ON APRIL 17, almost all school teachers in Mexico
City and the states of
Chiapas and Oaxaca followed the strike call of the National Coordination of Education Workers
(CNTE), the democratic opposition current in the
National Union of into difficulties and increase inflation". Nevertheless, the strikers have been supported by the school students' parents who have organized raffles and collections, as well as by independent unions. The teachers are continuing their movement, although the government's offer has now been increased to 25% in all (wages and benefits). A further demonstration on May 3 reaffirmed their intention to continue. Bus drivers take solidarity action
The bus drivers of the capital withheld their labour on April 23 in solidarity with the teachers. Then, also on May 3, a strike call was followed by 14,000 of the 20,000 bus drivers of the Ruta-100 company. The goverment answered by ceasing relations with the Ruta-100 company, which is equivalent to sacking all 20,000 drivers.
This upturn in workers' struggles shows the depth of the regime's crisis. On the one hand, buying power has officially fallen by 50% in the last six years. On the other, the majority of trade unions in Mexico are affiliated to the Partido Revolucionario
Institucional (PRI), the ruling party since its foundation 60 years ago, so the majority of workers are nominally members of this party. Workers' leaders thus enjoy many economic and political privileges. In the SNTE for example, there are two senators, 16 federal deputies, 42 local deputies and 500 mayors. Added to this is the impunity with which leaders practise corruption and gangsterism to maintain their power. Carlos Jongitud took power at gun-point in 1982, and between 1980 and 1985 150 leaders were assassinated.
The teachers' movement represents a continuation of the defeat suffered by the PRI in the presidential elections in July 1989 (see /V 145 and 146, July 25 and September 19, 1988). The government attempted to call a halt to this succession of defeats when it imprisoned the leader of the oilworkers' union. However, the state cannot calm the democratic desires of the masses with superficial changes, such as changing the leadership of the SNTE. This measure, Which it was forced to take by the pressure of the mass teachers' movement, is an indication of the possibility of major workers' struggles for the democratization of Mexican trade-union life. *
Hunger strike protest for Jose Ramon Education Workers (SNTE).
The SNTE groups together ON MAY 4, leaders of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT, Mexin a single union all ican section of the Fourth International) announced at a press employees of the Ministry conference their intention to go on hunger strike from May 10 if of Public Education - that José Ramon Garcia Gomez, who "disappeared" from outside his home in the state of Morelos, Mexico on December 16, 1988 (see is, 1.2 million people.