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Weekend
Edition
November 11 / 12, 2006
A
CounterPunch Special Report
Beyond the Barricades
Oaxaca
at Any Cost
By BARUCHA CALAMITY
PELLER
Oaxaca.
Barricades removed by the Federal Preventive
Police, during their invasion and occupation of Oaxaca City since
Nov 1, may be reconstructed throughout the city as early as tonight.
"If hostility continues,
if detentions and disappearances continue, we will put up more
barricades...if Ulises doesn't leave, we will put the barricades
back up." said Alejandro Benitez, a student of the university
that houses the last remaining APPO radio station in the city.
In an attempt to satisfy negotiations with the APPO to take down
the remaining barricades, the government has released a few dozen
political prisoners in small groups each day, but as some prisoners
are released more people become detained or become disappeared.
The approximate number of detained so far is 85, and about 34
people are considered to be disappeared. Indeed, everyday numerous
acts of aggression take place against APPO members, their families,
and supporters.
Yesterday, as a 5.1 earthquake
shook the city, more students disappeared and received threats,
prompting the occupied university to declare a red alert. Four
APPO leaders with warrants on their names sought asylum in the
Catholic Church for the night. Many members of APPO´s 350
integrated organizations have abandoned their homes and offices
because of threats and violence from PRI party members or supporters.
"We are on the run,"
said Claudia, a member of CODEP, yesterday. "They have
entered our houses, or they have threatened us, so we are not
sleeping or working there. We won't just go to jail, the PRIistas
will disappear us, they will kill us."
Under so much repression, the
APPO is meeting today to draw a plan of action. And on the other
side, with the governablity of Oaxaca in question, governor Ulises,
under pressure from all sides including the Mexican Congress,
has accused his enemies in the federal government of "being
afraid to apply the law."
The Last
Barricade
Cinco Senores is the last major
barricade remaining after the entrance of the Preventive Federal
Police (PFP) in Oaxaca City. The barricade spreads over several
blocks surrounding the Autonomous Benito Juarez University and
the University Radio, the only remaining APPO radio. In the past
few days, the radio signal has had interruptions and can no longer
be heard in some parts of the city, in response, yesterday, a
march of radio supporters held a protest decrying radio interruptions.
At the intersection of Cinco Senores, each road is blocked with
burned buses, rebar and light poles.
Shots were fired into and towards
the university four times this week, twice in the early morning,
once at night, and in the early afternoon today. Twenty-two
year old Marco Sanchez Mertinez was hit by a bullet earlier in
the week while guarding the radio entrance and remains in grave
condition in the hospital. Though the government presented the
possibility of removing the Federal Preventive Police from the
city if the protesters removed the Cinco Senores barricade and
freed up movement on the central university avenue, the APPO
decided that they would keep the barricade intact and reinforce
security as long as aggressions continue.
It was here on November 2 that
about 150 students and APPO supporters, some as young as 12 years
old, were able to force a thousand PFP police to retreat during
an attempted eviction of the radio. Although during a seven
hour battle the federal forces launched tear gas from two low
flying helicopters, shot water with indelible identifying ink,
and aimed tear gas canisters directly at the bodies of the radio
defenders, they were defeated by a rain of stones, molotov coctails
and homemade firework launchers.
A twelve year old boy running
through the streets that day with a paper mask to filter tear
gas and sweat pouring down his face explained breathlessly, "We
are the people and the people cant be defeated no matter who
the police kill, fuck them." A day later, two military officers
were captured by young barricade guards and released two hours
later to the Red Cross.
Apart from the new APPO planton
in Santo Domingo plaza, the Cinco Senores Barricade is the only
remaining image of rebellion in Oaxaca City. Before the federal
forces entered Oaxaca there were close to three thousand barricades
of varying sizes around the city, but today the Cinco Senores
Barricade is ground zero for the flickering visibility of APPO
in the city.
The eviction of barricades
gives Oaxaca City the appearance of normalcy, something important
for Ulises Ruiz, since he is under a serious threat of being
ousted by the Mexican Congress (after being ousted by popular
decree of the people of Oaxaca) due to the blatant ungovernability
of the state. The image of "normalcy" is also in the
interest of exiting President Fox , who insists that Oaxaca is
not a major problem and does not suggest the instability of the
country as a whole. He makes these declerations despite increasing
solidarity protests throughout the nation, in which highways
are blocked and the idea of barricading "business as usual"
is recreated from Chiapas to Morelia.
The barricades must also be
routinly torn down if the social movement of Oaxaca is to be
controlled, because for months the barricades are the place where
people have come together to sleep and eat, talk politics, and
where the youth practice launching rocks in slings and laugh
and play.
The barricades, along with
the new APPO planton at Plaza Santo Domingo in the center of
city, have become exactly what APPO represents; a rebellious
intersection of lives that were previously segregated by their
common social and economic marginalization. Because the APPO
is based in the teachers movement and Mexican teachers have traditionally
been the ones with the greatest ability of communicating with
"el pueblo", the people, rural and urban social movements
have fused around the teachers from different parts of the state.
And at the barricades and the APPO planton, Oaxacan people have
began to recognize eachother and their similar plight of poverty
and misery, in the looming shadow of neo-liberal privatization
and development plans.
Life of
Terror with the PFP and the PRI
The presence of the Federal
Preventive Police in Oaxaca City has greatly empowered supporters
of the governor and members of his PRI party. Radio Ciudana,
a PRI controlled radio station, has openly threatened members
of the APPO, calling on PRI supporters to go to houses of APPO
members and to hurt them. There have been reports that molotovs
have been thrown into houses of some APPO members. At night
Oaxaca City falls quiet, and people rarely walk around unless
in large groups, for fear of being disappeared, arrested, or
killed.
The government and the paramilitaries
alike have used the death of indymedia journalist Brad Will as
a tool to step up their aggression. A caller on the same PRIista
radio called on people to kill any foreigner they see with a
camera, and it is believed that the government used the death
of a foreigner as a a justification for the need of "order"
in Oaxaca and to carry out more arbitrary detentions of protesters.
"Ulises has made the political
practice of terror a constant," says one of APPO's best
known faces, Flavio Sosa."These types of acts have been
a pratice of the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. For example,
the assassination of Brad Will permitted, accelerated, and justified
the entrance of the Federal Preventive Police. This environment
of fear has been a provacation by the federal government."
More than three hundred warrants
have appeared for APPO members, and there is a search warrant
for the University Radio, apparently to look for weapons.
As reports of threats, disappearances,
and torture inside prisons continue to pour in, there remains
a spirit of confidence among the Oaxacan people who are resisting
the government.
Although the Federal Police
hold a 24-hour standing blockade in full riot gear on all the
streets surrounding the Zocalo, people still insist Oaxaca City
cannot be occupied by anyone but the people themselves. Late
one night, protesters took pounds and pounds of the day´s
trash from the APPO plant on in Santo Domingo plaza to a huge
dumpster that sits in front of a line of police with shields
protecting the Zocalo. The protesters stuck their fingers to
the air and, discovering that the police were down wind, lit
the trash on fire. As the police were forced to remain standing
in the smoke of burning trash, people walked by on the street
and shouted insults at them.
During Tuesday's march of 10,000
APPO women in memorial of those dead and disappeared, white flowers
rained down on the police standing guard outside the Zocalo as
the women chanted "Assassins!". In response, the federal
police sprayed the march with water from tanks and launched stones
at protesters with slingshots.
Despite these confrontations
it has seemed that this week both the PFP and the APPO have been
careful of major provocations, and that there was small room
for give and take on both sides. But all of that is likely to
change with the recent buildup of PRIista, paramilitary, and
police repression inflicted through scattered acts of violence.
In The
APPO's Gaze
Though the exit of governor
Ulises Ruiz seems to be APPO's primary concern, and indeed APPO
was formed as a reaction to the violent attempted eviction of
the teacher´s union sit-in in June by the governor, there
exists a deeper political desire within the APPO.
"...Later on, the idea
matured of not only looking for the fall of Ulises, but also
to transform the conditions of our lives that we have, and in
our bases to create a new relation between society and the government."
says Sosa." We have debated with civil society about the
changes that Oaxaca needs, and towards where the type of government
that we want must walk. The APPO is taking this avenue. The
other is the struggle in the streets...that lately has been converting
itself, not only as a peaceful movement, but a movement that
is able to respond to the aggressions that we suffer from the
PFP".
But it is difficult to tell
what will happen when and if Ulises Ruiz leaves, if the APPO
will struggle for an autonomous or assembly controlled state,
or if they will appeal for reforms with the next governor. The
APPO seems to be quite coherent in the need to address conditions
caused by neo liberal policies, and in their movement there has
been a transformative analysis of political parties, authoritarianism,
and the mass media-something that has been extremely tangible
with the takeovers of mainstream television and radio networks
by APPO women.
While crafting the vision of
the future in the APPO Constitution Congress this weekend perhaps
the APPO and its support bases will form a clearer idea of their
desires and needs, and the new way "of doing politics."
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