Oaxaca Follies

From Tuesday, March 4:

The highways were blocked today in Oaxaca around the government offices by the teachers of Section 59 (PRIistas) who are pissed because they abandoned Section 22 at the behest of URO [Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz] and with the support of Elba Gordillo, SNTE [the teachers union] national president. They were promised salaries for teaching during the Section 22 strike,* and now URO won't pay them that money.

So not only is 22 on strike, [but] so is the governor's strike-breaking breakaway union.

That's Nancy Davies, explaining the current state of the striking teachers'** scab teachers' strike.

*In 2006.

**Teachers are currently on strike, sort of. They refuse to work on Fridays. There are a handful of complaints that, while maybe 10,000 or so teachers spend their Fridays demonstrating in the streets or mobilizing in the nation's capital, the other 60,000 or so Oaxacan teachers organized under SNTE are nowhere to be seen. What gives? Three day weekends for everyone? That's at least part of the current, anti-teacher sentiment in Oaxaca, where a vast population of workers earn between 50-100 pesos a day (5-10 dollars), without benefits, and work 6-7 days a week.