Voices From the Oaxacan Insurgency
Rascón, Benjamín Alonso
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: mexico i
Voices From the
Oaxacan Insurgency
people were tired with the plantón, fed up with us teachers encamped in the zócalo. But with the...
...Singing and poetry contests for barricade participants were broadcast on Radio Universidad, contributing to the formation of a diffuse barricadero/barricadera identity...
...The most recent took place in November, when four columns of marchers converged on the zócalo to repudiate Ruiz’s annual government report...
...Ruiz eventually fled to Mexico City, where he set up office in a hotel and worked to guarantee federal government support...
...in the barricades, in the sit-ins, it was the women who were there...
...Outside the city’s historic center, residential neighborhoods formed more than 1,000 barricades at key intersections throughout the city to protect themselves from both the paramilitary “caravans of death” and from thieves emboldened by the absence of state and municipal police...
...But it is the people who have to start thinking about this and not wait for the leaders to do it for us...
...we are the ones, as we demonstrated during 2006, who can realize important actions and also devise strategies to defeat the system...
...Gaby, Colectivo Mujer Nueva we don’t believe in political militancy, and the people do not want to be militants...
...Closed out of their offices and unable to move easily around the city, legislators and other government officials abandoned their SUVs for less easily identifiable rental cars and held furtive meetings in private residences and hotels where they felt safe from the daily mass mobilizations demanding an end to their hold on power...
...Patricia A., schoolteacher i believe that we are making oaxaca’s history, but a very different history, a history where women have played an important role...
...therefore, inspired a bit by this experience, we decided that we would not form a collective, nor an organization, nor a front of organizations, but rather a space in which everyone who fights for autonomy from the political parties, those who want to reorganize, those who want to pursue whatever initiative for autonomy can meet regardless of whether they come every week, every two weeks, once or month, or every day...
...Many were defended by workers, women, and youth who had never before participated in mass political actions...
...the barricades were that space: a non-militant space where everybody dropped by, and everyone had a common purpose: to defend oaxaca from the death squads...
...Demonstrators closed Oaxacan state government offices and occupied the municipal police headquarters, padlocking its doors...
...Police forces vanished from the city streets...
...But with the repression, ulises ruiz energized and woke up the whole society...
...everyone who wants to can come regardless of whether they are oaxacan or not, because the barricades were made by people from all different walks of life...
...the spaces in which they meet are their own spaces...
...To ensure order and security in the city, APPO activists created the Honorable Cuerpo de Topiles, a group of civilians appointed by communal authority to enforce APPO resolutions, modeled on indigenous traditions of community policing...
...During the early months of the insurrection, when Oaxacans still held out hope that the federal government might intervene to unseat Ruiz, the APPO launched several mass political actions designed to highlight the Ruiz administration’s inability to govern...
...Ita, schoolteacher, member of Colectivo Mujer Nueva people should forget the idea that a leader, or a group of them, can give direction to a movement...
...During his surreptitious visits to the city, he was transported by helicopter from the airport to a “safe house” where he made regular—and increasingly surreal—statements reassuring the national press that nothing was amiss in Oaxaca...
...Established as a means of self-defense and security, the barricades quickly emerged as a crucial space for political discussion...
...there was a total, radical transformation of women...
...Ruben Valencia, Voces Oaxaqueñas Construyendo Autonomía y Libertad (VOCAL) From interviews conducted by Benjamín Alonso Rascón in August 2007 attracted the largest multitude ever in Oaxaca’s political history...
...The teachers’ union police kept order in the city, particularly at night...
...The festive cumbia “Son de las barricadas” became the emblematic hymn for the Oaxacan movement...
...if you invite them to militate, they will reject you...
...i believe the majority is looking for a total change, not simply for a change of governor or president...
...Since then, despite government violence and assassinations, some occurring during the marches themselves, the APPO has coordinated at least 12 other megamarches...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: mexico i Voices From the Oaxacan Insurgency people were tired with the plantón, fed up with us teachers encamped in the zócalo...
...we are looking to create a new type of government, a new constitution...
...Neighbors and merchants organized block committees and patrols...
Vol. 41 • May 2008 • No. 3
