Report from Oaxaca

Report from Oaxaca
by Luciente Zamora and Nina Armand

This is the first report from two Revolution correspondents, Luciente Zamora, and Nina Armand, who are now in Oaxaca as part of a delegation whose mission is to bring international attention to the situation in that southern Mexican state. As the two correspondents wrote in a letter in Revolution #74: “Repression is hitting hard against a powerful struggle that has rocked Oaxaca for months and inspired many people throughout Mexico and other parts of the world. Now more than ever there is a need to hear from the people who have been fighting with such determination, to bring to light the government-inflicted terror currently unfolding, and to get a deeper understanding of how people are confronting these new challenges and what the implications of all this are for emancipatory struggle on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.”

Watch this website and get the next issue of Revolution for further on-the-scene reports from Oaxaca.

Oaxaca, Mexico, December 18— Contrasted against the blue sky, the red noche buenas blooming throughout the city, along with the sounds of women cooking and children playing in the marketplace, make the center of town seem almost…normal. Oaxaca is not the same place it was before the people stood up in June of this year. The fact that for months the people raised their heads throughout Oaxaca—from the center region and through much of the countryside—cannot be erased. Oaxaca demanded to be heard.

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On Sunday, December 17, 43 prisoners who had been detained in a prison in Tepic, Nayarit were released. Immediately upon their arrival back to Oaxaca City, many of the people released began sharing stories of the November 25th repression when the Federal Preventive Police (PFP)—which had been occupying the zocalo, the central city square, since October—attacked protesters demanding the ouster of Oaxaca's hated governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. More than 150 people were brutally beaten and arrested in the area around the zocalo, including many people who were coming home from work and shopping.

Magdalena was coming home from work on the afternoon of the 25th. She’s a 50-year-old widow and works as a housekeeper to support her family. She had heard of the popular movement, but didn’t really know too much about it. She remembered some of her neighbors telling her that the teachers were just troublemakers and that it was time for the authorities to bring down order. But on the 25th everything changed. She was swept up along with many others by the PFP while she was in the town center. She was hit, thrown down on the floor, had her hands tied and told—along with other women—that they were going to die and that after they were killed their bodies would be thrown in garbage cans where nobody would find them.

Magdalena saw her relatives bloodied and beat up. For the 21 days she was in prison, she and the others arrested that day had no contact with the outside world. For Magdalena, what is burned into her consciousness is the desperation of the women prisoners who don’t know where their children are and whether or not they are eating. Just as arbitrarily as she’d been grabbed off the street on the 25th, she was told that she was going home. She can’t stop thinking about the women she left behind.

Before, Magdalena hadn’t given much thought to the people’s struggle. Her experience has affected her profoundly. She says after what the government has done to her she wants to participate in the struggle however she can. She now remembers the repression against the people of Atenco, who were fighting against the government's moves to take their land, and never would have believed she’d find herself identifying with the women who were brutalized there. She is most of all driven by an urgency to free the prisoners who remain in the conditions she’s just escaped, and she says that though she can’t read or write she wants to be involved in whatever way she can. She says she doesn’t seek to be rich and live in a mansion like URO, but she demands respect and a more just world—not just for herself, but for everyone.

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The air is still thick in Oaxaca. In the past weeks police helicopters have occasionally flown low over the city—their blades a reminder of the brute force of the state. Officially the PFP forces have withdrawn from the city, but there are still eyes and ears everywhere. Just last night Florentino Lopez, Pedro Garcia, and Macario Padilla, prominent figures in the APPO movement were detained at a stoplight and were beaten and arrested. They were released the same night—but the threat of more repression is clear, as is determination on the people’s side.

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Support the Revolution Reporting Trip to Oaxaca

From Luciente Zamora and Nina Armand:

“To accomplish what we’re setting out to do, we need your support. Primarily and urgently, we need funds to finance all this. We also need you to spread the word—pass on our articles, send them out to your listserves and e-mail lists and arrange speaking engagements in neighborhoods, schools, bookstores, etc.

“Send donations* to:
RCP Publications
attn: Oaxaca reportage
PO Box 3486
Chicago, IL 60654”