Unions and neoliberalism in the Global South. The case of Oaxacan teachers union section against education reform in Mexico (2012-2018)

CASCO PEEBLES, MARIANO

Londres

Congreso; 16th Annual Historical Materialism Conference: Claps of Thunder: Disaster Communism, Extinction Capitalism and How to Survive Tomorrow; 2019

University of London

This paper examines the struggle that public education workers of Oaxaca (State located in southeast Mexico), organized in the Section 22 of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educacin (SNTE) [National Union of Education Workers], undertook against the education reform that the Mexican Federal Government tried to implement during the years 2012-2018. The education reform seeks to achieve educational quality by reducing labor rights of the teachers, principally job stability, and reducing the intervention of the unions in the public education system. It was one between eleven reforms with a neoliberal point of view that approved and implemented Enrique Pea Nieto during his presidency (2012-2018). Considering factors such as number of workers involved, political impact, acts of repression and the conflict temporal extension (for six uninterrupted years) we can say that the conflict starred by Section 22 of the SNTE was one of the strongest union battles in Mexicos recent history. The most vivid example of the virulence of the conflict occurred in the city of Nochixtln (State of Oaxaca) where government repression led to the death of 7 people and 280 wounded (civilians and police officers), according to the Comisin Nacional de Derechos Humanos [National Human Rights Commission]. The strategy of the section union to fight against the education reform had three main parts: (a) the execution of extended strikes and street mobilizations; (b) the elaboration of laws; (c) and the put into practice of an alternative pedagogical proposal in the schools where union members worked. This paper is organized in three parts; first we will mention some aspects of the education reform, then we will detail the moments of the struggle against it; and finally, we will say some words about the way the Section 22 of the SNTE is organized and the union subjectivity ofits active members. The central question of the paper is: How was the unionism deployed by the Section 22 of the SNTE against education reform? To answer the question we will deepen in the debate about the scope and limitations unionism has to question social totality, a classic discussion in Marxist theories