The NarcoSphere: “The Center of the City Looks Like a War Zone”—Scenes of Chaos in Downtown Oaxaca City as Striking Teachers Defend Themselves from Police Attack
By Nancy Davies, Posted on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 06:59:48 PM EST
The center of the city looks like a war zone. On the tourist street, broken glass and broken bricks and stones lie everywhere. Torn and crumpled tents lie destroyed, flattened in every street, along with personal belongings, trash, and burned objects.
The teachers have regrouped. According to Enrique Pineda Rios, a physical education teacher sitting with a group of five men armed with sticks on Porfirio Diaz about two blocks north of the zocalo, about 80% of the zocalo has been reoccupied by the teachers.
Pineda Rios told me that three teachers and one of their children were killed by the gas used in the attack. More than twenty teachers have been wounded. Pineda Rios told me that the teachers were unarmed but the federal police (and I asked him twice, was it local police or federal; he says federal. He told me that more federal police are on the way.) accompanied by the state troops entered with gas, clubs and guns. He also told me the teachers were awaiting a renewed police attack at 2:00PM. An older teacher was circulating with surgical masks , handing them out to everyone.
The radio station of the university, which is acting as a news station for the strikers, reports 10 dead.
I saw one teacher cleaning the broken glass off his car. The back window was shattered when a gas cannister shot through it, landing on the front seat beside the teacher. Helicopters are circling.
The teachers remain defiant and are sending out requests for citizen assistance. The radio stations reporting for the gov say stay home, the teachers are burning, breaking rioting, etc. That’s clearly not true. They look shocked but not violent -grim, I would say, including the women who remain.
Some who received the worst of the tear gas retreated several blocks and were washing out their eyes with water. The radio reported many injurred arriving at the hospital.
Every business in the center is closed, with their metal doors padlocked.
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