Washington Post: In Mexico’s ‘Misery Belt,’ an Annual Strike Becomes Much More
OAXACA DE JUAREZ, Mexico — Gonzalo Toledo Cruz tries to teach math in a dark, sweltering classroom that has no electricity. During morning flag-raising ceremonies, he said, some of his students pass out from lack of nutrition, “like trees dropping in a forest.” Others saunter into class with loaded pistols.
Toledo Cruz’s classroom in Juchitan de Zaragoza, a small, rugged town in what is known as “the Misery Belt” east of Oaxaca de Juarez, has become his private hell. But he knows that to curry favor with his bosses and get the transfer he so desperately wants, he must make a big show of union support.
So each May, Toledo Cruz joins nearly 70,000 teachers, administrators, school doctors, food-service workers and janitors in this picturesque colonial city. Their gathering — now in its 26th year — has become one of Mexico’s longest-running serial protests and a forum for complaints about low wages, poorly equipped schools and unfair treatment of indigenous peoples.
Most years, the school workers peacefully chant and march for a week or two, win some minor concessions and pack up. But this year, the protest has turned into a tense, occasionally bloody standoff that has scared off tourists and is now stretching into its third month, with no end in sight.
The stalemate illustrates the remarkable reach and influence of unions in Mexico, where workers’ organizations play a huge role in defining the political and social lives of their members. None is more powerful than the teachers union, which has 1.3 million members nationwide and is the largest union in Latin America.
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