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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2006 
Teachers in Oaxaca Threaten to Derail PRI
 S. Lynne Walker - Copley News Service
| | Roberto Madrazo, presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, speaks to supporters during his final rally in Mexico City on Tuesday, June 27, 2006. The Mexican presidential elections are on July 2. (AP/Victor R. Caivano) |
Oaxaca, Mexico – A teachers strike in Oaxaca threatens to end PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo's chances of winning Mexico's presidency and give leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador the edge he needs to win the election.
With just five days left before the election, Oaxaca's politically powerful teachers are vowing to cast a “punishment vote” against Madrazo, who represents the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
The political shift by the teachers in this impoverished – and once hard-core PRI – state in southern Mexico is a strong signal that momentum is building for a victory by López Obrador and his Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, political observers said.
“For years, it has been the PRI, the PRI, the PRI,” said Cecilio Marcealo, an adult-education teacher. “We are not going to vote for the PRI anymore. Now, it's going to be the PRD.”
Teachers wield considerable influence in Oaxaca, where 80 percent of the land is communal and 14 languages besides Spanish are spoken. In 80 of Oaxaca's 570 municipalities, teachers serve as mayor.
“They are moral leaders of their communities,” said Salomón Nahmad, director of the Center for Investigations and Studies of Social Anthropology. “They always go and fight with the governor because they want him to build them classrooms, because they want him to build roads, because they want him to install drinking-water systems or electricity. If the governor is difficult with them, then they mobilize communities in Oaxaca.
“I think the teachers have convinced thousands of communities” in this presidential election, Nahmad added, “and I think the PRI is going to lose.”
The teachers' protest began as a strike for higher wages – a strike they have staged on May 15 for the past 26 years.
But as they camped on the streets of the picturesque colonial capital, they were attacked by police on orders of Gov. Ulises Ruiz, one of Madrazo's closest political allies.
After they fought off police with sticks and stones, they expected President Vicente Fox to offer a solution. When Fox refused, the teachers, who often serve as poll workers, hinted that they would disrupt the election.
Instead, they decided they will not only withhold votes from Madrazo, but also from Felipe Calderón, the conservative candidate from Fox's National Action Party, or PAN.
“We want everybody to go out and vote against the PRI and the PAN,” said Luis Aguilar, an elementary teacher and the spokesman for a local section of the union.
Calderón and López Obrador are in a statistical tie for the lead, and with 2.3 million votes at stake in Oaxaca, a massive vote against Calderón there could decide the presidential election. Calderón is strong in Mexico's northern industrial states, but López Obrador, who lived with Indians in Tabasco state and learned to speak their language, has won support in the heavily indigenous south.
“There is a sense that much of Oaxaca will vote for López Obrador because there is deep discontent here,” said Gloria Zafra, a professor at the Institute of Sociological Research at the University of Benito Juarez in Oaxaca. “This is not just a teachers' issue. This has become a political issue in Oaxaca.”
With tensions rising, Madrazo canceled a rally scheduled today in Oaxaca. Instead, the streets will be filled with tens of thousands of teachers who will march to mark the final day of the presidential campaign.
Ruiz, who proclaimed he would deliver 1 million votes for Madrazo, is now the target of a concerted effort by the teachers to force him from office. The effort has gained support because Ruiz, whose election two years ago was tainted by suspicions of electoral fraud, has been an unpopular governor.
In the days leading up to the election, vote-buying has been rampant, said elementary school teacher David Martínez. “They'll even give you a cell phone for your vote,” he said.
“Instead of giving money to education, all the money has been devoted to the campaign of the PRI,” said Rafael Morales, a retired teacher.
But even those time-honored practices may not work.
Leftist organizations, farmers cooperatives and even the Zapatista Liberation Army, whose leadership draws heavily from bilingual teachers in Chiapas, have joined the teachers in their effort to oust Ruiz and get rid of the PRI.
In Oaxaca's colonial plaza this week, a stream of people stopped to sign petitions calling for Ruiz's resignation. A peasant woman with a baby slung across her back carefully penned her name and then dropped a coin in a donation can for the striking teachers.
“We want people to vote,” said Catarina López, a teacher from a violence-plagued town near the Pacific coast. “Every vote that punishes Madrazo is one less vote for the PRI.”
S. Lynne Walker: slwalker@prodigy.net.mx |
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