At least eight people have been killed in Oaxaca, Mexico after teacher protests were met with a police presence, turning into a violent bloodbath. Jorge Ruiz, Oaxaca’s state secretary for public safety, confirmed the rise in the death toll on local radio.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto stated his grief towards the casualties, adding that the government would help Oaxaca investigate the occurrences. Peña Nieto’s administration has been criticized for its failures to combat drug violence, revive the economy, and battle graft.
A tweet from the union criticized the violence.
“The education is the only weapon of the people, the one of the government are the instruments of death and repression. Who is the criminal?”
The teachers are protesting national education reforms which would change the system of teacher evaluations. Protests in Oaxaca were reinvigorated after authorities arrested Ruben Nuñez, leader of one of the most aggressive factions of Mexico’s CNTE union, Oaxaca’s Section 22, under suspicion of money laundering.
Miguel Zurita, a CNTE representative in Oaxaca, spoke about the moments the protest turned violent. When police arrived on the scene to break up Sunday’s protest, they were quick to resort to violence.
“What we lived through was something brutal, something that has no name. They arrived armed and they arrived shooting.”
However, the Mexican government has defended its forms of dealing with the protests. The National Security Commission denied federal forces had used weapons, stating images appearing online of police with rifles were faked.
