The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.24           June 23, 1997 
 
 
Thousands Of Teachers Strike In Mexico  
 During the month of May, teachers struck across Mexico demanding higher wages. The teachers, members of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE), began organizing demonstrations throughout the country after May Day celebrations. On May 21, the CNTE mobilized tens of thousands of teachers from Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Michoacán to demand a 100 percent pay increase. The unionists agreed May 24 to suspend their street protests and negotiate.

Their demands also included defense of social security and public education, free text books for secondary school students, school breakfasts for children through all levels for elementary school, and an end to military repression. The CNTE members, who broke from the official National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), said their real wages have dropped 60 percent since the devaluation of the peso in December 1994.

The government maintained its offer of a 6 percent wage increase and a 16 percent hike in social benefits.

Meanwhile, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is facing elections for governor in five states, mayor in Mexico City, and lower house of the national legislature on July 6. Polls indicate the PRI could lose its majority in the lower house of Congress for the first time in nearly seven decades.

- MAURICE WILLIAMS  
 
 
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