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 Editorials | Issues | May 2007 
May Brings Protests and Strike Clouds to Mexico
 Frontera NorteSur
| | Peasants belonging to the group 400 Pueblos, who fight for land rights for poor farmers, march naked in a major avenue of Mexico City, Friday May 4, 2007. It is a daily occurrence in Mexico City to see people protesting naked. (AP/Dario Lopez-Mills) |
As the month of May opened with tornadoes striking the northern borderlands, Mexican unions and their allies stepped up an offensive against government economic policies. From Chihuahua in the north to Chiapas in the south, tens of thousands of protestors staged rallies, occupied government buildings, seized highway toll booths, and temporarily shut down some border crossings to the United States and Guatemala. In Baja California and Chihuahua, classes were cancelled by striking teachers.
Members of Mexico's National Teachers Union (SNTE) played leading roles in the welling mass movement. A central issue was the passage of a new federal law that changes the troubled ISSSTE (State Workers’ Social Security and Services Institute) retirement system for teachers and other federal workers. Opponents object to the higher premiums and longer working years that are mandated in the new law.
Government spokespersons say that the reform is necessary to salvage a system on the verge of collapse, and to assure a decent retirement for ISSSTE members. But critics, fearing the privatization of the ISSSTE system, charge that they were not consulted about reforms that could leave them with less future money and healthcare.
"We're teachers and they have to respect us," said Tijuana strike leader Juan Ramirez Sanchez. "We'll stop work until we are protected, because the law is unjust." In addition to the street struggle, ISSSTE law opponents took their fight to federal courts. By May 2, about 100,000 individual legal challenges to the law were piling up in federal offices in Mexico City.
The protest movement, which picked up steam on May Day when anti-ISSSTE law teachers upstaged official celebrations in Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Aguascalientes and other places, varied in size and impact depending on the location. Downtown Chihuahua City was paralyzed May 2 by thousands of protestors, while a reinvigorated popular movement reoccupied Oaxaca City’s Zocalo. On the other hand, a mass movement failed to immediately materialize in Tamaulipas state.
Besides the ISSSTE law, protestors slammed Mexico's growing security cooperation with the United States, criticized proposals to privatize energy resources and denounced the high cost of living. Other objections were raised to the North American Free Trade Agreement, and criticism was voiced about the recent release of alleged Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles from a US immigration jail.
Although some immigrant advocacy groups in the United States, like the March 25 Coalition, had earlier declared that a broad coordination of United States and Mexican organizations existed for protests this year on May Day in both nations, little attention was focused in the Mexican actions on the situation of Mexican migrants in the United States. One notable exception was in Nuevo Laredo, where members of the border city's Migrant House and the Mexico-USA United Front Association, marching in the annual May Day parade, protested the Bush administration's border wall and the overall treatment of migrants in the US.
More court battles, teacher strikes and other protests are expected in the days ahead. "We have to meet and establish our appropriate conditions of struggle, which aren't the same conditions as in other states," said Jose Francisco Ramirez, a protest leader in Aguascalientes. "Additionally, we don't want to expose our protesting comrades to the repression of the armed forces or public order."
Additional sources: Frontera, May 1, 2 and 3, 2007. Articles by Manuel Villegas and Kriztian Camarena. Lapolaka.com, May 1 and 2, 2007. Enlineadirecta.info, May 1 and 2, 2007. Articles by Hugo Reyna and Jesus Hernandez Garcia. La Jornada, May 2 and 3, 2007. Articles by Emir Olivares, Alfredo Mendez, Jesus Aranda, Rodolfo Villalba Sanchez, editorial staff, and correspondents. El Universal, May 2, 2007. Article by Sara Pantoja. El Diario de Chihuahua, May 2, 2007. Article by Juan Manuel Vergara.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
http://frontera.nmsu.edu/) |
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