The National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) has intensified its protests in the streets of Mexico City just over a week before the capital hosts the opening of the 2026 World Cup. Protesters have taken over several of the city’s main streets and have attacked the statues of footballers that the local government had placed as part of the tournament’s decoration. The president, Claudia Sheinbaum, stated this Tuesday at a press conference that there is open dialogue with the teachers, who are demanding a meeting with the president in person and not with her secretaries to discuss retirement age, salaries, and educational reform. “There was a lot of provocation, honestly, but I don’t think it was teachers who caused the provocation,” Sheinbaum said about the violent events taking place in the city’s streets.
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The statues were placed on May 18 as part of the celebrations leading up to the World Cup and the agenda of cultural events to be held in 17 public and private museums in Mexico City. The figures, created in a cardboard workshop in Iztapalapa, are made of fiberglass and measure several meters in height. Representations of some of the most iconic footballers are distributed across the museums of the Cultural Corridor, on Paseo de la Reforma, and other emblematic spaces in the city. Reinforcements of up to 90 kilograms were used in the anchors to withstand the weather, but they were not able to survive the fury of the CNTE, which has used the sticks from their own banners and ropes to knock them down.
CNTE members declared this Tuesday during the dialogue table with the authorities from the Secretariat of Government and Education that their demands “are fair.” “We want to hold the federal government responsible for anything that happens to any of our mobilized comrades across the country,” said one of the union members in a video shared by Radio Fórmula. After the meeting, the CNTE stated that they still do not know the date when Sheinbaum will participate in the commission.
The sculptures have been vandalized on one of the main arteries of the capital, with parts destroyed and without clothing. The left-wing union had already announced that it would declare an indefinite strike and that it would use the days leading up to the major international sporting event as the perfect leverage against the government. This Tuesday, downtown Mexico City woke up amid traffic chaos due to protest roadblocks, foreshadowing what will happen in the coming days as part of the standoff between the teachers and the Executive.
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That tension has also reached Guerrero, one of the territories where education unions also have social influence. Teachers from the State Coordinator of Teachers of Guerrero (CETEG) forcibly entered the parking lot of the state Congress, damaging several vehicles.
The main demand of the teachers is the return to public pensions, which since the 2010 ISSSTE law reform have been managed by private administrators known as Afores. However, Sheinbaum’s response is that there is no economic viability to return to the previous model, and the only solution they have been able to offer are minor reforms. The Secretary of Education, Mario Delgado, posted this Tuesday on his social media that he met with the CNTE in a working group that also included the Secretary of the Interior, Rosa Icela, and Martí Batres, director of the Institute of Security and Social Services for State Workers. “We are fully willing to seek solutions to the legitimate demands of the teaching profession,” added the official without giving further details on how the talks with the union are progressing.