Politics: AMLO camp tested by teachers
The protests by teachers in Michoacan that for the past two weeks have shut down many municipal government offices, highways and rail lines pose a challenge to the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and highlight the problems he will increasingly face in trying to maintain the highly disparate forces that comprise its supporters.
The teachers led by the radical CNTE faction of the National Teachers Union insist their members must be paid 7 billion pesos in back pay and benefits (the state government claims the figure is closer to 1.20 billion) and that officials meet scores of other demands as well. The state government and business leaders have been demanding the federal government take decisive action to end the rail and road closures.
The CNTE has been emboldened by AMLO’s embrace of its longstanding demand that the Peña administration’s education reform be repealed, as well as by the current government’s reticence to use force against the CNTE as part of AMLO’s promise that federal forces will never be used to “repress the people."
Although the CNTE suspended its rail blockages at the end of January, its renewed activism could inflict new budgetary pressures on the López Obrador government, complicate negotiations with other teachers' union factions, disrupt the administration’s alliances in Congress, and heighten tensions with other political actors of importance to the government’s agenda, especially state governments and business owners. CNTE protests have spread further south to Oaxaca and may soon break out in Chiapas.
The current conflict exemplifies the government’s structural problem of being brought to power by a broad and ideologically heterogeneous coalition that includes left-wing activists and dissident trade unionists, as well as major business representatives and officials of previous PRI and PAN administrations. On the campaign trail it was relatively easy to pave over the sharp contradictions, but they become more apparent every day AMLO is in government. The left wing of that coalition, which traditionally has been excluded from political decision-making, also feels empowered, but its demands directly conflict with the administration’s commitment to fiscal discipline and the need to maintain a non-conflictive relation with business leaders.
Now read on...
Register to sample a report