CNTE BLOCKS ROADS IN MEXICO CITY
This article by Laura Poy and Alexia Villaseñor appeared in the May 22, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier daily leftist newspaper.
What are the CNTE’s Demands?
Immediate repeal of the 2007 ISSSTE Law; restoration of a solidarity-based, collective, and intergenerational pension system; the full recognition of retirement based on years of service (28 for women and 30 for men); the payment of pensions based on the minimum wage rather than on UMAs; the elimination of AFOREs as a privatization model (AFOREs are private companies who managed pensions as individual accounts, extremely restrictive and profitable for finance capital); and a profound restructuring of ISSSTE to restore its social character.
Mexico City. Teachers from the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) are demonstrating at various points in northern Mexico City.
At the intersection of Calzada Misterios and Río Consulado, dozens of educators set off on a march to demonstrate at the Plaza Tepeyac shopping center, where they are conducting a brigade operation at one of the largest locations of the Walmart, SAMs, and Suburbia department store chains.
The average real salary of a teacher is between 14 and 15 thousand pesos per month ($725-$775USD), which is totally insufficient to support a family.
Meanwhile, thousands of teachers from Section 7 of Chiapas are gathering at Avenida Insurgentes Norte and Buenavista, where they are blocking the area. They are also blocking the area around the Forum Buenavista shopping center and the central offices of the Institute of Security and Social Services for State Workers (ISSSTE).
Francisco Bravo, a member of the CNTE’s national leadership, stated that “the agreement is to blockade 100 points in the nation’s capital to demand that the federal government provide a clear response this Friday to our central demand, which is the repeal of the 2007 ISSSTE Law and the Peña Nieto education reform.”
He emphasized that brigades of dozens of teachers “are going to mobilize to shopping centers, banks, and public offices to inform the public why we are in the streets. To let them know that despite official rhetoric, the average real salary of a teacher is between 14 and 15 thousand pesos per month ($725-$775USD), which is totally insufficient to support a family.”
Chanting slogans such as “Teacher’s salary to our president!” and “No UMAS or Afores, a solidarity pension system!” the educators marched along Calzada de Guadalupe to the corner of Henry Ford Avenue, where they organized to begin the brigade.
Teachers In the Streets
All the teachers’ demands are justified, and repeal of the ISSSTE would not just benefit all public sector workers, but all workers, says teacher Ángel Custodio Guadarrama in this interview.
STAGNANT WATERS
The Morena government is refusing to fulfill its campaign promise to repeal Calderón’s 2007 ISSSTE Law and is seeking to confine the issue of pensions, handed over to private banks under the predatory Afore model, to a weak and very provisional scheme.
CETEG TEACHERS REDECORATE SNTE HQ
Striking teachers burned photographs of controversial union leader Alfonso Cepeda Salas, head of SNTE, who was last year appointed a plurinominal Senator by the Morena government, which is negotiating with striking teachers.