Mexico: Teachers Fight Bosses’Attacks

OAXACA, MEXICO — On July 21, the Governor of Oaxaca, Gabino Cué, announced the elimination of the State Institute of Public Education of Oaxaca (IEEPO) and the creation of a “new” governing body of education in the state. As Cué made this announcement, the sinister head of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) Emilio Chuayffet was there showing his support, and that of the federal government.
These politicians state that this measure will put an end to teachers’ control of the IEEPO, held since 1992 under Section 22, won by the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) union. At the core of the announcement is a fascist hit against Section 22, openly excluding teachers from participation in decision-making on educational programs and the organization and supervision of the schools. According to Cué and Chuayffet these things must be performed by personnel as corrupt and sinister as they are, not the teachers who are responsible for the education of the children and youth in the classroom. That is the capitalists’ vision for all aspects of society.
The announcement was accompanied by the presence of thousands of federal police and the military, who have been patrolling by ground and air trying to intimidate the teachers and the community. They have canceled the bank accounts of teachers and the delivery of union dues. Teachers have responded with massive demonstrations at the state and national level, and teachers from other cities like Michoacan, Chiapas, Guerrero and Mexico City have shown their support of Section 22.
On behalf of Cué’s education reform, the ruling capitalists, their apologists and their repressive governing bodies have launched a fascist attack to get rid of Section 22. There is no doubt that this is an attack by the capitalist class against the entire working class. Its education reform has nothing to do with improving the quality of education, but to fire teachers and privatize education.
The assessment that the SEP is supposed to make does not seek to retain effective teachers who are committed to the education of children and youth, their true goal is to dismiss anyone who questions the rotten education system and defends their rights as workers. Tens of thousands of education workers will be laid off because the SEP is moving all administrative work to municipalities, who will subrogate these services and will force parents to pay for them. Teachers from Oaxaca are the ones with the strongest resistance to this repressive and privatization reform, thus they are being targeted, and eventually eliminated.
In Mexico and throughout the world, capitalists blame teachers for backwardness in the education system, but the ruling capitalists are solely responsible for this as they subject and degrade education to their needs and monetary gains. They spend public funding to sustain hundreds of thousands of military and police murderers who defend the capitalists and their profits, and commit mass murders, in particular of young people who the capitalists’ hypocritically claim to defend with this reform.
Behind the current education problem, unemployment, growing poverty rates, narco-state genocide, among other calamities, are the capitalist ruling elites who accumulate enormous wealth daily through cheap labor, seizing natural resources and privatizing basic social services such as health and education.
The capitalist ruling class exploits, represses, imprisons, tortures, disappears, spies and corrupts — it is a burdening liability to humanity. Workers have the need and the power to put an end to it. We must break nationalist borders and expand this struggle internationally, with the understanding that we are one working class and our enemy is the entire imperialist capitalist class. Workers of the world unite! It is a powerful slogan that puts all the world’s oppressed on the offense.
A true good quality education for all youth will only come when we’ve smashed this system of markets and profits, when society is run by and for all workers and their families, and where all members of the working class are provided for. The working class united and organized by Progressive Labor Party has the power to end this rotten capitalist system. PLP has already begun the fight for communism. Join us!