Narco News: Teachers Repel 3,000 Police from Oaxaca’s Historic Center
Thousands of Police Surround the City Center as Strikers Hold Their Ground
By Geoffrey Harman
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Oaxaca
June 14, 2006
OAXACA CITY: In a scene that is starting to look all too familiar in Mexico, the police attempted to disrupt the Oaxaca teachers strike in downtown Oaxaca City this morning. At roughly 3 a.m. a police helicopter flew low over the tent city where the teachers have been camped for the past 23 days and shot canisters of tear gas. Meanwhile, 3,000 state police armed with riot shields and clubs entered the chaos and tore apart the roughshod shelters where the teachers had been staying. During the course of the six-hour police intervention three people were reported to have been killed (this is unconfirmed), two women and one child.
Radio Plantón (the teachers’ pirate radio station, which had been broadcasting from the Zócalo, or central square, since the strike started and had been the main source of information for the striking teachers) was dismantled and has been off the air since the first police attack. (Four journalists from the station were among the first to be arrested: Arcelio Ruiz Villanueva, Ociel Martínez Martínez, Eduardo Castellanos Morales and Roberto Gazga.) The teachers are now broadcasting on the college radio station 89.7 FM and 113.95 AM. At roughly 10 am the police retreated and the teachers re-took the Zócalo. During the course of the struggle unconfirmed reports have said four people were arrested (three of which were from Radio Plantón), 20 people hospitalized and three police taken hostage. …
Narco News: Stand-off Continues as Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike enters Fourth Week
By Nancy Davies
June 12, 2006
The strike by Section 22 of the Síndicato Nacionál Trajabadores Educativas (SNTE), the teachers’ union, enters its fourth week in a stand-off that seems no closer to resolution. SNTE Section 22 vows to increase pressure on Ulises Ruiz Ortega (URO) by continuing the invasions or blockades of government property such as PEMEX distribution terminals, the Chamber of Deputies, the state attorney general’s office, the collection tollbooth of Huitzo on the Oaxaca-Mexico highway, the Institute of State Public Education for Oaxaca, the Secretary of Finances’ office, and the so-called public works such as the renovation of Llano Park and the Fountain of Seven Regions, and the widening of Fortin Road.
Furthermore, teachers are now soliciting citizen signatures to depose URO as governor of the state. At the corner of Independencia and Porfirio Díaz streets on Sunday, June 11, two young teachers and a professor were requesting passersby to sign on. …
Narco News: Oaxaca Near Meltdown Over Teacher Strike
More than Just an Educators’ Pay Dispute, the Conflict Is a Sign of Governor Ruiz’s Inability to Rule a State Fed Up with Repression and Corruption
By Nancy Davies
June 7, 2006
It’s unprecedented and nobody knows what will happen, but nobody is backing down.
Tens of thousands of striking teachers occupy the center of Oaxaca city, sprawled out under camp tents, on top of cardboard cartons, on stairs and walls and benches. The plantón — the occupying camp — has now been going on for fifteen days. It covers 56 blocks, preventing all traffic and access to the heart of the central square, or zócalo.
The striking teachers have with them in the zócalo and the Plaza de la Danza their embroidery and their children. Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz has called in Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) obligations in more than half the municipalities of Oaxaca and obtained signed condemnation of the teachers, along with their demands to control education at the municipal level, from more than 250 municipal mayors, which means breaking the union. …
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