Wanted Mexican leftist says Oaxaca rebellion will spread

[struggle4progress]

Nov. 10, 2006, 8:40PM
By IOAN GRILLO
Associated Press

OAXACA, Mexico — ...

The president on Oct. 29 sent 4,000 federal officers backed by helicopters and water cannons to push the leftists out of the city center ....

Interior Undersecretary Arturo Chavez, whom Fox sent to Oaxaca to negotiate with the leftists, said they have no chief.

"They are a very hard group to bargain with," Chavez said. "We talk to some leaders but then we are not sure if other leaders agree with them."

The grass-roots nature of the movement empowers its followers, Sosa said, predicting it will grow to a national rebellion ....

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4326864.html

[bemildred]

1. No central points of failure.

No bottlenecks. It's almost like it's alive.
Damn, that does make it tough to stop.

[struggle4progress]

4. I think that's the point. Resistance movements against very brutal regimes ...

are often set back, over and over again, as official death squads decimate the leadership. This happened repeatedly, for example, in South Africa and was overcome only by a gradual development of political culture and strategy that had no indispensable leaders.

[bemildred]

10. 35 Years ago, in the antiwar resistance, one of the maxims

was "Fuck Leaders", no leaders. We had a lot wrong, but some things we had right. The reason I like Dean, despite some political stances that I disagree with, is that he gets that, he trusts the people, we wants the roots to control the process, and he is working to teach them how to do that. The mechanisms are built into our political system, but discouraged and little used.

[Igel]

11. It also makes it hard to unify once

circumstances arise that bring out internal divisions.

Since there are no leaders to negotiate over the division, the movement breaks down. How chaotic it becomes depends on how much power the movement got to begin with. How the situation is resolved depends on how thuggish or liberal the leaders that arise are.

[bemildred]

12. When old problems (outside tyranny) are removed,

new problems (self rule) will arise,
that it true, and not everyone will prove
up to the job. Nevertheless, all God's
children want to be free.

[Vidar]

2. The Mexicans shame us with their courage.

[niallmac]

3. Lets see...has history seen this before? Hmmmm...

"...Mao recognized the fundamental disparity between agrarian and urban societies, he advocated unorthodox strategies that converted deficits into advantages: using intelligence provided by the sympathetic peasant population; substituting deception, mobility, and surprise for superior firepower; using retreat as an offensive move; and educating the inhabitants as an offensive move; and educating the inhabitants on the ideological basis of the struggle. This radical approach to warfare, waged in the mountains by mobile guerrilla bands closely supported by local inhabitants, has been adopted by other revolutionary leaders throughout the world..."

from a review of "Mao Tse-Tung On Guerilla Warfare" Samuel B Griffith

[struggle4progress]

7. Mexico does a small self-proclaimed Maoist group, the EPR, that has sometimes

been active in Oaxaca during the last decade and has launched armed attacks against police installations from time to time.

Since I have fairly strong pacifist convictions, I'm not generally inclined to regard such groups favorably: there may, of course, be situations in which violent resistance offers the only option, but such situations are rare, and the resort to violence often indicates a lack of political talent.

Nelson Mandela, from prison, wrote profoundly on the topic of the anti-apartheid sabotage campaign of the early 1960's, remarking that it sucked energy from important and more immediate political organizing needs. Mandela was not entirely opposed to violent resistance, so far as it became necessary, but he preached from prison that it must remain subordinate to larger political objectives.

The Oaxaca crisis is primarily a teachers strike combined with a protest against a stolen election. There were some very touching photos last week of unarmed men and women standing up peacefully right against the riot shields of the troops sent there. And perhaps it is exactly this discipline of the movement that has earned the support of older groups such as the Zapatistas.

[niallmac]

8. If the central government chooses to physically smother discontent

the steam will escape somehow and under pressure. I agree that violence is not a thing to
be wished for but I do not see how a poor people being brutalized by right wing goon squads
trained by our own military to assure a stable environment for our corporations reflects
a lack of political talent among the victims.

Guerrilla tactics evolved when the centers of power, the cities became killing fields.
The goons love to kidnap politically talented fathers from their homes and families
and make them disappear.

It has been a long long despicable shameful history this country has written in
Central and South America and my sympathies are with those who have suffered from
my tax dollars and my lack of power to do anything about the United States military
corporate machine.

[Cafe Americano]

5. Not black and white

It's not a clear case of who's at fault. The Oaxaca crisis started five months ago with a teacher's union strike for higher pay. The police became brutal to a few of them, and it escalated.

a couple of question for everyone:

* Is there a legal method in Oaxaca for unions to make demands?
* If yes, why didn't the teacher's union use it?
* If no, why isn't there?

Additionally, the reporter from New York, William Roland, was shot after a mob tried to break into a police station and the police inside came out and fired on them. There are protesters in these types of things, and then there are mobs.

[w4rma]

15. I expect you'll find those answers in America's own history.

The situation in Mexico is very similar to our own past during the era of the robber barons.

[ToolTex]

6. Do you suppose Ortega will pick it up and spread it in Nicaragua?

Then Bush will have to bomb and invade central America. Just think how much money it will save on fuel, to have our war so close to home.

[jwirr]

14. If *ss the oil man bombs them there will be no savings on oil for us

poor jerks down here. *ss & Co. will make megabucks from the users in the US. There are many ways to profiteer.

[Peace Patriot]

9. The disinformation about the Oaxaca movement in our corporate press

has been...I was going to say extraordinary...but it's really so goddamned typical.

And the Associated Press is one of the worst offenders!

But let me say that, in this article, they at least allow the personality of this Oaxaca activist to shine through. He is a very likable guy, with an easy sense of humor. ("Wanted by Oaxacan authorities," indeed. Read, "wanted by Ruiz's death squads." The bottom of the article reveals that he was elected to Congress, was a FOUNDER of the PRD--the biggest leftist political party in Mexico (Lopez Obrador's party), and walked the halls of power with Vicente Fox for a while, until he became disillusioned with Fox's Corporate Ruler policies.) The Corporate Rulers and their propaganda machine typically try to personalize any protest situation--in this case, an awesome revolution that involves millions in Mexico, and multi-millions in Latin America. They have done this time and again with regard to Hugo Chavez. The peaceful, democratic revolution that Chavez is ONE LEADER OF goes far beyond Chavez, in Venezuela and elsewhere. It is in fact the democratization of Latin America (at long last!), after brutal U.S. suppression over decades and centuries, in collusion with Latin America's rich, land-grabbing European elite. As Evo Morales (first indigenous president of the Bolivia) has said, "The time of the people has come." The poor and the brown, the majority--brutalized, neglected and oppressed for so long--are coming into their own as a political force.

It is a beautiful thing to see.

The only way the Corporate Elite could prevent the majority from taking power in Mexico was a fraudulent vote count. That's how Calderon squeaked in (by .05%--his brother has an interest in the electronic tabulators that did it). And in the state of Oaxaca, a vicious fascist stole the 2004 election and became governor. And it is him and his paramilitaries that have caused so much trouble.

The long-suffering people of Oaxaca have NOT caused any trouble. After Gov. Ruiz's brutal attack on striking teachers--in the middle of the night (the teachers were camped out)--the Oaxacans rose up, and declared a peoples' assembly, under ancient indigenous rights and rules that are written into the Mexican Constitution for just this sort of situation. The Mexican people do NOT have to put up with fascist dictatorships. They are a REVOLUTIONARY country, at the roots--just as we are!. But their revolution is a lot fresher than ours. The peoples' assembly was/is supported by MOST Oaxacans, who TRIED to vote in a good state government in '04, and were prevented from doing so by election fraud and by brutality (--people tortured, kidnapped, killed, for opposing Ruiz politically). The attack on the teachers was just too much.

And what has occurred over the last five months, after declaration of a peoples' assembly, has been ENTIRELY PEACEFUL on the part of the "protesters" (the people of Oaxaca) as they have organized an alternative (real) government, with the support and active participation of all sorts of ordinary people and community leaders. (The population of Oaxaca, by the way, is largely indigenous indian.)

The ONLY serious violence that has occurred--murder, kidnapping and torture--has been AGAINST the Oaxacan people, by Ruiz's military and paramilitary forces. When Fox/Calderon's Darth Vader forces descended upon this ENTIRELY PEACEFUL five-month protest, last week, the students at the AUTONOMOUS University of Oaxaca--which, by law, is self-ruled and CANNOT be invaded--threw some molotov cocktails and rocks at the invading force. They felt they had a LEGAL right to resist this invasion by federal police. They were also defending the university radio station--the lifeline of emergency communication and protest information for local people.

That's it. There has been NO OTHER VIOLENCE of ANY kind by the Oaxacans.

Naturally, this MINOR resistance, by STUDENTS, is played up as some sort of violent uprising--to taint the whole protest as disorderly and a fracas.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now read the article by AP. As AP articles go, it's unusually fair to Flavio Sosa's point of view. Let's him speak for himself. And one of the things that HE points out is that "he is only one of many leaders in the assembly of leftist, trade union, student, Indian and neighborhood groups."

"'We are all equal. But my big beard and big stomach have made me become the favorite leader of the press and the police,' he said."

[jwirr]

13. I think this is about more than just the election. I read a thread here

some time ago that said illegal immigration is being pushed by global warming as Mexico becomes drier and poorer. It is likely that the pressure on the poor in this nation is increasing and thus the unrest: election protests that do not seem to end, higher rates of immigration to the US. If we do not rapidly recognize that climate change and water shortages are effecting our own continent we will end up having to deal with massive refugee camps on our own borders. We need to find a way of helping people in their own countries (NAFTA has been a total failure).

[IntiRaymi]

16. This is the ideal situation:

"They are a very hard group to bargain with," Chavez said. "We talk to some leaders but then we are not sure if other leaders agree with them."

This means that the rebellion is spontaneous, unorganized, and coalescing into a coherent movement, intent on tossing the pigs from office.
This is the face of revolution, not like those color coded things in Eastern Europe.