The Mexican Situation

[VukBZ2005]

I wanted to initate this thread because I feel that there must be a "official" news/discussion tread that would both keep on eye on the developments that are occuring in Mexico and would allow others to comment and discuss on those developments.

I do appologize if there is such a tread that exists.

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Oaxaca’s Popular Assembly “Expels” the State Government
Events Announced to Build a “National Movement from Below”

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca

September 7, 2006

In an eight-and-a-half-hour-long meeting of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) on September 3, the 193 delegates from different organizations which constitute the APPO declared the governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz (URO) “proscrito” – banned, exiled, unwelcome – in the state of Oaxaca. The ex-governor will be replaced by a “proclamation of good government for the city of Oaxaca, a proclamation for the 570 municipalities, and a manifesto to the nation, declaring the banishment of URO from the government, and that the government will continue to be exercised from the historic center of the city of Oaxaca”.

In the following days the APPO has proclaimed various regulations for governing, including ways to open the barricades on city streets during the day, closing them only at night for protection of the radio stations and antennas.

It was proclaimed by the APPO that “laws” or rules laid down by the assembly will be binding on the rest of the state – which sure sounds to me like a state government. The forthcoming proclamations will deal with reactivating the economy, citizen security, cleanliness and beautification of the city, measures for the urban and suburban transportation system, a announcement to attract tourism, and another for “harmonic coexistence”.

On Tuesday, September 5, federal highway 190 was opened. On the 15th and 16th of September caravans will leave Oaxaca bound for other states in the north, south and center of the nation, to spread the word about Oaxaca’s movement. The APPO pronouncement is “For the construction in the nation of a single national movement from below.” On September 28 a national and international forum in solidarity with the people of Oaxaca will take place, in an as yet unspecified location.

On October 12 at 11:00 AM a statewide popular forum will be held in City Hall. Exactly where the vanished mayor is or will be has not yet been revealed. Jesús Oretega has been “missing in action” for several weeks.

In Oaxaca, the only government is the APPO, affirmed Caesar Mateos Benatez, in a press conference. He is a member of the provisional coordinating committee of the APPO. This proclamation was contradicted by Miguel Angel Concha Viloria, a spokesperson for the URO regime, who said, in essence, that would be breaking the law! Because only legally constituted governing bodies can make regulations.

People living in Oaxaca have made it known to the APPO that they feel severely inconvenienced by this revolutionary movement, not only by the loss of income, but by having to drive blocks out of their way to navigate blocked streets. Furthermore, the children are not in school and no municipal police are on the streets; there’s a curfew to discourage roving paramilitaries and ordinary thieves. Public transport is never certain, and the bus routes are regularly changed to avoid blockades.

Acknowledging the inconvenience of the revolution, Mateos Benatez said that the APPO was obliged to put forth the declarations in order to minimize the problems and inconvenience to society.

The “mobile police” of the APPO, if one can call them that, have been cruising the streets, aided mainly by cell phones and calls to radio stations to issue alarms. The new police force is “members of the Honorable Body of Topiles of the APPO and of the Magisterial Police of Oaxaca.” Topil is a Zapotec word for a volunteer guard or messenger under the indigenous system of usos y costumbres that governs many of the state’s small towns.

The national patriotic holidays of Mexico will be observed in the city, with the traditional “Grito de Dolores” – the reenactment of the cry for an uprising in Dolores Hidalgo that sparked Mexico’s war for independence – emanating from the capital building on September 15.

The Secretary for Citizen Protection, according to Mateo Benítez, has started to hire some 8,000 people from different parts of the state to constitute reinforcements for the state police, with a goal of massive attack on the movement’s encampments, to dislodge them “at the moment when the federal government intervenes.”

On September 6, the federal election commission (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación) unanimously declared Felipe Calderón the president elect of Mexico. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is pushing for an alternative government.

Oaxaca is not alone in its approach to changing Mexico.

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What do you think of this development?

[Iseult_]

I support the Mexican leftists. The Vincente Fox regime is a disgrace. A recent poll said tha nearly half the Mexican citizens want to leave Mexico.

[R_P_A_S]

The OAXACA situation has escaladeted. I haven't been following it very close though. I've been so caught up with the Obrador issue that i sort of though it was simply some teachers protesting. so what exactly is the problem now? whats really going on? is there a summary of this?

[rebelworker]

From Teachers' Strike Towards Dual Power: The Revolutionary Surge in Oaxaca

By GEORGE SALZMAN

Oaxaca, Mexico
August 30, 2006

Oaxaca shares, with Chiapas and Guerrero, the distinction of being the one of the three poorest states of Mexico. These three bastions of extreme poverty, albeit among the richest states of Mexico in natural resources, lie along the Pacific coastline in southeastern Mexico. Oaxaca is flanked to its east by Chiapas and to its west by Guerrero. Its population, about 3.5 million (2003 estimate), is unique among Mexican states in containing the largest fraction, 2/3, and the largest absolute number of people with indigenous ancestry.

Which of the 31 states holds top place for corruption would probably be impossible to measure in this intensely contested Mexican arena, as highlighted in the fraudulent July 2, 2006 presidential election, but for sure Oaxaca merits high placement on the corruption scale. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of the indigenous population is among the most impoverished. Naturally they are very sympathetic to the struggles of indigenous peoples in other parts of Mexico to better their lives, such as the attempts of the Zapatista base support communities in Chiapas, that have declared themselves "in rebellion" and asserted their autonomy, often at great cost due to state and federal efforts to crush them.

The 70,000 or so teachers in the state educational institutions, state employees, are, by Oaxaca standards, far from poor. They are part of the state's "middle class". So it's not as though the majority of poor people are usually very sympathetic. This quarter-century-long tradition of a Oaxaca teachers' strike each May never before was much more than a nuisance for the city business people, for a week or so, until the union and the state government negotiated a settlement, the teachers ended their occupation of the city center and returned to their homes throughout the state.

Why was this year so different?

It will come as no surprise to los Americanos that in Mexico, as in the U.S., there are 'conpany unions'. But here, south of the border, the 'company' is the ruling party of the federal government, a big 'company' indeed. The National Union of Educational Workers (El Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores Educativo, SNTE) is a very large and powerful union, hierarchical in structure. For over 70 years the SNTE had been in bed with the government of the ruling party, the Revolutionary Institutional Party, El Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). In fact, until recently, the General Secretary of SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo, was second from the top of the PRI leadership, just below Roberto Madrazo.

Section 22 of SNTE is the Oaxaca part of the National Teachers Union. Among Mexican teachers there is another formation, the National Educational Workers Coordinating Committee (Comité Coordinador Nacional de Trabajadores Educativo CNTE). In Oaxaca the CNTE, whose members belong to SNTE Section 22, play a leading role in setting Section 22 policy. Section 22 has long been regarded as one of the most militant, independent sections of SNTE.

On May 15, National Teachers' Day in Oaxaca, the leadership of Section 22 of SNTE declared that if their negotiations with the state government did not progress, they would initiate a state-wide strike the following week. The teachers were demanding an upgrade in the zonification of Oaxaca, which would increase the federally-designated minimum wage for the state. The "logic" (i.e. rationalization) of the federal government for having lower legal minimum wages in poor states like Oaxaca is apparently that it's cheaper to live in a more impoverished region than in one with a higher average income. Such an upgrade of Oaxaca would affect waged workers in Oaxaca who are paid the minimum wage, but would not affect those paid above the minimum, like the teachers. For themselves the teachers demanded a salary increase. Their other demands involved improved school facilities and meeting students' needs. Much of the money supposedly budgeted for education is siphoned off by corrupt officials. There is no accountability, a process not even legally required in Oaxaca and no bookkeeping.

Negotiations from the 15th to the 22nd between the union and the state, instead of moving towards a compromise agreement, became even more acrimonious. Beginning May 22, a large group of teachers, other education workers, family members, allied individuals and members of allied organizations, numbering perhaps between 35,000 and 60,000 (hard numbers are impossible to know) occupied the center of Oaxaca City - the large central park (the zócalo) and some 56 blocks surrounding it - with their encampment. Local business, hotel and restaurant owners were, by and large, critical because of financial losses caused by the disruption. Quite normal. The ritual of an annual teachers' strike was by now about a quarter century old. But never before had it been so large, so prolonged. Even now, no end is in sight.

During a period of barely three and a half weeks, May 22 to June 14, the strength of the teachers' opposition to Governor Ulises Ruíz Ortíz continued to grow, with additional adherents nursing their own grievances against the dictatorial regime allying with the formidable SNTE contingent. Frequent marches, and two mega-marches, the first on Friday June 2 with between 50,000 and 100,000 (the police and SNTE estimates, respectively), and the second on Wednesday, June 7, with 120,000 brought to the city demonstrations of size and vehemence never before seen here. I watched the June 7 march from the parapet on the north side of the Plaza de Danza as endless mockery of Ulises Ruíz paraded past, demanding boisterously that he leave the governorship. Undoubtedly there were state spies in civilian clothes with cameras, cell phones, video cameras and tape recorders, but no one seemed in the least intimidated or cautious. The entire event was permeated with a sense of peoples power.

On June 14, when Ulises unexpectedly ordered state police to carry out a surprise early pre-dawn attack on the sleeping teachers (many of them women with their children), destroying their tents and other camping gear and firing tear gas and bullets, even using a police helicopter that sprayed tear gas on the campers, to drive them out of the city center, he ignited a mass uprising throughout the state and beyond. The teachers fought back, drove out the police after about four hours, recapturing the city center and gaining admiration throughout the state for their gritty determination not to be terrorized into submission.

In his year and a half in office since December 1, 2005, Ulises had succeeded in generating a powder keg of hatred across the state towards him because of his tyrannical rule. This included his overt attempt to destroy the state's largest-circulation daily newspaper, Noticias de Oaxaca , his destruction of much-loved parts of the capital city's world-famous cultural patrimony, numerous killings by armed thugs tied to the ruling party, in communities struggling against corrupt and oppressive state-appointed municipal administrations. In sum, it was his attempt to rule by "excessively overt" terror, including kidnappings, jailings on baseless charges, torture, and death, and always impunity for the state thugs terrorizing the people, that turned the population en masse against him.

Moreover, history was against him. Fresh in peoples' memory was the sadistic early May attack in San Salvador Atenco in Mexico State by federal, state and municipal police, and the outrage against the authorities then - incarceration and worse for the victims, impunity for the perpetrators. There was a pervasive sense that in such a society, everyone is a "political prisoner unto death". A multitude of civic organizations in, and outside of, Oaxaca swarmed to declare their solidarity with the teachers. Immediately after the attack the teachers announced, and two days later led a huge march, their third mega-march, with 400,000, that included many new adherents. They all demanded URO's resignation or removal from office.

The show of strength quickly led to formation of a statewide assembly that termed itself the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, Asemblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca .. Though instigated as a result of the teachers' initiative and the ugly state repression, the assembly went far beyond the teachers' original demands, which had been limited to educational matters. Ousting a hated governor had been done before on three occasions in Oaxaca. Not trivial, risky of course, but not by itself a revolutionary act.

APPO is established, sets revolutionary goals

In addition to the immediate third mega-march on June 16 (two days after the assault), the popular movement of teachers and other members of civil society held the first state-wide popular assembly the following day, just three days after the attack of June 14. In this precedent-breaking assembly meeting, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca ( (APPO, by its initials in Spanish) adopted a truly revolutionary program by declaring itself the supreme authority in Oaxaca, and asserting the illegitimacy of the entire political structure, which had ruthlessly run Oaxaca as a PRI-terrorist-controlled state for nearly 80 years.

APPO's deliberately broad representation evidently excluded any explicitly political groups, i.e. it was to be a "non-political" formation, truly a peoples' government. As Nancy Davies wrote in her report, "Popular Assembly to Oppose the State Government", its initial meeting on June 17 "was attended by 170 people representing 85 organizations." Included, or at least invited, "were all the SNTE delegates, union members, social and political organizations, non-governmental organizations, collectives, human rights organizations, parents, tenant farmers, municipalities, and citizens of the entire state of Oaxaca." Its intention was to be open to all the citizens of the state. There was no attempt, so far as I know, to exclude wealthy people from the assembly. Naturally, most very rich people who saw their interests served by the URO regime would not want to be involved in an effort to remove him and the rest of the governing apparatus, but wealthy 'mavericks' who rejected social injustice were evidently welcome. The only 'absolute requirement' for participation was agreement that Ulises must go.

Flimsy barriers such as those that had not prevented the police assault of June 14 were clearly inadequate. APPO adherents went about establishing stronger barricades against future invasions. They began commandeering buses, some commercial, as well as police and other government vehicles, using some of them to block access roads to the zócalo and other APPO encampments. Other of the commandeered vehicles they used for transportation.

APPO's major strategy for bringing pressure to bear on the government, in order to force either URO's resignation or his legal removal, has been to literally prevent the institutional government from carrying out its functions: legislative, judicial and executive (i.e. administrative). The tactic deserves to be called aggressive civil disobedience, meaning that APPO adherents carry out their forceful "illegal" actions as civilians (unarmed, i.e. no firearms). Some of them have poles, iron rods, and even machetes, but these are for self-defense. The culture here is not one of 'turning the other cheek'. They don't sit down and pray if police attempt to beat them. They have blocked highways, occupied government buildings and made a good many tourists and potential tourists reconsider Oaxaca as a desirable destination, thereby shaking the economy

As for 'winning the hearts and minds' of Oaxaqueños, the 'hearts' part of the task has been in large part already accomplished, thanks to the arrogance and aggressiveness of URO - the hatred he managed to sow since taking office as governor on December 1, 2004 and which he's now reaping. Even people who are not thrilled with APPO are so disgusted with URO that they are more likely to be passive rather than actively opposing APPO by supporting the governor.

Winning minds, as APPO well knows, is essential. They have made that a major part of their work. The government and its corporate allies fully realize the importance of what people think. The media of communication are therefore a prime arena in the contest to influence peoples' consciousness.

The fight for the communication media

The very first action of the state forces in their pre-dawn attack on June 14 was to destroy the teachers' radio station, Radio Plantón. It had been serving not only as a source of pro-teacher propaganda since the start of the strike, but as a vital communication link broadcasting (within its limited range) 24 hours a day. Soon after the Radio Plantón equipment was smashed, students at the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca (UABJO in its Spanish initials) seized the university's station, a licensed station with a much more powerful transmitter, and kept it going non-stop in support of the then rapidly-growing rebellion. The student-operated UABJO station was attacked several times, first on June 22, and eventually put out of commission after a diversionary tactic the night of August 8 enabled three people who had earlier infiltrated the movement to enter and throw sulphuric acid on the equipment, ending, at least for a time, those broadcasts.

Revolutions are not, by their nature, tidy affairs. There is no simple chronology according to which, at certain key dates, one important group of actors halts its activity and a different group takes the stage. Rather, a multitude of groups fills the stage at any given time, and the flow of activity is continuous - no separation of the actions marked by curtain calls. Thus it may be a questionable effort to try to divide the flow into phases. While the attack of June 14 did clearly mark a separation of events into two different phases, the ensuing struggle has been, and will likely be a continuous flow. Nevertheless, the action of the women who seized the state television and radio stations on August 1 so powerfully upped the ante in the struggle to control the communication media that I will say that act initiated a third phase of the struggle.

On July 1, the day before participants in La marcha de las caserolas (the march of women beating their pots and pans with wooden spoons) went on to seize the state TV and radio stations, only Radio Universidad was broadcasting for the popular movement. By then it had been on the air daily for almost of seven weeks. It was to continue for another 8 days until the sulphuric acid attack shut it down. But by then Channel 9, TV Caserolas as some folks dubbed it, had been broadcasting 8 days.

The move to seize, or as a graffiti on the wall of the control room at the transmission tower phrased it, to re-appropriate facilities paid for with the peoples' money, was a bold escalation in the struggle for the media. Channel 9 and FM 96.9 covered the entire state. For 3 weeks, from August 1 until the early morning assault on August 21, the "voices and images of the people" dominated these normally state-controlled airwaves in the struggle aimed at "winning the minds" of the people, although of course the powerful national corporate channels, TV Azteca and Televisa continued their pro-state broadcasts. But what a vision of hope sprang from the screen those three weeks! Ordinary people in everyday clothes spoke of the reality of their lives as they understood them, of what neo-liberalism meant to them, of the Plan Pueblo Panama, of their loss of land to developers and international paper companies, of ramshackle rural mountain schools without toilets, of communities without safe water or sanitary drainage, and so on, all the needs that could be met if wealth were not being stolen by rich capitalists and corrupt government agents.

And not all was about Oaxaca and its problems. The horizon of consciousness reached abroad as, on one occasion that Nancy mentioned to me, Channel 9 broadcast a documentary videotape of living conditions of Palestinians in the occupied territories. One can only imagine the level of global grassroots solidarity if the media, worldwide, were controlled by popular groups instead of transnational corporations.

This flood of uncontrolled, unmediated, spontaneous communication among the population must have terrorized the former economic and political rulers of Oaxaca by the threat it posed, but they dared not try a repeat of their June 14 heavy-handed attempt to crush the popular uprising. Rather than risk another open failure the state authorities pursued a strategy of clandestine warfare, as described vividly by Diego Enrique Osorno in his 28 August special report from Oaxaca to Narco News . The desperate authorities pursued their so-called Operation "Clean-Up". As Narco News stated, "Following the CIA's 'Psychological Operations' Manual for the Nicaraguan Contras, the State Government Has Unleashed a Bloody Counterinsurgency Strategy to Eliminate the Social Movement".

The onslaught by these clandestine heavily-armed police officials and state thugs on the transmission facilities of TV Caserola and Radio APPO up on Fortin Hill above the city revealed the government's panic. This assault, in the very early hours on Monday 21 August, totally destroyed the control equipment housed in a building at the base of the transmission tower. The racks of electronics were smashed and sprayed with automatic weapons fire, bullet holes only inches apart in some of the panels, which I photographed that Monday evening. There are, as explained to me by a student friend involved with one of the movement radio stations, several components that made up the state's TV and radio stations: 1) the studios where interviews, news reporters, panel members, etc. met, 2) a repeater station whose antenna received the signals from the studio building and "bounced" them to the transmission station, and 3) the transmission facility atop Fortin Hill, which broadcast the programs to the entire state.

By knocking out the transmission tower facility the government-directed thugs insured that APPO could not operate the occupied state TV and radio stations. The damage wrought at the transmission control room was a shocking double admission: 1) the URO government knew it was unable to retake and hold each of the three components of its broadcasting stations, and 2) the impact of the APPO broadcasts was an intolerable threat. Therefore they destroyed a key component of what they surely regarded as their own governing infrastructure.

The battle for the air waves continues. Later that day, the 21, having lost the use of Channel 9 and FM 96.9, APPO groups seized twelve commercial radio stations belonging to nine different companies. The number of seized stations broadcasting for APPO varies from time to time. This morning (29 August) we were able to pick up three, one AM and two FM at our location below the base of Fortin Hill. Apart from radio, the movement produces and distributes a great deal of printed material, videos and CDs, and seeks to spread its point of view by all means of communication. Radio of course remains particularly important.

On August 16 and 17 a national forum was held in Oaxaca to discuss "Building Democracy and Governability in Oaxaca." Sponsored by fifty organizations within Oaxacan civil society, as Davies wrote, it provided "an opportunity to analyze the crisis and propose alternative solutions from the perspective of civil society, including a new Oaxacan constitution, and by implication, a blueprint for the nation." The basic problems that beset Oaxaca exist throughout Mexico and so it is not surprising that the invitations to attend brought people from all parts of Mexico. What is taking place in Oaxaca is clearly inspiring people throughout this nation.

In the meantime, the situation in Oaxaca remains full of uncertainty, with much seemingly dependent on the power struggle centered in Mexico City over the presidency. Those currently in the saddle are doing everything possible to insure continuance of PAN/PRI rule, but the majority of Mexicans may be ready for much more fundamental changes. Education, true education, is indeed subversive. Adelante!

[rebelworker]

(en) Mexico, Red Alert in Oaxaca*
Date Sat, 12 Aug 2006 08:24:12 +0300

On 6th of August governor of Oaxaca Ulises Ruiz and the president of
Mexico Vincente Fox made a new ultraright alliance, which activated the
federal preventive police (PFP), known for its cruelty. The PFP is and
will be used against peaceful protestors. Ulises also allied himself
with archbishop Botello, which accused the protest of being violent and
stated that a peace is worth much more than any fight for justice«.
The same day Catarino Torres Peredo was violently arrested on the false
accusations. The police was wearing civilian clothes. Catarino is member
of APPO and a member of CODECI from Tuxtepec.
Because of the massive threat from the police APPO declared RED ALERT IN OAXACA!

Represive state institutions are trying to stop the movement by any
means necessary. APPO intercepted the information that police would even
place bombs in banks in order to harm the movement. On August 6th
another shocking thing happened, people paid by the governor, took over
several buses, claiming to be members of APPO. Police, as usual, in
civilian clothes attacked protestors with teargas and firearms in front
of one of the public buildings.

APPO IS SENDING A CLEAR MESSAGE TO ULISES AND HIS ALLIES:

Oaxacan men, women, children, young and old, we are tired of life in
misery in which we are forced by governmental employes. Most of the
people of Oaxaca are of Indian origin and we have a lot of experience
in resistance and in struggle.

WE WILL RESIST! WE WILL NEVER LET FASCISM WIN!

And we are answering to archbishop with the words od Mahatma Gandhi:

THE WORST VIOLENCE IS POVERTY!

TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
TO INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
TO HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS
TO THE PEOPLE
Oaxaca de Juarez, Monday 7th of august 2006, 5:47 PM
Indian Organizations for Human Rights in Oaxaca (OIDHO)- member of the
provisional collective directorship of the Popular Assembly of the
People of Oaxaca (APPO), sends the following urgent communique:
In these moments, - via radio broadcasts from the brave Oaxacan women
who peacefully occupied the Channel 9 TV station last tuesday - APPO
calls for a RED ALERT in order to reinforce all current blocking of
local, state and federal government buildings and Channel 9 amidst the
threat of intense police activity in the states capitol.
Let us not forget that as of yesterday we have confirmed a dangerous
complicity between right-wing extremists of both the national and state
governments evidenced by President Fox's immediate grant of a request,
petitioned by (ex) governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, to send the Federal
Prevention Police (PFP) - a nefarious militarized police created for the
authoritarian neoliberal state. The acute aversion to the state police
can be attributed, amongst other reasons, to the repression experienced
at the hands of fellow country-persons. More than one thousand PFP
actives, along with some special state and municipal units with similar
repressive practices, and groups of vandals financed by the
(ex)government, have been contracted to enforce the fascist plans of
this moribund regime.
New information has come to light that reveals other tactics in this
dirty war. The repressive front has plans to plant bombs in banks in
order to frame the popular movement and, thus, use the accusations to
justify massive repression. And yesterday, thieves hired by the
(ex)state government highjacked and burned buses having falsely
identified themselves as APPO. Fortunately, the movement was able to
apprehend them and reveal the nature of the provocation. Today, units of
the police dressed in civilian clothing tried to dislodge one of the
blockades in front of an occupied public building with tear gas and
gunfire. The attempt to disperse the blockade was a failure, and there
were no wounded reported.
Previously described in an internal communique within the state regime
which the APPO acquired, the dirty war has tactics to prevent the
impeachment of the nefarious governor and his mafia. The campaign
includes a move orchestrated on the high pulpits of ecclesiastic power.
Yesterday and today, the Archbishop Botello of Oaxaca made repeated
calls for "Peace" criticizing the supposed "violence" of the popular
movement. The Archbishop went on to say that "peace was worth more than
any movement for justice" to the various outlets of mass disinformation.
The compañero Catarino Torres - a representative for the
Indigenous-Farmworker Organization (CODECI) from the Tuxtepec region and
member of the APPO - was detained yesterday under false federal
accusations.
These accounts depict the tense situation that we live in the State of
Oaxaca set in the context of ultra right-wing state and national
government alliances that believe the popular movement DOES NOT EXIST.
The compañeras of the radio have just said that Oaxaca is the
birthright of humanity; and they hope that this perspective would not
be limited to the beautiful buildings, but would include all the human
beings fighting for a just and free life on these lands.
From the permanent sit-in in the center of this Capital, from the
different blockades of public buildings and roads, from [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]ñ@s&#39; <mailto:oaxaqueñ@s&#39;Channel 9, from the
university and free radios, and from the popular organizations and the
distant communities in the different regions of the state that have
integrated into this peaceful and just fight with the APPO, we are
sending one sole communique to Ulises Ruiz and his regime, including any
of his alliances, being state or national:
The men and women of Oaxaca, the children, the youth, the elderly, we
are all tired of being walked over, tired of living in misery due to the
greed of corrupted officials and business-people. The State of Oaxaca in
its majority is indigenous and has a long history of resistance and
struggle.
We will resist. We are not going to retreat. The State of Oaxaca will
not permit fascism. THEY WILL NOT PASS.
And to the Archbishop we speak with the words of Mahatma Gandhi:
"Poverty is the worst of all violence."
We are putting out a red alert to everyone warning them not be fooled by
the dirty campaign perpetuated by the mass system of disinformation and
to join in solidarity with the popular oaxacan movement represented in
the APPO.
Indigenous Organization for Human Rights in Oaxaca - OIDHO -

[rebelworker]

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Teachers seize Mexican radio stations

Monday 21 August 2006, 21:18 Makka Time, 18:18 GMT

Gunmen fired at a radio station controlled by the strikers


Striking teachers armed with pipes, wooden planks and clubs have seized control of eight radio stations in Mexico&#39;s southern Oaxaca state.

The teachers took over the private radio stations after unidentified gunmen opened fire on a state government radio station they seized on August 1. A male teacher was reportedly taken to hospital after the shooting, but the extent of his injuries was not immediately known.

About 50 protesters simultaneously took over each of the private stations in an apparent effort to broadcast their messages.

The teachers - who have been on strike since May 22 - refused to halt their work stoppage on Monday to allow 1.3 million public school students to return to classes at the start of the new school year.

One of the teachers in control of the radio stations broadcast a warning: "It would be better if you didn&#39;t bring your children to school."

Vehicles torched

The strikers, armed with crude weapons, blocked off all the main avenues in the centre of Oaxaca City and burned several vehicles overnight.

The 70,000 teachers originally went on strike to demand pay rises totalling about &#036;125 million, but the government offered them less than one-tenth of that amount.

Vehicles were set on fire by
strikers in Oaxaca City
The protests have since expanded to demand the resignation of Governor Ulises Ruiz, whom the demonstrators accuse of rigging the state election in 2004 and of using force to repress dissent. Ruiz belongs to the Institutional Revolutionary Party which has governed the state since 1929.

The strikers have used the radio stations to denounce officials, intellectuals, the news media and others they say have refused to support their cause.

"We&#39;re fed up with neoliberalism," one said, using a term for free-market economics. "We are fed up with gringo ecotourism."

Oaxaca City paralysed

Oaxaca City attracts thousands of Mexican and foreign tourists each year because of its colonial architecture and local Indian crafts but the strike has paralysed the city centre causing tourism revenues to suffer.

The protests have erupted in violence on several occasions and one demonstrator was shot dead earlier this month. The demonstrators have taken control of radio stations and blocked news media offices in the past to protest against what they say is biased coverage of their movement.

News outlets also have been attacked by alleged government sympathisers. Earlier this month, gunmen opened fire inside the offices of a newspaper critical of the government, injuring at least two people.

[VukBZ2005]

Clarifying in Order to Move Forward
One Hundred Days Into the Oaxaca Commune, a Successful Assault on Power is Possible

By Alberto Hijar
Por Esto&#33;

September 9, 2006

Brutal, forced globalization and the downfall of Soviet and European socialism demand the deconstruction of historical power blocs. In Mexico, the defeat of the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI in its Spanish initials) forms part of the corporately legitimized political and economic liquidation of the so-called welfare state. The Party of the Democratic Revolution’s (PRD’s) losses, like those of the rest of the Euro-communist nationalist and statist socialist leftist parties, are not absolute. Rather, they are socially maintained by the hope of winning the Presidency accompanied by corresponding parliamentarian, state, and municipal representation, where grassroots social organizations faced with unprincipled political backdoor maneuvering don’t fit.

Politics of exclusivity, where a negotiator class operates on behalf of the state with its back to the people, reduces the place of the people to the identity offered by the leadership of nationalist state power. Self-governing and autonomous popular power is reduced to marginality and precariousness.

The historical bloc of statist leftists define themselves in the struggle. They are the nationalist part essentially opposed to all organization of popular power, substituting it with false representations because they insist on preserving state power at all cost. Here we can see their filthy alliances opposed to all criticism of their principles and that, in fact, they are not leftists.

In any event, the Left, faced with the acute crisis of the Nation-State (not only a crisis of government and not only in Mexico), is defined as favoring the extinction of the capitalist state in order that the power of a complete and inclusive nation might emerge. The current historical phase, according to this strategy, is the construction of popular power expanded from the power of the proletariat to include those without traditional employment who are close to or integrated into the so-called informal economy.

For the false Left deeply rooted in the state and in the defense of its institutions, the people are passive subjects because they must remain represented by the leaders. The assembly, the Democratic National Convention, is a rite, a formality to legitimate those who don’t make room for the practice of popular sovereignty. It’s about, in the end, proclaiming a president in rebellion, or an acting president, or someone in charge of the government, or provisional leadership, and assuming as a strategy a personalized struggle accompanied by the unlikely coordination of the interests of Congress members, senators, assembly persons, governors, mayors, and the chief of the Government of Mexico City, who are paradoxically considered legally elected. The contradiction in the acceptance of one part of the electoral process would be left resolved in strategic terms by the outside struggle coordinated with the struggle from inside. What is necessary is a political party clear in its program, in its strategy, and in its tactics, something that doesn’t exist in Mexico.

The platform of the false left is one of nationalism that is close to the monopolist imperialism of the state. They demand sovereignty in the management of energy and land without acknowledging the corruption in PEMEX and the Secretary of Energy. They have high hopes for public services in compliance with the slogan “first the poor” (under state control, of course) and at the same time, state reform in order to improve the corrupt justice system, infringed workers’ rights, and the devastated countryside. But the practice proves a different tendency: like no one else, the government of Lopez Obrador in Mexico City operated against the most fundamental labor rights, just as those who have followed him have. He handed over control of the historical downtown area (the Centro Histórico) to Carlos Slim’s corporations, while the popular culture was subjected to fun diversion in order to attain the Zócalo as territory of the industry of spectacles, with massive televised concerts for CD promotions and with an act of popular agitation here and there under the control of the social climbers on the bandstand. Symbolism was all that resulted from a grand march against the desafuero with clamoring multitudes and brigades of PRD supporters demanding that they silence their chants. Grassroots organizations were conspicuously absent from the bandstand, and in their place were hot shots on the rebound from the PRI, “statesmen” as they like to call themselves. La Jornada’s eloquent exaltation of spectacular figures like Jesusa Rodríguez, Poniatowska, or Taibo II makes us believe that the great nine-kilometer-long encampment on el Paseo de la Reforma is boiling over with cultural activity. In the presence of neighborhood musicians and the instrumental participation of groups like the Coro de los Pejeviejitos (Choir of Lopez Obrador’s Little Old Men) is proof of the cultural workers who the Mexico City government never support or acknowledged. This is owed to the need to contain the popular organization within the limits of the so-called leadership’s orchestration.

To wait and hope for the disenchantment of the National Democratic Convention attendees would be criminal. We would be shortsighted if we though the non-conformists’ unhappy consciousness was due to the electoral fraud and nothing more. Starting now, and even before now, it is urgent that we construct a genuinely sovereign popular power with a long-term plan against the oppressor and repressor State. Take, for example, Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land, which could have been the first Caracol with its Juntas de Buen Gobierno in the outskirts of Mexico City. The excessive repression hasn’t merited the smallest commentary from the Alliance for the Good of All (the electoral coalition led by the PRD) – just the predictable renunciation of Convergencia (a small party that formed part of the Alliance).

Not a single political party protested the Mexican Interior Secretary’s official congratulation to the murderous repressor of Atenco, Peña Nieto, during the Meeting of Governors (presided over by Vincente Fox) in recognition of the preservation of law and order. The same could be said with respect to Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, who attacked the miners of SICARTSA (the Lázaro Cárdenas Las Truchas Iron and Steel company) in the place named after his own grandfather.

Neither does the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca seem to merit the attention of López Obrador supporters, despite the popular power that was proven by the organization’s ability to increase its strength in the wake of the violent eviction attempt of June 14. The reinstallation of the encampments, accompanied by the necessary self-defense and the corresponding security measures, included the occupation of eleven government offices and the Oaxaca Corporation of Radio and Television, which was being used by the repudiated Gov. Ulises Ruiz for his self-exonerating propaganda. This was the response to the attack by paramilitaries protected by municipal and federal police that burned buses, threw acid on Radio Universidad’s equipment, and shot at protestors, killing five so far. Now the radio stations La Ley and Oro are communications media with open telephone lines to receive messages, commentaries, and criticisms of the movement, which has grown in all of Oaxaca with the occupation of city halls and local and regional assemblies. Self-defense tactics have also grown accordingly.

Everything that the enemy privatizes and corrupts must be liberated and socialized, just as has occurred with the Guelaguetza. What was once a tourism business has been recuperated as the peasants’ divinely titled land, which calls the producers of all wealth, the workers, to join in the fiesta that integrates work and pleasure.

The Other Campaign seems to be waiting on the sidelines until the lifeless bodies of populist statism are taken away, when it will once again raise the flags of the Left from below. But since the Indigenous Gathering in Campeche, Delegate Zero has welcomed the APPO and asked that people not be confused by the silence of those who are liberated from the State’s electoral times, but instead create liberatory times with new territories. In any case, many adherents to the Other Campaign will be in the National Democratic Convention, perhaps to denounce the expropriation of the name given by the EZLN to a meeting held in Chiapas toward the end of 1994. Since the condition of being adherents doesn’t precisely define their rights and obligations, and since there is no longer any civilian Zapatista Front, each organization loyal to the Sixth Declaration will act according to their own knowledge and understanding, creating a complex relationship with the statist and institutionalist false left.

What is certain is that, in the face of a globalizing corporate rightwing bloc that has chambers of commerce, monopolies, and cartels that are all associated with the state (the administrator of maximum concentrated profit), there is a need to act from now to December 1, when the rightist puppet will take power amid blood, fire, and televised verbal diarrhea. It will be necessary to cultivate, in turn, a national program of struggle from Atenco, Oaxaca, the Other Campaign, the Popular Assembly of Michoacán, and those that follow, workers against union charrismo [the alliance of corrupt union leaders, bosses, and the state apparatus] and in favor of workers councils exercising the sovereignty of the people guaranteed in Article 39 of the Constitution (“…All public power comes from the people, and it is instituted for their benefit. The people have, at all times, the inalienable right to alter or modify the form of their government.”).

One hundred days into the Oaxaca Commune, a successful assault on power is possible. The Paris Commune lasted fifty days in 1871, the same number that the St. Petersburg Soviet lasted in 1905. Eurocentric revolutionaries offer these events as the example to follow. Today its time to reclaim the 100 days of resistance in Oaxaca as the exemplary point of departure for the constructive history and geography of the new richly complex and inclusive nation. The great historical obstacle of the nation-state, still maintaining the power of conviction, has begun its definitive collapse, though not without demonstrating the danger of its last recourse: military and police power along with disinformation broadcasted on the televisions, radios, and newspapers. It is necessary to act accordingly, opposing the sermon of the informe [the Mexican president’s state-of-the-union speech] with the information of a people in struggle.