[News] Day of the Dead in Oaxaca

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

November 2, 2006


"Suddenly, There Was No Middle Ground ..."


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 <http://www.ircamericas.org/esp/3530>Luis 
Hernandez Navarro, 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 
<http://www.americaspolicy.org/>IRC Americas 
Program in Mexico City, where she has been a 
writer and political analyst for more than two decades.


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