Mexico: Teachers Tonsured For Defying Union Strike

CNTE tonsuring the heads of defiant teachers and school workers. (AP Screengrab)

A dissident faction of Mexico’s National Teachers’ Union (CNTE) is under fire for publicly humiliating teachers and administrators who defied its strike.

Several school workers were seized in the southern town of Comitan on Tuesday.

They were marched barefoot through town with placards hanging around their necks that read: traitors to the country.”

Theïr hair were forcibly cut as a crowd watched. The victims had been carrying lists of teachers who had attended classes so they would not be fired for absenteeism under reforms the radical faction opposes.

Education Secretary Aurelio Nuno says he’ll work with prosecutors to punish those responsible.

The leader of the faction appeared to defend the shaming on Tuesday, but as criticism mounted on Wednesday, he blamed it on government-planted infiltrators.

(With inputs from AP)

Video editor: Sunil Goswami