The state and city of Oaxaca in Mexico rose in protest in May against a governor seen as corrupt and repressive. The government later sent in troops to clear the city, but the struggles have broken out again.

‘We are witnessing the biggest military operation since the campaign against the Zapatista uprising in 1994; troops are being sent in by land, sea and air,’ wrote journalist Hermann Bellinghausen in the daily La Jornada on 3 October, the day special naval commando units landed at Huatulco and Salina Cruz on the coast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

They were supported by the warship Usumacinta, a 1,500-strong naval force, 20 M-18 and M-17 helicopters, Hercules and C-212 aircraft, and tanks; with the special army and Federal Preventive Police units, a force of 20,000 was deployed. For several days, helicopters and planes flew sorties over the state capital, its ‘combat zone’, the historic centre, the barricades and buildings held by the ‘rebels’. Men and women gathered in the streets, shaking their fists and yelling insults.

The Mexican government had once again responded to a popular uprising with a show of strength; but the massive deployment of force was unlikely to silence the voices raised against a governor seen as repressive and corrupt, and as having been elected by fraud in 2005: Ulises Ruiz of the institutional revolutionary party (PRI, Partido Revolucionario Institucional), which ruled in Mexico from 1929 to 2000.

Social conflict began on 22 May in the state of Oaxaca, particularly its capital, and hardened on 14 June, when 92 people were injured after Ruiz took repressive measures against section 22 of the teachers’ union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación. About 40,000 members of this dissident section struck, standing by their position that classes would restart five days after the governor resigned.

Separate interests

They had the support of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (Appo), representing almost all the social organisations in the state. Schools were closed and 1.3 million children were given no lessons for six months. Town halls, public buildings, hotels and the airport were occupied. Civil disobedience and passive resistance were the order of the day, and there was radicalisation. The people were united and public activities in the state were brought to a standstill, but Ruiz refused to step down.

It was clear from the start that the outgoing government of Vicente Fox and his National Action party (PAN), elected in 2000, was incapable of dealing with the crisis. It was still continuing when Felipe Calderón (PAN) was elected in a contested ballot on 2 July (1), creating a conflict that shook all Mexico. An initial proposal for negotiation, the governability, peace and development pact for Oaxaca, made by interior minister Carlos Abascal on 5 October, recommended a new state constitution, a review of the judicial system, plus economic incentives and respect for human rights. There was no mention of the principal demand that the governor should resign.

The interests that had prevented Fox from securing the resignation of Ruiz had nothing to do with the conflict in Oaxaca, but were connected with the fraudulent presidential election. The electoral college decision to appoint Calderón produced an enormous public reaction, unprecedented in the history of the country and orchestrated by the ‘defeated’ candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftwing Democratic Revolutionary party (PRD). The PRD, now the second strongest political force, refused to recognise the new government (2).

The only real support Calderón could rely on when he took over on 1 December was the alliance made in congress in September between the PAN and the PRI (first and third in strength). As commentator Luis Javier Garrido explained: ‘Calderón needs the PRI in order to govern and to get structural reforms passed that Fox never had a big enough majority to push through. He also needs the PRI in order to take up his official duties in congress.’ One aim of the civil resistance organised by the left is to prevent this happening.

Calderón could not take office without PRI support in parliament and the PRI officially acknowledged the PAN’s victory. In return it is defending its traditional stronghold, Oaxaca, but has to pay a high price at national level for its decision to protect Ruiz. The Appo spokesman Florentino Lopez claims that Ruiz has had 35 social leaders assassinated and more than 200 jailed in two years, and that he has taken millions of pesos earmarked for social projects and used them to finance the PRI’s election campaigns and his business interests.

The previous governor, José Murat (PRI), had 60 leaders locked up and was held responsible for four deaths and 15 injuries: 60% of the members of his cabinet are now serving under Ruiz. On their orders, paramilitaries and local police daily attacked the 1,500 barricades put up in the capital (3,000 in the state), and attacked the 80 public buildings and 12 radio and television stations taken over by the people.

Nine leaders have been killed since June and eight abducted (these reappeared a few days later in custody). There has been serious repression to divide, terrorise and weaken the social movement. According to Raul Gatica, a spokesman of the indigenous peoples’ council (the Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca-Ricardo Flores Magón), now in political exile in Canada, the local government’s first targets were the barricades, where members of the movement gathered to plan their activities, and their second target the radio stations.

`Punish the leaders’

There was no official investigation of the violence at federal level. The two main television channels, Televisa and TV Azteca, depicted the Appo and section 22 militants as dangerous armed rebels. Ruiz and the PRI called for federal police to be sent in to ‘restore order and punish the leaders’; the business community backed them and then the army moved in. Fox announced that measures must always be taken to prevent and punish a breach of the law.

Faced with the imminent threat of repression while negotiations were still in progress, Oaxaca became the ‘Oaxaca commune’. But the military offensive was halted a few days after it began. Onésimo Hidalgo, who works at the Centre for Economic Research and Social Action and has written several books about the militarisation of Chiapas after the Zapatista uprising of 1994 (3), said the aim was only to intimidate, since Fox could not afford to end his term of office with serious human rights violations.

However, only 3,000 marines returned to their barracks in the north on 12 October. The rest stayed. The militarisation of the state of Oaxaca continued. Country people supplied the strikers with food. Hidalgo believed the strategy was to find some pretext for deploying troops in rural areas: an emergency plan to deal with hurricanes, the presence of armed groups, or the need to combat drug trafficking and illegal immigration. The government would never admit that the aim is to militarise the area, but the same strategy was employed to control the state of Chiapas. At the end of October the centre of the city of Oaxaca was cleared of demonstrators, but in the last week of November, rioting broke out there again, and a courtroom and hotels were firebombed.

Much like Chiapas

There is a strong resemblance between Oaxaca and Chiapas, still militarised 12 years after the Zapatista uprising: both are strategic areas, rich in natural resources, with a high proportion of indigenous people and the worst levels of poverty. The 16 indigenous peoples who represent more than half the population of Oaxaca state (1.6 million out of 3.4 million inhabitants) have always suffered from discrimination. Section 22 teachers, who work in the most marginalised rural areas, are among the worst paid. They have been fighting for better pay and more resources for their schools for 26 years. Almost 460 of 570 municipalities in Oaxaca lack basic services (water, sewerage, electricity, roads). Farming and the exploitation of natural resources are still the main sources of jobs.

Oaxaca is the richest part of Mexico in biodiversity: forests, coastal areas, lakes, mountains, rare plants, types of maize. Mineral resources include oil, uranium, coal, iron, gold, silver, lead and mercury. From 1540 to the beginning of the 20th century, the mines in Oaxaca produced half of Mexico’s gold and silver. What was mined represented less than 10% of the estimated potential (4). Oaxaca also has plentiful water for hydroelectricity and one of the best sites in the world for wind farms in the southern part of the Tehuantepec isthmus (5). Plans to exploit these resources were mooted in 2001 as part of the Puebla-Panama Plan (6), a neoliberal development strongly opposed by the social movements, which is supposed to establish the necessary infrastructures (roads, ports, dams) for economic activities. In October it was revived by Calderón during a visit to Central America.

Oaxaca’s geostrategic importance makes it difficult to resolve the present conflict. The indigenous peoples and rural communities represented in Appo want to manage their natural resources and the legal instruments to do so. The right to their own political organisation is a constant claim in town and country. Carlos Beas, spokesman for the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (Ucizoni) and a member of Appo, explained that it is a question of the peoples’ right to self-determination — the right to political control of their land and management of its natural resources.

The militarisation of Oaxaca is no great surprise. It confirms official anxiety about the social movements springing up all over Mexico. The Fox government’s response was often to send in the police, regardless of human rights violations (7). To judge from the past experience of Latin American countries and the history of Mexico, the country would appear to be heading for an clash between two different political and economic concepts.

Neil Harvey, associate professor of government at the University of New Mexico, believes it is a polarisation between the excluded and a privileged class that has concentrated wealth in its hands and exerts an influence on political life. He said Calderón also has to satisfy the demands of the members of the business community who supported him during his election campaign.

Oaxaca presages the potentially ungovernable state of Mexico under Calderón’s presidency, contested by the opposition. His alliance with the PRI and the business community may ignite fresh conflicts. Will the armed forces be able to extinguish the fires that may be started by multiple revolts?

Anne Vigna is a journalist in Mexico

(1) See Ignacio Ramonet, ‘The great Mexican election theft’, Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, August 2006.

(2) More than a million people gathered in a national democratic convention on Zocalo Square in Mexico City on 16 September. Obrador was voted ‘legitimate president of Mexico’ by a show of hands and announced the formation of an alternative government.

(3) See Onésimo Hidalgo, Tras los pasos de una guerra inconclusa, Ciepac, Mexico, 2006.

(4) Julio Cabrera, Los minerales estratégicas de Oaxaca en el contexto del mercado mundial, Ciepac, Mexico, 2006.

(5) See ‘Les vents dorés de l’isthme’, Systèmes solaires, Paris, July-August 2006.

(6) See Braulio Moro, ‘Central America’s jaguars snarl’, Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, Dec 2002.

(7) Two steel workers were killed by police in April 2006, when workers occupied the port of Lazaro Cardenas. In an action against a group with Zapatista links, two were killed, 211 arrested.

Translated by Barbara Wilson

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