FROM DAILY CENSORED
Criminalizing unions and student groups in Mexico
By Danny Weil on September 18, 2013 8:29 pm / no comments
On Friday September 13, 2013, the federal police marched in Mexico City’s historic central square to retake space from thousands of teachers who had been occupying it for the past month to protest an overhaul of nation’s education policies.
It all happened in a matter of minutes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0m2b4bCwoE&feature=youtu.be). After a month of tolerating the teacher encampment and almost daily marches intended to create call attention to the plight of the teachers both the city and federal government moved quickly to end the occupation just two days before Mexico’s Independence Day celebration.
The teachers had been trying to block a measure requiring them to be evaluated or lose their teaching jobs. The measure reassigns them to administrative posts if they fail. But there is more. The teachers are challenging the neo-liberal policies of Mexico’s ruling class that seeks to impose Race to the Top in Mexico (http://www.dailycensored.com/lumina-foundation-pushing-privatization-of-education-in-mexico/).
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President Enrique Peña Nieto has rejected the calls to negotiate with the teachers, refusing any talks with those who, according to him, “broke the law”. The Mexican president has promised his educational reforms will not privatize education, only modernize it. But this is all a lie. As I have written, Race to the Top is now an international movement as education is turned into an utter for the one percent (ibid).
And who do you think is one of the big players in Mexico’s privatization efforts? The Lumina Foundation of course. Like a parasite looking for a host, the Lumina Foundation can be found all over the world destroying public education under the canopy of ‘philanthropy’.
In Xalapa, Veracruz, near the Caribbean coast, Sin Embargo, an independent newspaper, reported that police armed with electric knives evicted 300 teachers who had occupied Plaza Lerdo. There was an unreported number of injured and detained (http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10726). Mexican repression is brutal and the Narco-state is known for its violence against the people. Especially teachers.
The government repression that faces teachers in Mexico also threatens teachers in the US. International solidarity is now the key. An international movement of teachers and students, from Chile to Mexico, from S. Korea to the US must be built to challenge the international bankers and their political hand puppets, like the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto who seek to impose austerity and neo-liberal shock doctrine policies on the whole world, thus denying education to billions of young people.
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