AUT: Mex Labor News - Special Report - Teachers

[Dan La Botz <103144.2651@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS              =

March 4, 1998
Vol. III, Special Report -- The Teachers Union
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               About Mexican Labor News and Analysis

     Mexican Labor News and Analysis is produced in collaboration
with the Authentic Labor Front (Frente Autentico del Trabajo -
FAT) of Mexico and with the United Electrical Workers (UE) of the
United States and is published the 2nd and 16th of every month. =


     MLNA can be viewed at the UE's international web site:
HTTP://www.igc.apc.org/unitedelect/. For information about direct
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editor Dan La Botz at the following e-mail address:
103144.2651@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx or call in the U.S. (513) 961-8722.
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     The UE Home Page which displays Mexican Labor News and
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     Staff: Editor, Dan La Botz; Correspondents in Mexico: Bob
Briggs, Peter Gellert, Jess Kincaid, Wendy Patterson, Jorge
Robles, Juan-Carlos Romero, Fred Rosen, Don Sherman, Sam Smucker,
Linda Stevenson.
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IN THIS ISSUE:
     *Special Report: Fraud and Intimidation in the
                         Mexican Teachers Union
                              by Sam Smucker
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                     FRAUD AND INTIMIDATION =

                  IN TEACHERS' UNION ELECTIONS

                         by Sam Smucker

     Special Report to Mexican Labor News and Analysis

     Democratic opposition groups inside the Mexican Teachers
Union (el SNTE) charge that the delegate election process for the
upcoming national convention has been characterized by
intimidation against democratic activists including death threats
and outright election fraud. In an interview this week with
MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS, teacher activists charged that
Humberto Davila Esquivel, the SNTE's top officer, and anti-
democratic hard-liners within the SNTE have orchestrated a
nationwide campaign to steal delegate elections from democratic
forces.

     During the last several weeks union members have elected
state-wide local union delegates as well as many local executive
committees. The local delegates then meet in a local state
congress in order to select delegates to the national convention.
Democratic activists with the two most important opposition
groups, the National Coordinating Committee of the Teacher's
Union (la CNTE) and Democratic Fractions claim that fraud and
intimidation have been widespread, occurring in almost every
local.

               Fraud in Local 10, Mexico City

     Members of SNTE Local 10 of Mexico City filed charges on
March 1 with the SNTE's National Electoral Committee charging
mismanagement of ballot boxes and the voting area by this same
Committee. Furthermore, they declared that hired thugs were
present in the voting area where they watched people vote and
threatened observers. The SNTE Local 10 members claimed that many
Secretary of Education sector administrators and managers of
several schools threatened and bribed education workers to vote
for the Institutionalist Slates. =


     Diego Ramirez Yanez, a candidate to the local convention for
the Democratic Slate and an election observer at the Iztapalapa
election site asserts that he was harassed by the thugs present
in the voting area. Furthermore, in his affidavit, he claims that
at the time of vote counting there was clear evidence that the
ballot box had been opened at the bottom and retaped and the
signatures over the seals were out of place. Finally, voting
lists showed that there were 420 teachers who voted at this site.
However, when the ballot box was opened, 772 votes counted.

     It was at the vote count in Iztapalapa that one of the
alleged paid thugs, named Ezequiel Soto Ordaz, approached Jorge
Mejias Mateos, a leader of the opposition group Democratic
Fractions and an employee of the national union on the Political
Committee. Soto threatened Mejias saying, "I'm going to kick your
ass. I'm going to kill you."

     At the voting sight in Itzalco, there were 13 more votes in
the box than there were people who voted. During the vote count
the observer for the Institutionalist Slate, Severiano Soriano,
brazenly pulled out 77 more marked ballots from his pocket and
tried to convince the representative of the Electoral Committee
that they also should be counted. They were denied.

     According to the democratic activists, more important than
the ballot box stuffing is the atmosphere of fear and
intimidation which the Institutionalist forces have created in
the schools. School sector administrators are by law members of
the union, a fact to which democratic groups object. These
managers have used their powers within the schools to offer
workers special jobs, easier hours of work, jobs in the union,
special credit arrangements through the union as well as
threatening or pressuring union members to vote for the
Institutionalist Slates.

     The Institutionalist candidate for Secretary General of
Local 10 is Jaime Figueroa who has never taught a day of school
in his life, but who was Chief of Police in Acapulco and, rumored
to be responsible for a massacre that occurred in Guerrero.

                    Same Throughout the Union     =


     Similar patterns of intimidation have occurred throughout
the union as each state-wide local holds elections to select
delegates to the national convention. In the Local 15 Congress in
Hidalgo, Friday, February 29, opposition delegates proposed from
the floor their opposition slate to the nation convention. When
the chair ruled the proposal in order Institutionalist began
screaming insults and threats. Finally a group approached the
chair of the meeting carrying their chairs as if to attack the
front table. At this point the chair changed his mind saying the
proposal of an opposition slate was out of order. The congress
ended without a vote.

     The next day two teachers from Hidalgo, Aaron Austria Garcia
and Justino Garcia Hernandez, initiated a hunger strike. On
Monday, March 2nd, hundreds of teachers from Hidalgo blocked the
north highway entrance into Mexico City and protested at the
national legislature. They angrily denounced SNTE president
Humberto Davila Esquivel, who they claim is behind the
anti-democratic maneuvers occurring throughout the union.

     Over the weekend in Tlaxcala, teachers and support workers
from Locals 31 and 55 filled the main streets of Tlaxcala
demanding that local election results be recognized as reported
on March 3 in LA JORNADA, a Mexico City daily newspaper.
Apparently, an opposition victory is being ignored.

     Finally, over the weekend at the local congress in Oaxaca,
delegates reported the presence of paramilitary provocateurs.
Nevertheless, el SNTE locals in the southern states of Chiapas,
Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacan seem to be solidly in the
opposition camp as democratic forces have controlled these locals
for many years.
     =

                    The Balance of Power

     In an interview with several members of the Democratic
Fraction in Local 10, workers explained that the
Institutionalists are split between the more pluralist soft
caucus and the hard line reactionary caucus. The experiences of
the last couple of weeks suggest that the hard line caucus is
thoroughly in control of the union. In fact what is happening,
they claim, is a rebellion of the hard-line caucuses against the
pluralism of some union leaders, most notably ex-SNTE general
secretary Elba Esther Gordillo. Gordillo's union base is
Hildalgo, where the hard liners forced the pluralists to shut
down the election process. Incidentally, the chair of that
meeting who caved into a potential violent crowd was none other
than Gordillo's husband.

     Some members of the democratic opposition had been hopeful
that a series of dialogues set up by the SNTE leadership earlier
in the month were a positive sign.  However, according to
participants, these tables were a joke, nothing more than a
diversion with no authority.

     Institutionalists have targeted for takeover locals 9 and 10
of Mexico City, currently controlled by the opposition. Workers
believe that these large locals were important in causing the
Institutional Revolutionary Party's loss of the election for
mayor of Mexico City. They believe that these attacks on Locals 9
and 10 are politically motivated, and represent an attempt to
punish Mexico City mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and to undermine his
institutional base of support.

     "This all seems to be a return to the hardline days. And, we
may have to return to the days when we brought hundreds of
thousand of people into the streets of Mexico City," says Jorge
Mejias. A reference to the late eighties when opposition teachers
groups mobilized more than a half-million education workers in
Mexico City and brought down the authoritarian and violent SNTE
president Carlos Jonguitud Barrios.

     Mejias explains that opposition groups are calling for
emergency assemblies of workers in the local unions with the most
egregious electoral violations in order to demand free and fair
elections. Democratic opposition groups are still focused on the
ultimate goal, to present a unified opposition slate at the
National Convention to begin March 10th.

                              ###

END MEXICAN LABOR NEWS, VOL. 3, SPECIAL ISSUE , MARCH 4, 1998


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