The community of Acapatzingo (Photo by José Luis Santillán/Creative Commons)

Walking through La Polvorilla on the southeastern fringes of Mexico City, a rare sense of ordered calm fills the neighborhood. The eye lingers on posters announcing workshops and classes for local residents and the rust-colored peaks of Montaña de Alvarado and Volcán Xaltepec, jutting up a short distance away. The community’s open spaces, clean streets, abundant greenery, and uniformly built, well-maintained two-story houses stands in sharp contrast to the surrounding area of the Iztapalapa borough, which is the most crime-afflicted and one of the most impoverished of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs. La Polvorilla is a kind of oasis wedged within the chaos and disorder that defines much of the built environment in Mexico City’s neglected periphery.

The difference between the two is the result of the popular struggle for housing, democracy, and a better life for Mexico City’s urban poor. La Polvorilla, officially known as La Comunidad Habitaciónal Acapatzingo, is an autonomous community with more than 4,000 residents. Hailed by Raúl Zibechi as “one of the most important autonomous experiences in Latin America,” La Polvorilla was founded in 1994 when the socialist Frente Popular de Francisco Villa (FPFV) organized a land invasion and squat. Previously a quarry and mining area, the land had become a dumpsite for debris after the devastating 1985 earthquake. In 1998, the movement leading the occupation bought the land with a combination of funds the organization raised and credit from Mexico City’s housing institute, Instituto de Vivienda del Distrito Federal (INVI).

Two years later, in 2000, residents began building permanent housing, transforming their make-shift squat—constructed out of rubber, wood, sheet metal, and cardboard—into buildings made of sturdier materials. The neighborhood also self-constructed a clinic, a library, a pirate radio station, soccer fields and basketball courts, greenhouses, and other urban infrastructure. Once a literal dump, La Polvorilla is now an active, safe, and militant neighborhood, committed to building a socialist society grounded in collectivist practices of mutual aid and autonomy from the state, government institutions, and political parties. [See also: Building Homes, Building Lives in Mexico City in NACLA’s Winter 2019 print issue].

Today, La Polvorilla is affiliated with the Organización Popular Francisco Villa de Izquierda Independiente (OPFVII), an offshoot of the FPFV. Apart from La Polvorilla, the OPFVII has self-constructed nine other communities in which a total of 3,000 people live, all in the southeast of Mexico City. The OPFVII is distinct from most urban popular social movement organizations in Mexico City in its absolute commitment to organizational autonomy. It is both a strategic and ideological answer to the key question that Mexican social movements have faced since the 1980s: To what extent, if any, should a movement organization collaborate with the state? 

A soccer game in the community (Photo courtesy of OPFVII)

Roots of the Urban Popular Movement

The debate over social movement cooperation with the state was and is salient because cooptation was the longstanding preferred method of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) to demobilize social movements that threatened its dominance. PRI presidents governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000 and created organizations to represent different sectors: workers, peasants, Indigenous peoples, the urban poor, and others. The government also worked to incorporate those organizing outside official party or state channels through clientelism. In the urban periphery, this would look like a PRI representative offering a community help in acquiring basic urban infrastructure in exchange for political support—in other words, materials to build a road could be provided, if the community delivered votes, attended rallies, and canvassed for the party. In addition to clientelism, outright violence was a key way the PRI demobilized social movements, most famously illustrated by the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.   

This system began unraveling for the PRI in the 1980s, most of all in the urban peripheries of Mexico’s rapidly growing cities. Already the sector of the population least incorporated into the PRI’s clientelistic networks, the urban poor completely abandoned the party. State neglect of rural areas combined with a development plan that heavily centralized economic activity and opportunity in Mexico City led to roughly 500 migrants arriving daily to the capital from the countryside between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. Many of these migrants settled on the margins of the city, especially in the southeastern boroughs of Iztapalapa, Ixtapaluca, and Tláhuac, where the OPFVII organizes today. 

The rural to urban migration boom alone would have posed a huge challenge to the PRI’s ability to expand urban services and infrastructure, but it also coincided with a full-blown economic crisis. Reeling from a near-default in 1982, double-digit unemployment, and yearly increases in the price of dietary staples of around 300 percent, the PRI implemented severe austerity while prioritizing foreign debt payments over the basic needs of its citizens. According to statistics compiled by Diane Davis in her book Urban Leviathan, between 1984 and 1985, the government reduced spending by 12 percent on transport, 25 percent on potable water, 18 percent on health services, 26 percent on garbage collection, and 56 percent on land regularization, which would mark the beginning of Mexico’s transition to neoliberalism. Spending reductions diminished the state’s capacity to create and sustain the clientelistic networks that defined the PRI’s corporatist mode of governing. On top of that, when the 1985 earthquake destroyed thousands of buildings and major infrastructure in Mexico City, the PRI failed to respond in any meaningful way, laying bare its corruption and incompetence. Support for the party in Mexico City completely collapsed. 

In this context, major mobilizations of the urban poor were demanding housing, infrastructure, and a democratization of urban governance. In 1988, the center-left Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) party, riding the energy and many of the organizational networks behind the mobilizations, fell just short of the presidency in an election the PRI has since admitted was fraudulent. The PRD would subsequently capture power in Mexico City. The same racket returned: The PRD collected support from the urban poor in exchange for often-empty promises. Now, however, organizations that had previously been on the forefront of popular uprisings served as intermediaries.   

The decision of many urban popular organizations previously unaffiliated with political parties to engage in electoral politics and subordinate themselves to the PRD was a major factor in the movement’s demobilization. The departure of reform and electorally-minded movement leaders for state bureaucracy and elected positions left much of the movement without leadership. But it also served to consolidate the more radical currents of the movement. These organizations used direct action tactics like land invasions, articulated their goals in explicitly socialist vocabulary, and developed a comprehensive critique of clientelism, state corruption, and the corporatist mechanisms of political representation that disenfranchised the urban poor. They also demanded urban services and housing, as well as autonomy from the state and political parties. This is the tradition from which the OPFVII and La Polvorilla emerged. 

Autonomy and Self-Governance

Organizations that emphasize autonomy in a project of developing unused land for the urban poor share several traits, which are referred to as autogestión across the Spanish-speaking world: direct and popular participation in the planning, construction, and administration of the community; a robust commitment to internal bottom-up democracy; and the rejection of government technical experts in favor of experts who are members of the organization or likeminded allies. These organizations also use land invasion and squatting—usually on state-owned or ejido land—as a means to initially acquire territory, which they then militantly defend from state eviction efforts. Marches and sit-ins will often accompany the negotiating process with city government to both avoid eviction and eventually legally acquire the land.

Community members participate in construction efforts (Photo courtesy of OPFVII)

For the OPFVII, autonomy encompasses more than self-constructing housing and infrastructure. If this were the case, it would simply be a kind of real estate development cooperative for the urban poor. “Housing is the principle demand for all the compañeros that join the organization. It is the pretext for organizing,” said Rosario Hernández Aldaco, a member of the OPFVII’s political commission. The organization politicizes the lack of housing and infrastructure for the urban poor as the initial step in project to remake social relations based on horizontality, cooperation, collective work, and solidarity. “Not just a project for housing, but a project for life,” is a common refrain among the organization’s leadership. For the OPFVII, building a democratic and collectivist movement culture is as important as building housing.

Housing and community construction also forms an important foundation in creating this movement culture. When regular people build a neighborhood together—relying on each other rather than on a political party, NGO, or corrupt government—they witness and experience their capacity to meet their individual and communal needs through working collectively. “The construction process creates a consciousness that we have to come together and organize to create a better life,” said Hernández Aldaco.

However, the primary way that OPFVII builds movement culture is through the organization’s structure, which ties individual members to one another in different groupings and at different levels of the organization. The basic units of the organization are the brigades, which are each comprised of 25 families. The brigades send members to each of the commissions responsible for different work in the communities: communication, education and culture, health, maintenance, finance and administration, and security. Each housing settlement also has a general assembly, which takes place monthly in La Polvorilla, and weekly in some of the other communities. At these assemblies, the elected representatives of each commission report back on the work being carried out and its plans for future work. Finally, the entire organization participates in a Congress every two years. At the most recent Congress last May, 692 delegates attended, signaling that the OPFVII has a large tier of mid-level leadership. The presence of a sizeable group of leaders is extremely important to the OPFVII, which views it as a sign of the membership’s ideological development as well as an important contribution to the organization’s ability to continue growing into the future.

From initial recruitment phases, which are aimed at friends and family members of existing members, the organization tells potential residents that joining the community marks a life-long commitment to building a democratic and socialist society.A common problem for urban popular movements that build housing is keeping members mobilized after construction is complete. Many urban autonomy projects exhaust themselves in the process of introducing urban service and regularizing their land tenure. OPFVII combats the tendency towards stasis in a few ways, but most simply it manages to do so because the organization’s raison d’être encompasses far more than housing. The membership is keenly aware of this. From initial recruitment phases, which are aimed at friends and family members of existing members, the organization tells potential residents that joining the community marks a life-long commitment to building a democratic and socialist society. A consistent stream of new people joining the organization keeps it fresh, while each individual community’s leeway to make its own decisions about how to operate decentralizes power. The overall effect is a militant organization of the urban poor rapidly growing in a moment when nearly all other popular organizations have become ossified, fragmented, and part of the bureaucracy of the PRD, PRI, or MORENA, the center-left party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The OPFVII has nearly doubled in size in the last 10 years while claiming nine new territories. While the organization has no plans of slowing down, conditions for its organizing have changed. Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s mayor from the MORENA party that won power in 2018, recently disqualified social organizations from receiving funds from the city’s housing agency, INVI. After protests from urban popular organizations, like OPFVII, that access these funds, Sheinbaum announced plans to once again revise INVI’s rules. Sheinbaum then removed the director of INVI, Pedro Sosa Álvarez, and replaced him with Rodrigo Chávez Contreras, most recently a leader of the MORENA-aligned social housing development organization Asamblea de Barrios. Contreras’s appointment signals the continuation of an 80-year-old pattern in Mexican politics: Administrators award public resources to popular organizations in exchange for electoral support.

Alternative in Practice

Refusing to play the game has made obtaining credit from INVI a challenge for the OPFVII since its inception. “Accessing the credit and resources provided to build housing has always been a problem for us,” said Hernández Aldaco. The over three years of contradictory decisions, information, and delays the OPFVII endured in obtaining credit from INVI to build La Polvorilla is a stark example. Meanwhile, other social housing organizations with “neither a blueprint nor land, but a good relationship with an official” were awarded credit, explained Enrique Reinoso, an OPFVII leader at La Polvorilla in the 1990s. In this regard, the OPFVII’s leadership expects their relationship with authorities to be the same, if not worse, with MORENA’s government.

But the OPFVII is not discouraged: two new communities are under construction, one of which is almost finished and the other just beginning. The nearly finished community, named Zapotlán, will have 80 housing units after two years of construction—a far quicker turn around time than a real estate corporation or the state would need for the project. The organization also feels it achieved the greatest autonomy from the state yet with this specific construction process by managing all aspects of administration and labor for the project. Another step the OPFVII is taking to increase autonomy from the state and its institutions is developing community-centered justice systems so that disputes can be handled according to the organization’s principles and ideology. Police only are admitted into OPFVII territories if they are unarmed and with with prior permission from the given community.

The crest of the OPFVII movement (Photo by Evan Neuhausen)

OPFVII’s total rejection of collaboration with political parties and near-total rejection of the state have guided it over the last 25 years and will continue to be one of its defining characteristics as it autonomously and democratically develops unused land in Mexico City. It offers a refreshing alternative to the clientelism that has defined Mexico’s politics—and especially its urban politics—for 80 years.

The OPFVII poses a question of if and how autonomous projects may excuse the neoliberal retrenchment of a state that answers to foreign capital above the basic needs of its urban poor. From a certain cynical point of view, autonomous housing projects “justify” the government’s lack of investment. This viewpoint is far too narrow a conception of what autonomous movements do.

What becomes clear from the OPFVII experience is that for the people involved, organizing is a struggle for freedom that, in Reinoso’s words, shows that “there are other ways to live and build” communities. These alternative possibilities, in which people look to each other rather than the state or political parties as caregivers, will be part of any movement that succeeds in transforming Mexico City into a more just and equitable city. The OPFVII will not be stopping anytime soon. As Hernández Aldaco said, “The project for life lasts a lifetime.”

Written by Evan Neuhausen – a researcher, translator, and archivist. He lives in New York.

Source: https://nacla.org/news/2019/12/30/Polvorilla-mexico-city-housing

The post A housing Project for Life in Mexico City appeared first on Void Network.

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.

So, why don’t we love Mexico?

We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires. Whether it’s dress up like fools and get passed-out drunk and sunburned on spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.

In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs—while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us. The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in L.A., burned out neighborhoods in Detroit—it’s there to see. What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead in Mexico, just in the past few years—mostly innocent victims. Eighty thousand families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.

Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness. Its archeological sites—the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over tortilla chips. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply “bro food” at halftime. It is in fact, old—older even than the great cuisines of Europe, and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet, if we paid attention. The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation—many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe—have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling heights.

It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, and was there—and on the case—when the cooks like me, with backgrounds like mine, ran away to go skiing or surfing or simply flaked. I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them. To small towns populated mostly by women—where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North. I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand from their hands to mine.

In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather around a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious salsas, drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, and listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.

The received wisdom is that Mexico will never change. That is hopelessly corrupt, from top to bottom. That it is useless to resist—to care, to hope for a happier future. But there are heroes out there who refuse to go along. On this episode of “Parts Unknown,” we meet a few of them. People who are standing up against overwhelming odds, demanding accountability, demanding change—at great, even horrifying personal cost.”

Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Michael Bourdain (June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018) was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian who starred in programs focusing on the exploration of international culture, cuisine, and the human condition. He was considered one of the most influential chefs in the world.

__________________________________________________

photos: Tasos Sagris (Void Network tour in Mexico 2008)

The post Americans weird relation with Mexico- by Anthony Bourdain appeared first on Void Network.

The March for Life & Climate Justice started at La Via Campesina in Cancún and worked it’s way to the 0km mark by the Hotel Zone to honor Lee Hun Kae the Korean farmer who committed suicide at the police barricades during the Cancun WTO protests in 2003. Along the way people from all over the world spoke of the lie of green capitalism and in support of indigenous rights and solutions to climate change. 


More coverage by the MBN 10 person team in Cancun at
http://mobilebroadcastnews.com/MBN/story/Cancun-COP16

Perspectives from the Streets / Cancun COP16 Mexico

The post COP 16 March for Life & Climate Justice appeared first on Void Network.

Peoples Caravans Arrive in Cancun to offer an alternative voice to the COP16 Summit 

Police Harass Mayan Caravan Headed to COP16, Stop Religious Ceremony at Chichen Itza Ruins 

more info : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw9ULKRXt2g

Glassbead report from COP16 ESMEX

http://mobilebroadcastnews.com/MBN/story/Cancun-COP16

The post First Reports from Cancun Climate Change Summit People’s Actions appeared first on Void Network.

“Cocaine Culture: 

A global apartheid of 

decadence and death” 

by Blake Sifton

 

 

CΨΨCapitalism has always required disposable populations in order to function. In our system of global apartheid other people must toil in fields and sweatshops, die in resource wars and watch as their countries are poisoned in order for us to enjoy comfortable, privileged lives.

The post “Cocaine Culture: A global apartheid of decadence and death” by Blake Sifton appeared first on Void Network.

In the memory of Brad Will

murdered in Oaxaca

by Mexican police and

government officials

The Oaxacan People’s Insurrection for Dignity By Korinta Maldonado written in 13 November 2006

On the dawn of Friday, October 27, 2006, news about the assassination of the New York independent media reporter Brad Will by paramilitary forces in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico reverberated throughout the world. This day marked the beginning of the direct state-sponsored offensive towards the Oaxacan people who had tired of the repression and corruption of the governor Ulises Ruíz. For almost six months they have peacefully organized to remove him from office. Ruíz has been the subject of an escalating conflict. He was elected in August 2004 through fraudulent means and since then has persistently used brute force against social and political organizations. The repressive tactics of the governor have sharpened the conflict.

Yet that Friday, six barricades across the city of Oaxaca were under attack at the same time by paramilitary forces including the barricade where Brad Will lost his life reporting. The results of these premeditated attacks were three dead and 23 members of the popular movement injured (see oaxacalibre.org). But even worse, the death of Brad Will would serve as the perfect excuse for the federal government to enter Oaxaca with all its repressive might despite almost six months of neglect amidst the plea of civil organizations and the people of Oaxaca to intervene in the conflict.

The Teachers Struggle for a Dignified Education

The conflict between the state and the Oaxacan people began May 22 as thousands of teachers belonging to section 22 of the teachers union initiated a strike pleading for a raise of their wretched $460.00 monthly salaries, as well as a monthly bonus for teachers living mostly in the tourist areas where the cost of living is disproportionately high in comparison with the rest of the state. There are 15 more demands related to funding for school materials, children’s uniforms and free school breakfasts.

Every year, the teachers strike for such demands and until 2006 negotiations would occur. This time around, Ulises Ruiz’s government first threatened the teachers and later brutally evicted them from the town plaza where the governor’s headquarters is located. Haunted by the nightmares of recent state violence in Atenco, Mexico, where peasants sympathetic to the Zapatistas stopped the development of an airport, 300,000 inhabitants of Oaxaca poured into the streets, outraged. They protested the state violence and marched through Oaxaca demanding the governor’s immediate resignation, perhaps, one of the biggest civil protests in Oaxacan history. During the march the previously evicted teachers would once again reclaim the central plaza. This event would unite dispersed and divergent organizations and groups into one organization the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca. Their goal: the immediate resignation of the state governor Ulises Ruiz.

Ya Basta! (Enough!): The Formation of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca

On June 17, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO by its Spanish acronym) was born. It would challenge the state government through pacifist means, with words, ideas and most importantly dignity. Local unions, peasants, students, women and environmental organizations, indigenous communities, teachers and whole families from across the state united to form this radical organization. Their collective process of decision-making and political action has a long tradition among Oaxacan indigenous towns and after the Zapatista armed uprising it has been further revitalized.

On July 5, as the Mexican people contested the election where rightist Felipe Calderon was declared victorious, the APPO reclaimed the government headquarters situated in the central plaza of the city and declared itself as a parallel government of the state of Oaxaca. Recently, governor Ruiz had transformed this headquarters into a museum due to the all too frequent protests of “dirty” Indians, rural teachers, and all those from below. Oaxacans were infuriated watching the governor cynically respond to the interests of foreign investors and tourists. During July and August, the APPO also reclaimed the Guelaguetza —a yearly celebration where the 7 regions of Oaxaca represent through performances their culture— that had was one of the main tourist attractions. It had become a corporate enterprise guided by the leading businessmen of Mexico. They would also reclaim the local media, 12 radio stations and for small periods of time the local TV station. They reclaimed what was, in their words, of and for el pueblo.

Furthermore, the radio stations would become the heartbeat of the APPO, through which they would organize across Oaxaca, calling people to regional and general meetings, and to inform the people of local agreements, mobilizations, road blockades, food and first aid needs. In August, that is how they organized the takeover of the city of Oaxaca. The radio would also serve to inform human rights organizations if violations were committed. Many of us following the movement from afar could access the Oaxacan radio broadcast through the web and international supporters could mobilize almost instantly.

Although the struggle of the APPO is rooted in the local politics of Oaxaca, they have clearly bridged it with anti-globalization and social justice movements across the nation and the world. The lived experience of fraudulent electoral politics in Oaxaca fueled a rather strong sentiment against the presidential elections. The people would chant vociferously: “Ya cayo, ya cayo Ulises ya cayo. Si no hay solución también caira Calderon” (“He fell, he fell, Ulises fell and if there is no solution so will Calderon”).

The effects of the conflict on the lives of the Oaxacan people are very complex: the salaries of the approximately thirty thousand teachers in the struggle have been cut off, many small businesses in the region have no customers, vendors of local produce have not sold one piece of corn or squash, many members are jobless due to the conflict. Yet, they are able to resist because the people draw upon years of experience of autonomous collective organizing visible in the forms of everyday resistance. The indigenous communities, the peasant communities, the popular neighborhoods and other supporters of the APPO deliver daily to the barricades and encampments tortillas, stews, water, hot coffee and chocolate. At the same time, representatives of organizations come and go in groups from all over the state of Oaxaca, some people travel up to 12 or so hours to get to the city. They come with banners supporting the groups and with musical instruments from their local towns. They take turns guarding the barricades, the radio stations, the government headquarters, and the main roads to the city.

Members of the APPO speak many different languages; they come from the 16 indigenous groups that make up the state of Oaxaca. There is also representation from the Afro descendant communities from the coast. Thus, they all come from different experiences of struggle, from different social positions, and therefore, from different experiences of oppression. As a woman said on Radio Universidad, “nosotros no somos maestros, somos pueblo, mirenos, somos pueblo, somos pueblo los que estamos luchando por nuestros derechos…hasta que Ulises se vaya no vamos a parar” (“We are not teachers, we are the people, look at us, we are the people that are struggling for our rights…until Ulises steps down we are not going to stop”).

A Oaxacan Cry for a National Peaceful Insurrection

On October 30, the federal government ordered the federal police to enter the city of Oaxaca. With full armor, thousands of federal police forces entered the city accompanied by tanks and bulldozers to crush the barricades. Simultaneously, police helicopters flew throughout the city. Oaxacans were expecting them. Days before rumors of the police takeover had spread throughout the highlands, cities and coast of Oaxaca. Groups of people from every corner of Oaxaca had come to the city to defend it from the government forces. The barricades were reinforced. School buses were placed in the middle of streets. Tires, chairs, pieces of wood, doors, anything and everything was used to stop the federal government’s repressive forces to enter. At the same time, however, the radio announcers coordinated the resistance and desperately called for a national peaceful insurrection to stop the government offensive. The Oaxacan people had agreed to resist peacefully, so as the tanks entered they would gather at each entrance by the hundreds trying to intimidate the police activity. Some would burn tires in order to prevent the visibility of the helicopters. Some would fearlessly jump on the tanks and spray paint on the windows to disable them. Many times they were successful, many times they were not. The tanks rolled over the streets spraying high-pressure water mixed with chemicals to knock down the thousands of protesters. Many photos and video show young kids, women, students, peasants, mothers and elderly trying to stop the police forces with their bodies. At the end of the day, dozens were imprisoned and taken to the army headquarters, dozens disappeared, many were injured and at least four were found dead. The police forces secured the center plaza displacing all the resistance to the Autonomous University of Oaxaca where legally the state could not enter.

A few days later, on November 2, in an attempt to demolish the university radio station, the organ of resistance and organization, the police forces once again confronted the Oaxacan people. On the radio, nationally and internationally we followed the resistance. We heard the Oaxacans battling, calling for reinforcement, for vinegar and coke to wipe the tear gas from their faces, for solidarity across the globe. This time however, after hours of confrontation, the police forces withdrew. Elated, thousands of Oaxacans celebrated what seemed impossible: the unarmed resistance for a government of the people and for the people. We heard through the radio a shrill scream of a woman saying, “Comrades today we are filled with glory. There are present a million people. We defeated them. We defeated them. We want Ulises Ruiz to leave Oaxaca right now and never to return because we will kick him out like we did today with the police forces.” The APPO’s demand is not only for the governor to resign, but also for dignity. They will not stop until the illegitimate government of Ulises Ruiz steps down from office. Additionally, APPO’s initiative of nationalizing the movement has already been taken up by many organizations through out the country, including the zapatista communities.

Today, popular assemblies are emerging throughout Mexico and the United States. This past October in Los Angeles, California, various indigenous groups, like the Mixtecs, the Zapotecs, the Mixes, the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB), together with the Mexican and Mexican-American organizations like Unión del Barrio y UCLA Raza Graduate Students formed a transnational APPO. Likewise, the Zapatistas have called for a nationwide shut down on November 20 during the national celebration of the Mexican Revolution in solidarity with the Oaxacan struggle.

Today this movement is the largest grassroots movement in Mexico since the 1968 student movement and promises to grow as different social movements across the nation adhere to it. We look once again to the South, where dignity infuses the global struggle for justice.

For more information:
www.asambleapopulardeoaxaca.com
www.mexico.indymedia.org
www.narconews.com (English)

the article appeared in:

http://www.ucimc.org/node/372

for more info about the death of Brad Will you can read the article
Mexico Presents Flawed Theory in Shooting Death of American Journalist
http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dd99p3r5_6g7fzs5k8&revision=_latest

The post WE WILL NEVER FORGET OAXACA appeared first on Void Network.

ΤΟ ΚΕΝΟ ΔΙΚΤΥΟ (Θεωρία, Ουτοπία, Συναίσθηση, Εφήμερες Τέχνες)

ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΖΕΙ

OAXACA

ΤΟ ΠΟΡΤΡΕΤΟ ΜΙΑΣ ΕΞΕΓΕΡΣHΣ
ΠΡΟΣΩΠΙΚΗ ΠΕΡΙΓΡΑΦΗ ΜΙΑΣ ΕΜΠΕΙΡΙΑΣ

ΟΜΙΛΙΑ THΣ CALAMITY PELLER

ΟΠΤΙΚΟΑΚΟΥΣΤΙΚΟ ΠΕΡΙΒΒΑΛΟΝ

S L I D E S H OW

V I D E O S

Η CALAMITY PELLER ΣΥΜΜΕΤΕΙΧΕ ΣΕ ΑΝΑΡΧΙΚΕΣ ΚΟΛΛΕΚΤΙΒΕΣ ΣΤΟ ΜΕΞΙΚΟ ΤΑΤΕΛΕΥΤΑΙΑ 4 ΧΡΟΝΙΑΚΑΙ ΕΖΗΣΕ ΑΜΕΣΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΜΠΕΙΡΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΕΞΕΓΕΡΣΗΣ ΣΤΗΝ OAXAΚA ΣΥΜΜΕΤΕΧΟΝΤΑΣ ΣΕ ΑΥΤΗΝ. ΘΑ ΜΙΛΗΣΕΙ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΖΩΗ ΣΤΑ ΟΔΟΦΡΑΓΜΑΤΑ,ΤΗ «ΛΑΙΚΗ ΣΥΝΕΛΕΥΣΗ ΤΩΝ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΩΝ ΤΗΣ ΟΑΧΑΚΑ»(ΑPPO)ΤΙΣ ΔΟΛΟΦΟΝΕΙΕΣ ΤΩΝ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΩΝ ΑΓΩΝΙΣΤΩΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΟΥΣ ΠΑΡΑΚΡΑΤΙΚΟΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΙΣ ΕΞΑΦΑΝΙΣΕΙΣ,ΤΗΝ ΑΠΑΝΘΡΩΠΗ ΑΣΤΥΝΟΜΙΚΗ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΟΛΗ, ΤΗ ΔΙΕΘΝΗ ΑΛΛΗΛΕΓΓΥΗ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΜΕΛΛΟΝ ΤΗΣ ΕΞΕΓΕΡΣΗΣ ΣΤΟ ΜΕΞΙΚΟ
Η ΟΜΙΛΙΑ ΚΑΙ Η ΣΥΖΗΤΗΣΗ ΘΑ ΠΕΡΙΛΑΜΒΑΝΟΥΝ ΦΩΤΟΓΡΑΦΙΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΒΙΝΤΕΟ ΤΗΣ CALAMITY ΚΑΙ ΑΛΛΩΝ ΣΥΝΤΡΟΦΩΝ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΙ ΣΤΟΝ ΤΡΟΜΟ ΤΟΥ ΚΕΝΟΥ ΘΑ ΠΛΑΙΣΙΩΣΟΥΝ ΤΗΝ ΒΡΑΔΥΑ ΜΕ ΕΙΚΟΝΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΗΧΟΥΣ

ΠΑΡΑΣΚΕΥΗ 22 ΙΟΥΝΙΟΥ 2007 9.00μ.μ.

[NOSOTROS] θεμιστοκλέους 66 ΕΞΑΡΧΕΙΑ

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