Description

The Mexican Teachers’ Movement: 30 Years of Struggle for Union Democracy and the Defense of Public Education

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect, the region’s education sector has been the site of a great number of mass protests. This article analyzes social movements in the education sector in the context of: first, structural changes in the content and meaning of education, as well as in the conditions of the teaching/learning process resulting from reforms and policies that have accelerated privatization of education; second, authoritarianism and criminalization accompanying these reforms; and third, transborder action, the emergence and maturing of solidarity, and the formulation of trinational agendas. Although mindful of the regional trends in North America, Arriaga focuses on the organized teachers’ movement in Mexico, which she regards as fundamental because it is massive, active in every region of the country, strategically placed for the exercise of power, has the capacity to be counterhegemonic, and has endured for more than three decades.

Mexico, teachers’ movement, education reform

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 42, Nos. 3-4 (2015): 104-118