PFP and Army, Out of Oaxaca: Long live the resistance of the barricades!

PFP and Army, Out of Oaxaca
Long live the resistance of the barricades!

In spite of the harsh military operation to put an end to the "Oaxaca Commune," the valiant people of Oaxaca are resisting today by putting up barricades and confronting the occupiers at several points in the city. They have not succeeded in defeating it. That big resistance shows that it is possible to curb the PFP invasion, but also that in all the organizations of the country we have to go help strengthen our class brothers in this unequal battle.

The betrayal that the Rueda Pacheco agreement with the Interior Department (Gobernación) represents, so that the teachers would return to classes, dividing and weakening the movement of the APPO – in spite of the sit-in and the APPO hunger strike in the DF – has generated a lot of dissent among the thousands of militant educational workers who, in a principled manner and fulfilling the APPO agreements, are not returning to classes until the fall of the tyrant URO. No one in the APPO can go on saying that we must respect the decision that the teachers' leaders might take. Strike-breaking cannot be justified with the excuse of "trade union autonomy" of the
organizations. It was obvious that the return to classes would weaken the movement and encourage the repressive policy against the struggle. No negotiation with those who attack the people's struggle!

Let us break through the military siege on Oaxaca

An action on the national level that can mobilize against repression, like the one that forced Zedillo to halt the military offensive against the indigenous peoples and Zapatista peasants in Chiapas in 1994, is urgently needed. In all the movements in the states of the country, we ought to go to help the comrades of this big workers' and people's movement. On Sunday, October 29, several organizations blockaded the Lázaro Cárdenas Eje Central ("central axis") as a means of supporting Oaxaca. The students are already seizing departments and prep schools and CCHs (science and humanities high schools) and making barricades.

Now the trade union, peasant, social, and political organizations must carry out actions in their places of influence, like the seizure of border bridges and custom houses, seizing embassies, strikes, etc. (Mexican consulates overseas have been seized in countries of Europe and Latin America.) Although delayed, the EZLN has announced that it is joining this support and will blockade highways in the zones of Chiapas that it controls. Time is pressing, let us form brigades to work in the whole DF and let us increase international solidarity. Let us make the agreements we voted on in the national and international Solidarity Forum with the APPO in Oaxaca a reality.

On the results of this struggle which has held the state and federal government at bay for 5 months, depends the reorganization of the workers' and mass movement or a big fall. In many years, we had not seen a struggle as deep as this one, disputing the state, la Federación, over territorial control; and with organs of self-defense that infuriated the bourgeoisie. Let us coordinate with the normal school students of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, who are confronting repression by the PRD government of Zeferino Torreblanca. A Caravan of Caravans that will arrive at Oaxaca City from the north, south, east and west, should be the aim of meetings like the Assembly of the Peoples of Mexico. Let us make international attention focus on Oaxaca. We have to arrive at the Oaxaca Zócalo to help our comrades recover that bastion of struggle that the APPO installed. With forceful actions, let us show the heroic comrades of Oaxaca that they are not alone!

Promote a national strike!

The unions must spare no effort in these decisive moments. Unfortunately, faced with savage repression, they failed to call a strike and mobilization, limiting themselves to declarations against the entry of the PFP. The comrades of Oaxaca must not be left alone! It is urgent that in their assemblies the unions now discuss the national strike to force Ulises Ruiz and the troops out of Oaxaca. The SME has already declared in its meeting with the Interior Department on Monday, October 30 that it agrees with the national strike. Rank and file electrical workers should discuss the date for this national day to make it a reality. But the university students' unions must also do like the students and join this action, promoting the universities' and teachers' strike (STUNAM, SITUAM, CHAPINGO, Bachilleres, CNTE). Let us pass from declarations to deeds. Let us vote on a tentative date now!

For a broad and democratic coordinating body of the actions of struggle

Together with the APPO, let us promote a coordinating body that can promote the necessary tasks to keep up the people's resistance in Oaxaca. Let us join forces for that. The different organizations in the DF and other states where we are, should elect their delegates to this coordinating body and vote in a united and democratic manner on the necessary tasks and actions. Let the APPO feel that it can rely completely on the organizations with which we unconditionally support its struggle. For its part, the APPO can help organize a national body that, independently of the interests of the parties of the Congress of the Union, moves forward toward a class-conscious and militant unity.

Ulises Ruiz and troops, out of Oaxaca!
Stop the arrests in the state! Freedom for political
prisoners!
Down with the agreements with the government that
weaken the movement!
For a Provisional Government of the APPO!
For a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly on the ruins
of the regime!
Long live the Commune of Oaxaca!

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From LA JOURNADA:

Oaxaca: Solitary in Flames The Democratic Revolution Party Isn’t Willing, Nor can it Mobilize, to Defend the Popular Movement in Oaxaca

By Adolfo Gilly, La Jornada, November 1, 2006

The entire structure of political organizations and institutionalized labor unions are, in spite of their differences, leaving Oaxaca in solitude during these crucial moments. No great social mobilizations have sprung up, like the ones that were started to stop the war against zapatismo in 1994, not like the mobilizations that arose against the Acteal massacre. The electoral routine, that is, the logic of the existing institutions, has taken over every social mobilization. There are a few declarations and a few protests, but no great mobilization of forces like the one organized in the electoral dispute. The Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) is absorbed in the congressional aspect of the dispute. In Congress, the PRD voted in favor of the disappearance of power in Oaxaca and asked for a political trial. If that didn’t work, too bad, we saved our honor and we’re off for the extended weekend.

All of the governors chosen by the PRD, including the one from the Federal District, signed next to Ulises Ruíz during the Conago (National Conference of Governors). The CND (the National Democratic Convention organized by Andrés Manuel López Obrador), a motive for so many illusions and bewilderments, has demonstrated its inexistence for all practical effects, except the vote recount. The old pact between the PAN (National Action Party) and the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) has now mobilized in support of Ulises Ruíz and against the people of Oaxaca, making them responsible for fifteen deaths in Oaxaca so far. This has to uphold a repudiated governor and oppose a legitimate social movement of the people of Oaxaca.

Now, they have imposed the PFP (Federal Preventive Police) and military soldiers dressed as PFP, another sign of their impotency and discredit, all to achieve political solutions as they were often achieved in the past. The PRI-PAN pact is no novelty. It comes from the PAN’s foundation in 1939, as the legal inheritor of sinarquismo (a largely religious social movement in the 1920s and 1930s against what would later become the PRI) and of the political voice of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and of Mexican conservatives. This pact always came into action during crucial moments: the repression of the rail workers’ strike in 1959, the student movement of 1968, the dirty war of the 1970s, the neo-liberal restructuring begun in 1982, the 1988 voting fraud (with its sequel of hundreds of PRD members killed as well as others, since political resistance then was no joke), the burning of the certificates of the election in 1991, the disappearance of articles 27 and 130 of the constitution, the signing of NAFTA, the repression in Chiapas since 1994, the rupture of the San Andrés accords and the vote against the Cocopa law, the Fobaproa (the agreement to absorb the private bankers’ debt into public debt), the pact of buffoons where 360 congressmen of both parties voted in favor of stripping Andrés Manuel López Obrador of his political rights to become a presidential candidate (an initiative that didn’t prosper because of massive popular discontent), the refusal of recounting the votes in the 2006 election. The list is endless and without significant exceptions.

Today, the PRD, with both of its masks, the institutional one called the “Front to Extend Progress” and the pseudo-institutiona l mask called the “Democratic National Convention” isn’t willing, nor can it mobilize the popular forces that it assembled in the capital’s main square in September against the electoral fraud, to support Oaxaca and to repudiate the repression of the federal government. Fortunately, La Jornada and several other medias (including Indymedia, that already paid with the life of one of its reporters), in addition to the innumerable individual voices, preserve information, protest and create indignation (cheers Blanche, always there!). But their task isn’t, and can’t be, the organization of the movement.

The task applies to those that were given fifteen million votes in July and that hold, as was confirmed, the right apparatus. But nothing is coming from that way. They simply repeat the same things they said about the Atenco repression. The letter written by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, published Sunday October 29th in La Jornada, isn’t acceptable. He limits himself to denounce the actions of the police, the pact between the PAN and the PRI, and the “sinister and repressive” government of Ulises Ruíz. He declares that the governor’s resignation is the only possible solution and he reminds the readers that in the July election most oaxaqueños voted for him. That is it.

One would expect that the sequel to these affirmations would be to call for a large mobilization in the Federal District and in other places of the country in support of the oaxaqueño movement, against the murders of Ulises Ruíz’s paramilitaries and against the repression of the federal government. A call like this one, coming from a man that got fifteen million votes, would overfill the capital’s mains square and many other plazas around the country. A mere late accusation, as is written in his letter, is useless.

As I write these lines, Oaxaca is being occupied by federal forces that the PAN government has launched in defense of the murderous governor of the PRI. Today two more people have been killed. I don’t ask the leaders of the CND to mobilize their forces in the public squares and in the places of work and study of the country, first of all because I know they won’t, and secondly because they don’t have the influence to mobilize these forces. Neither do I ask the leader of the opposition, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, since his letter states that he doesn’t have the intention of doing so.
In the presence of the indignation and astonishment of the Mexican people, who once more contemplate how the repressive forces of the federal government attack a massive and legitimate popular movement and try to corner it and drive it to extremes and misbehavior; in the presence of protests, denunciations, mobilizations of popular support, human rights and other organizations – those not counted as major forces – the silence and the passivity of the large organizations leave Oaxaca standing alone, with its own forces, its own courage, its own ability to mobilize and its own and ancient organizational framework. As in the unforgettable verse of the poet of Muerte sin fin (Death without end), Oaxaca is now the “solitude in flames.” The people of Oaxaca will leave this trial beaten up, but possibly more organized. Meanwhile, the vote collectors will have new occasions to remember other verses:

“We are the ones who carry and we ride on the path / and everyone will get what they deserve.”


Protests Today:

Austin: Solidarity encampment at Mexican Consulate (corner of Brazos & 9th)
http://austin. indymedia. org/feature/ display/34291/ index.php

Boston: 4pm New England Day of Action at Mexican Consulate (20 Park Plaza)
http://nyc.indymedi a.org/or/ 2006/10/78337. html

Chicago: 3pm “Day of the Dead” Alters at Plaza Tenochtitlan (18th and Blue Island in Pilsen)
http://chicago. indymedia. org/newswire/ display/74611/ index.php

Los Angeles: 10am Demonstration and 5pm Vigil (Park View & 6th St)
http://la.indymedia .org/news/ 2006/10/185894. php

Los Angeles: 7pm Cuauhtemoc Mexica Dance at Mexican Consulate (Park View & 6th St)
http://elenemigocom un.net/305# comment-233

San Diego: Ongoing Protest at Mexican Consulate (1549 India St Little Italy)
http://sandiego. indymedia. org/en/2006/ 11/120376. shtml

San Francisco: 7pm Day of the Dead in the Mission District (24th & Bryant)
http://indybay. org/newsitems/ 2006/11/01/ 18325572. php

Sacramento: 3pm Protest and Day of the Dead at Mexican Consulate (8th & J St)
http://indybay. org/newsitems/ 2006/10/31/ 18325321. php

San Jose: 2pm Day of the Dead march, protest and vigil at Mexican Consulate (540 North First St.)
http://indybay. org/newsitems/ 2006/11/01/ 18325479. php

Seattle: 11am Protest at Mexican Consulate (2132 3rd Ave)
http://elenemigocom un.net/323


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