CNTE Rejects “Delaying Talks” with Education Secretariat; Insists on Dialogue with President Sheinbaum
This article by Laura Poy Solano originally appeared in the March 19, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
Mexico City. Members of the leadership of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) rejected having “more delaying tactics with federal officials who lack the capacity to resolve issues,” and reiterated their demand to reinstate dialogue, but with President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.
At a press conference near the Torre del Caballito, where they began a blockade that will extend along Paseo de la Reforma to the Diana the Huntress roundabout, as part of their 72-hour National Strike, teacher Jenny Aracely Pérez, general secretary of section 22 of Oaxaca, emphasized that in the current administration “we have met three times with President Sheinbaum Pardo, and we have reiterated that there is a budget to repeal the 2007 ISSSTE Law,” the central demand of the dissident teachers.
She pointed out that during President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration, “we met several times, and we were always told that it couldn’t be repealed because they didn’t have a majority in Congress. Now they tell us it’s because there are no resources, which we have insisted is false. What we propose is to generate a process to achieve dignified pensions for all workers, not just teachers.”
We have explained, he stated, that “there is no proposal for 80 percent of education workers who are not in the transitional article X of the ISSSTE Law, so they are already in individual accounts, which will not allow them to access a dignified retirement.”
Pedro Hernández, general secretary of Section 9 in Mexico City, emphasized that given the government’s “closed-mindedness, which prefers to protect the interests of the ten private pension fund administrators (AFORES) that manage 8.2 trillion pesos belonging to workers, we reiterate that we will return with greater force. We will return to the states to consult and reorganize, and we will be back. The decision of whether this will take place during the World Cup will be a decision for the federal government itself.”
Professor Filiberto Frausto, general secretary of section 34 in Zacatecas, indicated that the federal government “has only given insufficient and demagogic responses, offering delaying tactics that do not provide a definitive solution for the workers.”
The leadership of the CNTE reiterated its rejection of establishing a dialogue in which only the Secretaries of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, and of Public Education, Mario Delgado, participate, considering that “they have no capacity to resolve our main demands,” which include the repeal of the 2007 ISSSTE Law, as well as the so-called USICAMM Law, and a one hundred percent salary increase.
The dissident teachers reported that their action for this Thursday will be to maintain a blockade on Paseo de la Reforma and surrounding streets until 6:00 p.m., and then reinstate their National Representative Assembly at 8:00 p.m.
The dissident teachers arrived before 9:30 a.m. this Thursday in the vicinity of El Caballito, to block both directions of Paseo de la Reforma at the corner of Avenida Juárez and Bucareli, which resulted in the suspension of vehicular traffic on Avenida Guerrero, so there is no circulation from the Atemajac roundabout to past the Hidalgo metro station.
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