Mobilized Maestros: Teachers Performing Resistance in Oaxaca, Mexico

• In Event: 29.069 - Selected Dimensions of Teachers' Lives

Abstract

Teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico have maintained militant resistance to the state and federal government since the early 1980s. Tensions exploded in 2006 when military police broke up a peaceful strike, leading to a six-month insurrection led by the teachers' union. More recently, the teachers' union was forcefully evicted from Mexico City's main plaza in 2012 after several months of strike. This paper uses ethnographic interviews, observations, and archival data gathered between 2010-2014 to examine the ways teachers learn to be political actors and how the union maintains the social movement. It also argues that teachers resist top-down reforms from the Mexican government as a way of protecting professional and regional autonomy in Oaxaca.

Author

• Christian Alejandro Bracho, University of La Verne