Mexico Teachers Rise Up In Face of State Repression

FEATURING ROBERTO FLORES – Teachers in Mexico have been protesting and striking for their rights for years. But more recently their anger over reforms proposed by President Enrique Pena Nieto have reached boiling point. A violent clash with police and armed men in Oaxaca earlier this month resulted in 9 deaths, including one journalist, and more than a hundred people injured.

Teachers, led by the union, National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), have been on a strike, blocking roads and there have been mass demonstrations in solidarity that have even included doctors.

Roberto Flores, Professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State LA, long-time Chicano activist based in Los Angeles, and founder of East Side Café, a space in El Sereno that was in part inspired by the Zapatistas.