Thousands of teachers across Mexico from the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) have been on an indefinite national strike since last Monday. As the FIFA World Cup kicks off in Mexico City this week, workers across the world should be paying attention to the struggle of education workers unfolding across the country — and standing in uncompromising solidarity.

In the midst of the teachers’ struggle and ahead of the World Cup, the contrast between the Mexican government’s priorities could not be more stark.

Mexico is one of the World Cup’s three co-hosts, alongside the United States and Canada, and expects around 5 million international tourists in June and July. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government has spent at least $3 billion on infrastructure in preparations for the tournament, and has recently suspended some classes and directed public agencies and businesses to shift to remote work to accommodate traffic.

While the government is boasting transparency and asserting that these investments are going toward lasting infrastructure projects, workers know well who really benefits from mega-events like the World Cup — big businesses and the ultra-rich. As one protesting teacher summed it up: “Who will benefit from the World Cup? Big bosses and bankers! How is it possible that there is so much money for them while we and our children are increasingly insecure?”

Meanwhile, the government has been continuing budget cuts on education that have been squeezing education workers in Mexico, who are demanding decent pensions, a real increase in wages, and the repeal of neoliberal reforms that have made their profession more precarious. These include the 2007 ISSSTE law and the 1997 IMSS law, which successively privatized civil servants’ pensions by transferring them to AFORE (pension funds managed by banks).

We know very well that educators’ working conditions are one in the same as students’ learning conditions; and just as students deserve a future, educators deserve to retire with dignity. These are profoundly just demands for those who, for decades, have sustained public schools under precarious conditions, institutional neglect, and excessive workloads.

While Sheinbaum promised to repeal this reform in her 2024 presidential campaign, she has not touched the reform since taking office. Instead, she is rejecting the teachers’ demands, claiming that conditions are no longer favorable for withdrawing the reform and that “there is no money,” after having allocated billions of dollars for the tournament.

To make their voices heard, educators have blocked major roads, occupied the Ministry of Education headquarters in Mexico City, set up camp in the Zócalo (Mexico City’s main square), and blocked the Nogales border crossing into the United States. Statues of footballers erected by the state for the World Cup have been toppled, a symbolic gesture that carries a clear message: no World Cup as long as Mexican workers endure austerity.

While the government has been attempting to paint the striking teachers as unreasonable or even violent, government forces have themselves been violently repressing the teachers’ legitimate protests. Police were deployed in force to prevent demonstrators from reaching the Zócalo. At least five teachers were seriously injured, one of whom lost an eye after being hit by tear gas fired at close range. In an attempt to intimidate protesters, police and riot police blocked the passage of CNTE teachers’ union members, student teachers, and even relatives of the 43 missing Ayotzinpaa students who were on their way to the capital to join the sit-in all the way from Guerrero.

A statement in solidarity with the teachers has received hundreds of signatures from prominent figures, union and political leaders, intellectuals, and academics in solidarity with and against the repression, from Mexico, Argentina, Spain, the United States, and other countries.

This episode of struggle is set upon the backdrop of Donald Trump’s imperialist attacks on Latin America — from kidnapping the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to enforcing a brutal siege on Cuba to conspiring to destabilize progressive governments around the region. Threats of military intervention against cartels, economic coercion, and the “Donroe” Doctrine are the latest expressions of U.S. imperialism attempting to reassert hegemony in Latin America as its dominance wanes worldwide. It also comes amid massive opposition to Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

A dangerous illusion persists on the U.S. Left that governments like that of Sheinbaum represent a strategic progressive alternative that can challenge U.S. imperialism. But the CNTE’s struggle highlights the contradictions of progressive reformists — who use combative rhetoric against Trump while undertaking closed-door negotiations with imperialism to negotiate better terms for capital while continuing the hyper-exploitation of the working class and repressing those who resist.

The teachers in Mexico, like the SoFi stadium workers in Los Angeles who just authorized a strike demanding pay raises and protections against ICE, demonstrate the power that workers have to disrupt and politicize these mega-events that on the one hand unite people across the world, yet exacerbate inequality and reveal the priorities of governments who put profits over workers, students, and the broader population.

Teachers in Mexico, like workers worldwide, want to enjoy this year’s football games with family and friends rather than being tear gassed and beaten on the streets. But as long as their demands are ignored and living and working conditions worsen under inflation and the heavy boot of imperialism, their fight will continue.

Workers around the world, and especially in the heart of the imperialist beast across the border, whose eyes will be on the World Cup must also stand in full solidarity with the teachers’ struggle in Mexico. This World Cup demands us to take an internationalist perspective. We must build a perspective of worker solidarity across the U.S.-Mexico border, and take up the CNTE struggle as our own. Solidarity with the teachers of Mexico!

The post This World Cup, Workers Everywhere Must Stand with Mexico’s Striking Teachers appeared first on Left Voice.

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