Oaxaca’s Popular Assembly “Expels” the State Government

[Joanne98]

Oaxaca’s Popular Assembly “Expels” the State Government
Events Announced to Build a “National Movement from Below”
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2045.html

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
September 7, 2006

In an eight-and-a-half-hour-long meeting of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) on September 3, the 193 delegates from different organizations which constitute the APPO declared the governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz (URO) “proscrito” – banned, exiled, unwelcome – in the state of Oaxaca. The ex-governor will be replaced by a “proclamation of good government for the city of Oaxaca, a proclamation for the 570 municipalities, and a manifesto to the nation, declaring the banishment of URO from the government, and that the government will continue to be exercised from the historic center of the city of Oaxaca”.

In the following days the APPO has proclaimed various regulations for governing, including ways to open the barricades on city streets during the day, closing them only at night for protection of the radio stations and antennas.

It was proclaimed by the APPO that “laws” or rules laid down by the assembly will be binding on the rest of the state – which sure sounds to me like a state government. The forthcoming proclamations will deal with reactivating the economy, citizen security, cleanliness and beautification of the city, measures for the urban and suburban transportation system, a announcement to attract tourism, and another for “harmonic coexistence”.

On Tuesday, September 5, federal highway 190 was opened. On the 15th and 16th of September caravans will leave Oaxaca bound for other states in the north, south and center of the nation, to spread the word about Oaxaca’s movement. The APPO pronouncement is “For the construction in the nation of a single national movement from below.” On September 28 a national and international forum in solidarity with the people of Oaxaca will take place, in an as yet unspecified location.

On October 12 at 11:00 AM a statewide popular forum will be held in City Hall. Exactly where the vanished mayor is or will be has not yet been revealed. Jesús Oretega has been “missing in action” for several weeks.

In Oaxaca, the only government is the APPO, affirmed Caesar Mateos Benatez, in a press conference. He is a member of the provisional coordinating committee of the APPO. This proclamation was contradicted by Miguel Angel Concha Viloria, a spokesperson for the URO regime, who said, in essence, that would be breaking the law! Because only legally constituted governing bodies can make regulations.

People living in Oaxaca have made it known to the APPO that they feel severely inconvenienced by this revolutionary movement, not only by the loss of income, but by having to drive blocks out of their way to navigate blocked streets. Furthermore, the children are not in school and no municipal police are on the streets; there’s a curfew to discourage roving paramilitaries and ordinary thieves. Public transport is never certain, and the bus routes are regularly changed to avoid blockades.

Acknowledging the inconvenience of the revolution, Mateos Benatez said that the APPO was obliged to put forth the declarations in order to minimize the problems and inconvenience to society.

The “mobile police” of the APPO, if one can call them that, have been cruising the streets, aided mainly by cell phones and calls to radio stations to issue alarms. The new police force is “members of the Honorable Body of Topiles of the APPO and of the Magisterial Police of Oaxaca.” Topil is a word from colonial times now used for a volunteer guard or messenger under the indigenous system of usos y costumbres that governs many of the state’s small towns.

The national patriotic holidays of Mexico will be observed in the city, with the traditional “Grito de Dolores” – the reenactment of the cry for an uprising in Dolores Hidalgo that sparked Mexico’s war for independence – emanating from the capital building on September 15.

The Secretary for Citizen Protection, according to Mateo Benítez, has started to hire some 8,000 people from different parts of the state to constitute reinforcements for the state police, with a goal of massive attack on the movement’s encampments, to dislodge them “at the moment when the federal government intervenes.”

On September 6, the federal election commission (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación) unanimously declared Felipe Calderón the president elect of Mexico. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is pushing for an alternative government.

Oaxaca is not alone in its approach to changing Mexico.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2045.html

[Joanne98]

1. Blockades

Blockades
“Those that underestimate the popular opposition don’t know what they are talking about”
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2042.html

By Luis Hernández Navarro
La Jornada
September 7, 2006

A profound political crisis is shaking up the country. The rules that regulate the balance of power between elites have been violated. From above, there is no agreement or any possibility for one in the short term. The occupation of the lectern of the Palace of San Lázaro (the Chamber of Deputies, lower house of the Mexican Congress) by legislators from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD in its Spanish initials) and the Labor Party (PT) in order to prevent President Fox from giving his speech this September 1 is one example.

A severe crisis in the model of control pierces the relationships of domination in large regions of the Mexican national territory. People accustomed to obeying have refused to do so. People that think they are destined to rule have been unable to impose their command. Those from below have become disobedient. When those on the top want to impose their opinion from above, in the name of the law, they are ignored from below. This can be seen with Oaxaca, Chiapas, the miners of Lázaro Cárdenas, and the peasants of Atenco.

The political crisis and the crisis in the model of control have joined hands. Taking advantage of this fight on the top, millions of people from below have shown their insubordination. They are not ready to accept any more impositions. So they slip through the gaps that are left open by the dispute up above.

The country does not fit into the political regime. All the organizations that regulate the struggle for power, its exercise, and its values have been kidnapped by the powers that be. They have taken these organizations hostage. People that demand that the PRD choose between the rule of law and social mobilization are behaving like a thief who, upon being discovered, yells, “stop, thief!” They have been the first to impose extrajudicial force upon these institutions. What else could this be if not the famous Chapultepec Pact of Carlos Slim?

Upon becoming the President of the Republic in 2000, Vicente Fox had the opportunity to undertake a profound reform of the state that would transform the old regime that society had clearly grown tired of by that time. He decided not to do so, instead taking advantage of the tools that allowed him discretionary use of presidential power.

These were the tools that were used to intervene in the electoral process in favor of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN). These tools were the instruments that the businessmen organized in the Corporate Coordinating Council (CCE), that the oligarchy of the electronic media, corrupt union leaders like Elba Esther Gordillo, sectors of the Catholic Church hierarchy, and front groups of the Mexican far right used to participate illegally and illegitimately in the July 2 election on behalf of Calderón.

People that try to make a scandal of the plantón on Reforma Avenue and of the occupation of the lectern at the Chamber of Deputies are the same people blocking the political representation of more than 15 million Mexicans who voted in the ballot boxes and of many millions more who did not vote because they have seen that any participation that is not subordinated to institutional politics has always been blocked off. It is they who obstruct the access of millions of Mexicans to the world of political affairs. It is they who have kidnapped the federal government, using its programs for partisan purposes. It is they who have prevented voices against the imposition from being heard in the electronic media.

In order to recover the institutions of political representation, there is no viable option besides confronting and corralling these powers with social mobilization. There is no other course of action than to drain the powerful of their authority by putting up blockades against its exercise. There is no other way forward than to prove, step by step, the illegitimacy of those that have assumed for themselves the power of governing.

In this way, the actions such as the blockades of the streets or of the legislative stage that have been carried out by mobilized citizens are a response to the blockades of information and of political representation carried out from above. They are a response to a previous obstruction.

Blockades have been an effective weapon of struggle in a wide range of Latin American countries. Confronted by the limitations of traditional forms of protest, such as the general strike, in countries where the informal economy has grown so large that formal employment is the exception, blockades permit the multitude to create political pressure. Their implementation impedes the movement of products and of the labor force. This causes loses for the business world. The Argentine piqueteros have successfully put blockades into practice. The Bolivian gas and water revolutions made them a central part of the strategy against the privatization of natural resources. Why should Mexico be an exception?

The political crisis shaking this country will have an unfavorable resolution for the people if they withdraw to their homes or to the institutions. Now more than ever it is necessary to take to the streets in order to confront and corral the powers that be. Those that underestimate the popular opposition don’t know what they are talking about. And if they don’t know, let them take a walk through Oaxaca so they can have an idea of what awaits us.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2042.html

[Robbien]

4. This is such a good piece

When those on the top want to impose their opinion from above, in the name of the law, they are ignored from below.

After so many years of oppression, it is good to see there are several opposition leaders ready to lead when the oppressed people are so ready to revolt.

[Joanne98]

5. That would make a good bumperstick or tee-shirt

[Robbien]

2. Interesting

Parts of Mexico are stating their independence while Caulderon is packing his bags to go smoozing with Bush.

[Joanne98]

6. And the media whores in the US say nothing.

[Jcrowley]

3. National Government of the People

Oaxaca’s Social Movement Develops Radical Vision for a National Government of the People
Despite Fatigue, Marchers Once Again Fill the Streets of the State Capital, as Social Leaders from Other States Visit to Learn from Oaxaca’s Example

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca

September 3, 2006

The fifth Oaxaca Mega-March called by the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO in its Spanish initials) for Friday, September 1, passed a fixed point for an hour and a half, with a total number of participants that I estimated to be at least 50,000. (The newspaper Las Noticias estimated more than 300,000.) The march began in the affluent San Felipe del Agua neighborhood, where normally one might really believe the refrain of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz (“URO”) that “no pasa nada” (“nothing is happening”).

From the zocalo bandstand the crowd heard the leader of Section 22 of the teacher’s union, Enrique Rueda Pacheco, declare that the President of Mexico Vicente Fox had been obliged to withdraw from the chamber of deputies in the capital without being able to deliver his final Informe, (state of the union message). Instead, Fox’s speech was delivered later, by TV and print, while only a few hours after Fox’s ignominious departure, Rueda Pacheco declared that Oaxaca will not only fight forever until victory (“hasta la victoria siempre,” quoting from Che Guevara), but will fight on the national stage for a people’s government.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2038.html

So if one were to analyze these events in Mexico what lessons could we draw from them and how do they apply to here in sleepy el Norte'?

[Vidar]

7. Bravo.

[NashVegas]

8. Damn ...

The neocons better hurry up on those annexation plans.

Anyone notice that Oaxaca is right next to Chiapas?