Mexico City, July 14 (RHC-teleSUR) -- A highway blockade in support of Mexico’s striking teachers is increasingly gaining popular support in the capital of the southern state of Chiapas, La Jornada reported on Wednesday.

The protest in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez is being organized as a popular assembly and has remained active for 15 days, gathering up to 3,500 demonstrators in support of the radical CNTE teachers union.

Teachers and parents from impoverished neighborhoods, medical students, indigenous associations and grassroots movements have also joined the blockade as part of nationwide protests against President Enrique Peña Nieto’s neo-liberal education reform.

Popular support of the teachers cause in Mexico has been concentrated in the southern states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Tabasco and Chiapas, a region historically subject to violence and poverty but also rich in social struggle.