Following demonstrations, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Public Education (SEGOB) call on the CNTE to open dialogue.

The Ministry of Public Education and the Ministry of the Interior reiterated their willingness to engage in dialogue with members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) this Friday, following more than eight days of strikes and demonstrations in Mexico City and various cities across the country demanding a 100% salary increase and the reversal of the 2007 ISSSTE reform.

In a joint statement, the federal agencies headed by Rosa Icela Rodríguez and Mario Delgado Carrillo urged forging agreements with members of the CNTE after they blocked both terminals of Mexico City International Airport at midday, among other roads in the nation's capital and other cities.

The Ministry of Public Education detailed that due to the ongoing teachers' strike, "as of today, 19,462 of the country's 202,184 public elementary schools have been closed."

The teachers' protests, which began on May 15 with a sit-in in Mexico City's Zócalo , affected the National Palace last Wednesday, preventing journalists and officials from attending Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's regular morning press conference.

The federal president had to hold the meeting via videoconference, while teachers blocked journalists' access, even assaulting some of them, according to Mexican media reports.

The hostility of the protests had consequences: Sheinbaum canceled a meeting she had scheduled for this Friday with the leaders of the CNTE and delegated it to her Secretaries of Education and the Interior .

"There are things that aren't right. Dialogue remains open at the highest level (...), but under these conditions, it seems to me, why are they meeting with me?" President Sheinbaum said during her morning press conference.

"Under these circumstances, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) stated that they were on standby to hold the scheduled meeting with the teachers, without the presence of the head of the Executive Branch," the secretariats recalled in the statement.

Both agencies recalled this Friday that on Teachers' Day , the head of the Executive announced a 9% salary increase retroactive to January of this year and a 10% increase starting next September, in addition to an extra week of vacation for teachers.

"It's important to remember that a few days ago, the President published a decree announcing a program to benefit state workers who contribute to Fovissste. This program includes debt forgiveness, write-offs, and interest freezes for 24,000 teachers, representing an investment of more than 19 billion pesos."

Last Tuesday, protesters seized toll booths on major highways connecting Mexico City with other states and lifted barriers, allowing unrestricted traffic.

In March, another CNTE protest caused chaos at Benito Juárez Airport, one of the busiest in Latin America.