Coronavirus could be a strategy for capitalist control: teachers union

March 17, 2020

Chiapas teachers set up tents outside the National Palace.

Although it said it would consider the Education Ministry’s request to begin the Semana Santa, or Holy Week, vacation early in response to the spread of Covid-19, the CNTE teachers union is not doing so without skepticism.

A press release issued by union local Section 22 from Oaxaca on Saturday said that the union did not “rule out the possibility that [precautionary measures for the coronavirus] could be the product of a strategy for geopolitical control of interests in the capitalist system.”

The document added that “the working class and the people in general are the victims of such interests.”

It also asked union members and parents to practice proper hygiene, but not to fearmonger with false news about the “so-called coronavirus.”

One government recommendation the union does not seem to heed is that of social distancing. Teachers from a union local in Chiapas gathered to protest in Mexico City on Tuesday.

They set up camp outside the National Palace and demanded an end to the economic and legal repression they claim now reigns in the administration of Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandón Cadenas.

A total of five marches or assemblies snarled traffic in the nation’s capital on Tuesday. Aside from protests led by the CNTE and SNTE teachers unions, there were demonstrations by electricians and citizens demanding better potable water supplies and the cancellation of the extension of Line 3 of the Metrobús.