[Marxism] An update from Mexico City/Oaxaca

[dwalters at marxists.org]

Mexico City- October 28, 2006
Dear Supporter of the teachers’ and popular movement in Oaxaca:
 Yesterday afternoon (Friday, October 27) I was at the Planton (encampment) in
Mexico City with the 21 hunger strikers and the 400 remaining teachers and
activists from Oaxaca who arrived here October 9 following their 500-kilometer
walk.

 Just moments after the riot police (granaderos) charged the encampment to
dislodge us from in front of the Hemiciclio a Juarez building, we learned that
in the city of Oaxaca, armed goons – under direct orders from PRI Governor
Ulises Ruiz Ortiz – had charged the barricades in a major operation to remove
all the Section 22 teachers and APPO supporters from the downtown section of
the city, which has been occupied by the movement since June 14.

 The teachers’ union and APPO had called on their supporters to join them in a
major mobilization on Friday to demand the immediate resignation of Ruiz Ortiz.

 Three people were killed in this assault: IndyMedia photographer Bradely Roland
Will from New York, Section 22 teacher Emilio Alonso Fabian and community
activist Esteban Ruiz. At least 23 others were seriously injured, and are
currently in the hospital. This brings to 14 the number of people who have been
killed on the APPO barricades.

 We later learned that in the neighboring municipality of Santa Maria Coyotepec,
20 striking teachers were arrested by the police and carted off to jail.
Thirteen of them had gunshot wounds. The teachers and their supporters had
organized a protest and encampment in front of the Municipal Building to demand
the ouster of Ruiz Ortiz.

 The Mexican newspaper La Jornada also reports this morning (October 28) that as
many 50 teachers who were on picket duty in front of the office of Ruiz Ortiz in
the city of Oaxaca have been disappeared. At this writing, their whereabouts are
still unknown.

 In a statement issued Friday night, leaders of Section 22 and APPO said this
operation was masterminded by Ruiz Ortiz and Elpidio Concha Arellando, state
president of the PRI-controlled CNC peasant federation, and was carried out
both by plain-clothes cops and members of the CNC and PRI. The movement leaders
also said the Friday assault was the first stage of a two-day effort to destroy
the movement. They warned that a major police operation could take place today
in Oaxaca against the teachers and APPO activists.

 Both Ruiz Ortiz and Concha Arellanado had made public statements during the
past 10 days warning that the Section 22-APPO downtown encampment would no
longer be standing after October 28. Concha Arellanado was the most explicit,
stating on October 16 that “we, the PRI activist, will take matters into our
own hands in the event the federal government fails to put a halt by next
Saturday to the continued occupation and vandalism of our state by these
radical elements; we will carry out any and all actions necessary to restore
order, the rule of law and social peace.”

 Indeed, the federal government had hoped the barricades would be torn down and
the teachers would be back to work by now. Interior Minister Carlos Abascal
Carranza, wielding both a carrot and a stick, had been pressing the leadership
of the teachers’ union over the past 10 days to agree to the negotiated
settlement worked out in common on October 10 in Mexico City.
 The carrot was the creation of a Senate Commission to see if there was a basis
for impeaching Ruiz Ortiz and a pledge to address some of the teachers’ wage
and workplace demands. The stick was the deployment to Oaxaca of more than
3,000 Army and Marine troops poised to enter the city of Oaxaca on a moment’s
notice to smash the strike and the mass movement that was generated to support
the teachers.

 Abascal Carranza has had a willing partner in this effort to ram through the
government’s proposed settlement: Enrique Rueda Pacheco, the general secretary
of Section 22 of the teachers’ union.

 The main problem for the government is that Rueda Pacheco has not been
successful to date in getting the teachers to end their strike and return to
the classrooms. The main problem was that the Senate Commission, as expected,
ruled that there was no basis for impeaching Ruiz Ortiz. A full vote by the
Mexican Senate ratified the Commission’s findings. The teachers – like the rest
of the indigenous and community activists in APPO -- are steadfast in their
commitment to get rid of Ruiz Ortiz, who represents the worst of the corrupt
and repressive holdovers of the 70-year PRI regime that ruled Mexico with an
iron fist. They don’t believe it will be safe for them to return to work as
long as Ruiz Ortiz is governor. They fear individual and collective retaliation
by the governor and his death squads.

 One week ago, Rueda Pacheco succeeded in getting his union leadership to send
out a ballot to all the state’s 70,000 teachers that effectively would have
ended the strike. But an angry 10-hour session of the Section 22 Delegates’
Assembly, the union’s highest leadership body, on October 21 repudiated this
maneuver by Rueda Pacheco and his clique. The Assembly called for a new ballot
on ending the strike and a new “consultation” of the members on October 23-24.

 The results of that balloting were made public on Thursday, October 27: The
Delegates Assembly, held the previous day, certified that 31,078 teachers voted
to return to work this coming week, while 20,387 voted to continue the strike.
This vote reflected the exhaustion and desperate situation facing teachers
after a bitter five-month strike. For the past two months, the teachers have
not received their wages or any funding from their union. Many have lost their
homes and cars. Countless families have been broken up.

 The Delegates Assembly on October 26 took note of this membership consultation,
but it did not vote to return to work on Monday, October 30 – as Abascal
Carranza and Ruiz Ortiz had hoped. The Assembly said the teachers would return
to work ONLY if certain conditions and guarantees were met: the safety of all
the teachers had to be guaranteed, all wages lost during the strike had to be
repaid, all the political prisoners held in the state of Oaxaca had to be
freed, and a government fund had to be set up to cover the long-term expenses
of the families of the 11 teachers and activists killed during the strike.

 And the Delegates Assembly took another equally important decision. It voted to
reject the government’s demand to end the encampment and tear down the
barricades. The Delegates Assembly stated they would not drop their commitment
to remove Ruiz Ortiz from office, even if they were compelled to return to
work. They said they remained committed to APPO and would send teachers every
day, on a rotating basis, to staff the barricades and encampment.
 This last decision by the Delegates Assembly infuriated Ruiz Ortiz and his
supporters, who expected that a decision to return to work would be accompanied
by an end to APPO and to the downtown occupation and encampment.

 A meeting was scheduled in Mexico City between the Section 22 leadership and
Abascal Carranza for today (October 28) in which the government was to give
their response to the teachers’ conditions.

 In the interim, however, the violence instigated by Ruiz Ortiz on October 27
has disrupted this attempt to work out the final details of a settlement.

 I spoke late last night over the phone with Augusto Reyes Medina, a member of
the Executive Committee of Section 22. He said the union leadership was holding
an emergency Delegates Assembly today (October 28) to discuss what to do next in
light of the new killings and the fact a climate of peace does not exist for the
teachers to return to work.
 Reyes Medina told me he had met earlier in the evening with dozens of general
secretaries of local chapters of the union from across the state. He and these
delegates to the Assembly, he said, had drafted a letter to the Delegates
Assembly and to all the teachers in Oaxaca in which they state that the
conditions for returning to work stipulated by the October 26 Delegates
Assembly do not exist.

 "No matter what Abascal Carranza tells our Section 22 delegation about ensuring
the safety and protection of our teachers,” Reyes Medina said, “the fact is that
he does not call the shots in Oaxaca. Nor has he lifted a finger thus far to
rein in Ruiz Ortiz, much less get rid of him. As everyone knows, there is an
open alliance between the PAN and the PRI on this issue today. 
 As long as the
assassins of our 14 teachers and supporters remain unpunished, as long as the
No. 1 assassin, Ruiz Ortiz, remains at the helm of the state, we will be gunned
down one by one, or in clusters, by the governor and his goons. Of this we can
be sure. This is how Ruiz Ortiz functions.”

 Reyes Medina said he and a large wing of the local leaders of the union would
call on the Delegates Assembly to put the decision to return to work on hold
until the only real guarantee to ensure the safe return to the classrooms is
enacted: the punishment of those responsible for the killings and the removal
from office of Ruiz Ortiz.

 I will keep you posted later today on the decisions of today’s Delegates
Assembly.

 In the meantime, I believe it is urgent that all supporters of the teachers’
and popular movement in Oaxaca organize this coming week emergency protest
actions in front of Mexican embassies and consulates to demand an end to the
repression in Oaxaca and the arrest and punishment of all those responsible for
the violence against the teachers and the APPO activists. The earlier these
emergency protests, the better.
In solidarity,
 Alan Benjamin



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