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News > Mexico

Teachers in Mexico Vow to Prevent 'Farce' Elections

  • Members from the teacher's union CNTE call for a boycott of upcoming elections during a march in Mexico City, May 15, 2015.

    Members from the teacher's union CNTE call for a boycott of upcoming elections during a march in Mexico City, May 15, 2015. | Photo: Reuters

Published 1 June 2015
Opinion

The National Coordinator of Education Workers called the upcoming midterm elections a “farce” and “electoral theater.”

Teachers in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca announced that they will be participating in an active boycott of the upcoming June 7 elections, including actions to interrupt the electoral process as well as other “surprise” actions to sabotage the vote.

The National Coordinator of Education Workers, known as the CNTE, said it is taking these steps because it considers the upcoming elections a “farce” and “electoral theater.”

The radical teachers' union further criticized the amount of money being spent by the state to carry out the election.

“Despite the fact that half of the Mexican population lives in extreme poverty, this government allocates millions in the budget to conduct an electoral farce that does not represent the true interests of Mexicans,” read Monday’s communique by the union.

The CNTE says its members plan to rally in the state's 11 electoral districts and install permanent protest sites this week in order to shut down the polling locations.

Mexico's midterm elections will take place June 7 for numerous state governors, mayors and legislators, however social protests and insecurity poses a threat to the success of the elections. In the violence-plagued southern state of Michoacan, a police and military contingent was deployed to deliver the ballots for elections.

The teachers' union in Oaxaca is known for engaging in radical actions and for supporting causes beyond education issues.

“Today our movement has in its hands the potential to make its mark on the educational history of the country; for the immediate release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, for the defense of the rights of the workers of the Democratic Movement of Education Workers of Oaxaca, and the insurgency of this movement for the defense of free and public education, and for the immediate reappearance of our 43 student teachers,” said the CNTE in its statement.

The CNTE has played an active role in the campaign demanding the safe return of the forcibly disappeared 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers' training college in the neighboring state of Guerrero. The union also played a prominent role in the Oaxaca uprising in 2006, where social movements governed the state through an organization called the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, after expelling the ruling governor from the state capital.

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