Michoacán is not the only state where teachers have walked off the job to protest against the government.
More than 1,000 Oaxaca teachers affiliated with Section 22 of the CNTE union began an indefinite strike yesterday, erecting blockades in the capital that snarled traffic on two busy streets and staging protests in other parts of the state.
The CNTE members are demanding a meeting with the Oaxaca State Institute of Education (IEEPO) to discuss issues including job security, the recognition and employment of physical education teachers and the payment of bonuses and benefits they say they are owed.
Yesterday’s protests were led by teacher-trainers from the 11 teachers’ colleges in the state, media group NVI Noticias reported.
To block traffic, teachers commandeered buses bound for the Oaxaca bus terminal and parked them across Avenida Juárez and Calzada Niños Héroes de Chapultepec, the newspaper Reforma said.
Police sources said the latter street was blocked between 1:30pm and 6:00pm. On Avenida Juárez, a sit-in was staged in front of government offices.
Teachers also protested at the IEEPO cashiers’ officers in Oaxaca City for two and a half hours.
“They owe us bonuses dating back to 2015 and other work benefits . . .” said Wilfrido López, an instructor at the Tlacochahuaya Bilingual Teachers’ College.
However, IEEPO chief Francisco Ángel Villareal denied that any money was owed to the teachers, charging that the protests related only to administrative matters that the government is already attending to.
Lucila Mendoza, an official in Section 22 of the CNTE union, said that since the previous federal government’s educational reform was implemented, state education authorities have discontinued physical education programs in many schools, leaving at least 4,000 teachers with reduced hours.
Strikes, blockades and even vandalism have been a trademark of Oaxaca teachers’ strikes for many years.
The darker the color, the more corrupt. transparency international
Mexico’s ranking on an international corruption index plummeted 33 places during former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term, a period in which the government was embroiled in several damaging scandals.
Transparency International’s 2018 Corruption Perception Index placed Mexico in 138th place in the ranking of 180 countries, three spots below its 2017 ranking. When Peña Nieto took office in 2012, Mexico ranked 105th.
However, in subsequent years, Peña Nieto and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government he led were plagued by a range of scandals that analysts believe contributed heavily to the party’s crushing defeat at last year’s elections.
They included the disappearance of 43 teaching students in Guerrero, the so-called White House scandal in which the former president’s wife purchased a mansion built by a favored government contractor, the Master Fraud embezzlement scheme, the use of spyware to monitor government critics and allegations that the former CEO of Pemex accepted bribes from Brazilian company Odebrecht.
Transparency International also pointed out that several governors in Mexico have also been caught up in corruption scandals.
In the organization’s latest index published yesterday, Mexico sits on a par with Guinea, Iran, Lebanon, Papua New Guinea and Russia, all of which achieved a score of 28 out of 100.
A score of zero means that a country is highly corrupt, while 100 means that it is very clean.
“In Mexico, basic political rights, including freedom of expression and press freedom, have sharply declined. Without a free media to provide oversight to government, the ability to prevent and denounce corruption is limited,” Transparency International said in its Americas report.
Mexico’s ranking is the lowest of all 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and only slightly above Guatemala and Nicaragua, both of which Transparency International said were suffering from “democratic governance crises.”
Eduardo Bohórquez, director of the Mexico office of Transparency International, said that impunity was a significant factor that has allowed corruption to flourish.
“Preventative measures taken until now lose their effectiveness when those who participate in networks of corruption know very well that they won’t be sentenced and that they will be able to keep money diverted from the public purse,” he said.
President López Obrador, who took office on December 1, has vowed to combat corruption, but has said that his government will only seek to prosecute past presidents if the public demands it.
First on the 2018 Corruption Perception Index was Denmark, with a score of 88 out of 100, followed by New Zealand, which was one point behind. Finland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland shared third place.
In the Americas, Canada was the highest ranked country at ninth followed by the United States, which ranked 22nd and Uruguay, which placed 23rd.
The world’s most corrupt countries, according to the rankings, are Somalia, Syria and South Sudan, with scores of just 10, 13 and 13 respectively.
Two ships carrying 800,000 liters of fuel believed stolen have been seized by the Criminal Investigation Agency and the navy in the Gulf of Mexico.
The federal government was tipped off about the vessels by an anonymous caller early Monday morning and quickly intercepted the ships, which were then placed in federal custody at the port of Dos Bocas, Tabasco.
Government forces also detained 10 suspects, the ships’ captains and crew members among them.
Neither the ships’ point of origin nor destination is certain, but officials suspect they took on their cargo in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
Tabasco Governor Adán Augusto López Hernández recently told reporters that the federal government is investigating several cases of fuel theft in Dos Bocas.
The latter port is the site of the federal government’s new oil refinery. On January 16, President López Obrador told reporters that corruption was rampant in the port.
“We are investigating what is possibly a massive fuel theft operation, because it appears that thousands of unregistered barrels of crude oil are leaving port daily in Dos Bocas port alone.”
The federal government’s program to pay guaranteed prices to farmers for five agricultural products could place pressure on inflation and discourage competition if it is not well-executed, experts warn.
President López Obrador announced earlier this month the prices the government will pay for corn, beans, wheat, rice and milk, asserting that more than two million farmers will benefit from the program and that it will help Mexico to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Francisco Javier Núñez, former chief of the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece), said that while the government hasn’t yet explained the detail of the program, at face value it appears to be flawed.
“It’s not clear how this program will work. For example, the government will purchase corn crops at 5,600 pesos [per tonne] when the market price is 4,000 pesos so, what will Segalmex [Mexican Food Security, a government agency] do with the crops it buys? We assume that it will go out to sell them but nobody will buy them because they’re overpriced,” he said.
Núñez charged that the government will be forced to sell corn at a lower price than it paid and will thus lose money.
“You can’t force large consumers to buy it from you at an expensive price. The only way is to limit grain imports but that will drive up industry costs,” he said.
The former Cofece chief warned that if the program isn’t implemented carefully, it could also be vulnerable to fraud.
“The main problem will be how to prevent fraudulent schemes from people who, for example, buy corn cheaply [from the government] and sell it at an expensive price . . . Those whom the program is directed at won’t be the beneficiaries,” Núñez said.
He also said that according to existing regulations the government requires authorization from Cofece in order to set guaranteed prices, charging that their establishment would reduce competition.
Juan Pablo Rojas, president of the National Confederation of Corn Producers (Cnpamm), said there was a possibility that the program could have an impact on consumers if it is not well-executed, predicting that the price of tortillas could go up by as much as 20%.
Nevertheless, he argued that guaranteed prices are a good thing for small and medium-sized agricultural producers.
“It gives us confidence and certainty that yields will have a market and a secure price,” he said.
Rojas said “the main concern” with regard to the payment of guaranteed prices is that the government won’t have “the resources necessary to meet the demand” of the different agricultural sectors and that “the program ends up being a mere promise.”
He also said the program could cause yields to decrease rather than increase, meaning that imports of basic foodstuffs would have to go up, undermining López Obrador’s goal to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Representatives of other agricultural organizations were less pessimistic about the impact on inflation and the economy, and generally praised the initiative.
Pedro Alejandro Díaz, president of the National Council of Rice Producers, said he was confident that the program wouldn’t causes prices of the grain to increase, while Álvaro González, head of the National Front of Milk Producers and Consumers, said it was pleasing to see that the government was taking dairy production costs into account.
Juan Carlos Arizmendi, head of the Mexican Council for Sustainable Rural Development, said the program was also a good thing for bean farmers but added that the extent to which it will benefit producers in states such as Zacatecas, Durango and Chihuahua remains to be seen.
“We offer our vote of confidence that the authorities will know how to efficiently execute these [price] programs,” he said.
Some of the vehicles to be sold at auction in February.
President López Obrador has announced that the federal government will sell off vehicles and aircraft in two auctions at the Santa Lucía Military Base in February and April.
He said proceeds from the sales will be used to fund the creation of the new security force, the national guard.
The government expects to generate more than 100 million pesos (US $5.26 million) at the first event, scheduled for February 23 and 24, with the sale of 263 vehicles.
Among them:
171 pickup trucks;
Seven semi-tractors;
30 motorcycles;
12 trucks;
Two farm tractors;
Two buses;
Five semi-trailers;
One armored BMW;
One armored Audi.
The second auction will take place April 26 and 27 and will see the sale of 76 airplanes and helicopters, including the presidential jet, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
With the sale of the presidential plane, López Obrador will fulfill one of his campaign promises. The aircraft was seen by many as a symbol of the excesses of previous administrations. However, some experts contend that the government might actually lose money on the sale because of the lack of demand for such aircraft and the high cost of reconverting the plane.
During his announcement, the president also addressed concerns regarding the future of the vehicles and aircraft. He said he would ask for thorough background checks on potential buyers to ensure that the items are not used in illicit activities.
A suspect has been arrested in the homicide of journalist Rafael Murúa Manríquez, who was slain in his native Mulegé, Baja California, on January 19.
State Attorney General Daniel de la Rosa Anaya told a press conference that Héctor “El Moreno” N., originally from Veracruz, had been identified as a drug trafficking plaza chief in Santa Rosalía.
De la Rosa said the suspect was one of several in the case and that all have been identified and arrest warrants have been issued for them.
Two main lines of investigation are being pursued in the murder, one regarding Murúa’s activities as a journalist and another concerning a personal dispute that arose between him and an alleged gang member after both were involved in a traffic accident.
De la Rosa also stated that Murúa’s reports regarding the threats he received in 2017 and 2018 are also being investigated.
The most recent of those reports was made just over two months ago when Murúa denounced harassment and threats after writing comments that were critical of the administration of Mulegé Mayor Felipe Prado Bautista.
On November 14 he wrote that he had learned through a municipal official that there was a plan to kill him.
After the Attorney General gave his update on the investigation, Mayor Prado celebrated the progress achieved and said he was fully disposed to collaborate and, if necessary, would step down as mayor.
Murúa, 34, operated a local web portal called Radio Kashana and lived in Santa Rosalía.
After two weeks of blockades, not everyone is a happy camper in Michoacán.
Teachers in Michoacán have threatened to escalate their protest by barricading banks, shopping centers and highway toll booths if their demands are not met by the state government.
Isidoro Castañeda, a regional coordinator of the CNTE teachers’ union, said today is the deadline for the state to meet the teachers’ demands, which include 5 billion pesos (US $263 million) to pay salaries, benefits and bonuses they say they are owed.
Castañeda said that teachers will decide at a meeting today whether to begin the new protests immediately in addition to maintaining rail blockades, which have now been in place for more than two weeks and are costing the economy an estimated 1 billion pesos (US $52.5 million) a day.
The federal government has provided an additional 1 billion pesos to the Michoacán government to pay teachers but Governor Silvano Aureoles said yesterday that no new payments will be made and no further dialogue will take place with the union unless the teachers end their blockades.
Aureoles met with federal Education Secretary Esteban Moctezuma Barragán in Morelia yesterday and later said in a statement that they had agreed to work together to solve the conflict.
The governor said that officials from his government and the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) would meet today to review the teachers’ demands but stressed that they would not be met before the blockade is lifted.
“There is no reason for teachers to still be in the streets. The state and federal governments are willing to work [together] on the path agreed to with the secretary of education, provided the teachers clear the tracks so as not to continue affecting the economy and society in general,” Aureoles said.
With the federal government ruling out any possibility that force will be used to remove the teachers from the tracks, the standoff looks likely to continue.
“We have several demands . . . We’re asking for all of the demands [to be met] in order for the blockade to be lifted,” CNTE Section 18 spokesman Saturnino Pineda said.
Despite the federal government’s involvement in negotiations, President López Obrador reiterated today that it was ultimately up to the state government to solve the conflict and charged that Aureoles has failed to do so because he was on a working trip to Europe when the blockades began.
“The [teachers’] demands are not up to the federal government to resolve, it’s a matter of non-payment to state teachers, it’s the responsibility of the state government. At the same time, the governor goes on a working trip to Europe; he didn’t attend to the problem,” he said.
“To avoid damages, we decided to transfer federal funds . . . so that the [state] government would have sufficient budget [to pay teachers]. We already did that, the funds have already been transferred,” López Obrador added.
In addition to causing economic losses in Mexico, the teachers’ rail blockades are generating a negative image of the country abroad, according to the Mexican Association of Shipping Agents (AMANAC).
Association vice-president Norma Becerra said “there are now complaints from freight forwarders on the other side of the world” about delivery delays caused by the blockades.
“They ask us why we haven’t delivered freight to their consignees and we explain that it’s because we have railway blockades.”
Mexican industries are asking authorities to clear the tracks promptly amid fears that it could cause a shortage of supplies for sectors such as steel and automotive, among others.
“Up to today [Monday], 251 trains have been affected . . . 2.1 million tonnes of freight haven’t been transported,” Becerra said.
She explained that trucks have been sent to Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, and Manzanillo, Colima, to move imported goods but stressed that they don’t have the capacity to move all the cargo that continues to arrive and accumulate at the ports.
There is a possibility, Becerra said, that foreign ships will choose to go to ports in other countries and transport cargo to Mexico at a later date, which would significantly increase supply chain costs.
She also said that Mexican companies that export products such as beer, ceramics and white goods are incurring losses because they can’t get their goods to port.
“Exports are very important for the GDP of our country. Just in Mexico City and México state, in the Valley of México railway station, 720 containers are [normally] moved every day but they haven’t been able to leave,” Becerra said.
Juan Pablo Castañón, president of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), said the time has come for the federal government to act to clear the tracks, stating “we cannot allow strategic [transportation] routes such as railway tracks to be subject to political extortion by minority groups.”
Gustavo de Hoyos, president of the Mexican Employers Federation (Coparmex), urged the federal government to apply the rule of law and put an end to the blockades, although he emphasized that teachers’ human rights must be respected.
“Mexico’s economy requires the regular and safe operation of its trains. The complacency of today [in dealing] with the CNTE could be the disaster of the future . . .” he wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, public services in much of Michoacán have been paralyzed. Teachers have occupied 31 municipal headquarters and the offices of several state agencies. The union says its job action has suspended classes in 90% of the state’s schools.
Taibo (arm raised) next to AMLO, center, and Gutiérrez at launch of reading strategy.
President López Obrador launched the government’s National Reading Strategy yesterday, declaring that it will strengthen Mexico’s cultural and moral values.
At an event in Mocorito, Sinaloa, López Obrador said that his government’s agenda aims not just to improve people’s lives at home and at work but also strengthen their values, explaining that if it only focused on the former “our politics would be lame, standing on one foot, and both are needed, the material and the spiritual.”
Eduardo Villegas Mejía, coordinator of the government’s Historical and Cultural Memory of Mexico initiative, explained that the reading strategy will be made up of three key pillars.
The first, he said, will be of a formative nature and involve developing the habit of reading from a young age.
The Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) and the National Network of Libraries will play a central role in encouraging children and teenagers to read.
Villegas said that the second pillar of the strategy will be of a sociocultural nature and involve making books accessible to the nation’s citizens.
Paco Ignacio Taibo II, a writer and head of the government affiliated non-profit publishing group Fondo de Cultura Ecónomica (FCE), elaborated on the pillar during his address.
“There won’t be campaigns of ‘you have to read’, no, no, no, none of this ‘you have to’,” he said.
“Doors will be opened so that there is access to reading for millions of Mexicans who today don’t have access for different reasons. We’re going to make books extremely cheap, we’re going to give books away. And not just that, we’re going to force the whole of the publishing industry to lower their prices,” Taibo said.
The third pillar of the strategy, Villegas said, will be of an informative nature and include media campaigns that promote reading as a habit that can develop people’s critical thinking beyond the here and now.
López Obrador’s wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, also attended yesterday’s event and will play a central role in promoting the reading strategy.
“A book can be a path to become better people, better Mexicans, reading awakens the conscience and the imagination, it invites us to reflect, to feel, it allows us to enjoy ourselves, it makes us remember to cry,” the writer, academic and First Lady said.
“Reading can bring us peace, it’s a vehicle for peace, nobody who’s reading is hitting, kicking or attacking anyone so read, read everything you can,” Gutiérrez added.
In a 2013 survey by UNESCO that looked at the reading habits of people in 108 countries, Mexico ranked 107th.
Artist's rendering of the new US embassy in Mexico City.
The United States has begun the process of building a US $130-million consulate in Mérida, Yucatán.
The U.S. Department of State began a selection process on January 18 to find a construction company to build the multi-building complex on a three-hectare site in the Vía Montejo development.
Located in the north of the Yucatán capital, the development is already home to the new Harbor Mérida shopping center.
The Department of State said in a statement that Miller Hull Partnership of Seattle, Washington, had been selected as the design architect for the project.
The consulate will have a 5,250-square-meter office building with space for 63 employees as well as auxiliary buildings, a warehouse and a parking lot, the newspaper Reforma reported.
The United States government is also investing US $943 million to build a new embassy in the Nuevo Polanco district of Mexico City. The project is being built by Alabama company Caddell Construction and is expected to open in 2022.
In addition, new U.S. consulates will be built in the border city of Nogales, Sonora, in that state’s capital, Hermosillo, and in Guadalajara, Jalisco. The combined cost of the three projects is US $520 million.
BL Harbert International, a construction company based in Birmingham, Alabama, was awarded the contracts to build all three consulates.
Although it is investing heavily in infrastructure in Mexico, the United States doesn’t currently have an ambassador in the country.
The position has been vacant since Roberta Jacobson resigned and left the post last May.
CORRECTION: The original photo that accompanied this story — which depicted the new U.S. embassy in London, England — has been replaced with the right one, thanks to a notification by an alert reader.
María del Socorro Cauich Caamal hosts the weekly Radio Yuuyum show in Yucatecan Maya. megan frye
It’s all there, laid out in the popular vernacular of Mexico. The Mayan Riviera. Mayan food. Mayan pyramids. Mayan traditional clothing. Mayan people. Mayan design, etc.
But while the Mexican government has done a tremendous job at promoting Mayan cultural heritage for the consumption of both national and international tourism, there are members of Yucatán’s Mayan community who see hypocrisy in spreading the term Maya without any focus on preserving the Mayan language.
There are about 30 Mayan languages currently spoken by about 5 million people across southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. The languages are considered endangered, according to Oxford University Press, because there are documented cases of children in some communities who are not learning them.
And some Yucatán locals say interest in their language, Yucatecan Maya, is dwindling, even while tourism numbers soar in places such as Tulum, a resort town built around a sacred Mayan archeological site. There’s even a project for a high-speed train emblazoned with the name “Tren Maya” that’s in the works right now, with its proposed trajectory shredding through portions of Mayan jungle to allow tourists easier access to currently remote Mayan sacred sites.
But there are efforts under way to save the language from extinction.
Teresa Pool Ix is a retired teacher who volunteers at Radio Yuuyum. megan frye
Teresa Pool Ix is a retired preschool teacher and language preservation advocate and one of the 10 volunteers that make up Radio Yuuyum, a Mayan language radio station based in downtown Mérida, the Yucatán peninsula’s most booming metropolis.
“The problem of Yucatecan Maya is there really isn’t much family transmission anymore,” Pool Ix said. “Parents aren’t really speaking with their children in Maya. I don’t know why there is still this resistance; that our language isn’t valid or interesting or important, when we know that our language is very complex and beautiful. It would be a shame for us not to do anything against its loss.”
Around the Yucatán peninsula it’s estimated that about 800,000 people speak Yucatecan Maya. Some families teach the language to their children, and it becomes their native tongue. Later, the kids learn Spanish in school and in society outside of the smaller pueblos. But Pool Ix says this is not as common as it used to be.
“Older people speak it, but what happens when they start to die?” Pool Ix said. “The language loses speakers and Spanish gets stronger. There is this attitude of disinterest on the part of the government, both local and federal, so the materials that are emitted are very limited and they don’t arrive in the more remote communities.”
Radio Yuuyum broadcasts every Monday from 5:00-10:00pm CT and has for the past three years, and online at www.radioyuyuum.org. The programming includes Mayan language music such as rapper Patboy, discussions, language lessons and an hour of news which is selected each week by the station manager and translated into Mayan. The news deals with issues facing the state of Yucatán and the peninsula.
“What we’re doing here right now doesn’t seem like we’re doing much,” Pool Ix said. “Here we are 10 crazy people, but behind this there is something more. We want to grow, we want more people to get excited to participate. This is the truth of why we do this. We love our language. We love our culture. Though I know this will not bring me any economic benefit.”
Mayan language activisit Yazmín Novelo of Radio Yuuyum.
And while Maya is never a requirement for any job or school in the region, knowledge of English has become obligatory. Many young people are even studying Mandarin in expectation that it might become the world’s next imperial language. It all stems from economic pressures, Pool Ix said.
“Sometimes we think that, well, we don’t get any work if we speak Maya,” Pool Ix said. “But me as a person, I will be rich because I will transmit what I know. I will know more about my culture and language. People say the Mayans disappeared. No, they didn’t disappear. We are still here.
“Sure, we don’t live in the pyramids anymore. Everything changes, even the language. The language is a living thing. We have to accept the the changes of the language. But people lack knowledge of their origins.”
Just up the road from Radio Yuuyum’s broadcasting space in Mérida’s colonial center is the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, a 22,600-square-meter space which tells the story of the Mayan people, starting with the crash of a meteor off the coast of Yucatán.
Many scientists believe that event ultimately led to the extinction of dinosaurs and the formation of the Yucatán peninsula and its abundant underground freshwater rivers which pool into cenotes, considered sacred to the Mayan people and now a popular tourist attraction.
The museum is immense and touches on the beginning, prime and current Mayan civilization, with heavy focus on the Classic period of Mayan culture, the Spanish invasion and subsequent colonization whose effects, Pool Ix says, are still clearly felt to this day.
“There was an event recently at the Gran Museo Maya, and it was called the ‘Pueblo Maya’ though the least-represented group there was that of the Mayan people,” Pool Ix said. “They just use our name. They sell our name. They sell our culture. But only certain aspects, because the language doesn’t interest them. They see it as something that doesn’t serve them.
“But when it comes to doing a special ritual, they want it in Maya; they hire people and they do it in Maya because it’s lovely, and then they applaud for us. But that’s it. We are like actors, nothing else. The people should occupy these spaces. And the people who occupy the spaces the least are us. Unfortunately, they sell all of this under the name of the Maya, the very people who continue to live in difficult situations economically, who continue to be forgotten and abandoned.”
Throughout the years, the Yucatán peninsula has featured a number of television and radio programs, but the number has dwindled. Radio Yuuyum operates out of a space donated by Instituto Universitario del Pueblo. The radio is also supported by some listener and other donations. Pool Ix says that television has been the best way to reach the pueblos, but they hope that with the increase in internet availability they will be able to reach more communities.
“We can’t close our eyes to our own identity,” Pool Ix said. “ If people really knew their culture, they would defend the language. We hope that people wake up and start to worry about the language and start to speak the language.”
Socorro Cauich is a high school teacher and Radio Yuuyum volunteer host. She says her hometown is about 20 minutes away from Chichen Itzá, arguably the most visited archaeological site in Mexico. She learned Mayan when she was about eight years old.
“The goal in some communities is that whenever you speak, you try to speak in Maya,” she said. “Eventually, the kids will understand and be able to speak. I am applying this as well within my community and the places where I go. In my community, I started to learn Maya in certain places.
“But when I’m in the city, people know that I speak Spanish so they speak Spanish to me. Outside of the communities, there is the issue of people discriminating against it. If someone speaks Maya, there’s the idea that they are poor, or they are ignorant. So what people do is decide not to speak it for fear that others will make fun of them and they will undervalue them.
“In the school where I teach, many of the students more or less speak and understand Maya. But it’s always a challenge to really get them to converse in it. I generally convince my students to speak Maya after two and a half years of trying, then they come to the third year and now they think it’s cool. They like it. They want to speak Maya. But the process dies because then they finish high school and in many cases move away. But there is life in this language, it’s not something that has passed us by.”
Megan Frye is a writer, photographer and translator living in Mexico City. She has a history of newsroom journalism as well as non-profit administration and has been published by several international publications.
