This Week in the Americas

Oaxaca Fights Back
By Laura Carlsen

The Oaxacan protest movement burns slow, but deep. Oaxacan teachers, who mobilized for a pay raise last May, consciously built on years of protest against social inequality in their state. On June 14, the state government attempted to evict protesting teachers from Oaxaca's central plaza. Oaxacans responded by forming the broad-based Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). The federal government confronted the growing movement on October 28 when it sent thousands of federal police to occupy the city. The murders, wounding, and disappearance of the protestors have only deepened the resolve of the movement as a whole.

On November 5, the movement mobilized tens of thousands of people in a march through Oaxaca. In the pre-dawn hours of November 6, bombs exploded in the offices of the electoral tribunal, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and an international bank. No one was killed or injured, but the tension rose several notches. The APPO immediately condemned the bombings and repeated that it has no relations with guerrilla groups. It has continued to try to negotiate a peaceful settlement of its demands. In the turbid political atmosphere following Mexico's presidential elections on July 2, Oaxaca's conflict has now catalyzed a series of events that threaten Mexico's stability.

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:

Bush’s Anti-Terrorist Record: Don’t Look Too Hard!
By Saul Landau

The U.S. government's treatment of Luis Posada Carriles and Maher Arar shows the Bush administration's terrorism policy has no standards. While Arab suspects with no evidence or charges against them get “rendered” to other nations or stranded in Guantanamo, two anti-Castro terrorists who destroyed an airplane with passengers aboard are getting kid glove treatment.

Saul Landau is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).

Resistance and Repression in Oaxaca
By Luis Hernández Navarro

The latest move of the people's movement in Oaxaca has been to convert their protest into a central item on the national agenda. The following months will be marked by the conflict. The federal government has got itself into a quagmire that it can't get out of.

Luis Hernández Navarro is Opinion Editor at La Jornada in Mexico, where parts of this text were published. He is a collaborator with the Americas Program at www.americaspolicy.org.

Republicans Plan Lame-Duck Peru Trade Vote
By Sarah Anderson and Sara Grusky

The Republican House leadership is planning another sneaky tactic to pass an unpopular trade agreement. If passed after the U.S. elections, the accord could lock in more bad investment rules.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Sara Grusky is Latin American Program Coordinator at Food and Water Watch. They are contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).

If you would like to reproduce our articles for free, please cite the source, and let us know at americas@ciponline.org. We also welcome comments about our materials.

If you would like to unsubscribe, click on the link below that says "Update Profile/Unsubscribe". If you would like to subscribe for the first time to our multitude of topical lists, please go to http://app.streamsend.com/public/iKs8/Mr1/subscribe.

The Americas Policy Program is a fiscally sponsored program of the
Center for International Policy
http://www.ciponline.org/
Email: americas@ciponline.org
Tel. in Mexico: (52 55) 5324-1201, U.S. phone: (202) 536-2649

Donations can be mailed to: (please specify Americas Program)

Center for International Policy
1717 Massachussets NW, Suite 801
Washington, DC 20036

Or by visiting the site: https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/CenterforInternationalPolic/OnlineGiving.html