COMMENTARY: Teacher's strike in Mexico City

Almost all of our strikes and protests tend to be failures in the long-term. Why is this? Because while our people have the proper "instincts" to protest over temporary issues (labor issues, "immigration reform", police brutality), we do not have the proper NICAN TLACA MENTALITY (knowledge of history, identity, colonialism, genocide, false solutions) to go beyond temporary outbursts of anger and fight for long-term, structural change.

We show up, yell, and go home. Nothing changes.

We are reactive instead of proactive. We wait for something bad to happen, then react. And our reactions always take place within a EUROCENTRIC mindset: white people frame the issues, they propose the solutions, we beg them for "reforms" to our exploitation, they may (or may not) give us small crumbs, we are grateful, and nothing changes overall.

Only when we combine the "protest outrage" with a Nican Tlaca Mentality (education on our history, identity, European Colonialism) will we ever have a chance to make serious changes.

Only when we invoke our Nican Tlaca history, our Nican Tlaca identity in our protests, our chants, and the solutions will we gain serious traction in throwing off 500 years of European Colonialism.

Until then, we chant with half-baked Marxist slogans (European philosophy), narrow Capitalist goals ("we just want to work as your slaves"), and with White Supremacist slave-labels ("Latinos/Hispanics") that kill our Indigenous identity and hence, rights to our lands and our resources.

We have to learn our Nican Tlaca history. We will then reclaim our Nican Tlaca identity. And only then will we know what the hell we are protesting for, instead of being made fools every time we go out and protest using the white man's slogans, fabricated history, and loaded dice.

Otherwise, we will end up with thousands of people in the streets, with no clear sense of our Nican Tlaca past, our colonized present, or our Decolonized future. This is a recipe for a very loud failure, which we have seen time and time again.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/09/13/striking-teachers-mexico-city/2812289/