November 9, 2006

By Uli Schmetzer in Oaxaca:
www.uli-schmetzer.com

After failing to break the six months long populist
protests of teachers, joined by workers and students,
the authorities in Oaxaca are resorting to ‘dirty war’
tactics to intimidate the population and those who
flocked from all over the nation to support a protest
that has turned into a national cry for social justice
and a more egalitarian society. In this dirty war
agents in civvies kidnap people off the streets, some
of them innocent bystanders. Released detainees report
systematic torture. Many people have vanished,
classified ‘missing.’ The first reports of executions
and bodies are surfacing.

This is just what happened on one ‘quiet’ day this
week.

At dusk, when the voluntary workers tallied up the
numbers the total was 22. That meant 22 young people
kidnapped and missing in less then a day. Everyone
here knows they were snatched by agents in civvies as
they left the rally point on the square and the
streets around the 16th century Santo Domingo Church
in Oaxaca City.
Gone without a trace; clubbed, punched and bundled
into cars to join some 30 others reported missing over
the last week in the standoff between a tyrannical
governor and a popular protest to oust him.
Many of those ‘missing’ are people not involved in the
protests but snatched off the streets to arouse more
fear.
After all at stake in this central Mexican town today
is not only the future of a governor and a region, a
cacique of the old colonial school who not only fakes
elections but sees himself as master over life and
death, but the future of an anachronistic Mexican
political system badly cracking at the seams under the
pressure of snowballing insurrections joined by new
forces every week. Commentators on both the left and
the right agree: “Oaxaca will determine the political
fate of Mexico.”

As Latin America swings to the left and marginalized
majorities clamor for justice and a better deal the
battle lines are drawn in Oaxaca: Around the Zocalo
(the town center and seat of the provincial government
of Oaxaca) stand the bulk of 15,000 riot police, all
fitted out like Star War robots. Their task is to
defend the embattled governor Ulises Ruiz. His name,
taken in vain as ‘tyrant’ and ‘assassin’ is scribbled
all over city walls, even on the backs of trucks.

Ruiz is an old style relic from colonial days. He is
hardly worse then many of his predecessors, members of
the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) an
oligarchic party which ruled Mexico for 71 years. But
the loathed governor has become a symbol for the evils
of a system that rigged its own elections with methods
that were not very subtle and represented a fabulously
rich and arrogant oligarchy condemning the great mass
of Mexicans, particularly millions of indigenous
people, to an existence barely above or below the
poverty line.

It was his attitude rather then his alleged election
fraud or his manipulation of land sales that landed
the governor in trouble. Each year around May the
teachers go on strike for more money. Each year, after
a few weeks or days, the governor and the teachers
union reach a deal. This year Ruiz decided he did not
want to make a deal. He sent in his goons to beat up
the striking teachers. And that’s how the protest
snowballed, taking in outraged citizen, students,
workers and the poor classes.

Ruiz and his predecessors have clung to their office
thanks to the gun-ho paramilitary squads that do their
dirty work. Similar paramilitary units work for most
of the large hacienda owners in Mexico. These
thug-squads are already accused of shooting dead some
15 protesters in Oaxaca including an American
cameraman gunned down while he was filming them
discharging their weapons. Even though photos of the
gunmen were published in Mexico’s mass media not one
of them has been charged with a misdemeanor. This
surprises no one in a country where not one single
person responsible for the massacre on Tlatelolco
Square in 1968 was ever tried or indicted despite
periodic government promises to bring the culprits to
court.

As opposition forces contended governor Ruiz was
constitutionally incapable of exercising his duties
outgoing President Vincente Fox dispatched the riot
police to keep the governor in office. It appears
clear now the PRI, the old moribund rhinoceros of
Mexican politics, will only support the contended
presidency of Fox’s successor from the PAN (National
Action Party) if Ulises Ruiz is kept as governor in
Oaxaca. The PAN facing virulent opposition from the
defeated presidential candidate Obrador - who alleges
he was beaten by fraud and who has already declared an
alternate government in Mexico - needs PRI support if
its candidate is to be sworn in successfully next
month.

Today the phalanx of riot police and their plastic
shields stand on every access road to the Zocalo. The
question is how long can they resist popular clamor
written on nearly every city wall: “Ulises must go.”
The answer depends largely on how tough Mexico’s new
president wants to appear once he is sworn in next
month and how much backing the protest movement can
expect from the opposition and organizations like the
Zapatistas or the followers of defeated presidential
candidate Obrador as well as an international
community that has been taking a growing interest in
the violations of human rights in Oaxaca.

In the meantime the police water cannons, the
tear-gas-firing rifles and large doses of pepper gas
are keeping the governor safe from being lifted to
safety by the hovering police helicopters.

Less then a mile from the police cordons and slightly
uphill, outside the venerable 16th century church of
Santo Domingo, the protesters, many of them veterans
of a nearly six months old teachers’ strike, are
gathered for their battle against the governor. They
keep vigil day and
night, in their thousands. Their fervor has not
flagged thanks to modern communication systems that,
just as it did with the Zapatista uprising, had a
decisive impact on the protests. Two radio stations,
one run by APPO (the umbrella organization of the
protests known as the Popular Assembly of the Peoples
of Oaxaca) the other by university student barricaded
into University City on the fringe of town (where they
already successfully fought off one police raid)
broadcast news about incidents, statements and events
around the clock as an effective antidote to the
establishment-run TV and radio stations. These
corporate stations portray a peaceful city where
citizen clamor to be rid of ‘the trouble makers on the
barricades’ and where protesters not police are
responsible for the dead.

In the square the indignation of the protesters are
fueled by videos of the clashes with riot police
played over and over. Popular music blares all day,
vendors sell food and artifacts, news about those
missing or in detention is mega-phoned, signatures are
collected, donations are taken.

Late at night many of the protesters drift off to
homes or friends places. It is then the agents of the
governor pounce. They are well informed about protest
leaders identified by spies moving freely, often with
cameras, among the throng of protesters.

According to voluntary lawyers not one of those
‘missing’ had an arrest warrant issued against them.
Over the last days, so the lawyers say, 30 people have
gone ‘missing,’ without a trace. Between 45 to 50 more
have been located in various jails by a battery of
voluntary lawyers. Most of the detained are students
or trade union officials. There are accusations of
systematic torture and reports of bodies taken away in
trucks, a grim reminder of the 1968 and 1971 student
uprisings.

By mid-week the governor’s judicial system had
released 43 additional detainees, all of them after
their families, most of them poor with an average
income of 50 pesos a day, were made to pay a minimum
fine of
4,000 pesos ($400 U.S.).

“These are mandatory fines that go right into the
pockets of the officials because the prisoners have
never been charged nor sentenced. This is
unconstitutional, it violates all human rights, but no
one in the federal government gives a damn,” said one
of the lawyers Wednesday.

Many of those arrested had nothing to do with the
protests. They were simply picked up as they walked
along the streets in the evening. Their arrest is
simply a way to pad the pockets of crooked officials.

In the Square, protesters, already impoverished by 192
days on strike, are taking up collections to buy the
freedom of those whose whereabouts are known. Copies
of the videos showing the clashes go on sale in the
Square and the proceeds are also used to buy the
freedom of the imprisoned.
In all this drama someone is still making money, and,
as usual, by fleecing the poor. (ends)