25 NOVEMBER AND BEYOND

Saundra Sturdevant---Images & Text

25 NOVEMBER 2006 and BEYOND

Within days after the Demonstration of 20 November, URO set in motion his plan to take control of Oaxaca before December 1, the date Felipe Calderon would be sworn in as Mexico’s new president. Greater coordination between PFP (Federal Preventive Police), city police in uniform and paramilitary groups and assorted hired thugs was a key element of this plan. PFP groups were stationed at strategic points, including occupation of rooftops of the zocolo area. Police and paramilitary made raids on homes of known APPO participants and sympathizers. PFP checkpoint searches at entrances to the zocolo of backpacks and purses became mandatory.

APPO declared that they were organizing a Mega-March to peacefully surround the zocolo. APPO was clear that this action was to be non-violent, without physical contact with PFP. The date of the Mega-March was 25 November. Demonstrators planned to come into the zocolo area from different directions. From late morning until dusk, confrontations between demonstrators and URO’s forces took place on streets leading to the zocolo. Clouds of teargas marked the spots. Tanks took part in many of these confrontations and PFP fired their automatic weapons.

During the darkness of night, PFP began its assigned task of destroying as much of APPO, in as many ways as possible. At a minimum, if a shell of APPO remained, it would represent a time in Oaxacano history. This strategy had been tried before during the levantamiento and failed. On the night of November 25, URO used more PFP force and violence than he had before. URO demonstrated to Oaxaca, Mexico, and the world what the policy that Calderon, immediately upon assuming office would term Mano Duro, meant in practice. The policy of Mano Duro, the Hard Hand, is the use of multiple forms of militarized force and violence to deal with any form of dissent and the exercise of human and civil rights judged disagreeable to existing power.

Throughout the dark night, PFP, police, paramilitary and thugs chased down, beat, killed, wounded, arrested, and disappeared anyone who was on the streets. No exceptions were made for elders and women, and certainly none for the press. PFP were now seriously firing their weapons. Teargas went off continuously until the early morning hours. The air was a heavy mixture of white clouds of teargas and huge black clouds from the fires.

APPO and its supporters fought back with the usual rocks, Molotov cocktails, and homemade bazookas. Middle-aged and elders, men and women, broke concrete and paving stones and assembled them in piles. They brought coca-a-cola, water, vinegar, wet towels, and information on the location of PFP. Medical students administered to those seriously injured, taking many to the hospital. At one point during the night, PFP entered the hospital to finish off those wounded, but the medical personnel literally stood firm, a number injured at this time.

Cell phone communication between demonstrators was constant, as were calls to Radio Universidad telling of the situation in one’s area. Radio Universidad broadcast continuously these reports. Many were very chilling. Citizens came out of their homes and spontaneously joined the demonstrators in their battles with PFP and other military men. As the night drew on and the violence left the injured crying for help and so many others running away to regroup elsewhere and fight back, citizens carefully opened their doors and provided sanctuary in their homes. They saved lives.

Flames engulfed a number of government buildings, including the Supreme Court. The Office of Tourism and that of the Hotel and Restaurant Association were also torched, as was the office of Flavio Sosa, one of the most visible APPO members. It’s generally agreed that Molotov cocktails thrown by APPO did not start fires of the size required to do such extensive damage. Why torch Flavio Sosa’s office and the Supreme Court building that contained sensitive government documents relating to financial affairs of URO’s government. Since there is no transparency law in Oaxaca, financial records of this sort could prove damaging to URO. Speculation is that URO’s forces torched the buildings to destroy evidence. As for torching the offices of the Hotel and Restaurant Association, that was to teach them not to complain of loosing business during a trying time. URO’s media blamed APPO for everything.

There are few images and witness accounts of this night’s events. One intrepid Las Noticias photographer was able to take at least one image. Few reporters and photographers were in the streets. Those that were suffered severe beatings. There was no protection for the Mexican press, which has the highest kill rate in the world. Iraq is currently number one in this category. International press had no protection either, as the assassination of Brad Will and responses of both the Mexican and North American governments had clearly demonstrated.

The morning of 26 November found burned out areas in the center of Oaxaca and the Santo Domingo encampment completely trashed and burned. PFP were proud of their work at Santo Domingo. Teargas canisters, rocks, and marbles filled the street. Smashed coke and water bottles were everywhere. Ripped facemasks, bloody rags of all sorts, and clothing were strewn around. There was a lot of blood. A war zone.

URO had street sweepers, trucks, backhoes and fire hoses out at dawn to clean everything up. It took them several hours to pick up and wash down what had been the Santo Domingo encampment and a major area of APPO resistance. Around 10 a.m. one of the Santo Domingo church officials, completely dressed in white, came out of the church to survey the area. His concern was that evidence of the night’s destruction and death at the hands of the PFP was removed. Everything had to be cleaned up for URO’s press conference, which was about to being on the cathedral steps.

This all-in-white church official returned to the side entrance of the cathedral, whereupon, URO held the press conference. A crowd of URO supporters had been bussed in, as had friendly reporters for the occassion. Friendly press photographers were now encouraged to take photos of the Santo Domingo area, showing the normalcy of it all. PFP stood guard in the streets around Santo Domingo; PFP perched on rooftops across the street with assault weapons ready. Overhead helicopters flew. URO style Peace and Tranquility had come to Oaxaca.

During the press conference in what might be termed the ultimate obscene act of the morning, in this location at least, was a mime that performed on the very grounds of Santo Domingo, where only hours before blood of demonstrators, burned out tables, tents and materials had been scooped up into dump trucks. The mime was dressed in white, had white paint on all exposed body parts and hair. Using potable water from a city water truck, she ritually washed a Mexican flag. She then clutched the flag to her chest and dramatically looked and postured in each direction. Originally, the water had been drawn from an aquifer on indigenous land 20 minutes outside the city. Forced or bribed by URO’s men to sell the water, the issue had divided that indigenous community.

URO stationed PFP at intersections around the center of the city and at Santo Domingo. State police, armed with assault weapons and attack dogs patrolled the city in pick-up trucks. PFP extended their physical occupation of the city by establishing an additional encampment at Lleno Park. URO’s police, PFP, and paramilitary began more thorough house-to-house searches for APPO participants in selected sections of the city. Forced entry was made into private homes, especially in Colonia Aleman and Jardin, and also in towns and pueblos outside the city. Later, the niceties of arrest warrants for more than 30 were issued.

URO forces did not have to search the Catholic cathedrals in the center of Oaxaca. Perhaps they did in the working class sections of the city and countryside where priests were working with APPO. With paramilitary violence dramatically on the increase, APPO leadership was sleeping at different places each night. After the November 5 demonstration, they asked the diocese of Oaxaca to grant asylum to APPO people under threat of assassination. By then, there were lists. Wilfredo Mayran, the diocese’s legal officer, made the initial response by saying it was the Church’s mission to provide safe haven to those in need. Two days later, Archbishop Botelli denied sanctuary, saying that one must show respect to authority and anyone in any way challenging constituted authority did not qualify for sanctuary.

And they kept to their word. On the night of November 25, principal clashes between PFP and APPO took place in and around the Santo Domingo encampment. The imposing Spanish ordered-to-be-built cathedral, with its massive wooden doors, metal plates crossing in horizontal lines were, as usual, locked. Inside Church personnel, including the all-in-white official of the next morning. What did they hear? What did they see? What did they not respond to? How many of the five deaths of that night took place on these grounds?

Oaxaca is not Chipas. Botelli and his bishops are not united with Bishop Don Samuel Ruiz and his ministry to indigenous. Oaxaca is not Salvador with Bishop Oscar Romero standing with indigenous. Nor, was there the great courage and compassion shown by the Bishop of Myong Dong Cathedral in downtown Seoul in 1988 to leaders of the movement, generations old against U.S. imposed and maintained military dictatorships from Sigman Rhee of the 1950s to Chun Du Huan of the 1980s. In Korea, movement leaders were granted sanctuary and Catholic and Buddhist nuns slept inside yet another huge wooden door, rows ten deep, placing their bodies between military assault troops and movement leaders. Killings came there in the early morning hours also.

The post November 25, 2006, era finds many of APPO’s spokespersons in prison, including Flavio Sosa, arrested December 5, leaving a meeting with government officials in Mexico City. Leadership has not been that central to APPO. The welling up of the people, the conscience to put into practice what is necessary for systemic change has been and is central to the levantamiento. That has not been imprisoned.

Reflective of the depth of the levantamiento is that fact that given all the repression and the night of November 25th, APPO continues to formulate policy, hold conferences and assemblies, host international delegations, establish APPOs in other states, join with indigenous in resistance to developmental land grabs, support teachers local 22 in their right to return to class and teach, and demonstrate in the streets.

The marches are not in the hundreds of thousands, but tens of thousands. And there continues to be a broad representation of class, age and gender. Freeing political prisoners is now included in the list of demands. The march of December 10 called for freeing of more than 200 political prisoners, removal of URO, and PFP out of Oaxaca. On January 14, 2007, another sizeable march took place. This one in the wake of state police attack on families of political prisoners encamped outside one of the prisons. The police were establishing a safety zone, they said.

February 3, 2007, was the ninth mega march and tens of thousands demonstrated, demanding the resignation of URO, freedom to political prisoners, and cancellation of arrest warrants for more than 30 APPO participants and teaches of Local 22. In anticipation of the march, URO had 3000 assault police guarding 12 intersections leading to the zocolo and around Santo Domingo. State assault police in blue uniforms had begun to replace PFP in grey and brown uniforms during December. At Santo Domingo, barbed and razor wire sealed off the grounds, with assault police, mounted police and Rotweilers and their handlers inside their newly constructed compound. Barbed wire was wound around the length of batons wielded by assault police encamped at Santo Domingo.

Human Rights organizations from Mexico, North America, and Europe began arriving in Oaxaca in December. Each took testimony documenting abuses of arbitrary detention, physical and psychological torture, rape, killings, woundings and disappearings. They held press conferences and returned to their countries to gather support for addressing the situation in Oaxaca.

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The world has become a cruel and hard place for the majority of people on this planet who live in or on the rim of poverty. The violence of poverty and all that entails is the continuing source of levantamientos arising around the world. Non-violence and a return to indigenous culture of Usos y Costumbres to govern one’s affairs is the way of APPO’s levantamiento. It is a rejection of capitalism, neo-liberalism, of North Americanism and rule by the wealthy of Mexico. How possible is it in the world of 2006 and beyond to take control of one’s culture, community and heritage in a non-violent manner and to develop, sustain and build community without using force is the question. Former Bishop of Chiapas Don Samuel Ruiz said on his third visit to Oaxaca during the Levantamiento, “The Future is Here.” Yes, indeed.