their liberty, beaten and humiliated; right to liberty and personal security because of arbitrary arrests; illegal deprival of liberty; breaking and entering and even theft committed by the police; the right to defense and assistance of a lawyer; refusing to inform the detained what the accusations were against them and keeping them incommunicado; the right to freedom of expression and thought by destroying the equipment for Radio Plantón and arresting their broadcasters; the rights of women who were insulted, attacked and gravely affected such as those who aborted from blows; the rights of children sleeping in the encampment with their families who had no one to care for them; of the newborns who were protected in the union building and the schools nearby like Basilio Rojas; and even the right to defend human rights, as happened with threats to the human rights civil organizations on those days on which their offices were watched and harassed by police and plain clothes agents, and even broken into, such as in the offices of the Interdisciplinary Center for Assessment, Diffusion and Defense of Human Rights (Centro Interdisciplinario de Asesoría, Difusión y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos). There, in archives referring to precautionary measures solicited by the Political Negotiating Commission of Section 22 (Comisión Política Negociadora de la Sección 22) documents were inspected and erased from the computers. [4]
Since that day, the central demand of the teachers, who were joined by the rest of the social organizations, the same neighbors of the historic center, and other citizens affected by the gas, was the departure of the governor Ulises Ruiz.
Thus concluded the first stage of the teachers movement, which ceased to be strictly labor related and changed to a political conflict of broad dimensions, a political crisis. The teachers union was then converted into the catalyst for the inconformity and social protest which had been making itself a home against authoritarianism.. [5]
The political crisis in its infancy was characterized by the loss of authority of the government of Ulises Ruiz, ungovernability, paralysis of government functions and an extreme social polarization. [6]
[1] Some have explained this fracture in the union by the exclusion of the groups which these ex-secretaries general form part of, from the section committee headed by Rueda Pacheco and the refusal by him to then include them in the elective congress. Isidoro Yescas, “Assaulting the sky (notes on the Oaxaca teachers movement)”, en Joel Vicente Cortés, Educación, sindicalismo…, p.p. 28-29.
[2] In the article “Teacher insurgence and governmental violence in Oaxaca”, Samael Hernández Ruiz upholds the hypothesis of “the radicalization of the movement” which benefited — in his opinion— because the most radical groups no longer had the counterweight of the groups “less disposed to confrontation with the state”, in Joel Vicente Cortés, op. cit., pp. 110-111.
[3] Oaxaca Network of Human Rights, Information (Red Oaxaqueña de Derechos Humanos, Informe) about the violation committed against human rights during the eviction of the teachers encampment June 14, 2006, 38 pp.
[4] Ibidem.
[5] In his artícle “Oaxaca: conflicto político o crisis de sistema” Carlos Sorroza Polo dlescribes the political repression by Ulises Ruiz against the popular movement as a “war of erradication”, en Joel Vicente Cortés, op. cit., p. 161.
[6] We understand here authority as the “power” with which a person is invested; in this case by the position s/he occupies The loss of authority entails a lessening of obedience on the part of others.
Tags: Mexico, Oaxaca, World Watching And Politics
Zoe
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