The Mexican government followed through with its threat to use force against a teachers strike in southern Oaxaca state.  Police attacked members of the dissident CNTE Union, killing three to six people and injuring several more.  Police say 21 have been arrested.

The Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educacion (CNTE) had set up a roadblock on the Oaxaca-Puebla highway, which halted shipments out of a state-run oil company Pemex refinery.  The cops were attempting to evict teachers from the barricade when shots rang out.  The clash would continue for four hours.  Police reportedly seized a hospital in Nochixtlan, allowing only fellow cops to get treated; injured demonstrators were reportedly treated inside a nearby church.

Teachers were already upset over President Enrique Pena Nieto's neo-liberal "reforms" to the education system, such as imposing evaluations over teachers.  Critics say the testing does not effectively measure teaching skills and merely helps facilitate mass layoffs.  Even before Sunday's violence, hundreds of academic, religious, popular, student, human and social rights organizations around the world signed a document that condemns the "brutal repression" exerted by the Mexican government against teachers who reject the changes.

Last week, the Mexican government arrested two union leaders, accusing them of skimming thousands of dollars from union dues.  The union denies this.

The CNTE is allied with the Rural Teachers College of Ayotzinapa - the school that 43 student teachers had attended before being kidnapped en masse and presumably murdered in Iguala Town, Guerero state in 2014.  Months before that, the student supported a large strike organized by the CNTE. And a few weeks before the students disappeared into the backs of police vans, never to be seen again, a journalist overheard President Enrique Pena Nieto making threats against the CNTE.