Fwd: more on Oaxaca teachers

[Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>]

\\
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/muertaalosfascistas.pdf

Below, forwarding from Monty



> From: Montyneill@aol.com
> Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:20:54 EDT
> Today's Democracy Now has more info on Oaxaca. Reuters featured Gov't 
> denials of killings and rapes that are charged by teachers, etc
>
> Note that this is an 'annual strike.' Teachers in Oaxaca, Chiapas, 
> Michoacan and Mexico City have been esp militant going back now more than 
> 20 years. They have battled not only federal and state governments, but 
> also the main corrupt union that has long been controlled by the PRI - the 
> party that controlled the presidency since the 1920s. The teacher stuggles 
> have had their ups and downs as they have fought for better schools, 
> higher pay, union democracy and improved pedagogy. The Oaxacan teachers 
> made this year a particularly major push, and in occupying the zocalo 
> (square) in Oaxaca City (I've been there - a truly wonderful small city) 
> were joined by thousands of other people with other demands.
>
> Monty
>
> <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/15/1411208>http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/15/1411208
>
> Thursday, June 15th, 2006
> Mexican Police Accused of Killing 11 Striking Teachers in Oaxaca
>
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> ----------
> Thousands of state security forces have raided the southern Mexican city 
> of Oaxaca to break up a peaceful teachers strike. Witnesses say eleven 
> people were killed, including two children. The state government denies 
> the allegations. We speak to a teacher taking part in the strike. 
> [includes rush transcript]
>
> ----------
> We turn now to Mexico where thousands of state security forces raided the 
> southern city of Oaxaca early Wednesday to break up a peaceful teachers 
> strike. According to witness reports, up to eleven people were killed in 
> the raid. Two of the dead were reportedly children asphyxiated by massive 
> amounts of tear gas fired from police helicopters. Up to one hundred 
> people have been detained. The local radio station was shut down and four 
> of its workers have allegedly disappeared. Several women have accused 
> police of sexual assault. The state government in Oaxaca has denied all of 
> these allegations. After the worst of the raid was over, the union retook 
> Oaxaca's city center. This is a member of the teachers union speaking in 
> Oaxaca yesterday.
>
>    * Striking Oaxaca teacher, speaking Wednesday.
>    * â??We have recovered bullet casings and clips. We are showing this 
> to denounce internationally that we did not fire a single bullet, because 
> we are teachers, workers in education. We are poor and we don't have any 
> money, not even to buy a weapon.â??
>
> For the past twenty-three days more than seventy thousand members of 
> Mexico's National Education Workers Union have held their annual strike in 
> Oaxaca. The teachers have staged an encampment and various forms of direct 
> action to press the state governor for an increase in resources to fund 
> Mexico's education system.
>
>    * Alma Delia Santos, a local teacher who is part of the striking 
> component of the National Education Workers Union in Mexico, Section 22. 
> She has been on strike and witnessed yesterday's events.
>
> To place the current struggle of the teachers union in historical context 
> we turn to a documentary titled 'Granito de Arena' or 'Grain of Sand. It's 
> produced by independent film maker Jill Freidberg. She spent several years 
> in Oaxaca documenting the history, and the current state of the education 
> workers' union.
>
>    * Excerpt of Granito De Arena
>    * Jill Freidberg, filmmaker who spent two years in Southern Mexico 
> producing the documentary "Granito De Arena", which documents the 
> teacher's union movement in Oaxaca. She joins us on the line from Seattle.
>
> ----------
> RUSH TRANSCRIPT
>
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> more...
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Welcome, Alma.
>
> ALMA DELIA SANTOS: Hello.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what you saw?
>
> ALMA DELIA SANTOS: Well, yesterday morning around 4:00 is when it all 
> started. Actually it was about 4:45. Cops came in with dogs. There were 
> about 80 dogs just tearing everything up, coming in. A lot of the women 
> got attacked by the dogs to begin with. After that, the cops came in, 
> destroying everything, knocking everything down. A lot of the women were 
> harassed by these cops. There were about 2,000 cops from the different 
> corporations there, uniformed, and some of them were dressed as civilians.
>
> They were throwing everything down. They came into the offices of the 
> teacher's union. It got totally destroyed. They destroyed the -- 
> everything that was from Radio Plantón, which is the radio station. And 
> there seemed to be, at that point, 100 people that were arrested and about 
> -- we seemed to have about approximately 100 people that were injured at 
> that time, a lot of women that were in some of the schools. We received 
> notification that there was five women that were raped. At that time as 
> well the police came into the schools where the women were hiding at. And 
> there was just destruction of everything. They burned a lot of the tents, 
> a lot of the things that they had. Everything was burned down. This was 
> about -- and then the helicopters came in shooting tear gases, pepper 
> spray and another type of gas for hours, until about 11:00 or 12:00, when 
> we took the Zócalo again in the streets of El Centro.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Alma Delia Santos, this strike happens every year. What makes 
> this year so different?
>
> ALMA DELIA SANTOS: Well, the demands that -- obviously every year some of 
> the demands that teachers ask for aren't met fully, so every year we have 
> to strike up again, because the government just gives us petty little 
> results, but nothing ever -- there's 14,000 people on strike of the 
> teachers and 60% -- 14,000 communities and 60% are in high 
> marginalization. And all we're asking for is utilities for the students, 
> classrooms for the students, a better salary, because some of the teachers 
> in these communities receive very poor salary when the government 
> officials are receiving and taking all the money that we should be -- some 
> of these students should be getting in classroom materials, uniforms and 
> things like that.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: How much do you get as a salary for a teacher?
>
> ALMA DELIA SANTOS: Well, I think there's different salaries for the 
> different communities. Some of them, I know that there's a teacher from 
> one of the [unintelligible] cities, she gets 6,000 pesos which is around 
> $100 a month. Some of these teachers get a lot lower than that. The 
> minimum salary here is -- for a day is about 43 pesos, 48 pesos, and some 
> of them will get ocho jornadas, which is eight jornadas, eight 
> [unintelligible].
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Alma Delia Santos, I want to thank you for being with us to 
> place the current struggle of the teacher's union in a historical context.
>
> [excerpt from Granito De Arena]
>
> AMY GOODMAN: That was an edited excerpt of the film, Granito De Arena, 
> "Grain of Sand," produced by filmmaker Jill Friedberg, who joins us on the 
> phone right now from Seattle. Can you talk about this protest that has 
> been going on, but this year cracked down on by the Mexican military, 
> Jill? In the context of the upcoming presidential elections and also what 
> took place in May in San Salvador de Atenco, when the police moved in to 
> evict so-called illegal flower vendors in a fierce attack on the people -- 
> many of the women were sexually assaulted, many remain in prison right 
> now, there. And now comes Oaxaca.
>
> JILL FREIDBERG: At this point, relating to Oaxaca, it's a little bit 
> premature to go in-depth in terms of analysis of how it relates to the 
> political elections coming up in two weeks, but it is safe to say that's 
> what's happening in Oaxaca is not unrelated to what happened in San 
> Salvador de Atenco, in terms of the political benefits that certain 
> parties stand to gain from generating a climate of fear, a climate in 
> which they can then appear to be maintaining and restoring law and order. 
> And that's exactly what happened in San Salvador de Atenco, especially 
> with the helping hand of the mainstream electronic media.
>
> Weâ??ve seen a little bit less of that in terms of the media coverage of 
> what happened in Oaxaca, a bit less of the demonizing of the teachers once 
> the repression began. Although leading up to it, the electronic media were 
> certainly clamoring to create a climate in which mainstream society was 
> supposed to believe that the teachers were not only, supposedly, at fault 
> for all of Mexico's educational shortcomings, but that they are also 
> bringing down upon the city of Oaxaca the chaos of having 70,000 teachers 
> out of the schools, and not only carrying out direct actions in the 
> streets every day, but sleeping, and living, and camped out in the streets 
> of Oaxaca, and that what the governor of Oaxaca, or President Vicente Fox 
> needed to do was to come in and restore order, meaning do whatever 
> necessary to get the teachers out of the streets.
>
> Although since the repression, there's been a little bit less of that in 
> the mainstream media than it was during and following the conflict in 
> Atenco. Thereâ??s been a lot of ? since the repression hit the news 
> yeesterday, there's been an incredible amount of finger pointing between 
> the three parties. Vicente Fox saying that he had nothing to do with it, 
> his party, the PAN, accusing the governor of Oaxaca, who's with the PRI, 
> of being the sole intellectual author of the repression. The PRD 
> candidates saying that the federal government should be paying for 
> education and should have entered into negotiations with the teachers. All 
> three parties pointing to the union leadership as being responsible. So we 
> have yet to really figure out who's behind -- directly behind it -- other 
> than the governor of Oaxaca.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Lopez Obrador has just moved ahead in the polls of the 
> presidential race being held July 2. He's called for dialogue. What does 
> this mean for his campaign?
>
> JILL FREIDBERG: Iâ??m reluctant to comment on that just because I don't 
> put a lot of faith in the polls thus far in Mexico in terms of what may 
> actually happen on July 2. I think that there are teachers around the 
> country who are likely to vote for Lopez Obrador and this may have 
> increased that number. But beyond that Iâ??m reluctant to comment.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: We will certainly follow the events leading up to the 
> election in the aftermath of this attack on the teachers of Oaxaca. Jill 
> Freidberg, I want to thank you for being with us. Filmmaker, spent two 
> years producing the documentary Granito De Arena, or "Grain of Sand."
>
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