The People are Deciding, Every Day!

I began writing this overview of developments here during the last half year last Sunday, 8 July and finished it on Friday the 13th, when it was posted on the Narco News Bulletin. The exuberance of the people on Friday and yesterday still needs to be adequately told. Today is the second day of the peoples’ Guelaguetza, their grand annual festival. Last night the zócalo was jammed with oaxaqueños of all ages, with bands and a grand march and a lavish display of fireworks – bombs bursting in air – high above the plaza of the Cathedral. But a quiet lady, a teacher sitting on the bench next to Nancy told us it was not a festival but a luto, an event to remember the dead, the compañeros murdered by the governments since last June 14. As she smiled gently and spoke softly to us, the noise was enough to wake the dead. She handed us a flyer that said,

Today‘s Noticias has the ominous front page news that the Guelaguetza Stadium, where the all-day Monday culmination of the Popular Guelaguetza was to be held tomorrow, has been made into a military bunker, placed in a state of siege by troops of the Army, the Federal Investigative Agency, the Federal Preventive Police, the Ministerial Police (I think that's a state force), the State Preventive Police, the Municipal Police, the City Transit Police, as well as elementos de línea y élite (I think that means elite and front line forces). Only the Tourist Police seem to have been omitted. I guess they will be in the zócalo assuring the few tourists: Nothing [bad] is happening here. Oaxaca is tranquil (Nada pasa aquí. Oaxaca es tranquilo).

The APPO announced, according to Noticias, that “La Guelaguetza Popular,” meaning the big Monday event, will be held in the Plaza of the Dance. In my view a very wise positon for the popular movement to take, despite its revulsion at the governments’ actions. It is avoiding overt confrontation with armed units. The fears I expressed in the concluding paragraph of my piece Friday (see below) are still haunting me. I don't believe the armed revolutionary group, the EPR, still exists as a viable formation. To me the whole affair (of bombed gas and petroleum installations) looks as though it was planned and executed by the Federal government as a ploy to justify increased military actions throughout Mexico, and in particular to finally crush the persistent, peaceful revolution of the vast majority of the Oaxacan peoples. I'm glad the APPO is staying away from the armed forces deployed on Fortin Hill around the stadium. And I hope no police or military agents are assassinated. Surely the ‘big boys’ at City Bank and their associated thieves would like nothing better than to see ‘whatever it takes’ to get Oaxaca finally, unequivocally opened up for forest, mineral, pharmaceutical, and cheap labor exploitation. They let Bush know their wishes, and Bush tells President Calderon what to do, and Calderon let’s the local fascist, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, know which way the wind is blowing. Dangerous days.