Teachers’ union raises stakes in battle with Mexico’s Peña Nieto

Jude Webber:

The move, co-ordinated with Mr Peña Nieto’s government, was equivalent to throwing down the gauntlet to a union that has paralysed implementation of the education reform in Oaxaca and three other states. “They will not take what is ours,” Rubén Nuñez, a leader of the Oaxaca chapter of the union, vowed at a rally in the city’smain square as the union prepared to define its full response on Wednesday.

“This is a really important, even brave announcement,” said Marco Fernández, a professor at the Tecnológico de Monterrey and researcher at the México Evalúa and Wilson Center think-tanks. “Unavoidably there will be conflict in the coming days.”

Although investors have given more attention to the government’s energy reform, lifting education standards is considered vital to Mexico’s ambitions to boost productivity and vault into the advanced, high-income economy bracket.

The biggest obstacle to achieving that was the CNTE. Though it has only about 200,000 of Mexico’s 900,000 teachers — the rest belong to the SNTE that backs the reform — about 60 per cent of CNTE members are in Oaxaca. Victory over opponents there, the government reasons, will ensure the education reform is unstoppable.