Thursday, June 15th, 2006
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]
- Striking Oaxaca teacher, speaking Wednesday.
“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.”
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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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.
We’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. There’s been a lot of – since the repression hit the news yesterday, 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: I’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 I’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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