[OccupyCU] Update from Mexico

[a_indabronx via OccupyCU]

Mexico Update: October 14

Teachers and students battle police in Chilpancingo, Guerrero;
48-hour strike in Mexico City colleges and universities

Since the nationwide protests that swept Mexico last Wednesday, October 8 (see 
"Huge Outrage Over Guerrero Massacre" on the Internationalist web site [1]), 
the country has continued to be in an uproar over the massacre in Iguala, 
Guerrero and the kidnapping (and possible execution) there of scores of 
students from the teachers college at Ayotzinapa. Yesterday, October 13 there 
were running battles all day in the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo, 
with teachers and students confronting and breaking through police lines and 
ending with the offices of the state government and city hall in flames. Today a 
number of faculties, schools and campuses of the National University and 
Metropolitan University in Mexico City began a two-day strike in solidarity 
with the Ayotzinapa students.

Pitched battle in Guerrero

On Sunday night, October 12, state judicial police in Chilpancingo fired on a 
van including French and German students (one of whom was wounded) from the 
Monterrey Technological Institute who were returning to Mexico City after a 
weekend vacation in Acapulco. Since foreigners were involved and the incident 
could damage the tourist trade, 20 police were detained for questioning.

The clashes on Monday, October 13 began in the morning as militant teachers of 
the CETEG (Guerrero State Coordinating Committee of Education Workers, 
affiliated with the national CNTE). Last year the CETEG led off months of teacher 
walkouts protesting an education "reform" aimed at penalizing educators for 
the government's sabotage of public education. Offices of the capitalist 
political parties that voted for the law were torched and the state 
headquarters of the corporatist pseudo-union, the SNTE, an agency for police 
control of teachers, was stoned (see "Defend the Independent Teachers of 
Guerrero!" on the Internationalist web site).

This time teachers were seeking to enter the Guerrero state Congress building 
to demand the ouster of governor Ángel Aguirre and the arrest of the mayor of 
Iguala, but were blocked by a wall of cops. The teachers charged police lines 
using metal barricades as battering rams. Later a security shack was set afire 
and teachers were able to open the metal doors using a van. During the fighting 
in which sticks and tubes were thrown there were numerous injuries on both 
sides. The teachers have been on strike since October 8 demanding the 43 
students be returned alive, with a plantón (encampment) in Chilpancingo's 
Zócalo (main plaza). The CETEG had given the state government until Monday 
morning to present the disappeared students, and since their ultimatum was 
ignored they vowed to radicalize their protest.

Meanwhile, beginning in late morning, students, teachers and parents besieged 
the complex of buildings housing state offices, setting up barricades with 
shopping carts from a nearby supermarket. Barbed wire surrounding the 
buildings was removed. After a time, students withdrew, but then a larger 
crowd including teachers and parents returned heaving rocks at the police. By 
the end of the afternoon the main building had burned out. Earlier in the day, 
teachers occupied toll booths on the Mexico City-Acapulco highway, On their 
way back to the Zócalo they were joined by others coming from the state 
government offices and the crowd seized city hall. As they left, fires broke out 
there as well.

The feelings of rage at the police massacre of students in Iguala and fury at 
the criminal state and national governments are utterly justified, as is the 
struggle against them by the working people using whatever means are at hand. 
Militant confrontations with the heavily armed forces of repression, whose job 
is to keep the expressed and exploited down, can have an effect. But to 
effectively resist and defeat the capitalist state requires the mobilization of 
an even greater power, that of the working class. Thus it is vital today to 
struggle for a national strike against the murderous government and to 
undertake the building of a revolutionary workers party against the PRI, PAN, 
PRD and the rest of the bosses' parties and politicians including Andrés 
Manuel López Obrador's Morena.

48-hour strike in Mexico City universities

Public colleges and universities in Mexico City have been in an uproar over 
the bloodbath in Guerrero ever since police in Iguala attacked the Ayotzinampa 
students on the night of September 26-27. Calls to return the disappeared 
students alive dominated the annual October 2 march commemorating the 
Tlatelolco Massacre in. In addition, students at the National Politechnical 
Institute (IPN) have been on strike since late September over new regulations 
that would effectively exclude many students and curtail the rights of faculty 
and staff. Although the government ceded many of their demands in principle, 
students are refusing to go back until this is spelled out. And now professors 
have added their demands as well.

On October 8, many of the schools walked out to join the huge demonstration in 
the center of the Mexican capital. The next day, Thursday, there was an 
"interuniversity" meeting at the National University to decide on next steps. 
Prior to the assembly at the Filosofía y Letras (Philosophy and Literature) 
faculty of the UNAM, comrades of the Grupo Internacionalista took around a 
group of teacher college students to meetings in the Philosophy, Psychology 
and Economics faculties. At the assembly our comrades put forward a motion 
calling to extend the IPN strike to all the institutions of higher education 
and in particular to defend the teachers college students under attack in 
Ayotzinapa. This was defeated, but it was decided to have a two-day strike 
this week in universities and colleges in the Federal District.

Yesterday, Octobert 13, an assembly in Filosofía of upwards of a thousand 
students was called to vote on the 48-hour strike, which was approved by a 
vote of 900 for and 4 against, and to organize it. Our comrades along with a 
student from Ayotzinapa organized a brigade of students from UPIICSA and ESIME 
Ticomán aeronautical engineering students of the IPN, who had sparked the 
strike at the "Poli," that marched with several hundred students around the 
Interior Circuit of the Ciudad Universitaria (University City), the main UNAM 
campus to pull out the other faculties.

As of last night, walkouts were scheduled at the UNAM faculties of Philosophy 
and Literature; Political and Social Sciences; Architecture; Chemistry; 
Economics; Engineering; Psychology; the National School of Social Work; the 
Faculties of Higher Studies at Aragón and Zaragoza; 2 campuses of the Colleges 
of Sciences and Humanities; 2 campuses of the National Preparatory School , 
and the Xochimilco Campus of the UAM (Autonomous Metropolitan University).

Tomorrow, October 15, caravans from around the country, notably of teachers 
from Oaxaca and teachers college students from Michoacán will converge on 
Ayotzinapa in a show of solidarity.

[1] http://www.internationalist.org/guerreromassacreoutrage1410.html
[2] 
http://www.internationalist.org/mexnationaleducationstrike1305.html#defendermaestrosguerrero
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