Jennifer Rogers

A federal court judge released 56 sympathizers and members of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), overturning a decision by a lower court judge. The Federal Preventive Police (PFP) arrested all 56 people during a street confrontation on August 25, 2006. Most of the arrests were indiscriminate and violent. Prisoners who were released earlier complained of sexual and physical abuse by the PFP and the prison guards. This decision absolves the ex-prisoners of any wrong-doings. Their legal team, Liga Mexicana por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, will now fight for reparations and damages done by the government.

Below are two recent, great articles by Nancy Davies who has been reporting for the Narco News about Oaxaca since the beginning of the uprising.

The Governor of Oaxaca Is Provoking a Mini-Civil War in the State Capital
By Nancy Davies,
Posted on Sat Jun 30th, 2007 at 01:35:44 PM EST
On Friday June 29 a signed letter appeared in Noticias warning the public. Now, whether the author himself, one Patricio Solari, is acting in good faith or is himself a provocateur, I don’t know. But he outlined the plan, which we have already seen in its initial stages of the dozen or so commercial people from the zócalo area confronting the teacher APPO plantón with an ultimatum.. Solari names the ex- “chief of police” Manuel Vera Salinas, as being recruited along with other former chiefs. They would head up the selected infiltrators to be within the encampment. The former police, armed, would provoke the actual shooting – this in the middle of a zócalo occupied not only by overt partisans and teachers but also by vendors, tourists, children, and families. The infiltrators shooting into a column of marchers would incite the melee, bringing on the intervention of the ministerial police, state police, etcetera.

A Saturday Noticias article claims that the PRI is paying up to 300 pesos per youngster to fight in the expected confrontation.

Divide and conquer is an ancient strategy, and is well documented in rural Oaxaca where it’s easy to spark fights over water and land. But inside the city, where it would not be possible to target particular individuals, is another whole ballgame. Inside the zócalo on Friday I spoke to a waitress in the floundering restaurant cafe. She is young, pretty and vicious. Her words were, “we’re going to push them out”. How? I asked, since I doubt pushing is so easy, but when I referred to killing the teachers, she assured me that the APPO is armed – and the commercial people are also.

A small APPO march – apparently the APPO called off its megamarch as a show of good faith, but not everyone knew it or agreed to the cancellation – arrived at about 6:00 Friday evening. Among the first speakers was a man who identified himself as a vendor on the street Las Casas, who told the crowd that Las Casas would not participate in the attempt to dislodge the encampment, by a vote of 70% in opposition. (Las Casas is a poor street; it resembles Mexico City with its jammed sidewalks. It has been threatened with a “clean-up” because vendor stalls block entrances to shops.)

Saturday Noticias printed an article saying the attack was “suspended”. Two organizations are involved: Consejo Ciudadano para el Progresso, which was quoted as saying, “the peaceful expulsion planned for this Saturday was cancelled at the request of the governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz ‘to maintain the peace’ “. The other group, Organización Independiente de Comerciantes Establecidos (OICE) has thus far not announced their agreement with the CCP.

A spokesperson for the APPO called on the small and mid-size businesses to not fall into the “perverse game” of Ruiz Ortiz because he is trying to use honest men and women “ to fulfill his assassin’s aims”.

So we now wait to see if the current offer of the government is acceptable to resolve teacher-APPO demands. And we wait for URO’s next move.

This Week for Education in Oaxaca
By Nancy Davies,
Posted on Thu Jun 28th, 2007 at 06:42:23 PM EST

Here’s a note for comic relief: Section 59 of the teachers union has established a plantón in front of Government House in Santa María Coyotepec to demand a dialogue with the the governor, Ulises Ruiz. They want URO to attend to several of their educational demands. These demands are a direct result of taking over schools and classrooms without the normal administrative support system.

You may recall that Section 59 was a break-away group whose coming into existence was promoted and supported by URO, as a tool to fracture the Teachers Union Section 22, which had about 70,000 members when it began its 2006 strike. Section 59 peeled off maybe 2,000-5,000 of them. It was also supported and ratified by the dragon lady president of the national Teachers Union, Elba Esther Gordillo, who apparently now sells her favors to the PAN, having recently dropped the PRI as it collapses.

It seems that the Section 59 members are not reaping their just rewards. Or maybe they are.

The zócalo is occupied by teachers and the APPO, as is the Alameda, along with the usual communist hard-liners who strung up photos of Joseph Stalin.. The APPO has sent out small groups of activists to paste posters to the walls of buildings – at least where I saw them, directly north and on the pedestrian-tourist streets around the zócalo. The two varieties of poster say: “Tourists! Boycott the commercial Guelaguetza on July 23!” and “Tourists! Come to the People’s Guelaguetza July 16!”, thus indicating that the APPO’s desire is not to further hamper tourism, nor to punish the hotel and restaurant owners, but to punish the elite who make big bucks off the Guelaguetza. In past years the Guelaguetza has been the time when political lackeys came to pay their respects to the feudal lord, URO, according the Oaxaca sociologist Victor Raul Martinez.

On that same stroll I ran into a man I first met several years ago who owns a shop adjoining the zócalo. The conversation was along the lines of, He: isn’t it terrible there are no tourists. Me: tourists don’t like murderers and assassins (my creativity at work); Oaxaca must get rid of Ulises. He: ???? Me: yes, tourists favor democracy and peace (more creativity). He: you mean tourists don’t like violence? Me: bingo!, or words to that effect.

What this illustrates to me is that few commercial people assign blame to Ulises, or at least not publicly. This includes the street vendors, who are licensed by the state and now suffer bitterly from the lack of tourists. The paid propaganda assigns all blame to the teachers and/or the APPO; the APPO is depicted as violent although all 26 or so murders were committed by government thugs or police, and none by the APPO. Nor were the tortures and disappearances committed by the APPO. I tell this to a woman vendor whom I’ve known for years. She has trouble understanding. I give her money, I buy her food, I purchase yet another place mat. But she is hearing bad info from the people who control her privilege to sell.

Several people, like the bishop emeritus of Tehuantepec, this week averred that Oaxaca and most of Mexico stands at the “last opportunity” for reform of the state. Attempts by an editorial in Imparcial to smear the 43 civil organizations pushing reforms, and naming certain of their leaders to intimidate them (along with mentioning “foreign journalists” and “foreigners donating money to human rights organizations which used that money to buy arms”) have not dampened civil society’s determination. The video’s playing in the zócalo show the other side of the struggle, and in front of each television set people stand and look. That’s the true education at work this week.

I look forward to returning to Oaxaca at the end of August and throwing myself back into this issue…watching the videos that play in the zócalo and, of course, finishing my dissertation research.

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From a Mexico Solidarity News bulletin:

CNDH REPORT ON OAXACA CRITICIZED
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), a federal government agency, released a report Thursday on human rights abuses in Oaxaca that was attacked as a farce by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). The report justifies acts by police and state authorities that violated thefundamental guarantees of Oaxacan citizens, according to the APPO. While the report recognizes a number of grave human rights violations, it ignores the dozens of people who were disappeared during the popular uprising in Oaxaca late last year, as well as over 60 people who remain in prison. The report failed to fix responsibility for at least 20 assassinations and acts of torture, disappearance and arbitrary arrest by authorities. The 181-page report calls for investigation of armed paramilitary groups, but stops short of defining links between paramilitaries and Governor Ulises Ruiz. The report censured ex-President Vicente Fox but left Felipe Calderon blameless, even though the sitting administration has responsibility for investigating human rights abuses. The report also defended Governor Ruiz, claiming his removal would not resolve the tense situation that remains in the state.

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