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Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
November
14, 2006
A First Challenge to a Government Without
Legitimacy
Oaxaca
Fights Back
By LAURA CARLSEN
In regional lore, Oaxacans have a reputation
for being like the tlacuache. A recurring figure in Mexican
mythology, thetlacuache plays dead when cornered. But
woe to the enemy who thinks the battle is over. The small but
fierce creature merely awaits a more propitious moment to fight
back.
The Oaxacan protest movement
burns slow, but deep. Oaxacan teachers, who mobilized for a pay
raise last May, consciously built on years of protest against
social inequality in their state. On June 14, the state government
goaded the Oaxacan tlacuachewhen it attempted to evict
protesting teachers from Oaxaca's central plaza. Oaxacans responded
by forming the broad-based Popular Assembly of the Peoples of
Oaxaca (APPO). The federal government confronted the growing
movement on October 28 when it sent thousands of federal police
to occupy the city. The murders, wounding, and disappearance
of the protestors have only deepened the resolve of the movement
as a whole.
Although the stage was set
for confrontation, the movement continued to insist on non-violence.
They lay down in front of advancing tanks and distributed flowers
to riot-geared cops. On November 2, a crucial battle took place
when the police attempted to retake the university. Inside the
university, the radio station that has been the backbone of the
protest organizing over the past five months was under siege
the entire day. Radio APPO did not cease to broadcast and the
people did not cease to defend it, despite the grossly uneven
odds against them.
"Our eyes are burning
with tear gas, but at least now we can see the government for
what it really is," a young woman commented over the air
in a voice filled with urgency and determination. "We're
not budging."
People all over the world heard
her. Radio APPO streamed through the computers of listeners who
followed the battle for the university in blow-by-blow accounts.
They instantly activated networks to plan their own protests.
Within days, demonstrators gathered in front of Mexican consulates
and embassies in the United States and Europe, calling for an
end to police repression of the movement. People whose names
are well known throughout the world wrote and published letters,
and people whose names have been printed only in phone books
signed petitions. In a small town in Italy, hundreds of young
people gathered to discuss North-South cooperation and declare
their solidarity with Oaxaca, and in New York several protesters
were arrested in front of the Mexican consulate. The Zapatista
Other Campaign mobilized a binational roadblock on the Mexico-U.S.
border. The list of actions worldwide goes on and on.
Both houses of the Mexican
congress and the secretary of the interior, who is charged with
domestic policy, have called for Oaxacan Governor Ulises Ruiz
to step down. Despite the breakdown of governance in the state,
he has refused saying it is his duty to hold on to his job. On
November 5, the movement mobilized tens of thousands of people
in a march through Oaxaca. In the pre-dawn hours of November
6, bombs exploded in the offices of the electoral tribunal, the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and an international
bank. No one was killed or injured, but the tension rose several
notches. Several guerrilla groups claimed responsibility for
the acts, demanding the resignation of the governor, freedom
for political prisoners held following police repression in the
town of Atenco, and investigation of the charges of electoral
fraud.
The APPO immediately condemned
the bombings and repeated that it has no relations with guerrilla
groups. It has continued to try to negotiate a peaceful settlement
of its demands. In the turbid political atmosphere following
Mexico's presidential elections on July 2, Oaxaca's conflict
has now catalyzed a series of events that threaten Mexico's stability.
Why Oaxaca?
The mountains of Oaxaca became
the refuge of pre-Columbian civilizations that were never fully
conquered. The history of resistance and persistence that developed
there permitted the survival of cultures that bucked a colonizing
mentality and rejected tacitly or explicitly the wholesale imposition
of colonial political systems. At the same time, to subjugate
the rebels required some of the nation's most brutal forms of
repression. Many of these remain fundamentally intact to this
day. The governor, whose resignation has become the principal
demand of the current Oaxacan insurrection, has inherited the
mantle of this centuries-old tradition of repression.
Oaxaca is a land of many peoples.
The state encompasses 16 languages within its borders and has
the nation's largest number of municipalities (570), in large
part due to the determination to preserve and strengthen local
self-government. Even in Oaxaca City, where fighting between
police and protesters has transformed the urban landscape, diversity
precludes any easy characterization. Mixtecos converge with Martians
(the local name for the city's large population of foreign artists,
writers, pensioners, and NGO workers), tourists with beggars,
the rich with the poor.
This diversity, which in another
context could fragment a social movement, has become the wealth
and collective strength of Mexico's most important social justice
rebellion in recent years. Oaxacan teachers have drawn on over
26 years of experience in the democratic teachers' movement.
Section 22, the group of Oaxacan teachers organized in the National
Education Workers Union (SNTE by its Spanish initials), has long
been a stronghold of the democratic faction of the union. For
years its leaders have been elected from this dissident faction
and have become leaders in Oaxaca's social movements beyond the
union as well.
Oaxaca's rebellion also has
roots in the battles of the indigenous communities for autonomy
and, since the 1970s, for the restoration of communitarian forms
of self-government, collective work, and identity. Added to the
mix has been the anger of a new generation of high school and
university students sick of getting short shrift from governments
impoverished by structural adjustment and corruption. And as
a final ingredient in a recipe for rebellion, citizens sensitized
to the injustice expressed in daily life rose up against a disputed
gubernatorial election that seemed to doom their society to more
of the same or worse.
Leading
Edge
The significance of the Oaxacan
movement to Mexico is obvious. It is the first challenge to a
federal government with little legitimacy or credibility, elected
amid charges of fraud last July. Although Felipe Calderon takes
office on December 1, the rules of Mexican politics dictate that
all major, and especially very visible, decisions like the repression
of the Oaxacan movement must at least be approved by him. The
government's decision to send in federal police is in part based
on a desire not to pass on a problem to a weak president who
lacks the political capacity to resolve it.
The frustrations that led to
the formation of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca
(APPO) exist throughout the country. Elections that fail to reflect
the popular will, inequalities that sunder communities, brutality
and corruption that flourish with impunity-no region is immune
from the kind of social unrest that gave birth to the Oaxacan
movement. Many Mexicans openly celebrate each victory of the
Oaxacans, and each day they maintain the resistance. Knowing
this, the government seeks to repress the movement without conceding
political ground, so as not to provide a dangerous precedent
in a system that relies on the complacency of the political and
economic have-nots.
But why do other people care?
Does Oaxaca have a meaning beyond an inspirational tale for those
who aspire to a more just world?
If the movement for global
justice were a territorial battle, Oaxaca would be a tiny point
on a very large map, of little consequence except to the people
involved. But symbolic battles, although very real for the combatants
themselves, are the true terrain of the movement for global justice.
They offer an opportunity, even when lost, to defeat the myths
that uphold the system.
Oaxaca is the South of the
South. It is the truth to the lie that Mexico has joined the
First World by grabbing onto the coattails of the United States
through the North American Free Trade Agreement. The failure
of this integration strategy in Oaxaca and other southern states
in Mexico was so obvious that even a recent World Bank report
felt obliged to address the issue. Its conclusion-"the southern
states did not benefit from NAFTA because they were not prepared
to reap the benefits of free trade"-was foregone and surprised
no one who has studied the Bank's blame-the-victim logic. If
forced to do an evaluation of globalization in general, defenders
of neoliberalism would no doubt castigate the entire global South
for this supposed failure. Needless to say, it is of little consolation
to the hungry, the displaced, the disenfranchised, and the discarded.
The Oaxacan rebellion is proof
that for many people, even physical preservation can become secondary
to fighting for a conviction. With only the raw material of their
own lives in their hands, they have set out to mold a different
future. Although demands today center on the governor's resignation
and fair pay for teachers, the new forms of organization and
consciousness created will endure long after this movement and
become the seeds of future movements.
They will also be the seeds
of popular rebellions in other places. The Oaxacan rebellion
is a reminder that an evaluation of the consequences of free
trade and globalization is indeed overdue - and that the World
Bank has no right to be the evaluator. The people who have suffered
the consequences should evaluate the system. Too often in the
North, the reports of protest and rebellion around the world
are seen as disparate battles or isolated complaints and not
as part of a growing consensus that something is gravely wrong.
Those who have benefited from free trade rules, especially those
living in countries that designed these rules, have a responsibility
to get the message.
What could have been a local
conflict has detonated a national confrontation and contributed
to the revival of violent factions. The government's lack of
political will has blocked real negotiations. It has failed to
respond to Oaxaca's valid demands and open up talks on the reforms
needed to assure Mexico's peace and stability. Instead, the country
is now perilously close to the opposite.
Laura Carlsen is director of the IRC
Americas Program in Mexico City, where she has been a writer
and political analyst for more than two decades.
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