Reports from Oaxaca
APPO protesters commandeered four city buses on October 11 and drove
throughout the city in “mobile brigades” to take over more state government
offices and cover walls, buildings, road signs, other buses, and pretty much any
available surface with graffiti calling for Governor’s ousting.
October 15, 2006 by John Gibler, ZNet
In the past week, gunmen have killed one and wounded four protesters
from the Popular Assembly of the People of
Meanwhile, the
Mexican Senate is poised to make a definitive decision this Tuesday, October
17, on the APPO’s central demand that the state
government be dissolved.
The teachers union,
Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers, stated that they will
not return to classes on Monday, but will wait for the Senate’s decision the
following day.
The conflict in
Since then the teachers union and the APPO, which formed in response to
the failed police raid and groups together hundreds of local organizations,
have held onto their occupation of Oaxaca’s historic central plaza; blocked
state government office buildings; painted most of the city with graffiti
calling for Governor Ulises Ruiz’s ousting; led a
march of several thousand people over 250 miles from Oaxaca to Mexico City;
taken over television and radio stations; and built thousands of barricades throughout the city.
Since August gunmen and civilian-clad police have shot at protesters in
marches and at their camps, killing six people and wounding fifteen.
Paramilitaries have
also abducted movement leaders and participants and held them incommunicado for
days before being taken to jail or released. Those abducted testified to having
been tortured—with visible scars still covering their faces and bodies. (See
‘Pistol Policy’ ZNet, August 16, 2006)
The recent shootings
began on October 11, the day that a “sub-commission” of three senators from the
Senate Committee on the Interior was scheduled to arrive in
Hence the APPO’s strategy has been to “create ungovernability”
by blocking government buildings and shutting off highways and roads.
In anticipation of the sub-commission’s visit, APPO protesters
commandeered four city buses on October 11 and drove throughout the city in
“mobile brigades” to take over more state government offices and cover walls,
buildings, road signs, other buses, and pretty much any available surface with
graffiti calling for Governor’s ousting.
The protesters had nearly concluded their mobile brigade when, shortly
after 4 in the afternoon, outside a police station, un-uniformed police and
gunmen shot into a crowd of protesters who were preparing to get back on their
bus and move on.
The gunmen fired for several minutes, wounding four people, who were
taken to the hospital and released later that evening.
A photographer for
the local newspaper, Noticias, and the national
newspaper, Excelsior, captured clear images of one of the gunmen firing into
the crowd. Gunmen fired over 60 rounds, forcing the protesters to seek shelter
under fire. Three hours later a caravan of police trucks arrived to “rescue”
the gunmen, allowing them to escape without being apprehended by the APPO
protesters. As a result of the violence, the sub-commission suspended their
visit until the following day.
The senators’ visit
was an exercise in contradictions. Inside the empty state legislature,
surrounded by a few hundred protesters, state legislators told the federal
sub-commission that they had not stopped working and had passed four laws in
the past five months of the conflict.
The Governor,
accompanied by his entire cabinet, testified that he had continued to work “as
normal,” and presented the sub-commission with box-loads of documents to
support his claim.
Most poignant however, was the location of the Governor’s meeting with
the sub-commission: a gated and guarded hangar at the
During a four-hour
meeting with organizations from the APPO, people gave testimony about the
police raid and paramilitary violence.
Instead of handing over boxes of documents, the protesters submitted
bullet shells, exploded gas grenades, and police batons and helmets that they
have gathered during the months of conflict as proof of the impunity with which
the state government and paramilitaries beaten, shot, and killed protesters.
The senators repeated
in the meetings with state government officials and protesters that they would
not be “deciding” to dissolve the state government, but merely reporting their
findings as to whether the government had already lost control or not. The
sub-commission will turn their report into the Senate Committee on the Interior
on Monday, October 16. The full Senate will vote on the matter on Tuesday,
October 17.
In this context, the
Minister or the Interior threatened to withdraw the offer to increase teachers’
payments and open the way for institutional reforms in
Then, at about 2:30 in the morning on Saturday, October 14, soldiers in
civilian clothes who tried to make their way through a barricade on the
outskirts of the center of town, opened fire on APPO protesters guarding the
barricade. One soldier, 22 year-old Johnatan Ríos Vázquez, dropped his wallet before fleeing, thus leading to
his identification and later apprehension by local police.
Ríos Vázquez fired upon the
protesters with a 22-caliber pistol, hitting Alejandro García
Hernández twice in the head. García
Hernández, a nearby resident who nightly took coffee
to the APPO protesters guarding the barricades, was serving coffee with his
wife and son when the soldiers opened fire.
“My father was
bleeding from the head. I held him and they kept shooting, but now at me,” his
son Johnatan Halil told a
reporter from the
García Hernández
languished in the hospital for over 8 hours without receiving medical
attention. When the surgeons finally attempted to aid him, he had already gone
brain dead. He died a few hours later. García Hernández was the sixth person to die in paramilitary
shootings against protesters in
This number does not include one teacher who opposed the strike, Jaime
Rene Calva
His colleagues
immediately blamed the Section 22 and the APPO, while these organizations
denied the accusations, in turn blaming Ulises Ruiz
for trying to create the conditions necessary for a federal intervention.
While APPO protesters
have beaten people caught stealing in the city center and, on one occasion, a
local journalist, there have been no cases of premeditated or targeted violence
against strike opponents.
The coming days will
be decisive for the conflict in Oaxaca, with the federal government withdrawing
their settlement offer with one hand and voting on the dissolution of the state
government with the other.
The APPO has called
for national strikes and marches in solidarity with the
MORE:
“The Popular
Assembly Of The Peoples Of
October 17, 2006 By Nancy Davies, Narconews.com [Excerpts]
Let’s look at ten
recent developments here:
1.
2. Over the weekend in the capital city of
Oaxaca, during a forty-eight hour period, ten different marches took place. They
followed a public funeral in the zocalo’s central
pavilion for Alejandro García, who died from a
gunshot wound to the head while he was at the barricade in Colonia Alemán, bringing coffee to the night team.
A car with four
military men in civilian clothes, recently seen leaving a local cantina, tried
to beak the barricade. During the ensuing scuffle two members of the Popular
Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO in its Spanish initials) were shot, the
second victim in the arm.
3. The federal
senators who visited
As I understand it,
the Mexican constitution says that the Senate can declare the state
“ungovernable” by observing that the three branches of government are no longer
functioning. In other words, with state powers having disappeared, the Senate
sees that basic functions are no longer being carried out.
This is not the same
as declaring that powers which exist should be nullified. Hence why Ulises Ruiz Ortega showed up with boxes of papers that he
claims prove state functions are continuing.
4. The state director
of the National Action Party (PAN in its Spanish initials), Jorge Valencia
Arroyo, opined that the governor should consider resigning or taking a leave of
absence, because if the National Senate decrees that there is an absence of
powers, the shit will eventually hit the fan for him. No, he didn’t say that.
Excuse me. What he said was, that once there is an
effort to call on people to be accountable for their crimes, there are crimes
aplenty to go around – including the really nasty ones like assassination and
torture ordered by the governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz
(“URO”).
The crimes of the
APPO consist of delinquencies such as damaging the cultural patrimony with
spray paint and blocking the free transit of citizens. They have been trying to
maintain a peaceful movement and, with some exceptions (like beating up firemen
who tried to destroy a barricade over the weekend of October 13), they have
succeeded.
5. The
6. The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of
Oaxaca has been reproduced in at least eleven states, among them Chiapas,
Guerrero, Michoacan, Veracruz, Jalisco,
7. An indigenous Nahuátl
and Mazatec community radio station, Nandia, was attacked and destroyed by government agents. The
women who ran the station belong to an organization of Mazatec
indigenous women.
After the attack they
tried to leave the small northern town of Mazatlán
Villa de Flores to travel to the capital, hoping to make known their outrage
(non-licensed indigenous radio stations are presumably guaranteed in the Oaxaca
state constitution), but the only road out of town was blocked by people
identified only as Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) loyalists.
The Mazatec women were planning a hunger strike in the atrium
of the Cathedral in
8. In other areas of
the state, rumors and threats abound, not only in small towns but also in the
larger cities such as Tuxtepec, Matías
Romero and Miahuatlán, as reported in an October 16
article written by Carlos Beas Torres, the leader of The Union of Indigenous
Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI).
In Matías Romero, PRI loyalists burned the radio station La Consentida. In the
The mainstream media,
Beas Torres observes, place their emphasis on the big events such as the
helicopters flyover and the massing of marines at Salina Cruz and Huatulco.
In Oaxaca there are two wars; one has the aspect of military invasion,
and the other is carried out by local political bosses (known as caciques) and
local government officials who are desperate to hold on to their
seventy-seven-year-old privileged role.
9. In order for the Oaxacan people, authorities, and indigenous organizations
to come together for discussions, the APPO and other various sponsors held the
Dialogue for Peace on Friday October 13 in
This indicates that
Ruiz – who has come three times that I know of – has put his whole moral weight
behind the Oaxaca movement, most likely because of the movement’s importance
for indigenous peoples.
The inauguration was
celebrated with a band and several speeches, including the brief address by
Bishop Ruiz, who said, “
In addition to the
well known public personages, the event was attended by sociologists,
academics, campesinos, women, men, children, and
representatives of national and international civil organizations, as well as
statewide indigenous authorities and the Triqui
women, who are always so visible in their red beribboned overdresses. More than
1,000 people signed up as participants.
The opening hour
unified the crowd with symbols, such as blowing conch shells to summon the
people, wafting incense over the plaza and offering prayers in several
languages. The leader of the religious ceremony told the people, “we align ourselves with nature, from which we take our dual
representation of god and goddess, of heaven and earth, male and female. We
call the forces of the universe to aid and support our road.” As the woman lead
the prayer, the audience turned to salute each of the four cardinal directions.
Directly in front of me stood three older women who expressed their private
prayers in a low undertone. Then began the drumming – a spontaneous light
tapping that rippled across the entire audience. The women near me had taken
out small plastic compacts and were tapping a steady rhythm with their
fingernails.
After the ceremonies
the meeting broke apart to several tables where serious discussion took place.
Just how serious we don’t yet know because they will not report until later
this week. The best hope is that whatever they decide will be included in the
November constitutive meetings to establish a State Assembly of the Peoples of
Oaxaca (a new, permanent state government based on the APPO model) .
10. Stress, fatalities and tension abound. Neither the APPO, nor the
teachers who belong to the APPO, are backing down. The departure of URO is not
negotiable. The indigenous communities are organizing, as well as the nation. We’re
all drumming with our fingernails.