Mexico & Nafta - March 2011 (ISSN 1741-444X)

The decision by the newly inaugurated governor of Oaxaca, Gabino Cué, to pick as his new government secretary Irma Piñeyro, a prominent supporter of Elba Esther Gordillo, the powerful leader of the teachers' union, has major implications.

The most alarming implication is that it puts the state government back on a collision course with a group of radical teachers, known as Section 22, which brought the state capital to a virtual standstill from May to October 2006. In 2006, Section 22 of the teachers' union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), opposed Ulises Ruí­z, the authoritarian state governor from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), who was backed by Gordillo in 2006. The 2006 crisis, culminating in Section 22 barricading itself into the centre of Oaxaca for five months until it was evicted peacefully by a over 7,000 federal police, formed a backdrop to the 2006 presidential elections.

The first big sign of the radicals' unrest came on 15 February, when President Felipe Calderón chose Oaxaca as the site for his controversial announcement that private school fees would become tax deductible from 2012. The announcement enraged the radicals, who attacked the police and vandalised the city centre. Running battles went on for about seven hours. The authorities blame the radical teachers for damaging parts of the historic (and lovely) centre of Oaxaca.

So far Cué, who was elected on an anti-PRI platform, has avoided trying to confront the radicals in Section 22. Indeed the radicals seem to have been outmanoeuvred by cooler heads at a mass meeting of Section 22 on 18 and 19 February. At this meeting Section 22 agreed to continue talking to Cué's government and drew up an action plan for March which, the radicals said, did not envisage any more violent confrontations.

There will, however, be a strike on 8 March, to celebrate International Women's Day. This will be followed by demonstrations later in the month and in April. These demos mark the nationalisation of the oil industry (in 1938); the birth day of Benito Juárez; the death of Emiliano Zapata (at Chinameca on 10 April 1919) and a couple of Section 22 anniversaries.

The radicals still want two of Cué's cabinet to resign: Piñeyro and Marco Tulio López Escamilla, Cué's head of security. Section 22 also wants Bernardo Vásquez Colmenares, the director of the Instituto Estatal de Educación Pública de Oaxaca (IEEPO), to go. Vásquez Colmenares is seen by Section 22 as another Elbista.

Cué and Oaxaca are important nationally. Cué has a high profile because he is the first non-PRI governor of the state. Technically Cué is a defector from the PRI and runs a coalition government. Radicals claim he is no different from the PRI. Oaxaca accounts for 2% of the congressmen in the lower chamber of congress and has long been a PRI bastion.

Section 22 is not the only threat to Gordillo's domination of Mexico's education system. On 8 February a new teachers' union, the Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadores de la Educación de México (Sitem), was officially launched. The Sitem could be important for two reasons. The first is that it will break the stranglehold the SNTE has on school education in Mexico. The second is that it poses a threat to Gordillo's political influence. This may have peaked under President Vicente Fox (2000-2006) when she tried (and failed) to rally the PRI behind his political reforms in 2003.

• Calderón's tax break for private school fees strikes at Gordillo's power. Unusually, she came out on the wrong side of the election in Guerrero on 30 January 2011 and was a bystander in the election in Baja California Sur (BCS) on 6 February.