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Now
A profound political crisis is shaking
up Mexico. The rules that regulate the balance of power between
elites have been violated. From above, there is no agreement
or any possibility for one in the short term.
A severe crisis in the model
of control has eroded relationships of domination in many parts
of Mexican national territory. People accustomed to obeying have
refused to do so. People who think they are destined to rule
have been unable to impose their command. Those from below have
become disobedient. When those on the top want to impose their
opinion from above, in the name of the law, they are ignored
from below. Nowhere is the breakdown in control and the effervescence
of rebellion as obvious as in the state of Oaxaca.
Oaxaca is a state plagued with
social problems. It is a Mexican tourist enclave, surrounded
by poverty where people survive on remittances sent by migrant
workers abroad. Within its territory one finds land struggles,
confrontations between caciques(local bosses ) and coyotes (migrant
smugglers), local government conflicts, ethnic revenge, fights
for better prices for agricultural products, and resistance against
the authoritarian state.
Since May 15, Oaxaca has been
in the throes of its most massive and significant social movement
in recent history. The protest begun by Section 22 of the national
teachers' union (SNTE, for its initials in Spanish) soon became
the expression of the social contradictions in the state. It
is not at all unusual that teachers mobilize for pay raises around
the time of the contract negotiation. This time it has gone well
beyond a union struggle to fuse protests of many groups. Oaxacan
society has come out in force to show its solidarity with the
teachers and add in other demands and grievances. Around 350
organizations, indigenous communities, unions, and non-profits
have jointed to form the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca
(APPO).
Lessons
from the Teachers
The teachers' movement is the
only democratic force with a presence throughout the state. It's
the only organization capable of making their political presence
felt simultaneously in every municipality of the state.
Oaxacan teachers work in precarious
conditions. Their students arrive at school with empty stomachs
and drop out so they can help their families work in the fields.
Their classrooms are entirely unequipped. In order to get to
the communities they work in, they often have to invest their
own time and money in transportation, using roads that only exist
in official reports. Teachers have come to identify closely with
the precarious conditions of their communities they work in and
become not only fighters within their union, but the voices of
the community's demands as well.
The protest in Oaxaca started
as an expression of the union's struggle for a pay raise based
on rezoning cost of living scales. This is nothing new with respect
to struggles in years past. Their protest began on the same symbolic
and traditional date as it has for many years: May 15, Teacher's
Day. It is also common to use the presidential succession, to
increase pressure on the government to negotiate.
The protest radicalized as
a result of the state government's refusal to respond to their
demands. Instead of sitting down to negotiate, the governor threatened
the teachers, and then sent police to forcefully evacuate education
workers camped out in downtown Oaxaca. The outrageous repression
of June 14 radicalized the teachers, and from then on they demanded
the resignation of the state governor. Instead of seeking solutions,
the federal government pretended not to notice and said that
it was a local issue over which it had no authority.
This explosive political situation
was further polarized as a result of the last Oaxacan gubernatorial
election. Gabino Cué, backed by the ex governor Diódoro
Carrasco and a coalition of the majority of opposition parties,
confronted Ulises Ruiz, one of the main operators of Madrazo,
at that time candidate of the Institutional Revolution Party
(PRI) for the presidency. The tight win by the PRI was seriously
questioned by Cué supporters, who claimed election fraud
against him.
The teachers feel such responsibility
to their communities that the majority of them left the capital
occupation for a few weeks to end the school year with their
communities. Since classes are out they have returned to the
city to carry out their plan of action. The city of Oaxaca is
theirs.
The
Movement Grows
The claims of the teachers
quickly found an echo in a broad cross-section of Oaxacan society.
Bothered by the electoral fraud that brought Ulises Ruiz to power,
as well as governmental violence against the group of community
and regional organizations, thousands of Oaxacans took the streets
and more than 30 town halls.
Since that time a large part
of the society does not recognize Ulises Ruiz as governor. Since
a May 25 meeting between Ruiz and the Negotiation Commission,
they have not seen him. July 11 the APPO began, successfully,
a round of pacific civil disobedience that seeks to make obvious
the lack of governance and authority that exists in the state.
The movement took political
control of the city of Oaxaca. Since the occupation by federal
police that retook the center on Oct. 29, the movement has blocked
the entrances to expensive downtown hotels and the local airport;
it obstructs traffic and impedes the entrance to public buildings
and the state congress.
Ruiz, desperate to keep power,
betrayed his boss, PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo,
proposing at a meeting of PRI state governors that they recognize
PAN candidate Felipe Calderón as the winner of the presidential
contest. The federal government, needing allies to confront the
protests over presidential election fraud, has responded by maintaining
the teetering governor.
As time passes the situation
worsens. On July 22 a group of 20 unknown people fired high-powered
weapons at the Radio Universidad facilities. The university radio
station, run by the movement, has been converted into a formidable
instrument of information and social mobilization. The same day
Molotov cocktails were thrown at several movement leaders.
Dirty
War
Physical violence against protesters
is not new to Oaxaca. In the '80s Amnesty International published
a broad report documenting human rights violations in rural areas
of Oaxaca and Chiapas. Taking power by force, murders of political
dissidents, forced disappearances, and arbitrary detentions have
been common instruments used by a succession of state governments
to maintain control in the state.
The list of atrocities committed
by the government of Ulises Ruiz against the teachers movement
and the APPO grows day by day. Combined with the lack of governance
and stability in the state a serious human rights crisis has
emerged.
The assassination of dissenting
citizens at the hands of hired hit men and plainclothes police,
open fire against newspapers and independent radio stations,
kidnapping and torture of social leaders by paramilitaries, death
threats, underground detention centers, arson of buses by groups
affiliated with PRI authorities, and random detention without
warrant of movement leaders are some of the aggressions committed
against the civic movement that demands the resignation of the
governor.
The novel aspects of the violence
against resisters is that it seeks to dispel and intimidate the
broadest and most vigorous social movement the state has seen
in decades, and-with the exception of the October police offensive-it
is done "unofficially." This means that the majority
of the repressive acts are executed by state police and paramilitaries
dressed as civilians.
The state government does not
usually admit to responsibility for these incidents, although
it has admitted that it his holding some of the individuals originally
"disappeared" in high-security prisons. In Oaxaca a
new episode is being played out of the dirty war that shook the
country in the '70s and '80s and resulted in the disappearance
of 1,200 people.
To "justify" the
dirty war, the government and part of the media have spread the
message that the Oaxacan popular movement has been "infiltrated"
by leftist, politically militant organizations that have radicalized
the protest. But the movement for the resignation of the governor
has been explicitly framed as an act of civil disobedience, and
has followed clearly pacifistic paths. At no time has the APPO
used firearms in their actions. The radicalism comes from the
governmental authoritarianism. The violence is originating from
the other side.
An Organized
Society
Oaxacan society is highly organized
into ethnopolitical groups, communities, farms, producers, unions,
and environmental and immigrant defense groups. It has built
solid, permanent transnational networks. The traditional methods
of governmental domination, based on a combination of co-opting,
negotiation, division, manipulation of demands and repression,
have run out. The new dirty war has become the last resort of
a cornered political class to recover the chain of command.
In Mexico there is a long history
of social struggles that precipitate larger scale conflicts.
They are an alarm bell that alerts a country to serious political
problems that have not been resolved. For example, the workers'
strikes at Cananea and Rio Blanco are recognized as predecessors
to the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. The popular movement
that has shaken Oaxaca since May is an expression of this type
of protests. It has revealed the end of the old forms of domination,
the crisis between the political class and society, and the path
that the people's discontent could take throughout the country.
The movement has ceased to
be a traditional struggle or protest and begun to transform itself
into an embryo of an alternative government. The governmental
institutions are increasingly empty shells without authority
or public confidence, while the people's assemblies have become
the site of construction of a new political mandate.
Federal
Police Force Arrives
When the federal government
finally sends the federal police, in the streets of Oaxaca the
people confront them with peaceful protests. They hold up handwritten
banners that state simply: "leave, you're not welcome."
Thousands of people use their bodies as their only weapon to
resist the political aggression. Through their actions, they
convert fear into anger, humiliation into dignity.
At three of the barricades
the tension is higher. People throw sticks and stones. A few
decide to toss Molotov cocktails. Others launch bottle rockets.
From Radio Universidad, the voice of the movement against Ulises
Ruiz, announcers urge protesters repeatedly to use pacific means
to confront the incursion of federal troops. Be patience, be
calm, be smart, they warn. Don't let yourself be provoked, they
insist.
The government's offer to carry
out a clean dissuasion operation with no physical contact goes
up in smoke in the first moments. Empty words. The police throw
tear gas, wave their clubs around, shoot off firearms, ransack
private homes, detain individuals, confront journalists, and
seize their materials. Their byword is advance with all you've
got. They take over public buildings, erase evidence of their
mistakes and excesses, and make their strength felt.
Fighting Fire with Gasoline
As in Atenco, the government
launches a huge media campaign to cover up the atrocities of
its henchmen. Fox declares there are no deaths, that the results
are "a clean record." But the voice of the dead exposes
the truth. More than 50 detainees refute him. The wounded deny
his words.
The battle of Oaxaca is the
most important popular revolt in many years and could mark the
future of social protest in Mexico. Although the powerful say
that the police incursion was to guarantee public safety, what
is really behind the repression is the destruction of the newly
woven grassroots social consciousness and the decision to support
Ulises Ruiz.
While federal forces act like
an occupying army swollen by the positions it has managed to
retake, Oaxacans fly hundreds of Mexican flags and sing the national
anthem. In the fight for patriotic symbols, the government loses
the first round. A short time after the federal forces took the
center of the city and strategic positions, citizens put up new
barricades behind their backs. People from highland communities
come down to the capital to support the movement. They didn't
just come to march in a demonstration. A human fence has arisen
that surrounds the aggressors.
There is no way to return to
normalcy through violence. No way to knit the social fabric through
police occupation. Governing requires that the governed recognize
the legitimacy of their leaders. This acceptance does not exist
in Oaxaca and will never be attained with clubs and boots. Quite
the opposite, the fermenting inconformity has spread all over
the country because of the new aggressions. If until now some
sectors of society had remained neutral, the federal offensive
has obliged them to take part.
The images on the seven o'clock
news of confrontations between made-in-Mexico robocops and the
students and Oaxacan neighbors that defended the university on
Day of the Dead made it around the world. The Mexican police
were defeated by a popular uprising and the media bore witness.
The battle for Oaxaca is not
over yet. On the contrary, the solution to this conflict is more
complicated now than ever and the resolution even further away.
As the unavoidable saying goes: they tried to put out the fire
with gasoline.
The latest move of the people's
movement 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.
Oaxaca is today, more than
ever, Mexico. The civil disobedience there is close to becoming
a popular uprising that, far from wearing out, grows and becomes
more radical every day. The establishment of forms of self-government
is reminiscent of the Paris Commune of 1871. The way things are
going, the example set by the nascent Oaxaca Commune is far from
being limited to that state. It could be a taste of what may
sweep the country due to the governmental refusal to clear up
and clean up the presidential elections of July 2.
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 online at www.americaspolicy.org
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