Some freight trains in Michoacán have stopped running once again due to blockades, set up this time by students of a teacher training college.

Today is the third day of the blockades in Tiripetío in the municipality of Morelia, which as of Wednesday morning had left 15 trains stranded.

“We’re totally defenseless,” declared the president of the Industrialists Association of Michoacán (AIEMAC)

“The federal government must intervene immediately,” wrote Ricardo Bernal Vargas on social media.

He demanded that the federal and state governments create and implement an immediate response protocol that keeps protesters away from the state’s railways and highways, asserting that the federal crimes of blockading those means of communication “must be punished.”

“These threats to the rule of law are untenable, they are not the way to exert pressure. We demand that the state and federal governments move against these actions and not yield to blackmail,” he continued.

“We urge the government to remove this blockade; we cannot allow putting the brakes on the state’s economic activity, which affects the economy of the country.”

The students are protesting over an administrative matter at their school.

Trains were last halted in the state by teachers protesting unpaid salaries and bonuses. The state-wide shutdown of the rail system went for a month and cost an estimated 30 billion pesos before an agreement was negotiated.

Source: El Universal (sp)