After Elections, Southern Mexico Returns to Calm

Most members of Mexico's National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), a dissident national teachers' union, returned to their classrooms June 17 after having been on strike since June 1. The group had tried to use the strike to mobilize support for widespread demonstrations in its stronghold states of Chiapas, Michoacan, Oaxaca and Guerrero; its main goal was to disrupt June 7 elections to pressure Mexico City into repealing education reform. Though vandals targeted multiple electoral sites in the aforementioned states June 7, low turnout and an unwillingness to confront security forces blunted the impact of demonstrations, which in the end only minimally disrupted elections.

CNTE is not done vocalizing its objections to education reform or carrying out demonstrations. However, its inability to coordinate action with the other groups involved in protesting the Sept. 26 disappearance of 43 normalistas in Iguala, such as the Guerrero state teachers' union known as CETEG, indicates that the most recent bout of unrest in Mexico's southern states could be coming to an end.