Resistance in Oaxaca continues despite violence

Violence persists in Oaxaca City, Mexico, following a major escalation in the five-month-old conflict that began with a teacher's strike and has expanded into a larger struggle for civil rights. The conflict has claimed more than a dozen lives, mostly protesters. Protesters are demanding the ouster of controversial Governor Ulises Ruiz, who became a pariah to many Oaxacans five months ago when he used force to break up a teachers strike. The teachers, some of whom have returned to work in outlying schools, have ceded center stage in the demonstrations to an umbrella activist group, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO). The group advocates for the rights of indigenous people and is demanding economic and cultural changes that its leaders say are aimed at improving the lives of the poor. The protesters had occupied a large square in the center of the city, the Zócalo, until the Federal Preventative Police (PFP) invaded the city following the Oct. 27 shooting deaths of two protesters and US journalist Brad Will. That incident prompted President Vicente Fox to send the PFP to clear the Zócalo in an attempt to end the APPO occupation. Following the Oct. 29 PFP invasion of Oaxaca City and their seizure of the Zócalo, protesters aligned with the APPO have moved their base to Benito Juarez Autonomous University in the University City district of Oaxaca City. According to the Mexican constitution, federal police forces may not enter university grounds. This makes the university a strategically important location for protesters who seek to continue resisting Fox's attempts to contain and subdue the protests. The university is especially important because it houses the radio station, Radio Univesidad, that allows protesters in different parts of the city to communicate with each other and facilitate further resistance. The radio station has long been a target both for the PFP and paramilitary forces aligned with the governor. APPO defends University City against PFP attack Despite the constitutional ban, the PFP unsuccessfully attempted to evict APPO from university grounds on Nov. 2. Police bashed through barriers on roads leading to the university and launched tear-gas canisters at protesters. But the officers stopped short of crossing into the campus, pulling up as if they had hit an invisible wall. Entrances to the university were defended by hundreds of protesters armed with sticks, rocks and Molotov cocktails. It is unclear whether the PFP ever actually intended to enter the university or if they sought to clear out the protesters using massive amounts of tear gas launched into the university from the surrounding streets and dropped from helicopters. Another technique by the PFP was the use of a staining agent mixed into water shot by tanks at demonstrators. The staining agent presumably marks protesters for subsequent arrest. There are already around 200 arrest warrants out for APPO leaders including Flavio Sosa, a well-known leader and spokesperson for the group. There are additional reports of tear gas having been shot directly into private homes in the vicinity of the University. "The university is our symbol of autonomy, of freedom," demonstrator Carlos Manuel said as he paused in the shade after fleeing a tear-gas cloud. "It's the heart of our people." APPO members and sympathizers used guerrilla tactics to overcome an overwhelming disadvantage in firepower against police, who were backed by heavy armored vehicles and water cannons. Protesters in bandannas sneaked up behind advancing police officers, distracting them by pounding rocks against metal telephone poles and leaving them open to a barrage of rocks lofted from rooftops with slingshots. By the time the PFP retreated at least thirty people were arrested and more than seventy injured. Demonstrators set up crude first-aid operations several hundred feet behind the most intense fighting. After their retreat spokespeople for the PFP claimed that they were merely trying to clear streets around the university and had no intention of entering, but protesters remain skeptical. Radio Universidad was still broadcasting long after the PFP retreated at around 3pm. As the police backed away, the streets filled with thousands of people chanting, "Ulises has fallen." Massive march follows APPO victory Reinvigorated by their successful defense of University City APPO organizers called for another "mega march" in Oaxaca on Nov. 6 to maintain the movement's momentum. The march filled over 3 miles of federal highway 190 with hundreds of thousands of protesters all shouting for the governor's ouster. "This shows the people's unity," said one marcher who declined to give her name. At 10am, members of the APPO and supporters from across the state and the country began to gather at the monument to Benito Juarez about 4 miles outside of Oaxaca's Zocalo. The day before a caravan of nearly 100 cars, trucks and buses left from Mexico City to join the march. It took them over twelve hours to reach Oaxaca City–twice the normal travel time–due to military roadblocks set up to intercept them along the way. The caravan also had trouble getting gas as most stations had been ordered not to serve them. Early in the morning, in anticipation of the march's arrival, the PFP closed off all entrances to the Zocalo with six-foot-high barricades made of razor wire. They also stationed special operations officers on the roofs of surrounding buildings and doubled the ranks of riot police guarding the barricades. The march seemed relatively small, around 4,000 people, before leaving from the Juarez monument, but quickly expanded as people began to walk and found thousands more supporters waiting for them along the road. Throughout the entire length of the march, hundreds of people from surrounding neighborhoods gathered to applaud, offer marchers water and oranges, and then file in behind. Tensions rose briefly as the marchers entered the historic center, passing within two blocks of the reinforced police barricades. The cars leading the march turned up Porfirio Diaz but several marchers shouted to continue straight, towards the Zocalo. APPO organizers quickly linked arms forming a human wall to shut off the street and guide the march up toward Santo Domingo Cathedral where organizers say they will establish a new APPO camp. "We want to show that our struggle is peaceful and just," said a middle-age teacher from Tlaxiaco who declined to give her name. "Ulises Ruiz is the one who sends people out to kill. How is it possible that he is able to hire killers and stay in office?" When asked about the Nov. 2 battle outside the state university, she responded that the students: "did not attack; they defended themselves from an attack in an unequal battle because those wretched police are armed to the teeth. If they start to attack, well people have to defend themselves as best they can." In other news, Radio Universidad reported that gunmen had fired at some protesters near the university earlier on Nov. 6, injuring a 21-year old student who was taken to a public hospital. The hospital confirmed a student had been brought in with a bullet wound. There was no immediate government reaction to the report. Gov. Ruiz ignores continued calls to step down Despite the ongoing violence aimed at affecting his ouster, Gov. Ulises Ruiz vowed on Nov. 3 that he would not resign or take a leave of absence, even as demonstrators demanding his ouster were refortifying barricades torn down the day before by federal police. "No conditions exist in which I would resign," Ruiz said as he sat beneath a large oil painting of Benito Juárez, the beloved 19th-century president who was born in the state of Oaxaca. "How many more deaths is Ruiz worth, and how many more problems must mount up?" asked political scientist and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Miguel Morales, criticizing in an IPS interview the governor's insistence on holding on to power. While acknowledging that federal police are now necessary to maintain order in Oaxaca, Ruiz said he expects that the officers "will not be needed long." He also insisted that his government is functioning normally and that much of the city of Oaxaca is under control. His statement seemed far from the realities in Oaxaca, where hotels that normally would have been packed for Day of the Dead festivities are nearly empty, countless shops are closed, traffic is clogged by protest marches and machine-gun-toting federal police officers roam the streets in heavy trucks. Ruiz is under increasing pressure to resign. The Mexican Congress has passed resolutions urging him to quit, and his own party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, has abandoned him. The judiciary has also gone against him. On Nov. 3, Mexico's Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit that Ruiz had filed to challenge the congressional resolutions.