As the APPO nears Mexico City, more States in Mexico are following the example of the APPO. Last week dissident teachers and campesinos in Guerrero and Michoacan formed the Asamblea Popular de Pueblos de Michoacan and the Asamblea Popular de Pueblos de Guerrero. Now, in Morelos State, teachers from the town of Alpuyeca have convened the Asamblea Popular de Pueblos de Morelos. Alpuyeca is in the midst of its own struggle against incompetent governance; after 30 years of being home to Morelos State’s ghastly and unregulated open garbage dump where hazardous hospital waste, sewage solids and household trash are dumped together (and erroneously called a “sanitary landfill” by the authorities,) the towns of Alpuyeca and Tetlama have said “basta” and are preventing garbage trucks from dumping any more garbage in their community. (Six months ago the State government agreed to stop dumping there by the Fall.) Emboldened by the Oaxacan people’s struggle against unresponsive and incompetent government, teachers in Alpuyeca from the same democractic wing of the Teachers’ Union as the Oaxacan teachers in the APPO have convened towns from across this historically rebellious state to form the Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Morelos (APPEM).
More to come…
