Protesters converged on the central plaza in the early afternoon Monday in a mostly peaceful demonstration calling for the ouster of federal police and the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz. Sweltering in body armor and helmets on a hot day, the police stood impassively as some protesters pleaded for them to join their cause, and others insulted the officers' mothers and manhood.
"How quickly you forget the villages where you come from," said a woman, wagging a finger at police.
The protesters' grievances stem from the desperate poverty in this southern state, especially among the indigenous people, who are among the poorest and least educated in Mexico.
"All we want is work, hospitals, better schools and the military out," said Veralisa Flores, a teacher who marched with friends. "This is a peaceful movement."
Rogue elements have damaged the image of the fledgling movement, as well as that of the local government. Over the weekend authorities announced the arrest of five men in Friday's slaying of American journalist Bradley Roland Will, including the police chief and two of his officers from nearby Santa Lucia del Camino. Many residents who visited the plaza early Monday said they hoped the arrival of federal police would be the first step in bringing Oaxaca back to normal.
"The majority of people are relieved the police are finally here," said Gloria Crisantos, who with her family brought bottles of water to police officers. "We've been held hostage in our own city. Look around. Ask anyone." As if on cue, a crowd of passers-by gathered, eager to voice their support for police. They said they had lost business and jobs, and that their children had been out of school since May.
Meanwhile, both houses of Congress voted Monday to ask Ruiz to resign or take a leave of absence.
But the Federal police don't have control. They may have led a crackdown on local death squads, but the truth behind the protests and oppression has not emerged.
Democracy Now!
Since August, paramilitary groups who have been identified in photographs have been driving through the city killing protesters at barricades, and they’ve been doing this with total impunity. The fact that they’ve claimed to have apprehended and turned over to authorities the five gunmen who were killing people on Friday is of little consolation, since they’ve had these people identified for months. And the very authorities themselves have taken steps back to actually trying to enforce the law and bring the gunmen to any kind of justice. Both the government and most of the press, especially the international press, has made much more of a fuss about protesters wearing bandannas and spray painting pretty buildings than they have about paramilitary death squads who have been driving around town, with total impunity, killing people for months.
[...]GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Well, the question was that the teachers started their strike, as usual. Every year, they are forced to do this kind of strike to get some improvement in their terrible conditions, terrible economic condition. But that was not something special. That was the usual thing.
But then, after three weeks of their strike, on June 14th, they suffered a terrible, stupid, barbaric repression by the police of Ulises Ruiz, the governor, and that was the detonator of the movement. People started to react immediately, joining and supporting, expressing solidarity with the teachers and expressing the decision to oust the governor. And then this was the detonator of the accumulated discontent of the whole state.
After that, five days later, we have APPO, the creation of this Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca. We have a march of almost a million people. That is a third of the population of the state. We have every kind of activities after that, with -- that was the consolidation, the expression of a very well organized discontent of the people. This is a movement without leaders, in which the people themselves, very well organized, with amazing courage and amazing capacity of expressing their will. They are organized first to oust this governor, and then to change our society, to create a different kind of society. We don’t want anymore this kind -- as the woman said, we don’t want anymore this kind of repression, of corrupt government, of imposition of authoritarianism, and we want a different kind of conviviality in our lives.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting, Gustavo, that you said that, in fact, the federal police don't have control of the city, whether or not they’ve taken the city square. It’s certainly not what’s being reported in the U.S. press. The reports are that Vicente Fox, as a result of an American journalist being killed and others, moved in thousands of federal police to restore order to Oaxaca, and they have taken the city.
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Well, the disorder has not been created by the people. It has been created by this barbaric, psychopathic governor. You see hired killers, and you’ve seen the structures of authority, that should protect the law, to violate the law. It is not the people themselves who have created disorder in the city. That is the alibi of President Fox, using the police to support this governor in a very peculiar structure of cynicism and complicity. It is a combination that is forcing the people of Oaxaca to pay a very heavy price for a democratic, peaceful struggle.
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