Road blockades imposed by the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) union continue unabated in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. In both states, over 50 municipalities are feeling the food and fuel shortages pinch, while in Mexico City talks to come to an agreement came to a halt Tuesday night when Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong and CNTE representatives came once again to the conclusion that their dialogue was between the dumb and the deaf.
CNTE unionists demand that the Education Reform be immediately suspended while the President Enrique Peña Nieto tells them that the Education Reform “is the law, and the law cannot be negotiated.”
Hence, CNTE teachers, who are not on strike, maintained as many as 80 road blockades in Oaxaca and Chiapas, literally strangling the Isthmus of Tehuantepec’s meager economy. Their stance is that their road blockades also cannot be negotiated.
It’d seem that both sides of the negotiations table live in different nations where imposition, not dialogue, is the law.
The underlying reality of the CNTE struggle, backed by many local communities and indigenous affairs representative groups, whose government subsidies have been slashed, is that what they want is secession from the Mexican United States. Their stance shows no other direction, because it is not merely stubbornness, or even righteousness in telling the Peña Nieto administration that it is wrong. It has ulterior motives, such as forming its own republic.
There is absolutely no question in the administration’s mind that CNTE is being backed by radical Marxist armed guerrilla groups that are now joining in the street demonstrations and even aiming their guns at police, as it happened two Sundays ago in the township of Nochixtlán, where eight civilians died and four federal policemen ended up with bullet injuries.
Interior Secretary Osorio Chong says that on his part there is nothing to talk about until CNTE leaders remove the road blockades and show “some will” and bring “something” that is not just demands to the negotiations.
Secretary Osorio also mentioned that with their blockades they are affecting thousands of innocent bystanders, and CNTE leaders seem to not care about the outcome of their actions.
“That’s just where we stopped negotiations. We can’t just be paying attention to their issues without looking at what’s happening to the rest of the population. We have to think about the third parties that are being damaged in their development in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.”
Needless to say, the CNTE representatives left the Interior Secretariat building Tuesday fuming after seeing that Osorio Chong would not budge from the official position and continued their bet on an all-or-nothing, lose-lose political match.
There was to be another “dialogue” Wednesday to discuss exclusively the Nochixtlán violence but that was postponed because the Interior Secretariat sent officials to gather information and they were tossed out by the rank and file of CNTE protesters.
In short, the pacification talks are postponed, but Secretary Osorio Chong says they are not “suspended, I’m always open to talk.”
He says that all issues are open for debate, but when the topic of the blockades came up, talks got “tied up” and CNTE leaders did not want to go on.
The only potential solution now is creating a new “integral agenda” including all the issues. Secretary Osorio Chong says, “there must be corresponding participation from both sides, to create conditions from the two sides. Obligations can’t be just on the side of the government,” as the CNTE leaders would have it.
In short, there is no dialogue, and CNTE will continue with their modern guerrilla warfare aimed not at the government, but at hurting the economies of the poor residents of the affected municipalities in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.
