MEXICO: Arrests Suffocate Oaxaca Uprising

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Dec 7 2006 (IPS) - “They have not defeated us, we are still strong and we’ll soon show them,” one of the leaders of the social uprising in the Mexican state of Oaxaca said Thursday. So far 20 people have died, another 50 are missing or ‘disappeared’ and 250 are in jail.

However, analysts say that after six months of protests and, now, a brutal crackdown, the rebellion is losing momentum.

“The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) is alive and active, and will prove it in a gigantic demonstration” next Sunday in the state capital of the same name, Florentino López, one of the activists who is living on the run because there is a warrant out for his arrest, told IPS.

The march will be joined by human rights organisations, artistic, cultural and academic figures, and the leftwing Broad Progressive Front, made up of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Workers’ and Convergencia parties, which oppose the national government and support former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The new government of conservative President Felipe Calderón held talks with the protesters at the beginning of the week, just hours after the arrest and imprisonment in a high-security facility of Flavio Sosa, one of the foremost leaders of APPO.

“The repression appears to have calmed things down, and even to have defeated us, but do not be fooled, as some expert politicians are who assess everything from their desks. The fuse here is still burning,” López said.

He was referring to a report by the Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights that Oaxaca has become a police state, and that irregular armed groups are acting with complete impunity.

The uprising has been going on for six months, with the goal of removing Governor Ulises Ruiz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Ruiz is widely accused of corruption and despotism.

However, since Calderón took over as Mexico’s president on Dec. 1, Oaxaca has appeared to be relatively calm. But “It is the peace imposed by repression and the use of force,” López claimed.

Edgar Cortez, secretary of the All Rights For All network , an umbrella group of local human rights organisations, told IPS that the arrests of Sosa and other leaders may drive the Oaxaca social movement to focus on their legal defence.

In his view, Calderón intends to weaken APPO and not to respond to its demands.

But observers’ opinions vary. Political scientist Leo Zuckermann, of the private Centre for Economic Research and Teaching, said that Sosa’s arrest was a signal from the new government that law-breakers would not be tolerated, even when they belong to movements that call for justice, like APPO.

Miguel Granados, a columnist for the magazine Proceso and the newspaper Reforma, said that Oaxaca “is in a state of emergency,” with the police being the supreme power and armed civilian brigades in the streets, and that this has consolidated Governor Ruiz’s position.

“It is possible that some people might suppose that the Oaxacan conflict is over. And it may, in fact, have concluded in a victory for Ruiz,” Granados said.

APPO’s last mass demonstration was on Nov. 25, when violent clashes occurred between police and activists, and at least 15 buildings, including the courthouse, the historical Juárez Theatre and the local offices of the foreign ministry, were set ablaze.

APPO has drawn harsh criticism for supposed violence on the part of activists, allegations that the umbrella group has consistently denied and that it blames on agents provocateurs.

Shortly after the clashes, APPO dismantled its last roadblocks in the city of Oaxaca, which had brought activity to a halt from May to October. It also handed over the University radio station, which it had occupied for months.

Meanwhile, arrests of APPO members have continued apace, while divisions have cropped up among the more than 300 groups that make up the organisation.

Eight of APPO’s member groups, including several local trade unions like the ones at the Benito Juárez state university and the state social security institute, complained that within APPO are violent individuals who are no longer under the control of the organisation’s collective leadership.

The groups said they would continue to participate in APPO, “but cautiously.”

In the streets of Oaxaca, all activity is closely observed by some 5,000 federal police who were deployed to the city by the central government in October with the aim of putting an end to the unrest.

Teachers, whose strike prompted the creation of APPO last June, returned to class weeks ago, local businesses have reopened and life has slowly returned to a semblance of normality, and Governor Ruiz has come back to his offices, as have most of his associates and officials, as well as the local judges and legislators.

“But they have not beaten us. The causes of our uprising are still there, and APPO will return in force,” said López.

He said his group would hold talks with the Calderón administration “despite the repression, because we are neither intransigent nor violent, although I have to say that our central demand, the governor’s removal, will not be modified or set aside.”

Besides, he added, it must not be forgotten that those who have been killed, arrested and tortured belonged to APPO, and that those responsible for the violence remain at large.

Miguel Álvarez, a former member of a commission that acted as a mediator in the 1990s between the government and the indigenous Zapatista guerrillas in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, said the conflict in Oaxaca has gotten out of the hands of APPO.

“APPO no longer has the same strength or support, and the group should be purged and must come up with more proactive proposals,” he said.

The PRI, which governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000, continues to control all branches of the state in Oaxaca, which it has ruled for 77 years.

APPO accuses Governor Ruiz of cracking down on dissidents and activists, governing in an authoritarian manner, and having opponents arrested and tortured.

The new government has not made it clear what position it will take towards Ruiz, but lawmakers from his conservative National Action Party (PAN) argue that he should step down. The governor even faces opposition from within his own party.

Nevertheless, PAN and PRI legislators declined to remove him when they had a chance to do so in October, and the PRI now refuses to consider the possibility of his removal.

Along with Chiapas and Guerrero, Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in Mexico, with 150 of the country’s 250 poorest municipalities.