MEXICO | Acapulco. On 5 October around 5,000 teachers demonstrated in Acapulco, Guerrero, calling for the authorities to do more to protect them from threats from gangsters. The gangsters are demanding protection money from the schools: the schools refused to pay and so most did not start the new academic year, which should have begun at the end of August, until the first week of October. Some schools still have not opened.
It is not clear whether the intimidation is coming from gangsters or from the dominant teachers’ trade union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), which is headed by Elba Esther Gordillo, a hugely influential figure in Mexican politics. The teachers facing intimidation all belong to a rival trade union, the Coordinadora Estatal de Trabajadores de la Educación en Guerrero (Ceteg).
MEXICO | Pemex. Juan José Suárez Coppel, the director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state oil monopoly, claimed on 5 October that the president of Repsol, a Spanish oil company in which Pemex recently almost doubled its stake, had never explained to shareholders why the share price had underperformed so badly since 2005. Suárez Coppel said that the Repsol share price had only gone up 2% while other oil companies had seen their share prices go up by between 25% and 30%.
