Courage and Resistance in Oaxaca and Mexico City

by Stephen Lendman

It began on May 15 this year when teachers belonging
to the 70,000 strong National Union of Education
Workers in Oaxaca, Mexico took to the streets for the
first time to press their demands to the state
government to address their long-neglected needs.
They included restructuring teachers’ salaries,
improving the deplorable educational infrastructure
forcing teachers to conduct classes in laminated
cardboard shacks, a lack of books and other
educational materials and providing food for the many
impoverished children who come to school each day
hungry.

After Chiapas, Oaxaca is the poorest of Mexico’s 31
states, each of which has its own constitution and
elected governor and representatives to the state
congresses.  Both states share a common border in the
extreme south of the country, and both are
predominantly rural which exacerbates the
impoverishment of their people.  That poverty level
worsened substantially in the 1980s and especially in
last dozen years because of the neoliberal so-called
“free market” policies adopted by President Carlos
Salinas and maintained by successive presidents up to
the present that included the destructive NAFTA trade
agreement with the US and Canada.  It followed from
the IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies since
the mid-1980s that included large-scale privatizations
of state-owned industries, economic deregulation, and
mandated wage restraint that held pay increases to
levels far below the rate of inflation.  The result is
that the great majority of Mexicans for years have
seen their standard of living decline, and more of
them now live in poverty especially in the rural areas
where farmers are unable to compete with heavily
subsidized US grain and other food imports flooding
the country since the NAFTA agreement ended
agricultural import tariffs.  It’s the main reason so
many of them and other impoverished Mexicans come el
norte in desperation to find work unavailable to them
at home.

Mexico’s adherence to neoliberal Washington Consensus
policies also added to the country’s growing
dependency on capital inflows that includes “hot
money” free to enter and leave the country’s
deregulated financial markets.  It led to an
unsustainable current account deficit and collapse of
the peso in early 1995 causing the worst depression in
the country in 60 years and far greater impoverishment
of the majority of the Mexican people.  Those
conditions still affect most Mexicans, they’re not
getting better, and there’s a growing discontent and
anger because of them.  It’s leading to acts of
resistance and rebellion against a system of
governance that’s enriched a small minority of the
country’s elite (a handful of them to obscene levels
of wealth) at the expense of the majority poor sinking
deeper into poverty and the misery from it.  It’s
playing out now in the mass-demonstrations in Mexico
City’s vast Zocalo Plaza de la Constitucion (where the
country’s first constitution was proclaimed in 1813)
in the wake of another stolen presidential election
and in the streets of Oaxaca where teachers, other
working people, and many organizations and groups in
solidarity with them are encamped and demonstrating
daily for the rights they deserve.  It shows that
ordinary people anywhere will only put up with so much
for so long before demanding change.  In the Mexican
streets today, it just remains to be seen how far
these acts of resistance will go and what successes,
if any, they’ll have.

The Spirit of Resistance in Oaxaca

Back in May, demonstrating teachers presented their
reasonable demands to Oaxaca’s Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz
(known as URO) who rejected them out of hand.  A week
later on May 22 the teachers went on strike and set up
a tent city in an area covering 34 city blocks in the
colonial downtown area.  This was the 26th consecutive
year Oaxaca teachers had demonstrated demanding
redress for their grievances.  In the other years, the
teacher action lasted a few weeks, a modest compromise
was eventually reached, and things returned to normal
even without satisfactorily resolving fundamental
problems that always remained.  Not this time,
however, as events have played out.  Negotiations
began but after nearly three weeks produced nothing.
The teachers rejected Governor Ruiz Ortiz’s claim that
he had no resources to meet their demands.  In
response, they blocked government offices, city
streets and highways, tollbooths, access to the
airport, caused the cancellation of the Guelanguetza
cultural festival, and brought the important tourist
industry to its knees causing over 1000 hotel workers
to be laid off. They also held marches obstructing
traffic through the downtown area and blocked
construction projects on the Cerro de Fortin that
overlooks the highway entering Oaxaca from Mexico
City.  The frustration is clearly showing among
Oaxaca’s merchants, restauranteurs, and hotel keepers
who’ve announced a one-day strike on September 1 in
protest and to demand the government end the strike
that’s cost them millions of dollars and closed down
the city’s lifeblood tourist industry.

Back on June 2, things began to intensify as thousands
of other working people and representatives from
Oaxacan organizations joined in solidarity with the
teachers to march against the state government and
Governor Ruiz Ortiz. They repeated it again on June 7
in another huge peaceful march numbering about 120,000
in which student and parents’ groups, other union
members, and representatives from socialist and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Oaxaca and
other states joined with the teachers to help them
press their demands.  So far everything was peaceful,
as in the past, but all that changed on June 14 when
state police entered the compound where the teachers
were camping.  They had riot shields, fired tear gas
at the people there, and were aided by an overhead
police helicopter that also dropped tear gas canisters
on the crowds that by now were raging.  The police
also destroyed or burned nearly all the encampment
shelters and disabled Radio Planton that had been
broadcasting information to the people from the main
square since the demonstration began.

The teachers took none of this lightly and fought back
as best they could including tearing up cobblestones
to throw at the police and setting police cars afire.
After some hours they managed to regain the upper
hand, but from this action a precedent had been broken
of short-lived peaceful actions each year followed by
government obstinacy and in the end a modest
compromise.  For the first time ever, this strike
action became militant, and it showed two days later
on June 16 when an astonishing 300,000 - 500,000
people marched again (in a greater area of 1 million
people) outraged at how they were treated and
demanding the immediate resignation of Governor Ruiz
Ortiz who again ignored them.  It was clear this was
becoming more than just another strike for better pay
and working conditions.  It had grown to much more
than that to include Mexico’s long history of
authoritarian rule for and by the rich and powerful
with little attention given to addressing people
needs. 

A clear show of common determination and defiance of
state authority then happened early in July when the
teachers, other unions, indigenous peoples, religious
groups, NGOs and others from all across Oaxaca state
bonded together to form the Popular Assembly of the
People of Oaxaca (APPO) declaring this to be a
citizens’ assembly taking over as the governing body
of the state.  APPO set up encampments outside all
state government buildings including the legislature
and governor’s offices closing them all.

So far though, there’s no resolution in sight to the
confrontation and no clear idea whether there will be
one soon or what it will be when the current strife
eventually ends.  It’s now been ongoing for over three
months, has erupted in violence leaving two people
dead and has gone well beyond the demands of the
teachers who began it hoping, as in other years, for a
peaceful solution.  It wasn’t to be and now it’s
closed off highways and the schools, crippled the
state’s tourist industry, caused physical damage in
the city, and polarized the people en masse against
the Oaxacan government.  The teachers and other
demonstrators showed it by seizing government offices
forcing the governor and officials to work out of
hotels and then other makeshift facilities when
demonstrators warned hotel mangers they would
peacefully take over the ones allowing state officials
to hold sessions there. 

The governor is now under enormous pressure with the
people demanding he resign immediately.  In
desperation he’s apparently disappeared, and his
whereabouts remain secret.  Unless in hiding he orders
the state authorities go all out in violent
confrontation, APPO representing the working people of
Oaxaca is now the functioning authority in the state.
It remains to be seen if it intends to hold on to it
and can do it.  For now though, the confrontation
continues and it’s getting even uglier.  On August 21
at 3:00 AM, four vans of armed men (apparently police
and hired paramilitary thugs) attacked the people
guarding the antenna of Channel 9 and radio 96.9 with
high powered weapons resulting in several people being
wounded and one killed.  In retaliation, the
demonstrators took control of 10 AM and FM radio
stations and are using them to inform the people
what’s happening on the streets.  Other attacks also
have been occurring most nights elsewhere in the city
with people shot at or disappeared again apparently by
the state police and hired paramilitaries.  So far the
Oaxacan people are resolute and determined to see this
through to the end and to do it nonviolently.  They
have the numbers on their side, and up to now the
Federal government has been reluctant to intervene
because of the mass peaceful resistance movement in
the Mexico City streets and elsewhere calling for a
just resolution of the fraudulent July 2 presidential
election vote count so far unaddressed.

The Struggle for Electoral Justice On the Streets of
Mexico City

If the people of Oaxaca stand firm and succeed in
effectively running their state and getting redress
for their demands which are quite reasonable, it will
add momentum to the national campaign in the wake of
the fraudulent Mexican presidential election now
playing out simultaneously in Mexico City’s vast
Zocalo public square and elsewhere around the country.
For weeks, Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)
candidate Lopez Obrador (known affectionately as ALMO)
and his supporters have maintained a 12 mile
encampment in downtown Mexico City and effectively
kept the city in gridlock.  They’ve symbolically
closed government offices, shut down whole sections of
streets across the city for miles, taken over toll
booths, for a time blocked Mexico’s Stock Exchange,
and held mass marches through the streets with as many
as a record 2 million turnout at one of them to
support their candidate.  They demand a full and
honest vote recount of the July 2 presidential
election results that had clear rampant fraud and
irregularities unsatisfactorily addressed.  Unless
they are, Obrador promised his supporters his campaign
for an honest recount of all precincts “vote by vote,
precinct by precinct” will continue indefinitely in
the courts and on the streets where like in Oaxaca
civil resistance will be used if their reasonable
demands by peaceful protests are ignored which so far
they have been. 

At this point, there’s no way to know for sure how the
battle for electoral justice will be settled, but
several key dates are approaching fast. The issue of
resolving the election’s official winner is in the
hands of the Federal Election Tribunal (or
Trife…prounounced Treefay).  It has until August 31
to officially complete its final count and up to
September 6 either to declare a winner, annul up to
20% of the precincts without annulling the entire
election, or annul the whole thing which by law would
mean the Congress would choose an interim president
and have a new election within two years.  A second
key date is September 1 when current President
Vincente Fox must give his annual State of the Union
address.  Lopez Obrador has said if the Trife declares
National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderon
the winner, he and his supporters will protest in mass
“civil resistance” at the halls of Congress on that
date. 

Two other fast-approaching dates must also be watched
- Mexico’s national Independence Day on September 15
and the following day when traditionally a military
parade is scheduled through the historic center of the
city.  On September 15, the president always comes to
the balcony of the Palacio National on one side of the
square, rings the ceremonial bell and leads the “cry
of pain” from the Zocalo.  Lopez Obrador promises if
Calderon is declared the winner he and his supporters
will replace Vincente Fox with their own cry of pain
and disrupt the traditional commemoration then and
again the following day of the parade. 

How this will be resolved is now in the hands of the
seven Trife judges who on August 28 unanimously
dismissed allegations of massive fraud and are almost
certain to declare Felipe Calderon the winner and new
Mexican president.  It’s final decision cannot be
appealed.  Lopez Obrador responded calling the ruling
“offensive and unacceptable for millions of Mexicans.”
He told his assembled followers in the Zocalo this
court decision “represents not only a disgrace in the
history of our country but also a violation of the
constitutional order and a true coup d’etat.”  He also
called his opponent a “usurper” and added “the
constitutional order is broken…..and the electoral
tribunal decided to validate the fraud against the
citizens’ will and decided to back the criminals who
robbed us of the presidential election.”  He went on
to say Mexico “needs a revolution” and vowed to name
himself president when the Trife’s official ruling is
announced.

There’s no way to know for sure what will happen next,
but this may be a watershed moment in Mexico’s
history.  The long-entrenched institutions of power in
the country are being challenged as never before.
Since the Trife, as most expected, failed to address
the overwhelming fraud and election theft, there
likely will be civil resistance in the streets in
opposition that potentially could become a mass
uprising over the coming weeks.  If this happens, it
could threaten to unseat the federal authorities in
the capitol and lead to mass violence and bloodshed as
they attempt to restore order.  With that in mind,
it’s been rumored that a contingent of US Special
Forces has been sent to help the Mexican military
guard the country’s oil fields in case of trouble.
Mexico’s Pemex state oil company produces about 3
million barrels of oil a day and ships about half of
it to the US, thus making Mexico one of this country’s
leading oil suppliers. 

It’s also gone unreported that the Congress in Mexico
City is surrounded by 6 and one-half foot high grilled
metal barriers.  Behind them are 3,000 special shock
troops who are Federal Preventive Police (PFP), a
force drawn from the Mexican Army and members of the
elite Estado Mayor or Presidential military command.
They form a Praetorian Guard line of defense armed
with tear gas launchers, water cannons and light tanks
assigned to protect the institutions of power against
a rebellion that might threaten to storm the
legislative Chamber of Deputies, Senate or the Palacio
Nacional (the National Palace seat of the federal
executive in Mexico).

Given the constant mass demonstrations in the Mexico
City streets, this force is certain to be on high
alert, can easily be reinforced if needed, and is now
ready to act if civil resistance turns to disobedience
or rebellion in the aftermath of the final Trife
ruling that now looks to be a mere formality.  Blood
in the streets is nothing new to Mexico, and it may be
seen there again as tensions now are very high and not
likely to subside soon.  Lopez Obrador said if the
Trife formally declares Felipe Calderon the election
winner he will lead a civil resistance movement in
opposition and do it by setting up some kind of
parallel government.  If he follows through and keeps
his word, the battle lines will be clearly drawn in a
struggle ahead that likely will be turbulent,
protracted and uncertain as to how it will end.

Another potential source of trouble is the still
unsettled matter of 30 political prisoners arrested on
May 3 and 4 in San Salvador Atenco.  Addressing that
issue quietly and much more is Zapatista (EZLN) leader
Subcomandante Marcos.  He and many thousands of his
supporters and organizations allied with him
representing many thousands more in their Zapatista
Other Campaign organized a national movement to end
Mexico’s unjust economic system of corrupted and
predatory capitalism that exploits people for profit
ruthlessly.  His goal one day is to bring real social,
economic and democratic change to the country but do
it outside the political process within which he
believes it can never happen.

Toward that goal, on January 1 this year, Marcos began
a six month campaign taking him to all Mexico’s 31
states to meet and listen to a diverse range of
people, groups and organizations hoping to gain
greater support for his mission and goals.  The spirit
of APPO and people on the streets in Oaxaca are very
much a part of the Other Campaign Marcos is trying to
build.  What’s not part of it is supporting Lopez
Obrador’s campaign for the presidency because Marcos
wants much greater reform for Mexico than he believes
Obrador would ever work for if elected or even be able
to achieve through the electoral process if he wanted
to.  He hopes his Other Campaign can achieve it, and
with a great enough organizing effort is trying to
build unity among many diverse elements in the country
to back him in his campaign for real change and the
benefits it can bring to the great majority of the
Mexican people. 

With so much resistance happening on the streets of
the country today that’s likely to intensify after the
August 28 Trife announcement, Mexico may be more ripe
for real change now than it’s been since the heroic
efforts of Emiliano Zapata Salazar helped lead a
national revolutionary movement against the Porfirio
Diaz dictatorship that began in 1910 and led to the
dictator’s overthrow the following year.
Subcomandante Marcos and his modern-day Zapatistas may
sense another watershed moment in Mexico’s troubled
history and feel now is the time to seize it and go
for the change he hopes to help achieve.

For now though, it remains for events to play out in
the upcoming days and weeks throughout the country.
There are strong indications that Mexican authorities
sense a troubled time ahead, are armed and ready for
it if it comes with likely US military support, and
will have to consider how to deal with it.  It’s in
their hands to decide whether to use violent militant
action against the people demanding justice or relent
and give in enough to keep things from spiraling out
of control.  Whatever action they take, it’s possible
Mexico may never be the same again, but it’s still too
early to know and no one should be foolish enough to
guess.  The best anyone can say is stay closely tuned
in case Mexican history is about to be made.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
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site at sjlendman.blogspot.com