Performing the Revolutionary Nation: Mobilized Maestros Revolt Against the Official Mexican State

• In Event: Mobilized Teachers: Social Justice and Social Movement Unionism

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how and why teachers’ movements in Oaxaca, Mexico in the 1970s and 80s represented contestations between hegemonic and anti-hegemonic forms of revolutionary nationalism. During this period of mass protest, a dissident movement primarily led by rural teachers in Oaxaca, Chiapas, and neighboring states in Mexico’s rural southern region challenged the authority of the Mexican State, targeting the official party apparatus within the national teachers’ union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Educacion (SNTE). The movement gave concrete expression to not just teacher dissidence, but to a revolutionary vision of Mexico that stretched far back into the national imagination.

Author

• Christian Alejandro Bracho, American University