Un poquito de tanta verdad
(A Little Bit of So Much Truth)
Director: Jill Freidberg
Corrugated Films, 2007
(www.corrugate.org)
DVD. 93 min.

By Kelley Dawson Salas

Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad (A Little Bit of So Much Truth) tells the story of how the 2006 teachers' strike in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, became a mass movement that took over 14 radio stations and a television station, using the media to mobilize people and fight back against state and federal repression.

Producer, director, and editor Jill Freidberg also made This Is What Democracy Looks Like, about the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, and Granito de Arena (Grain of Sand), about the rank-and-file teachers' reform movement in Mexico. (For a review of Granito de Arena, see Rethinking Schools, Vol. 20, No. 1)

The teachers' strike begins in May 2006 with the teachers establishing a plantón, or encampment, in the city center of Oaxaca. At the outset the strike lacks widespread public awareness or support, but the teachers use a radio station called Radio Plantón to spread their message, and when Oaxacan governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz cracks down on the striking teachers, the public's disgust with the governor's policies brings the people out in force.

Activists use Radio Plantón and another radio station called Radio Universidad to call on the Oaxacan people to carry out massive, nonviolent civil disobedience. The people set up more encampments to shut down nearly every government building in the capital city of Oaxaca, as well as 25 city halls throughout the state.