Pena Nieto's First Major Legislative Victory Leads to Teachers' Revolt Michael Weissenstein - Associated Press
go to original April 14, 2013

Teachers chant slogans holding up metal pipes and wooden sticks while blocking a major highway in Chilpancingo, Mexico, Thursday, April 11, 2013. The teachers, who are protesting an educational reform that will submit them to evaluation and loosen union control over hiring and firing, left peacefully after negotiating with police. (Alejandrino Gonzalez/AP)

ATLIACA, Mexico — Easter vacation was over, but there wasn't a teacher in sight at the boarding school for indigenous children on the edge of this sunbaked southern Mexico hill town.

A 37-year-old cook who hadn't finished high school sat between two little girls on a cement stoop outside the kitchen, peering at their dog-eared notebooks as they struggled with the alphabet and basic multiplication.

"I've got the children here. If there aren't any classes while they're here, I have to teach them," said the cook, who shared only her first name, Gudelia, for fear of retaliation from striking teachers.

A short drive away, teachers marched by the thousands through the streets of the state capital, some masked and brandishing metal bars and sticks in an escalating showdown over education reform that's become a key test of President Enrique Pena Nieto's sweeping project to reform Mexico's most dysfunctional institutions.

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