Reply #76: NANCY DAVIES: COMMENTARY FROM OAXACA

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http://www.narconews.com/Issue43/article2233.html

Federal Police Authorized to Enter Oaxaca
A Day Of Killings While Teachers Negotiate in Mexico City

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca

October 28, 2006

President Vicente Fox, through his Secretary of Internal Affairs Carlos Abascal, has authorized the entry of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP in its Spanish initials) into Oaxaca, in direct response to the events of October 27 in Oaxaca. Following a declaration by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) to launch an all-out work stoppage and boycott to force the hand of governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (known as “URO”), Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) supporters, both police and private individuals, assaulted the population in several different areas of the city on Friday. The result, according to the Radio Universidad, was four dead, thirty wounded. The dead have now been identified as Emilio Alonso Fabián, Bradley Will and Eudocia Olivera Díaz. The fourth reported death, of Esteban Zurita López, is at the center of accusations by both sides of the conflict, with each blaming the other.

Airplanes full of PFP officers and riot gear have already arrived, with the police now gathered at a nearby military base, reports the national daily El Universal.


Photo: D.R. 2006 Nancy Davies
My analysis is that if the PFP enter the city by day, a negotiated exit is open for the APPO, possibly implying the removal URO from office. If they come by night, they’re likely coming to dislodge by force the resistance lodged in the zocalo (central city plaza) and barricades. URO precipitated the intervention by his attacks. The question is, does the PAN party of Fox and Calderón want to maintain URO as a sop to the PRI, or has URO become so costly that the PAN may choose to dump him? If so, URO’s setting up of the APPO backfires.


On Friday morning, the day scheduled for the onset of the big anti-URO strike, I walked up the north-south street close to my house. The newly constructed small neighborhood barricade consisted of three men, six women, a snarl of barbed wire, a banner, and a barrel. On the main road, traffic was light and getter lighter. In the middl

e of Niños Heroes Street, a woman held an umbrella against the sun with one hand and with the other tossed aside the rocks that impeded traffic in front of her shop. When she reached the sidewalk where I was watching, she snarled, “Ya basta! That’s enough of these blockades!” It appeared she not did not understand that, no more than 300 meters behind her, two busses were being maneuvered into position for a complete blockade of the avenue.

The peaceful appearance of this shut-down was brief. By the time I returned home the radio told a different story. URO had been sighted in Santa Lucia, and people were reminded not to overreact.

Three people were dead before the 11 o’clock news came on. During the Oaxaca segment of TV Azteca news, URO announced firmly that four were dead but that the shooting was done by the APPO, while his police were all in their barracks. Photographs and videos emerged later revealing the shooters as members of the ministerial police. URO was interviewed via phone by TV Azteca, which was simultaneously showing people with sticks in their hands running away from what could be heard as gunshots. In the video clip, they were carrying the body of Brad Will, a U.S. Indymedia reporter, who was killed during the afternoon in Santa Lucía del Camino during a confrontation with ministerial police. Along with him, a photographer from Milenio was shot in the foot. Santa Lucia del Camino is now in the hands of the PRI.