Mexico’s dissident teachers’ union, the CNTE, has entered its third week of a national strike with a sharp escalation of direct action, seizing toll booths on major highways into the capital and vowing to reinforce its protest camp in the Zócalo. The move came after a fractious internal assembly narrowly voted to continue the indefinite walkout, despite allegations of fraud in a consultation among the Oaxaca section’s rank and file. President Claudia Sheinbaum, facing the most sustained domestic challenge of her administration, cancelled a scheduled visit to Zacatecas at the weekend after intelligence suggested protesters would disrupt the events, opting instead to inaugurate a football pitch in San Luis Potosí and distribute World Cup tickets to youth teams. “We are in World Cup spirit,” she said, a remark that underscored the government’s determination to prevent the labour dispute from marring the tournament Mexico is co-hosting with the United States and Canada.

Viewed from Washington, the standoff carries reputational risks for a government keen to project stability during the month-long sporting spectacle. The CNTE, whose strongholds lie in the southern states of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero, is demanding the repeal of a 2007 pension law that it says gutted teachers’ retirement benefits. The union’s leadership insists that any dialogue must include the president herself, yet Sheinbaum has so far declined a direct meeting, pointing instead to tripartite talks at state level. The internal dynamics of the movement are themselves under strain: the Oaxaca section’s secretary-general reported a wafer-thin majority of 175 votes in favour of continuing the strike, while dissident factions claim a larger number of teachers actually voted for a recess, prompting Sheinbaum to publicly reprove the alleged fraud.

In a significant tactical shift, the president announced that from August federal officials will visit schools one by one to consult teachers directly, bypassing what she called the “union leaderships, whether of the CNTE or others.” She argued that the old system of joint union-government committees for allocating teaching posts had bred “a great deal of corruption.” The move is a calculated gamble: it seeks to undercut the leverage of street-blockading leaders by appealing to a broader base, but it also risks inflaming a movement that has historically thrived on perceptions of state imposition. Analysts in London note that similar direct-consultation strategies have been deployed by Latin American governments to defuse union militancy, with mixed results.

On the ground, the capital’s mobility has been repeatedly disrupted. The CNTE’s takeover of the Tlalpan toll plaza on the Mexico-Cuernavaca highway allowed motorists to pass without paying, a tactic the union has replicated in more than 20 states. Police maintained a largely non-confrontational posture, a legacy of the professionalisation of the city’s security apparatus under the previous administration. Senator Ricardo Monreal, a senior figure in the ruling Morena party, praised Sheinbaum’s “prudence” in avoiding Zacatecas, while the state’s government secretary accused the protests of having “political overtones and partisan ends.”

The conflict is far from resolution. The CNTE has warned that reinforcements from Michoacán, Zacatecas and other states will swell its ranks in the capital. With the World Cup entering its busiest phase, the government’s room for manoeuvre is narrowing. The school-by-school consultation may yet offer an exit, but for now the union’s capacity to sustain disruption—and the president’s reluctance to be seen as yielding to street pressure—suggests that the standoff will test Mexico’s labour politics well beyond the final whistle.