Quiet Night in Oaxaca: Seeds of Hope are Sprouting

[Wiley50]

Oaxaca, Sunday 3 September 2006
Another quiet night in Oaxaca
In Mexico, the seeds of hope are sprouting

Friends,

The rebirth of Mexico is proceeding apace, miraculously so far with a show of strength and commitment to non-violent civil disobedience by a popular movement that stirs the hearts of those of us who seek peace, true peace with dignity for all people. And who seek no vengeance. And no power except the power to control our own lives.

It’s a formula for revolution that terrifies the ruling power structure. Ignore the panic-driven lies of the corporate media. They are trying to stir fears in the minds of decent people. If there are any “guerrilla groups” operating in the northern or southern Sierra of Oaxaca, they are either armed gangs of Oaxaca State police thugs or inventions of bought-and-paid-for “journalists”, such as Mr. McKinley Jr. of The New York Times, whose effort to frighten us, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/world/americas/01briefs-007.html?_r=1&oref=slogin , follows:

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: September 1, 2006
The civil unrest in Oaxaca took a bizarre turn as a small group of armed masked men blocked a highway and distributed pamphlets warning the federal police and the military not to intervene in the three-month teachers' strike that has spread and paralyzed the city, news reports said. "The revolutionary armed organizations are in a state of alert to respond strongly in case the national security forces intervene in the conflict," the pamphlet said. It was signed by six radical groups. The men who blocked the road numbered at least eight, wore fatigues, had bandannas over their faces and carried automatic weapons, according to pictures from Agence France-Presse.

This kind of bogus “news”, pure lying propaganda, is everywhere in the U.S. and Mexican corporate media, doing its capitalist best to prevent the changes that the bulk of the Mexican people desperately wish for.

Nancy and I went to the zocalo in Oaxaca the evening of Sept 1 to witness the mammoth gathering there following what The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO in its Spanish initials) termed its Fifth Mega-March. It was all so peaceful, a Quaker would have beamed with joy, as we did.

Yes, we’ve had another quiet night in Oaxaca. As a matter of fact, no one has been killed by the state’s hired assassins (some in uniform, others not) since 22 August at 12:50 am when Lorenzo San Pablo Cervantes, an APPO adherent, was shot in the back by police at the corner of Eucaliptos and Emilio Carranza streets in Colonia Reforma, a rather nice neighborhood in the city.

I think that by getting the word out to the international community and thereby prompting Amnesty International and other human rights advocates to speak out, the hand of the Mexican federal government has been stayed, at least temporarily, and they have told the local Oaxaca authorities to “cool it”. So we have a reprieve. We must do everything possible to prevent the federal army from being used to crush this legitimate peoples’ movement.

I just posted an overview of this phenomenal struggle to date. Titled, “Incipient Revolution in Oaxaca“, it’s at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-08-29.htm .

The Oaxaca Study-Action Group (OSAG) maintains a Yahoo Group list that you can read at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oaxacastudyactiongroup/
If you wish to subscribe to this open, unedited list, so that you can also post to it, write to [e-mail]
The Oaxaca daily newspaper Noticias at http://www.noticias-oax.com.mx/ has intensive coverage for those who read Spanish.
The National daily newspaper La Jornada at http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ has regular coverage now that things are heating up. It too is in Spanish.
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[Me.]

1. K & R

*shadow government*

[Wiley50]

2. k n/t