We include in this volume most of the articles published in the newspaper Cantera from Oaxaca City, in Mexico, on the first half of 1998. Although the common thread is Labor, a subject that from my viewpoint does not lose its relevance and that continues to be a key point for the vital renewal of the economy and the creation of new social relations, the articles also touch on topics related to Oaxaca, the environment and the popular movement of 1968, as well as some interspersed with the teaching of mathematics and the updating of teachers.If the reading of these writings provokes in some people the desire to pull one or more ends of the skein, I will consider myself well served.