Useful background on Oaxaca.
B
This is What Recuperation Looks Like: the Rebellion in
Oaxaca and the APPO
By Kellen Kass
(from the forthcoming A Murder of Crows #2)
On May 22, 2006, teachers in the state of Oaxaca,
Section 22 of the National Education Worker's Union
(SNTE), went on strike. Section 22 has yearly strikes
in Oaxaca to demand a variety of concessions from the
state, and this year's strike included calls for
higher wages, the construction of more schools
throughout the state of Oaxaca, as well as free
lunches and supplies for students. Section 22 members
occupied the city center, the Zócalo, to further their
protest and disrupt the state capital during the
beginning of the tourist season. They set up camping
sites in the main square, occupied public buildings
and organized large marches, or mega-marches as the
Oaxacans call them, to reinforce their economic
demands as well as calling for the resignation of
Governor Ulises Ruiz. Public support was quite strong
for the marches as well as the occupation.
In early June, teachers were given a final offer and
ultimatum to vacate the Zócalo. On June 14, a police
raid authorized by Gov. Ruiz involving nearly 3,000
officers from the state police attacked the central
square in the early morning hours. A helicopter
dropped tear gas into the square to disorient the
occupiers, while outside of the city riot police
readied themselves for an invasion. Police attacked
the main square, completely destroying the teachers'
encampments and injuring hundreds. Teachers and Oaxaca
residents fought back against police aggression and
were able to retake the square in a matter of hours
with their fists and makeshift weapons. During the
fighting, however, 8 people died and others were
"disappeared. "
After people reoccupied the Zócalo and took control of
surrounding blocks, a mega-march was held on June 16,
with an estimated 400,000 people taking part. This
time however, the teachers dropped their economic
demands in exchange for one political demand: the
removal of Gov. Ruiz. Despite the narrowed focus, the
struggle was extended in a variety of ways; teachers
occupied seven city hall buildings across the state,
and students at the Benito Juarez Autonomous
University of Oaxaca (UABJO) took over their school
radio station in support of the striking teachers. In
addition to these actions, teachers and many on the
left formed the Popular Assembly of the People of
Oaxaca (APPO). The APPO was an ad hoc organization for
people to come together to talk about the events
transpiring and to plan future action.
July was contentious as well because the Mexican
presidential elections took place at the beginning of
the month. Much like Ruiz's election, the presidential
election was fraught with allegations of fraud.
Throughout the recount, groups in Oaxaca managed to
not be drawn into any particular party's machinations.
On August 1, a women's march involving some 2,000
people made its way through Oaxaca to the city center.
From there a few hundred women took their protest out
of the street and into the building of TV Channel 9.
They occupied the building and took over the station,
broadcasting themselves and their views on the current
situation; video footage of the various marches and
police raids was also shown. By August 22, Ruiz and
his cohorts had had enough, and they launched a
paramilitary attack against the station. In response,
people took to the streets, overturning several city
buses, setting them on fire, and using them to block
major roads. In addition, demonstrators took over
private radio stations to spread news of the raid and
to announce solidarity messages. At the same time
various smaller groups armed with clubs shut down
intersections across the already paralyzed city.
Paramilitary violence has been a serious problem
throughout the teachers' strike and occupation of the
city. The term paramilitaries is awfully vague, and it
has been extremely difficult to find out who has been
behind some of the shootings; those captured are
seldom identified by the state. Certainly the
paramilitaries involve Mexican military, Oaxacan
police, as well as the private army of Ruiz who is, at
the time of this writing, still desperately clinging
to power. At a march on August 10, gunmen opened fire
killing one teacher, Jose Jimenez. On October 18, a
teacher and APPO participant, Pánfilo Hernández, was
shot and killed in a paramilitary drive-by. On October
27, Brad Will, anarchist and Indymedia journalist, was
shot and killed by paramilitaries, as were Emilio
Alonso Fabián and Esteban López Zurita. These are some
of the most well documented cases, but there are
dozens of others who have died in this fight as well.
Events in October were tumultuous, and the month came
to a crashing conclusion. On October 26, Section 22
teachers voted to end their strike amidst allegations
of voting fraud and accusations that their leadership
had sold out. And on October 28, Vicente Fox announced
that he was ordering thousands of Federal Preventative
Police (PFP) into Oaxaca in order to retake the city.
When the PFP invasion came, the APPO urged peaceful
protest and non-violent resistance to the police.
Lines of riot police equipped with tear gas and batons
pushed back thousands of people, and they also used
armored trucks with water cannons and plows to
disperse people and destroy barricades. The APPO sent
out numerous communiqués exhorting people to act
peacefully, and even went so far as to denounce all
violent actions against the PFP as the work of agent
provocateurs. People laid down in the roads, pushed
against police lines, but by nightfall the PFP had
made it's way into the city center.
As police pushed further into the city on November 2,
they attempted to retake the university and destroy
the occupied radio station within it. In a six-hour
battle with police, students and many other people
used molotov cocktails, rocks, steel pipes and slings
to fight police, and they overturned cars and buses to
further reinforce their blockades. This fierce
resistance forced the police to withdraw, and put a
stop to police advances into the university area.
Students and many others were clearly upset about the
loss of the Zócalo to state forces. Therefore they
decided to use violent means to continue occupying the
university regardless of what the APPO said. At the
time of this writing, the students and the APPO still
control the area surrounding the university.
Roots of Rebellion
"The rich will do anything for the poor but get off
their backs." – Karl Marx
The uprising in Oaxaca and the popular mobilizations
have made international headlines recently, but the
causes of the situation have not garnered as much
attention. In August 2004, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, a
lawyer, "won" the Oaxaca governor's election by a slim
margin. Ruiz's opponents immediately contested the
election results, charging that he and his cohorts had
rigged the outcome. Apparently the opposition's claims
were not unfounded, but Ruiz still took office in
December later that year. Ruiz is a member of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that
completely controlled the Mexican federal government
for over 70 years until the 2000 election of Vicente
Fox, a National Action Party (PAN) member, to the
presidency.
Considering the extreme poverty in Mexico, with some
40 million living well below the poverty line, it is
not surprising that one of the main ways that the PRI
remained in power was through a system of patronage:
contracts, jobs, and funding for education and basic
services are handed out after successful elections of
PRI officials on the local and national level. In
thousands of other cases, and specifically in Ruiz's
case, bags of groceries were handed out in exchange
for votes. In Oaxaca though, it was not just Ruiz who
came to power in this way. In the first few months of
2006 there were also conflicts over town elections in
San Blas Atempa, Oaxaca between the Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) candidate and a PRI
candidate over issues of voter fraud and purchasing of
votes. While this may seem outrageous, patronage has
been a normal procedure in politics worldwide for
centuries, and the PRI is just a standard political
machine that many throughout Mexico are
finally fed up with. Unfortunately, many people think
that these corrupt politicians should simply be
replaced by honest politicians.
The roots of the problem, however, go much deeper than
PRI patronage and corruption that permeate Mexican
politics. The cause of the mobilization and violent
clashes with police lies in the absolutely wretched
economic conditions that dominate life across southern
Mexico. Oaxaca, bordering Chiapas to the west, is
Mexico's second-poorest state and has the
second-largest population of indigenous peoples.
According to human rights organizations, nearly 80% of
Oaxaca lives in extreme poverty. The main industry
that props up the economy of Oaxaca is tourism. And
like all tourist areas, most people work in services
where wages are low, and many public services are
geared towards visitors as opposed to actual
residents.
International trade agreements such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have only made
things worse. The implementation of neo-liberal
reforms to the Mexican state, which has meant an
overall cuts to basic necessities over the past
several years, has made it even more difficult for
people to survive. In recent years, Mexico has been
unable to keep pace with China's offer to the altar of
economic sacrifice: its immense, expendable and
therefore cheap work force. Thus Mexico has been
subject to the migration of factories and jobs to Asia
in the same way that the United States has experienced
"job loss" to Mexico. Thus it is not hard to see that
dictates of the market care little about countries,
and that capital flows in the direction of greater
profit and greater misery.
It is this complex situation that has led to decades
of social conflict and has culminated in the struggle
we see now.
We're All on the Same Team: the APPO
"Our aim is a more democratic government that listens
to the people more than the current government does."
–APPO Spokesman Florentino Lopez Martinez
While many inspiring actions are taking place in
Oaxaca, one must not lose the ability to look
critically at situations. On the surface the APPO
appears to be simply an assembly of common people
charting out their future, but there are very distinct
political perspectives and groups involved. The
membership of the APPO is extremely varied and is
composed of a variety of social organizations,
political groupings, unions, and human rights
organizations. Members of Section 22 are involved, as
are anarchists, municipal authorities, and indigenous
organizations such as the Movimiento de Unificación y
Lucha Triqui (MULT) and the Popular Indigenous Council
of Oaxaca – Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-RFM). Within
the APPO, representatives from each group participate
in meetings where issues are decided based on
consensus as opposed to majority rule. Members are not
supposed to be involved in parties participating in
electoral politics, but membership is open to groups
such as the
Revolutionary Popular Front (FPR) and the Union of
Revolutionary Youth of Mexico (UJRM), both of which
are openly appendages of the Marxist-Leninist Mexican
Communist Party. One of the spokesmen for the APPO,
Florentino Lopez Martinez, has stated in interviews
that he is a member of the FPR.
Aside from small aspiring states such as the
Marxist-Leninist Mexican Communist Party, there are
other politicians in the midst of the APPO. One of the
spokespeople of the APPO, the media-darling and crass
opportunist Flavio Sosa, was a part of Vicente Fox's
election campaign in 2000 through his organization the
New Left of Oaxaca. Sosa has also been actively
involved in the PRI splinter-party the Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) for years, a party he
actually quit in order to be involved in the APPO. It
should be pretty obvious that Sosa is a political
opportunist who moves from one group to the next in
hopes of carving out some kind of position for
himself. He's a classic recuperator, and one in
serious need of an ass kicking.
It is also interesting to note that APPO member and
Section 22 leader, Enrique Rueda Pacheco, gave a
speech at the fifth mega-march in Oaxaca in early
September calling for "national unity" and a movement
that would incorporate the PRD and the Zapatistas. He
has also been involved in trying to end the teachers'
strike as far back as July. Like a typical union hack,
he consistently tried to undermine the strike in
exchange for political clout. Clearly, the APPO is a
mixed bag and includes its fair share of aspiring
politicians and real politicians. This, however, is
not the most damning aspect.
At the end of September, three days of meetings were
held to discuss the transformation of the APPO from an
ad hoc organization to a more formalized and permanent
organization in Oaxaca. Following the meetings, a
document entitled "Resolutions of the First State
Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca" was released. This
document is perhaps the best indication of the nature
of the APPO because it is an attempt to define
"…Statutes, the Declaration of Principles, a
definitive Structure and a Program of Struggle."
Within the resolutions there is a section entitled
"Proposal for a Program of Struggle," which is most
revealing of the overall aims of the APPO.
The first point of the program of struggle is entitled
"For the Defense of National Sovereignty, " in which
they outline their proposal for withdrawing the
Mexican state from trade agreements such as NAFTA and
the FTAA, as well as from organizations such as the
IMF and World Bank. Their second point, entitled "For
a New Model of Economic Development" reaffirms
national ownership of natural resources and calls for
the re-nationalization of industries that have been
privatized, as well as the nationalization of
monopolistic industries such as banking. Thus the APPO
identifies neo-liberal institutions like the IMF and
World Bank and privately owned corporations as "bad"
and the sovereign Mexican state as "good." A later
portion of the economic program even calls for further
economic integration of Latin America and the
Caribbean and the creation of a common market therein,
a sort of alternative FTAA. According to the APPO, the
problem is not with the market, not with
capitalism, not with the existence of bureaucratic
institutions, but rather with US imperialism and the
bad countries of the North that take advantage of the
good countries in the South. It's the same tired
charade of national liberation that has proven time
and time again to be a miserable dead end.
The third point of their program of struggle is "For a
Popular Democracy," in which they proclaim that the
"present antidemocratic State should be replaced with
a new State with a democratic and popular character…"
which in turn will be based on "…the will of the
Mexican people to constitute and make effective a
Democratic and Representative Federal Republic." This
points asserts that the state is a neutral institution
and that everything would be better for all of us if
only the corrupt, lying politicians were replaced by
honest, democratic politicians. Perhaps their critique
of the state is so liberal because many
representatives in the APPO would like to see
themselves as the next ruling elite, but that remains
to be seen. Thus their program of struggle is not
proposing the revolutionary transformation of social
life, but rather the democratization of the state and
the continuance of capitalism, albeit with a
friendlier face.
Given the participation of many dubious groups and
characters, as well as the "Resolutions of the First
State Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca," we must
conclude that the character of the APPO is reformist,
and their overall plan is one of recuperating the rage
and resentment of the dispossessed in order to manage
the misery of the current social order. The APPO does
not seek to destroy the state, but it intends to
democratize it. The APPO does not seek to end
capitalism, but it intends to increase state ownership
of corporations and make capitalism fairer. Plainly
stated, the APPO – an organization with defined
principles and a long term strategy of struggle— does
not share common goals with anarchists, and is
certainly taking part in activity that will actively
undermine the overthrow of this system. They promote
false alternatives and question only the management of
the state and capitalism, not the system itself.
Solidarity?
"Prepare to die…Put down your shields and take off
your helmets, and I'll beat the living shit out of
you!" –anonymous Oaxacan woman a defending the UABJO
This brings us full circle then to the issue of
solidarity. Clearly the APPO is an organization with
wide support from those who want to see major change
come about in their lives; this cannot be denied. But
their popularity does not erase the fact that there
are micro-bureaucrats actively involved in the APPO,
nor does it change the fact that the APPO's program is
one of promoting a new way to manage the state and
capitalism. Also despite its name, the APPO does not
represent everyone involved, or the revolt in its
entirety. The uprising in Oaxaca has been inspiring
because of people's willingness to take their lives
into their own hands and direct their own activity.
This is the greatest potential of the rebellion: its
ability to break with the normality of being
controlled and directed by others and then spread
further, eventually leading to revolutionary social
transformation.
People are beginning to rediscover the ability to meet
face-to-face in occupied zones – the Zócalo, the
university, the neighborhoods and streets— in order to
discuss matters of real importance. Direct actions
such as strikes, occupations, blockades and sabotage
are being employed by all of those involved. Women are
asserting themselves even more, planning actions,
taking over television stations, organizing blockades,
and participating in street fighting against the
police. The cessation of "business as usual" and the
casting off of subservience has opened up many
possibilities and has led to massive resistance to the
Mexican state. This growing self-organization must
remain truly autonomous if it is not to be slowly
ground down by piecemeal reforms and other political
tricks. Therefore the APPO and its alternative
management plan must be rejected.
Despite the deficiencies of the APPO, we should extend
solidarity to the people fighting in Oaxaca. In the
United States many solidarity actions were undertaken
during the PFP raids in late October and early
November. Protests were held outside of embassies and
consulates in many cities across the US, including
Houston, Phoenix, and Seattle. Consulates in
Sacramento and Minneapolis had their windows smashed,
and other consulates and embassies were blockaded or
occupied like in New York, Indianapolis, and Raleigh.
Anarchists in the US have been very active in
concretely demonstrating their solidarity with the
events in Oaxaca, and one can only hope that these
actions will spread.
The course of the conflict is being played out as we
write. The Zapatistas have called for a general strike
in Mexico on November 20, and scores of actions are
planned in the US and abroad for that day as well.
Consulates and embassies are clearly targets of
interest, but one should not forget that we are
fighting an entire system, and that demonstrating
solidarity with Oaxaca can take many forms such as
shut downs of corporations with financial links in
Mexico as a whole, blockades in our own cities, and of
course the escalation of activity against more direct
issues in the US. People in Oaxaca are taking steps to
combat this system as a whole, let's do the same.
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Notes:
"Oaxaca Teachers Union Protests face Police
Repression," available at: http://www.chiapasp
eacehouse. org/node/ 286, and "Up From Below: The New
Revolution in Southern Mexico," available at:
http://www.counterp unch.org/ ross07142006. html
"In Oaxaca Mega-March, 400,000 Send A Firm No to the
Repression by Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz," available
at: http://www.narconew s.com/Issue41/ article1906.
html
"Oaxaca's State TV Station Under Popular Control,"
available at: http://www.narconew s.com/Issue42/
article1990. html
"Mexico Teachers Extend Protest," available at:
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/americas/ 5272462..stm
"Vioelence Flares in South Mexico," available at:
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/americas/ 4782837..stm
For the APPO's denunciation of violence, see
http://codepappo. wordpress. com/2006/ 10/29/urgente-
la-pfp-en- oaxaca
"Under the Volcano," The Economist, September 28,
2006.
"Oaxaca's Dangerous Teachers," Dollars & Sense: the
Magazine of Economic Justice, September/October 2006.
"Police Retake Oaxaca Town Hall Occupied Since January
2005," available at: http://www.narconew
s.com/Issue40/ article1654. html
"How Many Deaths Is the Oaxaca Governor Worth?"
available at: http://www.commondr eams.org/
headlines06/ 1103-08.htm
"Oaxaca's Dangerous Teachers," Dollars & Sense: the
Magazine of Economic Justice, September/October 2006.
For more information about the economic background of
Mexico, see "A Commune in Chiapas? Mexico and the
Zapatista Rebellion," Aufheben #9, Autumn 2000.
Frente Popular Revolucionario: http://fprweb.
tripod.com/ index.htm, and Unión de la Juventud
Revolucionaria de México: http://pagina. de/ujrm. For
interview with Florentino Lopez Martinez see:
http://www.infoshop .org/inews/ article..php?
story=2006102208 4418717.
"Liderazgo "camaleónico" : Flavio Sosa, cabeza de la
APPO, apoyó al PRD, luego a Fox," Diario de la
Yucatán, Nov. 6 2006.
"Oaxaca's Social Movement Develops Radical Vision for
a National Government of the People" available at:
http://www.narconew s.com/Issue42/ article2038. html.
Resolutions of the First State Assembly of the
People's of Oaxaca are available online at:
http://www.asamblea populardeoaxaca. com/boletines/
index.php? s=RESOLUTIVOS+ DE+LA+PRIMERA+ ASAMBLEA+
ESTATAL+DE+ LOS+PUEBLOS+ DE+OAXACA+
For a look at one neighborhood' s activities which are
outside of the APPO, see "Two Days in the Life of
Oaxaca's Revolution," available at: http://narconews.
com/Issue42/ article2021. html
