After two violent and tense months, striking teachers in the Mexican state of Morelos have started negotiations with the state over an education reform bill being forced through parliament with the support of the teachers' union head.
The last week have seen motorway blockades, occupations, national demonstrations and police violence that the people of Morelos had not seen in a long while, but now moves are being made towards a statewide deal on the Alianza por la Calidad Educativa (ACE) bill, co-written by Elba Ester Gordillo - head of the Sindicato Nacional para los Trabajadores en la Educación (SNTE), the teachers' union.
For two days running, hundreds of officers from the hated Policía Federal Preventativa (PFP), who were responsible for the Atenco massacre of 2006, cleared a motorway blockaded by indigenous teachers in the village of Xoxocotla. Following that, a blockade further up the road in Amayucan was also evicted. In Xoxocotla, teachers seized three PFP officials but later released them after receiving "direct threats" from the Mexican military.
Now talk in Morelos is turning to the human cost of the strike. Around 50 teachers have been formally detained by the state, but the location of many more is still undetermined. Many worry that they have been kidnapped by Gordillo-aligned hoods, a tactic that has been applied with alarming regularity ever since the Oaxaca uprising of 2006.
Other parts of the republic are starting to mobilise against the bill. The infamous Sección 22 of Oaxaca has once again hit the streets, occupying motorways throughout the state. The Coordinadora Nacional para los Trabajadores en la Educación (CNTE) - the anti-gordillista rank and file group within the SNTE - marched through Mexico City, breaching police barriers and a police line protecting the Secretaria de Educación Pública (SEP), the national education headquarters. The now traditional plantón (permanent encampment) remains there to this date.
The aforementioned occupation of the Guerrero state electoral offices however, was finally brought to a close via negotiations but further activities are being planned in that state while in Chiapas, teachers have held public meetings and demonstrations about the ACE.
