November 21, 2006
Lessons from the Teachers
Repression and Resistance in Oaxaca
By Luis Hernández Navarro
A profound political crisis is shaking up Mexico. The rules that regulate
the balance of power between elites have been violated. From above, there is
no agreement or any possibility for one in the short term.
A severe crisis in the model of control has eroded relationships of
domination in many parts of Mexican national territory. People accustomed to
obeying have refused to do so. People who think they are destined to rule
have been unable to impose their command. Those from below have become
disobedient. When those on the top want to impose their opinion from above,
in the name of the law, they are ignored from below. Nowhere is the
breakdown in control and the effervescence of rebellion as obvious as in the
state of Oaxaca.
Oaxaca is a state plagued with social problems. It is a Mexican tourist
enclave, surrounded by poverty where people survive on remittances sent by
migrant workers abroad. Within its territory one finds land struggles,
confrontations between caciques(local bosses ) and coyotes (migrant
smugglers), local government conflicts, ethnic revenge, fights for better
prices for agricultural products, and resistance against the authoritarian
state.
Since May 15, Oaxaca has been in the throes of its most massive and
significant social movement in recent history. The protest begun by Section
22 of the national teachers' union (SNTE, for its initials in Spanish) soon
became the expression of the social contradictions in the state. It is not
at all unusual that teachers mobilize for pay raises around the time of the
contract negotiation. This time it has gone well beyond a union struggle to
fuse protests of many groups. Oaxacan society has come out in force to show
its solidarity with the teachers and add in other demands and grievances.
Around 350 organizations, indigenous communities, unions, and non-profits
have jointed to form the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO).
Lessons from the Teachers
The teachers' movement is the only democratic force with a presence
throughout the state. It's the only organization capable of making their
political presence felt simultaneously in every municipality of the state.
Oaxacan teachers work in precarious conditions. Their students arrive at
school with empty stomachs and drop out so they can help their families work
in the fields. Their classrooms are entirely unequipped. In order to get to
the communities they work in, they often have to invest their own time and
money in transportation, using roads that only exist in official reports.
Teachers have come to identify closely with the precarious conditions of
their communities they work in and become not only fighters within their
union, but the voices of the community's demands as well.
The protest in Oaxaca started as an expression of the union's struggle for a
pay raise based on rezoning cost of living scales. This is nothing new with
respect to struggles in years past. Their protest began on the same symbolic
and traditional date as it has for many years: May 15, Teacher's Day. It is
also common to use the presidential succession, to increase pressure on the
government to negotiate.
The protest radicalized as a result of the state government's refusal to
respond to their demands. Instead of sitting down to negotiate, the governor
threatened the teachers, and then sent police to forcefully evacuate
education workers camped out in downtown Oaxaca. The outrageous repression
of June 14 radicalized the teachers, and from then on they demanded the
resignation of the state governor. Instead of seeking solutions, the federal
government pretended not to notice and said that it was a local issue over
which it had no authority.
This explosive political situation was further polarized as a result of the
last Oaxacan gubernatorial election. Gabino Cué, backed by the ex governor
Diódoro Carrasco and a coalition of the majority of opposition parties,
confronted Ulises Ruiz, one of the main operators of Madrazo, at that time
candidate of the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) for the presidency.
The tight win by the PRI was seriously questioned by Cué supporters, who
claimed election fraud against him.
The teachers feel such responsibility to their communities that the majority
of them left the capital occupation for a few weeks to end the school year
with their communities. Since classes are out they have returned to the city
to carry out their plan of action. The city of Oaxaca is theirs.
The Movement Grows
The claims of the teachers quickly found an echo in a broad cross-section of
Oaxacan society. Bothered by the electoral fraud that brought Ulises Ruiz to
power, as well as governmental violence against the group of community and
regional organizations, thousands of Oaxacans took the streets and more than
30 town halls.
Since that time a large part of the society does not recognize Ulises Ruiz
as governor. Since a May 25 meeting between Ruiz and the Negotiation
Commission, they have not seen him. July 11 the APPO began, successfully, a
round of pacific civil disobedience that seeks to make obvious the lack of
governance and authority that exists in the state.
The movement took political control of the city of Oaxaca. Since the
occupation by federal police that retook the center on Oct. 29, the movement
has blocked the entrances to expensive downtown hotels and the local
airport; it obstructs traffic and impedes the entrance to public buildings
and the state congress.
Ruiz, desperate to keep power, betrayed his boss, PRI presidential candidate
Roberto Madrazo, proposing at a meeting of PRI state governors that they
recognize PAN candidate Felipe Calderón as the winner of the presidential
contest. The federal government, needing allies to confront the protests
over presidential election fraud, has responded by maintaining the teetering
governor.
As time passes the situation worsens. On July 22 a group of 20 unknown
people fired high-powered weapons at the Radio Universidad facilities. The
university radio station, run by the movement, has been converted into a
formidable instrument of information and social mobilization. The same day
Molotov cocktails were thrown at several movement leaders.
Dirty War
Physical violence against protesters is not new to Oaxaca. In the '80s
Amnesty International published a broad report documenting human rights
violations in rural areas of Oaxaca and Chiapas. Taking power by force,
murders of political dissidents, forced disappearances, and arbitrary
detentions have been common instruments used by a succession of state
governments to maintain control in the state.
The list of atrocities committed by the government of Ulises Ruiz against
the teachers movement and the APPO grows day by day. Combined with the lack
of governance and stability in the state a serious human rights crisis has
emerged.
The assassination of dissenting citizens at the hands of hired hit men and
plainclothes police, open fire against newspapers and independent radio
stations, kidnapping and torture of social leaders by paramilitaries, death
threats, underground detention centers, arson of buses by groups affiliated
with PRI authorities, and random detention without warrant of movement
leaders are some of the aggressions committed against the civic movement
that demands the resignation of the governor.
The novel aspects of the violence against resisters is that it seeks to
dispel and intimidate the broadest and most vigorous social movement the
state has seen in decades, and-with the exception of the October police
offensive-it is done "unofficially." This means that the majority of the
repressive acts are executed by state police and paramilitaries dressed as
civilians.
The state government does not usually admit to responsibility for these
incidents, although it has admitted that it his holding some of the
individuals originally "disappeared" in high-security prisons. In Oaxaca a
new episode is being played out of the dirty war that shook the country in
the '70s and '80s and resulted in the disappearance of 1,200 people.
To "justify" the dirty war, the government and part of the media have spread
the message that the Oaxacan popular movement has been "infiltrated" by
leftist, politically militant organizations that have radicalized the
protest. But the movement for the resignation of the governor has been
explicitly framed as an act of civil disobedience, and has followed clearly
pacifistic paths. At no time has the APPO used firearms in their actions.
The radicalism comes from the governmental authoritarianism. The violence is
originating from the other side.
An Organized Society
Oaxacan society is highly organized into ethnopolitical groups, communities,
farms, producers, unions, and environmental and immigrant defense groups. It
has built solid, permanent transnational networks. The traditional methods
of governmental domination, based on a combination of co-opting,
negotiation, division, manipulation of demands and repression, have run out.
The new dirty war has become the last resort of a cornered political class
to recover the chain of command.
In Mexico there is a long history of social struggles that precipitate
larger scale conflicts. They are an alarm bell that alerts a country to
serious political problems that have not been resolved. For example, the
workers' strikes at Cananea and Rio Blanco are recognized as predecessors to
the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. The popular movement that has shaken
Oaxaca since May is an expression of this type of protests. It has revealed
the end of the old forms of domination, the crisis between the political
class and society, and the path that the people's discontent could take
throughout the country.
The movement has ceased to be a traditional struggle or protest and begun to
transform itself into an embryo of an alternative government. The
governmental institutions are increasingly empty shells without authority or
public confidence, while the people's assemblies have become the site of
construction of a new political mandate.
Federal Police Force Arrives
When the federal government finally sends the federal police, in the streets
of Oaxaca the people confront them with peaceful protests. They hold up
handwritten banners that state simply: "leave, you're not welcome."
Thousands of people use their bodies as their only weapon to resist the
political aggression. Through their actions, they convert fear into anger,
humiliation into dignity.
At three of the barricades the tension is higher. People throw sticks and
stones. A few decide to toss Molotov cocktails. Others launch bottle
rockets. From Radio Universidad, the voice of the movement against Ulises
Ruiz, announcers urge protesters repeatedly to use pacific means to confront
the incursion of federal troops. Be patience, be calm, be smart, they warn.
Don't let yourself be provoked, they insist.
The government's offer to carry out a clean dissuasion operation with no
physical contact goes up in smoke in the first moments. Empty words. The
police throw tear gas, wave their clubs around, shoot off firearms, ransack
private homes, detain individuals, confront journalists, and seize their
materials. Their byword is advance with all you've got. They take over
public buildings, erase evidence of their mistakes and excesses, and make
their strength felt.
Fighting Fire with Gasoline
As in Atenco, the government launches a huge media campaign to cover up the
atrocities of its henchmen. Fox declares there are no deaths, that the
results are "a clean record." But the voice of the dead exposes the truth.
More than 50 detainees refute him. The wounded deny his words.
The battle of Oaxaca is the most important popular revolt in many years and
could mark the future of social protest in Mexico. Although the powerful say
that the police incursion was to guarantee public safety, what is really
behind the repression is the destruction of the newly woven grassroots
social consciousness and the decision to support Ulises Ruiz.
While federal forces act like an occupying army swollen by the positions it
has managed to retake, Oaxacans fly hundreds of Mexican flags and sing the
national anthem. In the fight for patriotic symbols, the government loses
the first round. A short time after the federal forces took the center of
the city and strategic positions, citizens put up new barricades behind
their backs. People from highland communities come down to the capital to
support the movement. They didn't just come to march in a demonstration. A
human fence has arisen that surrounds the aggressors.
There is no way to return to normalcy through violence. No way to knit the
social fabric through police occupation. Governing requires that the
governed recognize the legitimacy of their leaders. This acceptance does not
exist in Oaxaca and will never be attained with clubs and boots. Quite the
opposite, the fermenting inconformity has spread all over the country
because of the new aggressions. If until now some sectors of society had
remained neutral, the federal offensive has obliged them to take part.
The images on the seven o'clock news of confrontations between
made-in-Mexico robocops and the students and Oaxacan neighbors that defended
the university on Day of the Dead made it around the world. The Mexican
police were defeated by a popular uprising and the media bore witness.
The battle for Oaxaca is not over yet. On the contrary, the solution to this
conflict is more complicated now than ever and the resolution even further
away. As the unavoidable saying goes: they tried to put out the fire with
gasoline.
The latest move of the people's movement has been to convert their protest
into a central item on the national agenda. The following months will be
marked by the conflict. The federal government has got itself into a
quagmire that it can't get out of.
Oaxaca is today, more than ever, Mexico. The civil disobedience there is
close to becoming a popular uprising that, far from wearing out, grows and
becomes more radical every day. The establishment of forms of
self-government is reminiscent of the Paris Commune of 1871. The way things
are going, the example set by the nascent Oaxaca Commune is far from being
limited to that state. It could be a taste of what may sweep the country due
to the governmental refusal to clear up and clean up the presidential
elections of July 2.
Luis Hernández Navarro is Opinion Editor at La Jornada in Mexico, where
parts of this text were published. He is a collaborator with the Americas
Program online at www.americaspolicy.org
Translated by Katherine Kohlstedt.
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