Teachers' Strikes in Honduras, Mexico

From WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS, ISSUE #863, AUGUST 13, 2006

1. Honduras: Teacher Strike Gets "80%"

On Aug. 12 Honduran president Manuel Zelaya signed an agreement with the Federation of Teachers' Organizations (FOMH) ending a strike by 61,000 teachers that had kept 2.5 million children out of school since Aug. 1. The agreement increases the teachers's base monthly pay by about $55 over three years, from $298 in 2007 to $353 in 2009; with the addition of international funding for an educational social program, the government says the national budget for teachers' salaries will be 7.212 billion lempiras (about $379.5 million) a year. As of 2010, the teachers' salaries will rise with annual increases in the cost of living as established by the Central Bank, currently ranging from 5 to 9%. "We're happy," FOMH spokesperson Edwin Oliva told a press conference, "even though we only won 80% of our demands."

Some 20,000 teachers from 18 departments gathered in Tegucigalpa to carry out numerous protests for the nearly two weeks the strike lasted. They protested at the presidential offices, the National Congress and the education and finance ministries, and twice tried unsuccessfully to occupy the Toncontin de Tegucigalpa international airport. The government initially refused to negotiate unless the teachers ended the strike. Cost-of-living increases are mandated by the Law of the Teacher, passed at the beginning of the 1990s, but the government insisted that paying the increases would make the fiscal deficit soar and violate an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

On Aug. 4 teachers blocked two entrances from Tegucigalpa to the Northern Highway for five hours; they ended the protest peacefully after the government agreed to start talks. But violence broke out on Aug. 9, when thousands of teachers blocked access from Tegucigalpa to the Southern Highway and part of an avenue in the capital. The teachers confronted police agents and soldiers with clubs, stones and containers filled with water, while the government forces used tear gas and bullets. Some 50 people were injured, but apparently the injuries weren't serious. [Reuters 8/4/06, 8/9/06; Prensa Latina 8/8/06; El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 8/10/06 from EFE; Miami Herald 8/12/06 from AP; La Prensa (Honduras) 8/13/06]

2. Mexico: 1 Killed in Oaxaca Strike

A supporter of a teachers' strike that began May 22 in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca was shot dead during a march of some 20,000 strikers and supporters on the afternoon of Aug. 10 in the state capital, also named Oaxaca. According to witnesses, there were shots from inside a house on Ninos Heroes Street as the center of the march passed by. Mechanic Jose Perez Colmenares was hit as he marched beside his wife, the teacher Florina Jimenez Lucas, and the marchers dispersed in a panic. Perez Colmenares died at the Santa Maria Clinic, a few meters from the site of the shooting. Two other marchers were injured and treated in hospitals.

Members of security groups set up by the march's sponsors, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) and Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), attacked the house with stones and captured four men they found there, along with a pistol. A fifth man escaped. Thinking he was hiding inside, the security group set the house on fire to try to flush him out. Strike supporters captured four more suspects later; they were all taken to the studios of Canal 9, the station operated by the state-owned Oaxaca Radio and Television Corporation (CORTV). (A group of hundreds of women took the station over on Aug. 1, and it has been used since then to broadcast bulletins from the APPO.) The strikers turned the eight suspects over to federal agents the evening of Aug. 11.

Oaxaca state attorney Rosa Lizbeth Cana Cadeza says Perez Colmenares was killed during a dispute at the house, which belongs to the Santa Maria Clinic, whose owner is one of the suspects picked up by the strikers. [La Jornada (Mexico) 8/11/06, 8/12/06] Despite efforts to break the strike, the teachers and their supporters have tied up Oaxaca's Historic Center for almost three months and have carried out militant demonstrations around the city and in other parts of the state to push demands for cost-of-living increases and the removal of Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz [see Updates 853, 854, 858, 862].

Meanwhile, thousands of supporters of center-left presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador continued to camp out in the center of Mexico City to demand a recount of the July 2 vote, which Lopez Obrador officially lost by 0.58%. After two weeks of snarling traffic in the city, on Aug. 8 the protesters occupied tollbooths on the accesses to highways to Pachuca and Queretaro to the north, Cuernavaca to the south, and Puebla to the east; for several hours they let motorists pass through without paying. [El Diario-La Prensa 8/9/06 from EFE] On Aug. 11 Lopez Obrador supporters held demonstrations at federal buildings in the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Guerrero. Some 300 protesters, mostly women banging on pans with spoons, sat in at the Chamber of Commerce and the Employers Association of the Mexican Republic in Nuevo Leon state. While US anti-riot agents watched, a group of protesters including campesinos on horseback blocked the international bridge linking Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas. [LJ 8/12/06]

Also in Update #863:

--Colombia: More Indigenous Massacred
--Colombia: Indigenous Killed in North
--Colombia: Indigenous Occupy Estates
--Colombia: Police Attack Antiwar March
--Ecuador: March Protests Israel's War
--Puerto Rico: US Clears FBI in Ojeda Death
--Cuba: Court Denies Cuban 5 Appeal


ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. If this issue was forwarded to you, please write to wnu [at] igc.org for a free one-month subscription. Update items are available in searchable form at http://americas.org

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