MEXICO: Two Days in the Life of Oaxaca's REVOLUTION!

[Joanne98]

Two Days in the Life of Oaxaca's Revolution
A Neighborhood Organizes to Hold a Radio Station and Protect Citizens from Police Repression

http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2021.html

By James Daria
The Ricardo Flores Magón Brigade Reporting for Narco News from Oaxaca
August 23, 2006

Monday, around four o’clock in the morning, the antennas and transmitter of the Oaxacan Radio and Television Corporation were attacked by police and hired thugs known as porros. A few weeks earlier, Oaxacan women took the offices of Channel 9 and the radio station at 96.9 FM, creating an audio and visual outlet for the demands of the social movement that is currently shaking the foundations of Oaxacan society. In the attacks, armed forces supposedly linked to the state government fired upon peaceful protesters occupying the facilities on top of Fortin Hill. One person was wounded and the equipment was destroyed, striking a strategic blow against the free expression of the popular movement and turning up the already tense climate in the city.

Oaxaca awoke to a flurry of activity as streets were blocked throughout the city completely paralyzing transportation. Upon hearing of the attack against Channel 9, the popular forces remobilized and occupied 15 corporate radio stations throughout the city, according to the report in the local daily Las Noticias. It was as if the response was, “if you take two of ours; we will take fifteen of yours” as they further increasing the un-governability of Oaxaca. The protesters had spontaneously and simultaneously organized the most massive media takeover ever seen in Oaxaca.

Waking up in the morning and trying to go to work, this reporter ran into a road blockade in his own neighborhood, a largely residential subdivision with cheap government housing and insufficient basic services. City buses were put into strategic places completely cutting off access to the neighborhood and to the Regional University of the South East located in the entrance. The neighborhood, El Rosario, is tucked into the southeast pocket of Oaxaca City and is surrounded by hills. Normally the residents of this neighborhood have stayed relatively neutral as to the current course of events but, finding themselves in the midst of the struggle to guard the antenna of one of the radio stations taken by the popular forces, the neighborhood’s consciousness began to rise and be put into action. From early on local residents brought food and coffee to the small numbers of teachers that were camped out in front of the antenna.

At night, wandering through the blockade, this reporter was able to witness the birth of not simply just another roadblock but the birth of social and community consciousness among neighbors, friends and family. The small numbers of teachers were aided by local residents who joined the encampment, making up the majority of the people. Women brought food and drink to the protesters and children ran throughout the occupied streets free of traffic. The atmosphere was one of a radical block party and an excuse to socialize with one another. Walking further I bumped into my two of my neighbors who brought hot coffee. We walked through the encampment and met up with other neighbors, friends and family.

Walking back to the house to make more coffee, the first reports of police attacks against encampments at other antennas began to be heard on the many radios. Fireworks began to sound throughout the city. One bang means alert, two bangs mean we are being attacked. We returned to our block together for security. Leaving the pots and pans in the house, the neighbors grabbed sticks, broom handles and metal rods. As they armed themselves with homemade weapons of self defense, they hatched a plan to ring the church bell.

The ragged group of instant revolutionaries roamed the streets of the neighborhood as we discussed why resistance to the state government was so important. My neighbor, a housewife who is originally from the coast and is raising four children alone while husband is away working in the United States, talked as she walked towards the church with stick in hand. “All of us here have been fucked over in one way or another by the government,” the mother explained. The other family, made up of parents and two daughters-one of whom was eight months pregnant but armed with a stick and a shopping bag filled with rocks, reiterated their commitment to defend their neighborhood. “We are poor. We are the people,” was the common sentiment. “We poor people have nothing to lose, the rich do.”

Arriving at the church, we found other people who had the same idea. One youth climbed on the roof of the locked building and began to ring the bell to sound the alarm. The neighborhood was aroused as people gathered in the church yard to discuss what was happening. The latest news of police violence was discussed as well as the reasons for the blockade. One woman, the caretaker of the church building, exclaimed that ringing the church bell in such a manner was against church law. My neighbor cried out that the people paid for the church bell through donations and therefore it belongs to the people. The whole church belongs to the people and should be used in an emergency such as this, she said. Whether it be radio stations, television channels or church bells, the movement that is forming in Oaxaca has been challenging on a concrete level the normal notions of private property and pointing towards a communal concept of social property so much part of the fabric of Oaxacan society.

Some neighbors protested and complained about the disturbances inherent in the blockade. Some couldn’t leave the neighborhood to go to work. Others asked for their understanding, arguing that what was most important was uniting as a community to physically confront the government. When some expressed no interest in taking part, their neighbors accused them of not having any interest in being part of the community as well. “When we have a community assembly you are never there. All you care about is your money.” As many residents of this community come from small towns outside the city, many have specific notions of what community means, and not fulfilling the moral and physical obligations inherent in being a community member is severely looked down upon. The community has the moral obligation to defend itself and help in the construction of a more just society, according to them, and now the residents of this neighborhood were confronted with fulfilling this obligation.

The ragtag army roamed the streets making noise and alerting neighbors. Residents came out of their houses and expressed their solidarity. Arriving at the encampment, my neighbors were delighted to see that the numbers were doubled. The community had come together to fight. And this was done spontaneously, without a central leadership. As explained by a participant in the blockade of Channel 9 ¬– who is neither a teacher nor a member of the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People but simply, as he says, a member of civil societ – the movement lacks direction as the leadership has vanished. This is now not a movement of leaders, it is one of bases. The people are in control, according to him, as the traditional leadership has backed away. This was clearly evident as my community, united in self defense, organized surveillance brigades, handed out vinegar soaked rags for protection against gases, gathered rocks to be used as ammunition and generally formed instant bonds of solidarity and understanding as they united in common cause. The people were ready. They knew what was coming. They knew the police and the government-hired thugs would come and would be armed. Together they were physically ready to confront the bullets of the “bad government.” “If the police come into the Rosario,” one neighbor exclaimed, “they will never get out alive.”

Throughout the course of the night, fireworks would burst in the black sky alerting us to another act of violence by the state. Church bells rang in the distance. The radio would crack into activity saying that bullets were fired in one neighborhood, that police activity was spotted in another, that one teacher was shot in yet another. The night grew tense as everyone prepared themselves for the hours between three and five in the morning as it seems the preferred time for attacks. The Rosario commune prepared itself for confrontation behind the barricades of city busses. One person remarked that this must have been what it was like during the Mexican Revolution. Another person claimed that what was need more than anything else was another revolution. The city seemed on the verge of exploding.

Dawn broke in our part of the city, however, without incident. Other parts of the city weren’t as lucky as according to various reports there were people shot or disappeared by the police. Many people like me who stayed up the whole night left the barricades to walk to work and carry about their normal lives.

Returning home later in the day to sleep I found that the residents of El Rosario had organized collective taxis that charged but a couple pesos to travel to the major intersection leading to downtown. A cheap taxi service is severely lacking in our part of town and is not possible due to the corruption in the taxi business. One driver remarked that the taxi business is a mafia and the corruption leads directly to the state government. “Mexico is a mafia,” he said. Meanwhile, however, while a general state of unrest and un-governability has paralyzed the city, the people have found the freedom to autonomously self-organize to meet the needs of their community.

Writing this, night is falling upon Oaxaca once again and the threat of violence from fascist forces looms. The people are organizing themselves to defend their community and their antennas. It is their community, their streets, their radio station, their voice and united they will defend them. It is their movement and their time. The movement in Oaxaca has taken many forms throughout these seemingly very long 93 days of struggle since the teachers went on strike. Perhaps the movement is now at its most profound point with such massive popular participation. It is the peoples’ movement and united they just might win.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2021.html

[Joanne98]

1. NN is asking for funds for their freelance reporters in Mexico.

They need cell phones, laptops and money for cheap motel rooms.

On the Eve of the Crisis in Mexican Democracy, Your Journalists Need Mobility and Equipment to Report What Comes Next
Your Access to the Authentic News, and Their Safety Bringing It to You, Is at Stake
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2022.html

By Al Giordano
Publisher, Narco News
August 24, 2006

As the clock ticks toward D-day, the decision day by Mexico’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal that must, by September 6, determine an official result of that country’s fraudulent July presidential election, water cannons and barricades have been installed around the federal Congress in Mexico City, repression is on the rise in Oaxaca and other conflict zones, and as those below struggle for their voices to be heard through the media, those above have ratcheted up the threats, intimidation and violence against the few and proud media that struggle to tell the truth.

More than a few observers have compared the tension and consequences in Mexico today to those of the 1973 US-backed coup d’etat in Chile. I am haunted by the image and memory of one of the journalists disappeared there – along with thousands of social fighters – during that dark September: the New Yorker Charles Horman, a saga from which came an award winning motion picture titled Missing.

Now I’m thinking about so many valiant and talented Narco News journalists who, today, are reporting for you from different regions of Mexico where gargantuan battles for freedom, justice and authentic democracy are raging. And of the responsibility they feel to bring you the stories that the Commercial Media has consistently distorted and will surely get wrong again and again. And of our responsibility, all of us, to do all we can to minimize their risks and maximize their ability to report the whole truth.

The forces of authoritarianism and censorship are rattling sabers:

The Mexican State has just reminded that arrest warrants against Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos and other rebels are active and that legal interpretations that an amnesty law protects them from detention are disposable on the whims of the state.
In Oaxaca, where the disgraced regime of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz has arrested, shot at, kidnapped and assassinated social fighters and journalists in the past three months, his state attorney general just labeled the peaceful Popular Assembly as a “terrorist organization.”
In North America’s largest metropolis and engine of culture, Mexico City, major showdowns are coming to a head: The September 1 “State of the Union Address” by President Vicente Fox in the halls of Congress where police have taken in recent days to violently attacking elected senators and representatives. And on September 15 and 16, the national independence days, Fox, the Armed Forces and the popular resistance against electoral fraud have all laid claim to the country’s “town square,” the Mexico City Zocalo.
There are already more than 400 political prisoners in this “democracy,” including 30 arrested May 3 and 4 in Texcoco and Atenco. In a land where narco-traffickers and corrupt politicians walk out of prison on a whim, the cells are reserved for those who dare speak out against the abuses of power.
We have to keep reporting all this and more to you and to the world: in Spanish, English, Italian, French, German and Portuguese. Specifically in Mexico, more than 45 authentic journalists have been donating our labor non-stop since the first of the year to chronicle – honestly and with strict adherence to the facts – the tide of history underway.

It is highly likely – although not at all certain – that this week or next the seven justices of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal will endorse a mammoth electoral fraud, cementing a 21st Century coup d’etat in this nation of 100 million people. If it opts for the corrupt path, the public isn’t going to swallow it, and the forces of repression will be unleashed to try to contain peaceful and civilian resistance. Journalists, too, will be in the crossfire, especially those who tell the truth.


You Are Our Only Security

For six years, Narco News has reported from all América. Our journalists have been arrested, sued, kidnapped, physically attacked, and threatened with deportation from various countries, including Mexico. And each time, we fought to defend them and won. We did that because you, the readers, gave us the tools to do this work, to do it well, and to mount the defenses.

Not one of these journalists has become wealthy. Not one has even been able to purchase an automobile, much less a home, because of it. But today not one is in prison, either, or assassinated; at least not yet.

In my experience, the most important protection a journalist can have during a time of moral crisis and violent conflict is mobility: the ability to move rapidly with the news. A moving target is harder to hit. It means taking buses, taxis, sometimes renting a car, and having effective internal communications systems between us.

It also means that the cameraperson must have a working camera, and the writer must have a working laptop. There are at least two of our key journalists who have lost theirs in the rough-and-tumble of this work and I feel it is urgent to re-arm them with these peaceful “weapons” of communication.

It also means having a roof over one’s head in a strange town where the news has suddenly exploded, and something to eat, and sometimes gasoline or an Internet connection.

For three months this Spring, when the Zapatista Other Campaign was in the central part of Mexico, you helped rent a safe house and Internet access for sixteen authentic journalists, at the cost of less than $500 dollars per month. Today, the “Narco Newsroom” publishes from more humble quarters: a $120-a-month apartment, with another fifty bucks for high speed Internet access. But if the mierda hits the fan, as seems entirely plausible in the coming days, we have no means to move quickly.

One of our courageous correspondents in Mexico City, this week, asked me for fifty dollars to be able to travel to do an important story. I checked my bank account. It has $45. That’s insane. We all know how to live on vapors but with the crisis evolving, we need to be mobile, or not only are we sitting ducks for any repressive plan from above, but, worse, we can’t get to the news in the different places where it is possibly going to explode in the coming days and weeks.

I can tell you that every member of this news team knows exactly how to minimize danger and maximize our ability to get the story to you. I have never known a finer bunch of communicators and colleagues. We have spent many hours talking about what could happen next and how to do our work without falling into traps. They’re ready for the crisis to come. We’re ready.

But what is missing is fifty dollars there, a camera here, a laptop over there, a bus ticket to a safe location, a ten-dollar hotel room somewhere in América, that, at a certain moment, could mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment, which means the difference between your getting to read the real story or not. And, if you’ve been following Narco News this summer, then you know we are also searching for a new webmaster, so that Dan Feder can get out into the field and do this important reporting, and so some extra financial responsibilities to be able to do that are leaning heavily on us as well.

And there are just $45 dollars in the bank, with the sabers rattling outside our doors.

None of us doing this work want to be the subject of some future movie about some journalist who is suddenly, in an hour of crisis and repression, disappeared or missing. We only want to keep doing this work, to keep informing you and so many others (Narco News today has more readers than ever before, and since January the increase in traffic to this little website has increased surprisingly each month, so we do know you are out there, and that there are hundreds of thousands of you each day.)

I wanted to wait until September to ask for your help, but the crisis clock is ticking before then. We just report the news. We don’t get to decide when it explodes. But can you hear that ticking sound? Do you think, based on what we’ve reported, that Mexico is going to stand for another electoral fraud and coup d’etat? Do you think that those who want to remain in power and who have already arrested and killed to keep it will not attempt to exploit our every weakness as we try to bring you the story?

The reality is that to do the job ahead, the work that becomes, tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, but definitely within two weeks, more important than before, we need your help, in the form of a contribution – more generous than before – to the Fund for Authentic Journalism.

Please click the following link and make your contribution right now at:


http://www.authenticjournalism.org/

Or send it via the mail to:


The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760 (U.S.A.)

[cal04]

4. thank you for the post Joanne98

without Al and the others we probably wouldn't know the half of what's going on
:hi:

:kick:

[Joanne98]

5. Thank you. They've done an awesome job.

[Clark2008]

2. This just amazes me: our neighbor to the south is in near revolt

and not a word about it in the corporate media. It's not being talked about ad nauseum by the chattering-class.

Is the 10-year-old death of a little girl ultimately more important (and, really, is it more interesting?) than the fact that Mexico is in near-revolution?

Is it, corporate media? Is it?

[Joanne98]

3. Not one word from the CM (corporate media). Not one....

[niallmac]

12. The revolution WILL NOT be televised.n/t

[Protagoras]

35. I can't find this documentary anywhere

seriously. It's got an "Unknown" listed on its availability.

art meet life.

[Joanne98]

6. Here's a website for Latin American News. (English)

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={B4799ECA-55FF-4DE0-BFB7-914C60D827B4}&language=EN

[Joanne98]

7. The Bolivian President wants to nationalize the oil industry. YES!

Bushco must be shitting about all the resistance down south.

[Greyhound]

23. ...and that's why we won't hear one peep about it in our "media" n/t

[Joanne98]

8. kick

[autorank]

9. This is what real news organizations do. Viva NarcoNews.Com n/t

[Canuckistanian]

10. Map showing Oaxaca

[Joanne98]

14. thanx

[EFerrari]

11. kick

[hogwyld]

17. People power MUST win!

The sham election must be overturned, and hopefully, that same fight for justice will come over here.

[Joanne98]

13. kick

[rman]

15. k&r

[tom_paine]

16. K & R for Mexican Patriots!

:kick:

What a shame our own people have so meekly become Subjects of an Emperor. How disgraceful.

Even if the Mexicans are resubjugated by their own Busheviks working with our Busheviks, at least they tried, at least they fought.

Whihc is more than can be said for the Imperial Subjects of America.

[meganmonkey]

32. Meek subjects, indeed

Are we so deeply entranced by this nightmare that we can't even act? We KNOW that most of the people are fed up with the way things are going, even the ones who may disagree with us on some things, we are ALL getting screwed and we all know it. The powers-that-be have succeeded in dividing and conquering so well that we can't even beat them even thought we are waaay more than just a majority, WE ARE THE PEOPLE, and we are supposed to rule this land.

We need to learn a lesson from this. If we don't it'll just get worse, until we have no choice but to fight back for our survival. The distribution of wealth in this country, the gap between rich and poor, is becoming more extreme by the 'fiscal quarter' and we'll end up a fricking 3rd world country at the rate we're going. We aren't that different from the rest of the world and we aren't that special, and we are getting fucked.

So let's look to Mexico before it gets that bad. Let's look to Mexico and realize that if there is a change it has to come from the people.

Let's get off our fucking asses.

:patriot:

[meganmonkey]

18. KICK

[meganmonkey]

19. Why is it that

at DU, people often ask "what can we do? Why aren't more Americans doing something?"

Meanwhile HERE ARE AMERICANS DOING SOMETHING (yes, Mexico is in America, fwiw) and barely anyone has jack-shit to say about it?

Read this and learn, people, because unless you want to end up in total tyranny, the time is gonna come when we have to take lessons from our neighbors to the south.

En solidaridad! (I don't know if that's right, I used a free-translator :blush: )

Megan

[Greyhound]

22. The difference is leadership. They have one, we don't.

We have our own little cabal of power brokers that aren't interested in fairness, rights, people, anything other than maintaining their own Little fiefdoms of power. :mad:

[meganmonkey]

24. The leaders must come from the people

If we want leaders, we need to start BEING them. We ARE the leaders. The longer we wait for someone else to lead, the worse it's gonna get.

In peace and solidarity,

Megan

[Greyhound]

26. I see you point, but the reality is that it is unusual for leaders to rise

from the lower classes due to having to spend so much time just meeting the day to day requirements of living. Here it is even more unusual because of the automatic suspicion amerikans have of those that are not wealthy.

Amerika is too big, too controlled, and too insulated for a Hugo Chavez to get the notoriety that would garner the exposure to become a leader. If I were to use myself as an example, it would take the politiwhores about 5 minutes to paint a dramatically distorted picture of my background and intentions. So we are pretty much left with the politicos as our source of leadership.

Look at what happened after the coup of 2000.

[meganmonkey]

30. Well, with all due respect

You can wait for your leader to appear, but I have to go protest in the street now. I am tired of waiting and making excuses. I am tired of pushing the responsibility to fix our country on other people. So in my town, we protest every weekday at rush hour. No 'politicos' sent me an email to encourage me to 'join' something, the local nonprofit peace organization isn't even doing anything like this, but a few of us just started doing it and we've been going strong since early April. Is it easy to get out there everyday after working (and before going home to fix dinner or whatever else I need to do)? No. But someone has to start doing something. Is the whole country going to follow our lead? Maybe, if more people like you would stop looking for answers from political leaders and just get started locally.

I don't know the answer, but I am quite certain that waiting for the politicos to actually give a shit is a losing proposition for the people, and it is the people that matter.


I hope I don't sound too snarky, but I hear excuses everyday for why people aren't speaking up and standing up. Yet our congresspeople aren't listening to us, our voting system is a mess, and still we wait...we wait for the broken system to fix itself. We wait for someone from within politics to change the system that is keeping them in power. Why would they do that? It benefits them to keep us disenfranchised. It benefits them to perpetuate the status quo. I expect NOTHING from them, and boy do I feel better about things, and more motivated.

Okay, I have to get off DU, finish my work, and head to the Federal Bldg now.

The sign I'm going to be holding today says:

HOW BAD MUST IT GET BEFORE YOU JOIN THE PROTEST?

In peace and solidarity,

Megan

[Greyhound]

33. Not snarky at all, and I don't disagree with you. The point I'm trying to

make is that your group, along with the hundreds of others across the nation is being universally ignored.

Groups like yours have been consistently working their hearts out for going on six years now and I've never heard on peep out of the M$M, and I pay much closer attention than most. IOW, the vast majority of the sheeple don't know we exist and the only thing I know of that will change that is for high profile people to lend their support to these efforts.

Another, less likely, method would be a general, nation-wide, strike.

[Selatius]

25. You don't need leaders to do what is right.

All it takes is principles and overcoming fear of the authorities and fear of the unknown.

[Greyhound]

27. I disagree, look at what happened after the coup of 2000.

Thousands of people in the streets in protest, all across the country, and the media successfully ignored them because none of our "leaders" lent their support. Watch the recording of the election certification in the Senate.

We are ready for revolt and the politiwhores know it.

[Selatius]

29. The news media ignored the protesters in Venezuela, too

And they still managed to reverse a violent military coup against their democratically elected government. This is not simple election fraud they reversed; they reversed a military coup.

[Greyhound]

34. True, and it was, by the estimates I've seen, a huge outpouring of

the people into the streets, something that hasn't happened here since the 70's.

Minor point, Venezuela's most recent coup was not strictly a military coup. It was a ruling class coup with the support of a portion (<1/3) of the military, which back off when the people made it clear they would not accept it. Just saying it was not a military coup in the sense of Brazil for example.

When things get bad enough for the kinds of numbers we need to get out in the streets, you will see the politiwhores knocking each other down to get out front and lay claim to the protests.

[Greyhound]

20. K & R, thanks, once again for keeping this vital issue before

the many DUers that don't hear or follow the truly remarkable events transpiring there.

[stepnw1f]

21. "The Revolution will Not Be Televised"

Know who your corporate media really works for.

[Generic Other]

28. You would think our media would at least mention it in passing

It's so great living in the free world.

[helderheid]

31. I am proud of you Mexico!!!!

[Opusnone]

36. “We poor people have nothing to lose, the rich do.”

I couldn't have said it better myself.
THAT is the answer to the question posed earlier today on this forum, "What do the neocons fear?"