Oaxaca, Mexico – Hundreds of teachers on Thursday blocked several roads leading to downtown Oaxaca city to press demands for the resignation of the governor of the like-named southern Mexican state.
The road blockades affected thousands of people who were forced to make their way to the center of the state capital on foot, a state police spokesman said.
The protest, in which members of the grassroots movement known as the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca also participated, is aimed at pressuring the state government and federal authorities to secure the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz, of the once dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
On June 14, Ruiz ordered state police to oust members of the Oaxaca chapter of the powerful SNTE teachers union from Oaxaca’s main square, where they had gathered since May 22 to demand a pay hike. Some 90 people were injured in the attempt to break up the sit-in.
Thursday’s demonstrations were the result of agreements reached at an SNTE state assembly meeting Wednesday, in which it was also decided that teachers at some 14,000 schools that have been shut down for weeks would return to their classrooms Monday.
The strike by the nearly 70,000 members of the SNTE’s Oaxaca chapter and the closure of the schools has kept some 1.3 million students out of class.
The teachers, meanwhile, have said they are prepared to return to work as long as school administrative personnel are allowed to continue protesting.
In 2005, Gov. Ruiz drew criticism from Amnesty International and the Inter American Press Association for his bare-knuckle tactics against a local newspaper that offended him by endorsing his opponent in the August 2004 election. Last July, the staff of Noticias, Voz e Imagen de Oaxaca were driven from the publication’s offices by club-wielding members of a PRI-controlled union.
