Helicopters hover over Mexico's protest-torn Oaxaca

[suffragette]

Helicopters hover over Mexico's protest-torn Oaxaca, sparking rumors troops may move in
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/01/america/LA_GEN_Mexico_Oaxaca_Unrest.php

Protesters fortified street barricades and readied gasoline bombs Sunday as navy helicopters buzzed over this southern Mexican city, sparking rampant rumors that federal forces were planning to retake the area.
 
Several newspapers in Mexico's capital gave front-page coverage to photos of two navy helicopters and at least one military plane that flew low over central Oaxaca late Saturday.
 
A headline in the Mexico City daily Milenio proclaimed: "Preparations for war in Oaxaca."
 
Mexico City's El Universal newspaper reported that helicopters, planes and 15 troop trucks had assembled in Huatulco, a Pacific tourist getaway and military hub a short flight — but a long drive — from Oaxaca city.

 

[Poll_Blind]

1. See also...(link)

This thread and this message in another thread.

PB

[suffragette]

3. Thanks

It is amazing there is so little news about such a major event.

[NOLADEM]

2. This is going to be very bad

Mexico may disintegrate if this is mishandled. The leftists just need their Kent State or Tieneman Square, and they will be lit.

South Texas's population may soon be booming.

[shugh514]

4. Is this the real reason why we have our NG on the border?

They had to see this coming.
:tinfoilhat:

[UncleSepp]

10. That was my thought

My thought was that there was a nonzero chance the troops were there to step in and protect the maquiladoras just inside the border and the needed transport routes to and from them for raw materials and finished products. In the case of serious civil unrest, the factories themselves might be a possible target due to their foreign ownership and distribution of profit to foreign hands. Mexican troops and law enforcement would be stretched and divided in such a conflict, so using what's left of the National Guard might be a mutually beneficial arrangement for the US government, the factory owners, and the Mexican government and ruling class.

From the other side of the border, it might also seem reasonable for some Mexican rebels in opposition to the lopsided distribution of wealth in Mexico and also in opposition to a US economic system which depends in part on underpriced Mexican labor to ally itself with other forces who are in opposition to the US on other grounds. It might not be the smartest thing any rebel ever did, but it is the kind of thing that people in conflict often do. In that case, it would also make sense to put National Guard on the Mexican border, and also to strengthen that border as much as possible.

It's not really so tinfoil-hat, is it?

[AlienGirl]

14. Have you read "It Can't Happen Here" yet?

The last stage in the book was war against Mexico...

Tucker

[happyslug]

15. Out of Copyright in Australia

Where I find in on Project Gutenberg in Australia:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html

[IndianaGreen]

7. The same elites that oppose the Oaxaca teachers

are the ones that support Fox and his stolen-election successor Calderon. It is no coincidence that the Mexican elites are supported by our own elites in what has become the Bush dictatorship.

There is also no difference between the Mexican elites and their Chavez-hating Venezuelan counterparts.

We are all in this together, and we must ally ourselves with the oppressed people in the world, including the Oaxaca teachers.

[suffragette]

11. This is it, exactly.

They are us. They are the librarians here who have stood up against the (un)Patriot Act and the regular people who have been marching and talking and typing and yelling about the injustices that have been and keep coming.
And the people oppressing them and now circling them are allied with the people who have been doing such harm here and around the world.
Oaxaca is where it is all being ratcheted up to the next stage.

[IndianaGreen]

5. Strong Troops Movement in Oaxaca (Prensa Latina) & background stories

Here is how Prensa Latina is covering this news:

Strong Troops Movement in Oaxaca

Mexico, Oct 1 (Prensa Latina) A strong concentration of troops and military devices in important places near Oaxaca city was reported Sunday as part of the tense situation Mexico is living in the last few hours.

After planes overflew Oaxaca´s capital, at least 10 Puma helicopters and two Mexican Army transportation aircrafts were parked at the Salina Cruz naval heliport in the international airport and in Huatulco Bay.

According to news broadcasts by local media there are also an indeterminate number of armoured personnel carriers, tank commandos, four-wheel vehicles and Marine Corps.

The troop movement is considered by the Teachers´ Union and Oaxaca People's Popular Assembly (APPO) the prelude to the announced federal forces intervention, as solution to the conflict that now has 131 days.

The staff of the Oaxaca International Airport Benito Juarez reported the helicopters unexpectedly landed Saturday afternoon carrying hundreds of Marines, adding also a CASA C-212 airplane used for detection and identification.

Prensa Latina

Here are a couple of background stories on Oaxaca:

Oaxaca, Mexico: Free Speech in the "Dirty War"

By Kelly Komenda and Sara Yassky

8-24-06, 10:06 am

Since May 22, Oaxacan teachers have been occupying the main plaza in the city of Oaxaca.

In the beginning of the occupation, the teachers' demands from the government were simple: fair wages to adjust for their cost of living and the guarantee of a better educational environment for their students, which to the teachers meant funding for books, supplies, uniforms and food.

The state government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz refused to negotiate with the teachers, so the teachers therefore refused to leave the plaza. But around 4 a.m. on June 14, Ruiz Ortiz sent approximately 1,000 state police officers to attack the sleeping teachers.

The police tactics included beating, torturing, raping, disappearing, and even killing some of the fleeing protestors. The teachers' movement responded by transforming itself into a state-wide people's resistance against government repression, while people throughout the country have expressed their solidarity with the Oaxacan people.

"We've learned and we're defending ourselves. We realized that…we need to raise our voices."

On Aug. 1, over 3,000 women fortified their voices with the ringing of their pots and pans as they marched the city streets of Oaxaca, demanding to be heard.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/3977/

Oaxaca's Dangerous Teachers

By David Bacon

9-15-06, 9:10 am

At 8:30 AM on October 21, 2002, Oaxaca state police arrested a dangerous schoolteacher.

Romualdo Juan Gutierrez Cortez was pulled over as he was driving to his school in the rural Mixteca region. Police took him to Oaxaca de Juárez, the state capital, where he was held for days on false charges. Gutierrez is the state coordinator for the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (the Frente), which had organized a loud, embarrassing protest during a visit to Oaxaca by Mexican President Vicente Fox not long before. Oaxaca Governor Jose Murat was out for revenge.

As Gutierrez languished in jail, Oaxacan migrant farm workers north of the border in California's central valley reacted quickly. They picketed the Mexican consulate, held press conferences, and clogged Murat's phone lines with calls and faxes. In Oaxaca itself, other Frente members organized similar protests. After a week, the governor succumbed to the pressure: Gutierrez was released.

That binational campaign to defend the Frente leader has since been repeated many times. Cooperation across the border is today one of the most important tools Oaxacans have for defending human rights in their home state.

Thousands indigenous people migrate from Oaxaca's hillside villages to the United States every year-among Mexican states, Oaxaca has the second-highest concentration of indigenous residents. They leave in part because of a repressive political system that thwarts economic development in Mexico's poor rural areas. Lack of development in turn pushes people off the land. From there, they find their way to other parts of Mexico or the United States, where they often live in poverty even as they send money home. This economic reality was the central issue in this year's heated presidential election, which was marred by charges of vote fraud.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/4086/

[acmavm]

6. What's the deal? The Mexican people don't lie down like sheep to

stolen elections anymore?

:sarcasm:

[suffragette]

8. Thank you.

These are much more thorough than the article I found and give a better description of the situation.

[stillcool]

9. the depth of my ignorance ...

continues to astound me....and yet into such darkness come these sparks of awareness, that miraculously light up my perception. The world is on fire.

[IndianaGreen]

12. More background on Oaxaca, this time from WSWS

As you can see from the dates on these stories, this struggle has been going on for some time. Add to that the goulash of PRI corruption (Oaxaca governor is a Priista) and their collaboration with President Fox's PAN, and we find the historical ingredients for revolution.

6 June 2000

Thousands of regional teachers protest in Mexico City

Thousands of protesting teachers from the impoverished southern Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Michoacan and Guerrero, demanding decent wages, have maintained a tent encampment in Mexico City for three weeks. Representatives of Ernesto Zedillo's government are saying teachers' salaries are a state matter and have refused to deal with the teachers' demands.

The teachers are members of the CNTE, the National Coordinating Organization of Education, the national teachers union. A separate organization, the SNTE (the National Education Union), which organizes the teachers in Mexico City, so far has refrained from joining the protest but has helped to feed the protesters.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/lab-j06.shtml

2 August 2005

Hundreds protest Oaxaca repression

On July 21 hundreds of workers marched through Oaxaca, a city in southwest Mexico, in solidarity with employees of the Noticias Voz e Imagen de Oaxaca newspaper who had been brutally assaulted July 18 by an armed goon squad. Thirty-one press workers were conducting a sit-in to defend the offices of Noticias, an opposition newspaper, and were violently expelled by the masked men, who were armed with baseball bats and metal rods. After expelling the reporters, the goons vandalized the newspaper’s equipment.

Several columns of protesters marched across the city with signs that blamed the assault on state authorities and called for an end to the repression of workers.

The reporters had refused to leave the Noticias offices on June 17, charging that a so-called strike, called by the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Farmers (CROC), was nothing of the sort. The CROC is affiliated with the Revolutionary Institutionalist Party (PRI.) Noticias workers indicated that the strike was called behind the workers’ backs and used as a pretext for shutting down the paper for its opposition to Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, also a member of the PRI. Workers in the area reported that a police patrol, present during the attack, refused to intervene.

Noticias uncovered corruption during the administration of the former governor of Oaxaca, Jose Murat.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/wkrs-a02.shtml

20 June 2006

200,000 teachers march in Oaxaca

Over 200,000 teachers and their supporters marched through the streets of Oaxaca, capital of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, in support of 70,000 teachers whose wages, benefits and working conditions are being threatened by the administration of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Members of other unions, peasant organizations and students from the Autonomous University of Oaxaca joined the protest which began at 4 p.m. on June 16 and lasted four hours. Along the route of the march people came out of their homes and shops to applaud. Heavy rain did not dampen the energy and spirit of the demonstrators.

That evening at a rally in El Llano Plaza in downtown Oaxaca, speakers categorized Ulises Ruiz’s strategy as repressive and called for the strengthening of this “great popular movement.” The teachers are demanding Ruiz’s resignation as a precondition for any negotiated settlement and are circulating a petition demanding the governor’s recall.

At dawn on June 14, 2,000 police forcibly expelled 10,000 striking teachers occupying the Zocalo square in downtown Oaxaca. Twenty people, among them three children, were wounded and 40 arrested in this operation. Union leaders reported that four people were killed, including a child, and that the government removed their bodies.

While teachers regrouped in other parts of the city, the police burned their tents. Another battle ensued before the security forces retreated.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jun2006/wkrs-j20.shtml

[gordianot]

13. The people of Mexico need to take some lessons from Murica.

A few tax cuts for the rich, patriotic jingoism, find an external enemy and attack them, and the right kind of corporate news media, all will be fine. I'm sure FOX news would be willing to set up a Mexican bureau if they have not done so already. They need to cover some abductions / murders of blond haired women and get the collective minds of the Mexican people off of their economic woes and political desires.

I also wonder if there is a Mexican equivalent of the Murican freepers?