Women have not only acted as participants in the ongoing popular movement in Oaxaca, but have also profoundly shaped the course of its history. They have created some of the most powerful stories and moments in the past nine months, and have helped tell them. Stories of women who have built the movement are everywhere in Oaxaca. There are the stories of housewives arrested and beaten by police, who in response have begun to organize for the first time in their lives. There are the stories of elderly women from local communities who have cooked huge pots of food for people guarding barricades and soothed tear-gassed eyes with vinegar and Coke. Then there are the stories of women who have been involved since the beginning, participating in the teachers strike or organizing the movement to support it. Their stories, of personal histories aligned with the movement since its very inception, are the ones that may best shed light on how women have helped create a widespread and lasting popular resistance in Oaxaca.

Partly as a way to organize concrete means of support for women who have suffered the effects of violence, arrests, death and disappearances, and partly as a way to consolidate and defend the power that women had accumulated during months of organizing, the women of APPO organized to create a womens arm of the movement. The new organization was officially established at an assembly held on August 31, 2006; it was named the August 1st Coordinating Body of Oaxacan Women (COMO). Read more