VivirLatino

Indigenous Teachers on the Oaxaca Front Lines

11:10 H | Topics: Mexico

What began in May in Oaxaca, Mexico as a simple teachers' strike demanding better wages and basic supplies has grown into a firestorm of civil disobedience and state violence. After refusing to negotiate with the teachers union, Gov. Ulises Ruiz sent the state police into Oaxaca City’s central plaza on June 14 to remove the teachers´ protest camp with tear gas and police batons.The protests and reactionary violence have led to a drop in the area's tourist industry impacting even those outside the teachers' struggle.

The tension shot up in late August when a convoy of armed gunmen opened fire on the protesters´ camp outside Radio Ley, killing 52-year-old Lorenzo Cervantes. From that night on, striking teachers and members of the APPO (Oaxaca People’s Assembly), have built massive barricades across all the streets surrounding the radio station and other strategic points near protest camps around the city.

Since the shooting on Aug. 22, teachers and local citizens take to the streets every night between 10 and 11 p.m. to reinforce their barricades.

"I have to walk six hours to get to my school," says Estela, a Mixteca woman who has been teaching in mountainside communities for 30 years, "And then when I get there, I find that half the kids have not had breakfast and the other half don’t have pencils or notebooks. I use my salary to buy these supplies, to prepare bread and tortillas. How do you expect children to learn if they have not had breakfast?"

Today on Indigenous People's Day, it is important to look throughout our America's at the people leading struggles in the name of their community's future.

Via / NYC Indymedia

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