Crisis in Oaxaca

"...The students of Mexico City are here to express their solidarity with the people and students of Oaxaca who are living under a state of repression at the hands of the federal government."

By Sara Harris

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On November 2, the Mexican Federal Police entered the main university in Oaxaca, one of the city's primary locations for peaceful protest, by force. Seventy people were injured in the storming, and 30 have been detained. Thousands of students and families threw rocks at the military, as troops fired tear gas at protestors and, what one local videographer described as, "streams of water mixed with an orange, acidic substance." Helicopters reportedly dropped grenades on Radio Universidad, which has been transmitting the words of the People's Popular Assembly of Oaxaca - a coalition of 350 NGO's and community organizations - for the past two months. Currently, local human rights groups are calling on international organizations to denounce the Mexican government's behavior and to demand a retraction of the military. Youth Radio’s Sara Harris reports from Mexico City on thecurrent crisis and the internationally-based protests calling for military withdrawal.

On Monday, October 30, protests took place around the world: in New York, in Raleigh, North Carolina, in Los Angeles, and in Barcelona.

In Mexico City, thousands of university students and teachers from Mexico City, and from Oaxaca joined supportive local citizens carrying signs that read “We are All Oaxaca.” On Tuesday, they marched to the presidential palace at Los Pinos.

The protestors are calling for an end to the federal occupation of Oaxaca City and for the resignation of the state governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.

JOEL (on tape)
Estamos manifestando en contra de la represión en Oaxaca...de que la policia federal preventiva se instaló...se presentaron actos que violaron a los derechos humanos. No estamos dispuestos de dejar pasar otro masacre en Mexico.

SARA
Joel is an economics students at the Polytechnic University He says the students of Mexico City are here to express their opposition to the repression and violation of human rights in Oaxaca. Referring to rapes and murders of protestors this year by federal police outside Mexico City during another protest, Joel says students do not want to see another massacre in Mexico.

EFRAIN (on tape)
Me llamo Efrain Ramirez Martinez...soy maestro el la secundaria.

SARA (on tape)
Efrain Ramirez Martinez is a teacher in a one-room school in the mountains in Oaxaca. Earlier this month, he walked to Mexico City with hundreds of other striking teachers to make demands that the federal government force the governor of Oaxaca to resign.

The current demand of the teachers is a salary increase and the resignation of Ulises Ruis Ortiz. But Efrain Ramirez Martinez explains that for the past 26 years, students and communities in Mexico’s second poorest state have been suffering severe neglect.

EFRAIN (on tape)
Hay lugares en la region de la Sierra Mixteca en que tenemos que caminar más de 10 horas para llegar a la escuela que está bajo un arbol, que están bajos de casas de carton y que no tiene lo más elemental. No es la exigencia de este año. Eso venimos exigiendo durante 26 años.

SARA
Ramirez Martinez says there are towns in the mountains where students have to walk ten hours to reach a classroom under a tree or a cardboard shack.

During Vicente Fox’s six years in office, the president has created free breakfast programs and brought computers to select classrooms across the country. But, as Ramirez Martinez points out, Oaxaca has not been included of this plan.

EFRAIN (on tape)
Oaxaca, en todo el estado, la gente está muy enojada. Oaxaca está ardiendo, ¿pues no? Porque jamás pensaron que iban a militarizar. No estamos en la epoca de la Conquista, ya.

SARA
He says, “The people across Oaxaca are angry. The state is in flames, isn’t it? Because no one very thought that this would come down to military action. The Conquest of the Americas is over, right?”

As the protestors make their way down Lázaro Cárdenas and past the majestic Palace of Fine Arts, dozens of indigenous women dressed in bright red traditional huipiles shout their support for the communities they have left behind in their home state of Oaxaca.

CECILIA (on tape)
Soy Cecilia...Somos del estado de Oaxaca...vinimos al D.F para salir un poco más adelante. No nos podemos ganar la vida allá. Preferimos vivir allá. Aca hay racismo.

SARA
Cecilia is 20 years old and from the indigenous Triqui region in Oaxaca. She says, like millions of others, her family came to Mexico City to improve their economic situation, but that they have encountered much racism that makes it tough to earn a living here.

Cecilia says the problems that are keeping the kids out of school and have existed for such a long-time, it’s hard to imagine there will ever be a solution.

CECILIA (ON TAPE)
Creo que a los alumnos nos está afectando mucho. Ya se atrasaron mucho a las clases. Ya vamos mucho tiempo con esto, y no hay solución.

As the last of the red-flag waving students round the bend toward the offices of the Secretary of the Interior, a political science student walking next to me shakes his head and says, “The teachers in Oaxaca only make $300 a month. The teachers here only make $300 a month. It costs at least $400 a month to live. Until that changes, there will always be marches in the streets here and there.”