Oaxaca Teachers Refuse to Budge, Reject Order from their Own Union Leadership to Return to

Commentary by Nancy Davies
Reporting from Oaxaca

Oaxaca, October 22, 2006

Another difficult night in Oaxaca; around 2 a.m. church bells rang furiously, the emergency sound, dogs ran up and down our street barking madly, and rockets exploded. I got out of bed and turned on Radio Universidad, which was reporting on the statewide assembly of Section 22 of the teachers’ union.

At 8 a.m., the radio broadcast an approximation of what happened and the position of Section 22...

First, on October 19, the National Senate of Mexico, voting along party lines, refused to intervene in the Oaxaca crisis. The possibility that the Senate would declare that the government of Oaxaca has “disappeared” came to nothing, leaving the peoples’ and teachers’ social movement – comprised of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), Section 22 of the national teachers union, Oaxacan communities and civil organizations – to find their own solution to the stalemate that grips the state of Oaxaca.

With 74 votes in favor and 31 against, the Senate accepted on Thursday afternoon the statement of the Internal Governance Commission not to declare a disappearance of powers in Oaxaca and not to proceed with the removal of the governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. The 31 votes against accepting the report were cast by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the Labor Party (PT) and the “Convergence” party, while the 74 votes in favor were cast by an alliance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), National Action (PAN) and “Green Party” (PVEM) legislators.

Meanwhile, during the time frame the senators were “considering” the issue (which in reality involved the formation of an alliance between the PAN and PRI) another teacher was murdered in a drive-by shooting on Wednesday, October 18. The primary school teacher, Pánfilo Hernández Vásquez coming out of an assembly with neighbors in the Jardín neighborhood, was shot twice in the abdomen. His death brings the total of movement murders, of teachers, APPO and indigenous leaders, to eleven since August (including the deaths of three members of the Triqui indigenous group – two men and a twelve-year-old boy – murdered in rural Oaxaca and left off of some versions of the death toll reported in the media).

By radio, the APPO called for citizens to strengthen and reinforce the barricades, maintaining the level of maximum alert decreed the night before. It was reported at the same time that as part of the government plan for “Operation Iron,” the state government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (“URO”) has completed renovating the prison in the city of Tlocolula, suggesting that it expects massive detentions of teachers and APPO members. The remodeling involves separating each cell into two, to double the holding size from 200 to 400. However, teachers, students and the APPO openly discuss that many of them will die by government-sponsored activities before they see their half-cell in Tlocolula.

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