Dear friends,
At this moment the Federal Police are trying to retake the University in Oaxaca, where protestors have a stronghold and have been operating a radio station crucial to their movement. The fighting is fierce—the police are launching tear gas from the ground and from helicopters (it was impact from gas grenades that killed at least one protestor in past days), and using high pressure water hoses on tanks to beat back the people. They are entering private houses and people fear the kind of vengeance attacks seen in the Atenco. The determination and resistance of the APPO is strong though and they have called out sympathizers to join them. Radio APPO continues to broadcast a blow-by-blow account. Please take the time to send a message to President Fox to CEASE THE REPRESSION IMMEDIATELY and calling for the resignation of the governor (see contact information below).
Laura
Presidente Vicente Fox Quesada
Phone: 52 552 789 1100 / Fax: 52 555 277 2376
E-mail: vicente.fox.quesada@presidencia.gob.mx
Licenciado Carlos Abascal Carranza, Secretario de Gobernación,
Fax: +52 (55) 5093 3414. cabascal@segob.gob.mx
Mexican Newspapers:
http://www.lajornada.unam.mx
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx
http://www.milenio.com/mexico
This Week in the Americas
Day of the Dead in Oaxaca
By Laura Carlsen
November 1 was the Day of the Dead. It's the day that Mexicans flock to the cemeteries to visit family members who have passed on. Or, if you believe the traditions, to welcome the dead who come back to visit them.
This year among the dead are 17 people killed in Oaxaca. They are dead because they dared to challenge a political and economic system that bound them to poverty and powerlessness. Most were assassinated by forces affiliated with the state governor, Ulises Ruiz. Some, whose blood has still not dried, were murdered by federal police sent in “to restore order” on Oct. 28.
The movement in Oaxaca began on May 15, national Teachers' Day, when state members of the education workers' union mobilized to protest against the latest imposition of a contract negotiated between corporatist leaders of their national union and the government. They asked for a pay raise and initiated a sit-in in Oaxaca City's central plaza.
There was nothing unusual in their action. Section 22, the teachers' union in Oaxaca, has historically been a bastion of the decades-old democratic movement to free the national union from the control of leaders whose interests are tied to the country's most powerful political figures and not the workers' well-being.
But their protest sparked a wildfire when Governor Ruiz sent in armed security forces to evict them on June 14. The deaths as a result of the repression enraged a society already angry at what many viewed a stolen gubernatorial election. Ulises Ruiz is an old-style politician from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that ruled Mexico single-handedly for 71 years and still exercises control over parts of the Oaxacan countryside through violent party bosses.
Suddenly there was no middle ground in Oaxaca. Some 350 organizations grouped to form the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). Indigenous communities mobilized by their own grievances, students, professionals sick of the pretence of democracy, vendors, and workers, joined ranks with the teachers to demand the ouster of the governor.
Oaxaca is among Mexico's poorest states. It's also among the most organized from the grassroots. Oaxacans have a reputation for stubbornness, and their resistance to successive forms of domination has continued for over 500 years. Their movements long ago learned to grow in the rocky soil left after everything valuable was systematically taken from them.
Now they have emerged not just to protest, but to build. Networks of solidarity, autonomous forms of communication, and spontaneous expressions of frustration and hope have come together to form what Luis Hernandez Navarro (http://www.ircamericas.org/esp/3530), a pioneer in the democratic teachers' movement, calls the “Oaxaca Commune” in reference to the Paris Commune of 1871.
But just as a re-alliance of the ruling class brought down the Paris Commune, the alliance between the rightwing National Action Party (PAN) and the PRI has launched an offensive against the popular movement in Oaxaca.
It began as a war of attrition, with several protestors a week killed by plainclothes gunmen, in an undercover dirty war that included kidnappings, torture, and selective assassination. With the entry of the Federal Police, repression now wears uniforms—about 4,000 of them.
National politicians know that Oaxaca means more than a state struggle for teachers' pay raise. Although he does not take office until Dec. 1, the battle for Oaxaca is the first of the administration of Felipe Calderón, who was elected amid accusations of fraud. A popular movement bringing down a leader after an election deemed fraudulent is not the kind of precedent Calderón would like to see established.
As the president-elect woos leaders of foreign countries (he recently returned from South America and next meets with Bush), the home front is far from calm. Protests against fraud in the July 2 federal elections continue, other sections of the teachers' union are threatening work stoppages in solidarity with Oaxaca, and the APPO has announced that if troops have not been withdrawn it will disrupt the presidential inauguration. Both chambers of Congress have voted to ask the governor to step down. In Mexico City thousands have marched and participated in roadblocks in solidarity with Oaxaca.
Over 30 leaders are in prison and others have been kidnapped or reported missing. Altars to the dead have been erected to pay homage to those killed by police and snipers over the past four months. The call for the resignation of the governor and to end the repression has only gotten stronger since the occupation by federal forces.
The movement for democracy and economic fairness in Oaxaca has rebaptized one of Mexico's most hallowed holidays. This year, the protesters have proclaimed it “the day of no more dead.”
Laura Carlsen is director of the IRC Americas Program at www.americaspolicy.org in Mexico City, where she has been a writer and political analyst for more than two decades.
New from the IRC Americas Program:
Guatemala: Two Months of CAFTA
By Umberto Mazzei
Two months is not much time, but we can sense that life in CAFTA’s universe will provide material for Guatemalan satire. Imports increase and exports decrease; no evidence on new investment, but there are new taxes in sight. Business continues in the hands of the same people as always.
Umberto Mazzei is Director of the Institute for International Economic Relations in Geneva (www.ventanaglobal.info) and member of the Mesa Global coalition in Guatemala. This article was originally published in the magazine Este País, October 2006 edition.
See full article online at:
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3664
Eleventh-Hour Election Meddling in Nicaragua
By Ben Beachy
As Nicaraguans make their way to the polls on Sunday, they must again consider not only “What will this candidate do for my country if elected?” but also “What will the U.S. do to my country if this candidate is elected?” The product of relentless outside interference, this sad reality is profoundly undemocratic.
Ben Beachy is an educator with Witness for Peace (www.witnessforpeace.org) in Nicaragua and a contributor to the IRC Americas program, online at http://americas.irc-online.org. Witness for Peace is a politically independent, grassroots organization that educates U.S. citizens on the impacts of U.S. policies and corporate practices in Latin America and the Caribbean.
See full article online at:
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3658
Indigenous Border Summit Opposes Border Wall and Militarization
By Brenda Norrell
Indigenous peoples at the Border Summit of the Americas opposed the construction of a border wall, which will dissect indigenous communities on ancestral lands split by the U.S.-Mexico border. They also issued a strong statement against the ongoing militarization of their homelands and proposed actions that will counteract the aggression they continue to face.
Brenda Norrell has been a news reporter in Indian country for 23 years, working as a staff reporter for Navajo Times and Indian Country Today and as an AP correspondent during the 18 years she lived on the Navajo Nation. She is currently a freelance writer based in Tucson and a contributor to the IRC Americas Program, online at www.americaspolicy.org.
See full article online at:
http://americas.irc-online.org/amcit/3648
Hunting Hugo
By Conn Hallinan
There are times when the tensions between Venezuela and the Bush Administration seem closer to Commedia dell'arte than politics. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez compares President George W. Bush to the devil, right down to the smell of sulfur during a speech at the UN General Assembly. Homeland Security responds by strip searching Nicolás Maduro Moros, Venezuela's foreign minister, at JFK airport. Venezuela seizes 176 pounds of frozen chicken on its way to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.
But recent White House initiatives suggest that the Administration has more than tit-for-tat in mind. In late June, U.S. Southern Command, the arm of the U.S. military in Latin America, concluded that efforts by Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia to extend state control over their oil and gas reserves posed a threat to U.S. oil supplies.
Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) columnist.
See full article online at:
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3630
Intense Dispute in the Heart of the Southern Cone
By Raúl Zibechi
In late September and early October, some major moves on the regional chess board shook up the political situation in Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay. The moves confirmed that Washington is not the only player in South America, and must accept multilateralism as an established reality in the region.
The United States expects to rely on Latin America as a secure base for resources, markets, and investment opportunities. And as planners have long emphasized, if this hemisphere is out of control, how can the United States hope to resist defiance elsewhere?
Raúl Zibechi, a member of the editorial board of the weekly Brecha de Montevideo, is a professor and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de America Latina and adviser to several grassroots organizations. He is a monthly contributor to the IRC Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org).
See full article online at:
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3663
