State Blames APPO for Brad Will's Death

Besides lacking any evidence, as you point out in your report Danielson, the government’s accusation that APPO killed Brad Will is nothing short of absurd.

Thanks for this report that once again proves the state Oaxacan and national Mexican governments lack any legitimacy.

At the beginning you state:

"The investigation into Brad Will's murder is underway, and it looks like we'll all need to stay vigilant if anything resembling justice is to be found."

Yet at this point justice will only be achieved through the arming of the people and a revolutionary struggle for power. Not only will there be no justice under the current government, the current government and its death squads will only continue to murder and disappear teachers, students and other revolutionary activists as long as it is left standing.

Yet APPO states in their response to the government’s absurd accusations in Brad Will’s death that, “The character of our struggle is PACIFIST [my emphasis] and at every moment we are living with the aggression of the ministerial police and the thugs of URO who create fear and terror in the streets of Oaxaca each night with the objective of frightening people out of the movement for the ouster of Ulises Ruiz, adding to the aggressions we’ve suffered even before the arrival of the PFP.”

The APPO leadership, with such pacifist illusions have sat on their hands in Oaxaca, and let the Federal Police, Mexican Army, Oaxaca State Police and the local death squads begin their deadly counterrevolutionary counteroffensive of rape, murder, and disappearances.

For the people of Oaxaca the current bourgeois government is so despised that its representatives cannot even meet to make decisions. Liberation News has been clear through publishing translations of individuals and groups to the left of APPO that what we see is needed in Oaxaca is for the APPO to adopt a revolutionary program, to use their militia to seize power, to take over the property of the bosses of Oaxaca and then go on the offensive against the whole Mexican capitalist class (that is, an armed march on Mexico City and the overthrow of the government of Mexico).

As part of this APPO must develop a clearer program to address the critical issues the working class faces: poverty, unemployment, under-funded schools, under-funded social services, oppression, and proletarian power. The struggle to remove the tyrant Ruiz from power would take on real meaning within such a context.

All Power To The People!

This is not a direct reply to Steve (Liberation News), but points are relevent.

"Maybe rather than placing judgement on the movement from afar, one should be asking what can be learned from Oaxaca, whether you argree with it or not."
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I am going to weigh in on this discussion about what happened on Nov. 25th, who threw the first stone, whether or not the APPO "qualifies" as non-violent, etc.

I wasn't going to chime in, cause there are enough troubling things happening in Oaxaca right now, that the more important thing seems to be to get the information out as much as possible. But I saw one too many emails commenting on what the APPO "should or shouldn't do."

1) I personally have seen, with my own eyes, on at least three occasions (Seattle '99, Washington DC '2000, and Mar del Plata, Argentina, 2005), young kids who were throwing rocks and molotovs, enter and emerge from police vehicles in a fresh change of clothes. And I've seen it in video footage from other places (Genoa, Prague). Infiltration and the presence of provocadores are a GIVEN in any large mobilization.

I'm not saying that people who associate themselves with the movement in Oaxaca didn't also throw rocks and launch cohetes on Nov. 25th. I don't doubt that some of the kids from the barricades came ready to fight with the PFP. I'm saying that even had they not been there, the state would have made sure that "someone" on the side of the protestors threw the first stone. It's an age-old strategy for justifying repression that, in the case of Oaxaca, had been in the works for sometime...all they needed was a justification.

2) One of the remarkable things about the movement in Oaxaca is how it somehow created a space for anyone and everyone. It has been a huge strength and a huge weakness. The fact that Stalinists and anarchists and perredistas and housewives and indigenous authorities and schoolteachers and taxi drivers all found an expression in the same movement is, to me, remarkable. Not everyone who has participated in this movement has considered themselves part of the APPO. I can't count the number of times I've had conversations with people in Oaxaca who have said, "I'm not APPO, but I support the people, and that's why I'm out in the streets." I've gotten the sense that a lot of people think that "being APPO" means going to the assemblies or belonging to an organization. Lots of folks haven't participated at that level, but they have guarded barricades, fed plantonistas, participated in marches, etc.

And more recently, the APPO became a space where street kids found an expression as well. Street kids who don't see themselves as having much of a future. Some of them are probably not too worried about dying. And for sure they ALL hate the police, after years of being kicked around by them. I'm guessing most of them haven't spent a alot of time studying academic texts about social movement history or the different definitions of non-violence, etc. But those kids were the only ones with the guts to guard the last barricade between Radio Universidad and several thousand federal police and plain-clothed paramilitaries. So they found a space in the movement. And the "APPO couldn't control them." The APPO has never "controlled" anyone.

3) Anyone who was in the streets on Nov 25th knows that what went down, at least in the first moments of the confrontation, couldn't really be defined as auto-defensa (self-defense). But in six months of conflict, it was one of the only times where that was the case. The use of rocks, bottle rockets, molotov cocktails, etc. has almost always been in the context of self-defense. Now, a lot of folks who subscribe to a Ghandian idea of non-violence don't really get the idea of self-defense in the context of social movements. I suppose the idea is that, when paramilitaries start shooting at your barricade, you should lie down in the street and sing kumbaya.

I believe that non-violent movements, like the civil-rights movement in the US and India's independence movement, had the impact they did, in part, because of the role the media played. In those moments, the whole world saw thousands of dignified, non-violent people being attacked. And the world empathized with them and rejected the violence being used against them. When was the last time you saw a non-violent social movement depicted on the evening news? For those of you who watched the news coverage of Seattle rejecting the presence of the World Trade Organization, in 1999, how many of you saw 80,000 people put their bodies on the line, non-violently, before a brutal police attack? And how many of you saw the same image played over and over of some kids breaking windows? The media has changed the way it depicts social movements. Period.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is listening, does it make a sound? If the police break the skull of a campesino and no one is watching, does it make a difference that the campesino praticed non-violence? Communities in Mexico, especially rural communities, get that. They understand that if the federal police or army enter their community at dawn to beat the shit out of people, rape women, raid homes, etc. they are screwed whether they lay down in the streets and sing kumbaya or pick up a rock and fight back. And they also know that, regardless of how they respond to the police violence, if the media is there, they will paint the community members as violent criminals and the police / army as protectors of the peace. (any doubts about that, pick up a copy of the video Romper el Cerco about last May's police attack in San Salvador Atenco).

Mexican communities, in general, also have a real clear understanding of the difference between self-defense and armed uprising. They are not the same thing AT ALL. Armed groups have been threatening to join the fray in Oaxaca for months, and the APPO has been real clear about it's position on that, telling the armed groups to keep a lid on it and not screw things up.

So in the context of Oaxaca, for the movement to claim it is non-violent makes sense in the context of self-defense. Images of people guarding barricades with sticks and bottle rockets appear violent, until you put them in the context of who is on the other side of the barricade and the kinds of weapons THEY have; until you put them in the context of who has died in the last six months of conflict in Oaxaca.

So, while Nov 25th might not be an example of self-defense, for those of you who have been saying that the APPO has practiced violence all along and never should have called itself a non-violent movement, you are making those statements outside of a local context, and it doesn't fly.

4) So back to the confrontation on Nov 25th. This wasn't really a case of self-defense. Some folks arrived with the tools of self-defense, but with the intention of using them to start a fight. Does that make the social movement in Oaxaca a violent one? Maybe the question people should be asking themselves is not - is the APPO violent, but instead - what went wrong on Nov 25th.

A few days after the PFP arrived in town, several marches converged in the center of town to establish a planton in Santo Domingo. There was no confrontation between police and marchers. A few days later, quite a large number of people (estimates ranging between 30,000 and 500,000) walked straight into the center of town and there was no confrontation. In both of those marches there were people who were mad enough about the presence of the PFP that they wanted to go straight to the zocalo and have it out right there and then. But it didn't happen. It didn't happen because, from what I saw, the marches were damn well organized. Big teacher-types, with arms linked, placed themselves between marchers and police. People who acted aggressively were immediately removed from the march. In my opinion, leading that many people to within two blocks of several thousand federal police, without any confrontation, is a remarkable act of organization and...non-violence.

So why didn't it happen that way on Nov 25th? Knowing that the state was itching for an excuse to smackdown on the movement, was it tactically a good idea to try and create a human chain around the PFP? Having seen what happened on Nov 20th (a smaller, "lite" version of what happened on Nov 25th), was it a good idea to go ahead with the plans for Nov 25th? I don't know the answer to that, and furthermore, I think our role as foreigners isn't really to judge the tactical decisions of a social movement operating in a context that's real different from that in which most of us live.

I do know that saturday's march and human chain action lacked organization. Once the human chain was established there was a notable absence of people at each entrance to the zocalo who could monitor aggressive behavior. When young fellas rolled their grocery cart full of rocks and molotovs up to the police lines, there was no one there to pull them back, or to put themselves betweewn the rock throwers and the police.

Maybe the march lacked organization because of the absence of a large number of teachers. Despite all the contradictions and weaknesses of the teachers' movement in Oaxaca, one thing they know how to do is push their luck with the police without entering into an actual confrontation. They've learned over 26 years that powerful actions have to be carried out very carefully in order to have an impact without bringing down the wrath of the state on everyone involved.

Maybe the march lacked organization or tactical foresight because the state's plan was working: wear people out with a constant presence of federal police and paramilitary action; divide teachers from the rest of the movement so as to paint everyone else as "ultras" or "radicals;" push people to a point of desperation by carrying out daily disappearances of friends and family members; get the PFP worked into a real frenzy with four weeks of standing in the sun being insulted by passersby.

Whatever the reason for Saturday's apparent lack of organization and/or tactics, I think it has a lot more to do with that, and very little to do with the question of whether or not the movement in Oaxaca fits into some historic notion of non-violence. And the conversations I have heard, amongst movement participants, since Saturday, have had to do with that question (where did we go wrong organizationally) and not with the question of who threw the first stone, nor how to define non-violence. It was a big topic of conversation at the two-day indigenous forum this past week.

5) Finally, the truth is... if the PFP had really only wanted to control a few hot-headed kids with rocks and molotovs, they could have done it easily, without carrying out a massive repression against the people of Oaxaca. They have the tanks, shields, gas, guns, etc. What the PFP wanted to do (in collaboration with local PRI elements and local police, cause they were there, with guns, shooting at people too, saw it with my own eyes) was carry out a wide-scale repression that would send the movement into the mode it's in now...waiting to see what Calderon and Acua do, and in the meantime, hiding out.

And counting on their friends in the mainstream media, just as they did in Atenco, the feds and state know that, even if Ulisesdeparture has already been negotiated, he can now leave without creating the appearance that the APPO and the teachers won. As far as mainstream public opinion is concerned, the APPO has been defeated.

So lets get back to focusing on whats happening right now. Massive human rights violations, both in Oaxaca, and in the prisons of Nayarit and Tamaulipas, and no amount of rock-throwing or tactical error justifies that. I believe this current situation would have unfolded as it has whether or not a few kids from the barricades threw the first stone; whether or not the APPO fits your text-book definition of non-violence. The state had a plan for Oaxaca and didn't just spontaneously decide to smackdown on a massive scale cause a few youngsters got out of hand. Maybe rather than placing judgement on the movement from afar, one should be asking what can be learned from Oaxaca, whether you argree with it or not.

j