Enragé
5th October 2006, 00:34
Oaxaca ( part 2 )
We arrived in Oaxaca yesterday and spent most of our time making plans for the coming days. It is expected that the army will attack tonight or tomorrow. This day effort is still being made to try and reach a compromise between the protestors en the interior minister, but there isnt much hope.
In Oaxaca life continues as normal, which is understandable since the city has been occupied by protestors for four months. So many stores are opened and if you are in the center of the city you wont notice the protest that much, except for the countless examples of political graffiti, visible on every wall.
Getting in to the city by foot, you will have to cross alot of barricades, which are made of cars, jeeps, sandbags, barbed wire and sometimes simply stones. The center of the town is occupied day and night by activists. United under the name APPO (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos) the people are always active in their struggle against the governor.
All accross town buildings have been reposessed by the people. One of those buildings is an old police station which has been taken over by a local group of anarchists, who want to set up an information center there. Proud as they were, they showed us the building with a huge courtyard. They are prebaring for battle and have a large collection of molotov cocktails to keep the army out.
We are concentrating mainly on making what is happening in Oaxaca visible. Armed with no more than our camera's and our recently acquired press cards, we prepare for a sleepless night.
Nobody knows what awaits him, but we are doing our best to bring as much footage into the open, hoping that the army will strike less hard if we do.
original (dutch)
http://www.grassrootsprojects.com/weblog
translation by me, did it quickly, and its late, so sorry for any mistakes.
I'll translate any further entries as well and post them here.
We arrived in Oaxaca yesterday and spent most of our time making plans for the coming days. It is expected that the army will attack tonight or tomorrow. This day effort is still being made to try and reach a compromise between the protestors en the interior minister, but there isnt much hope.
In Oaxaca life continues as normal, which is understandable since the city has been occupied by protestors for four months. So many stores are opened and if you are in the center of the city you wont notice the protest that much, except for the countless examples of political graffiti, visible on every wall.
Getting in to the city by foot, you will have to cross alot of barricades, which are made of cars, jeeps, sandbags, barbed wire and sometimes simply stones. The center of the town is occupied day and night by activists. United under the name APPO (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos) the people are always active in their struggle against the governor.
All accross town buildings have been reposessed by the people. One of those buildings is an old police station which has been taken over by a local group of anarchists, who want to set up an information center there. Proud as they were, they showed us the building with a huge courtyard. They are prebaring for battle and have a large collection of molotov cocktails to keep the army out.
We are concentrating mainly on making what is happening in Oaxaca visible. Armed with no more than our camera's and our recently acquired press cards, we prepare for a sleepless night.
Nobody knows what awaits him, but we are doing our best to bring as much footage into the open, hoping that the army will strike less hard if we do.
original (dutch)
http://www.grassrootsprojects.com/weblog
translation by me, did it quickly, and its late, so sorry for any mistakes.
I'll translate any further entries as well and post them here.