Oaxaca Resurgent by A. S. Dillingham;

Author:A. S. Dillingham;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Here, in the center of Oaxaca City, with the public and media watching, a teacher insurgency was born. The dissident movement gained momentum in the coming weeks, sidestepping official union leadership by organizing public assemblies and meetings at private homes. In two weeks, the dissidents successfully forced secretary general Maldonado to step down from his position and, after a month-and-a-half-long strike, negotiated a 22 percent salary increase. While wage raises were key elements of the movement’s demands, a range of other grievances created a groundswell of support. In addition to the poor working conditions faced by teachers serving Oaxaca’s disparate rural communities, sexual harassment and abuse of women teachers by education and union officials motivated many.39 Ultimately, the question of union democracy emerged as the most urgent demand for dissidents and the most threatening to union and party officials.

From the May Day action forward, bilingual teachers played a decisive role in the movement. Ignacio Santiago Pérez, who came from a ranchería on the outskirts of San Andrés Nuxiño in the Mixteca Alta, entered the profession a year prior to the birth of the insurgency. His hometown subsisted on small-scale farming, and in the 1960s many of its members had begun to migrate to Mexico City for work. Santiago’s town had lacked a school of its own, so he began work as a teacher by organizing Spanish language lessons for first and second graders of the community. In addition to the collective issue of delayed paychecks, what motivated Santiago’s participation in the movement was the fact that while bilingual teachers paid union dues, they had very little representation within Sección 22’s decision-making bodies.40 This was due to the lack of delegational representation of Indigenous education within the local’s internal structures. Santiago also attributed this lack of meaningful participation to two forms of discrimination bilingual teachers suffered, one “racial” and one “professional.”41 For their indigeneity, they suffered discrimination from society at large but were also looked down upon by their colleagues, who viewed them as less professionally qualified than teachers in educación formal. While some teachers in the Indigenous education sector had accommodated themselves to this institutional inequality, young bilingual teachers such as Santiago viewed it as a problem to be overcome. Shortly after beginning his career, Santiago joined the new Seccíon 22 assemblies and by 1981 had become secretary general of his regional delegation. His rapid rise in elected leadership demonstrates the movement’s transformation of internal union culture and the opportunities it created for young bilingual teachers.

These existing tensions in the education system sparked parallel teachers’ struggles throughout the country. Teacher activism was driven by the overall expansion of the education system, the poor implementation of decentralization, and a corrupt and passive union leadership. The Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) coalesced in 1979 to direct the dissident movement nationally. It was in Oaxaca that the CNTE would have the most success in challenging Vanguardia’s power. CNTE strategies involved bypassing the existing union structures to create new forms of direct democratic control.

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