You're so right Apathysux

How long has this issue been in the news - for folks who know where to look? Unbelievable how the welfare of a whole nation with whom we share the continent could stay off the media radar AND off the pages of what's billed as an independent and feisty on-line news source for so many months. Maybe if Brad Will had been Canadian eh?

I hope Skookum1 sees this. He'll have an update....

You are being conned!!!

Having lived in Mexico for 25+ years, I read reports from both Mexican and International media as well as personal knowledge of the teaching profession in Mexico and the Mexican political scene.

After 70+ years of one party (PRI) rule in Mexico and marriages of convenience between the ruling party and labor unions (teachers' union included) an opposing party, PAN, finally won the presidency although they did not gain control of the congress nor senate. During 6 years of Presidente Vicente Fox' term, almost nothing could be changed as the previous ruling party and a socialist party (PRD) made up principally of ex-PRI party members blocked almost all changes in the country. The protests in Oaxaca were stage managed by the PRD party from Mexico City to undermine the presidency of Vicente Fox. The APPO, like Sub-Comandante Marco's "guerillas" are funded in part by European left wingers and Hugo Chavez' Bolivarean movement as well as deceived "humanitarians" from the US and Canada.

Sure there are problems in Mexico, major problems but when change was tried finally by electing a president from another political party, the roadblocks to change have been so high that almost nothing has been accomplished. These roadblocks are managed by the PRD political party and the labour unions affilated with them. These are the same people who have kept Mexico in the dark ages for the last 100 years and they are so good at what they do that they can conn humanitarian and labour movements from both the US and Canada.

Quote:The protests in Oaxaca

Total BS as anyone who has followed the situation there. Of course, there has been international support from progressive movements - that internationalism that Glavin-Cohen claims is absent - but the struggle is a real grass roots one and only neoconvicts deny this

The PRD"s role

The APPO has complained about is the actual absence of support from the PRD in Oaxaca. Grass roots movements like this in Mexico are suspicious of the PRD seeing it as possibly engaging in a sell-out. There is also an ideological split between the PRD and groups like APPO. THe former is social democratic, the latter libertarian populist. Here below is my translation of a statement by CODEP, one of the groups in APPO. It is hardly anything like the PRD at all.

Our struggle was incited from the beginning by the injustices and atrocities we suffered at the hands of the political bosses and by the impoverishing policies
of the government. We struggle for justice, democracy, the equality of opportunity and conditions of development, freedom and brotherhood between human beings, men
and women. These values take body and form in the construction of popular power and the autonomy that is the exercise of self-management by the oppressed,
operating in the economic, political, social, and cultural self- determined to end inequality and social injustice.
The base of popular power is the self-organization of the towns, creating a network of economic and social
relations opposed to those of the present authoritarian regime, becoming thus, within the capitalist society, a germ of a new humanized society. To the extent to
which people's power is strengthened, the power ofthe oppressors is worn away.

We aspire that these ideas will take over as much as possible in the economic, political, social and cultural
activities of the territories where our organizational work is developing, in this long and permanent struggle against the political bosses and their government.
As previously mentioned, we have tried to make in reality such impelling productive projects as markets, ecological
recovery and restoration of lands, traditional medicine, resuscitation of culture, credit unions, the defense and
promotion of human rights and the rights of Native Peoples, recovery of traditional forms of government and an impulse toward a new system of education.

From the Horse's Mouth

Here is the APPO web site (There are some articles in English) and Narco News, the best English-language site for news in Mexico.
http://codepappo.wordpress.com/appo/
http://www.narconews.com/

How appropriate

It is appropiate that the dissenter's screen name is "anarcho" (anarchist).

"Total BS as anyone who has followed the situation there"

As previously stated, I lived there for 25+ years, I didn't have to follow the situation, I've lived it. Your sources are the same tired pseudo left web pages. Ask the parents that had to take over some of the schools which were blockaded by the striking teachers why they did it. Ask the "teachers" why they painted graffiti and caused millions of dollars of private and public property damage. Ask them how they will repay the lost wages of the thousands of ordinary private citizens who lost their livlihood because of either the damage to property or the loss of tourist business (practically all hotels had to be shut down for safety concerns)

Mexico does not deserve to be trashed by pseudo left activists like you. It has problems but supporting self-serving criminal gangs is not the way. These "teachers" shut down the economy of the state and caused millions in damages. Who is going to pay for it and put food in the mouths of the ones that were really hurt, the ordinary working stiff from Oaxaca.

What gall!

What gall it is for a right-whiner like you to talk about taking food out of people's mouths! As though rightists gave a damn about the people! Living some place for 25 years means nothing if you wear ideological blinkers. Don't think I haven't heard the same pap from Pinochet-loving Gringos in Chile. Who should we believe, the same people who have been wrong about the Iraq War, wrong about "privatization", wrong about NAFTA, wrong about cut-backs etc or should we believe the folks who have been right about these things, ie the left? You people are always against unions, always against the people when they revolt against the state and always spout the same lies. Your propaganda has not changed in 200 years. Revolt is always the work of "outsiders" "criminal gangs", people who revolt always have "alterior motives", there is never any legitmacy to our struggle. In your eyes all we should do is suffer. Well F*ck you!

sounds like jinny sims could

sounds like jinny sims could solve all their problems.

By the way, thanks!

Just want to thank Tyee for running this article. But that does not mean I have forgiven you for purging Coyote!

you are now the 'definition' of irrelevant El, way to go!

When the subject is teachers,

When the subject is teachers, it's only a matter of time before Elliot will weigh in with something offensive.

Nice to see you're still on point big dog.

you're too predictable g.

you're too predictable g.

Me, predictable?

Hardly. I'm all over the shop. You come down the right wing exactly the same way every time. Piece of cake to defend against you El.

Mexican teachers' unions could use some tips from Pakistan.

Sounds like the Mexican teachers' unions could use some contract negotiating tips from their brothers and sisters in Pakistan. Check out this link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/07/wpak07.xml

At Karachi's Haqqani Chowk School, 49 teachers are on the payroll, costing the school £7,170 a month, but no pupils are registered. At another primary school in the city, 40 teachers have been appointed to teach only 11 enrolled children. Absentee teachers hand 30-40% of salaries to district education supervisors to ensure they keep their "jobs."

Yeh!

That would really help cc

Third World teachers

You would think people would have some concern about teachers in the Third World, especially the village elementary teachers. They are very poorly paid, and have poor working conditions. Back in 1991 I was in Chile. Copper miners made $1000 a month, village school teachers $100. You can thank the right-winger's favorite despot Pinocho for that, but I doubt if teachers in other countries fared much better, nor do they fare a heck of a lot better now. They usually also face - as CC points out, and the Oaxacans have showed so well, regimes that are apallingly corrupt and oppressive. Yet, when they fight back - with grafitti, baracades and fireworks right-winger haters call them "criminal gangs." Makes me want to puke...

Democracy

"These "teachers" shut down the economy of the state and caused millions in damages. Who is going to pay for it and put food in the mouths of the ones that were really hurt, the ordinary working stiff from Oaxaca."

Peaceful protest is the price of democracy. Anything else is a police state. I would "ask" the families of the teachers who were beaten, jailed, and killed who paid for the "damage" to the economy.

Anarchist: definition

I recommend landover read the recent Tyee book coloumn on Anarchy before using the term in a derogatory manner towards one who actually cares about the whole picture rather than the 'right' one.

think twice...or more

i always find it interesting to hear people accuse another of having "ideological blinkers" on and then proceed to make huge assumptions about their politics or the inherent good of any movement or force in the world. im nowhere near a right winger but i understand that social movements can be co-opted. there are certain "sacred" terms and concepts that folks like anarcho just treat in their own ideologically blinkered, or could i say "fundamentalist" way. we all know our part in the what you could term "the people's struggle" but the minute we take it as being a given that anything with that label is pure, we fall off into some dubious territory. i can sense anarcho's passion around this issue, but i also sense a desire to believe in something that he or she has invested a part of themself in, and therefore is scared to look deeply and clearly into what is actually there.

i dont know enough about the oaxaca issue to comment on the specifics. i have heard intruiging arguments on both sides. what concerns me more is the idea that any side of the argument can be permitted "carte blanche" to speak for all of us and be free of scrutiny.

plankster

I don't think this is a question that can be settled by an ideological seminar. The facts on the ground: corruption of generations of PRI politicians, the army, the police and the civil authority - not to mention the drug cartels, have created a society in Mexico where the peasants, the workers and the average Mexican are likely going to take things into their own hands.

For anyone who has followed the events of the last year in Oaxaca and elsewhere it's pretty evident who are the victims and who are the victimizers.

It has been extremely hard to do that via the Canadian and American media. The Spanish press and some independent voices have been speaking out.

Possibly because of the influence of multi-national corporations in the tourism business - and by extension in the press - there has been little or nothing said about this here because no one wants to upset the apple cart.

The increase in the price of corn tortillas in the last month or so has exacerbated conditions for the poor in Mexico as well.

There is little evidence that the authorities are doing much that's corrective except to try and keep the lid on.

If the Mexican people have finally decided they've had enough of organized crime, government corruption and just plain incompetent governance, who can blame them.

It isn't a matter any more of sorting out 'sides' - it's a pressure cooker that is about to explode.

Doesn't sound to good to me CC ...

"There are 250 pupils in her shabby and dilapidated school, with just two teachers. There is no electricity, no fresh water and no lavatory. The teachers can do little more than try to keep order and, for much of the time, the boys and girls sit chattering amongst themselves, oblivious to the lessons they are missing."

Sounds like those two teachers need a union. Kickbacks and corruption might stop if the "real" teachers got organized.

Basta!! (Enough) with naive ideologies

Mexico has problems, granted. More than some countries and much less than others. In the specific case of the teaching profession, and like many (or most) countries they are one of the worst paid. They get screwed by their employer at the state and federal level AND by their union. They are quite often force to pay bribes to the union to maintain their jobs and get bused around from protest to protest. Not because the necessarily want to go, but if they don't they lose their job and sometimes more at the hands of the union goons. The union leaders have been affiliated for decades with the PRI and lately with what in many ways is an offshoot, the PRD.

What I'm getting at is that the poor, get screwed every which way and criticizing only one of their oppressors does nothing for them except add fuel to the fire.

After more than 70 years of PRI rule, an alternative party (only the executive branch) finally took power. Are they better? Who knows because they have not been able to lead due to all the roadblocks from the PRI, PAN and labour movements.

Note to Chris H: The teachers union's protest was far from peaceful unless you consider Molotov cocktails, public whippings, property damage and assaults on innocents (firement, paramedics etc.) peaceful.

It is history

After you see these struggles over and over in history, after you have taken part in them yourself for 40 years like I have, after you see the same stories told to denegrate those struggles, you can only take one side - that of the people in struggle, warts and all.

I would also like to point

I would also like to point out that being on the side of the workers against the bosses, as with being for the Indigenous People and teachers of Oaxaca against the gangster government is not a matter of ideology. It is a matter of ethics - something which transcends ideology. The ideological ones are those who oppose the oppressed, who wish to keep them that way, who rationalize this through talk of law and order, the rights of property, free trade (sic) or outside agitators and wicked union bosses misleading the people. etc. As those of you familiar with my views will vouch, I have little interest manufacturing anarchists, rather, I wish to encourage people's autonomy and self-determination. (The CODEP statement above captures what I think rather well, in fact. I challenge anyone to find fault with it. If only we had a movement with those ideals in BC rather than the weak tea NDP)

An example from history.

Here is an example from history, the Chartist Movement. A complex movement, some violence, some shady leaders, a good deal of brutality on the part of the authorities. But who would stand against the Chartists? Who would condemn their legacy, which was votes for all adult males and perhaps inspiring women's suffrage?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism

Plus Ca Change, Plus C'est la Meme Chose

No solution to Mexico's problems nor any other country's will be found while radicals of both sides continue arguing their ideals. Anarcho's arguments put us back to Marxist/Leninist times and where did that go. Oh yeah I remember, if I don't agree with you then I'm sent to the Gulag. Your arguments on the Proletariat and other phrases are so old they should be buried with Lenin.

The poor and "downtrodden" need a new vision and not more of the old and failed people's revolutions which got us Stalin, Castro, Mao and the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il. Let's find solutions not more of the same crap. Mexico does not need more dictators. It has suffered enough.

Totalitarian tactics

Landowner has engaged in typical totalitarian tactics - the big lie technique. Nowhere does the APPO, or myself for that matter, endorse Marxist Leninist ideology. Even the most basic reading of the materials show that the approach is one of populism. The whole point of the movement is to empower the population and take away the power of the crooks at the top. Thousands of anarchists and libertarians have died at the hands of ML's. We certainly have no affection for that ideology, to put it mildly. Landowner is the spiritual follower of Stalin Mao etc not me. And I don't need to punish you fella, the bad karma you are creating through your lies and hatred are punishment enough.

Pot Calling Kettle Black

I forgot to mention, that the far right in the US takes exactly the same line as Landowner does on the APPO and the teachers struggle. For a while there was a right wing Gringo blogger in Oaxaca in one of the nuttier neocon sites. Sounded exactly like Landowner. So who is being ideological?

Teacher's Strike in Oaxaca

A little update on the teacher´s strike here in Oaxaca: Last month ten thousand protesters marched by my house. Last weekend there were only about a thousand. What happened in between? Governor Ruiz gave them a big raise so they are now probably the best paid public school teachers in Mexico. Having got what they wanted (MO MONEY), when the march was called for this month, they simply stayed home. So much for idealism.

The Black Kettle

The Right Wing Gringo Anarcho is talking about is probably Mark in Mexico. I invite all readers of this discussion to read his blogs in topix.net/mx/oaxca to judge for yourself if he is blindly onesided or not.

More disinformation

Here is an eye witness account of the march in question.

From http://www.narconews.com/Issue44/article2526.html

Balanced and Fair - Mark in Mexico

Thanks localokie for the reference. I wasn't aware of Mark's blog which by the the way is at: http://markinmexico.blogspot.com/

It's a refreshing change from raging left-wingers without a balanced bone in their bodies. Sites like "narconews" is like reading a 21st century version of Das Kapital but with less education.

Hardly a reliable source...

Oh yes, we are supposed to believe someone who is a member of, get this, "The Conservative Web Ring" ie the folks that have been wrong about just about everything, the cakewalk crowd, the WMD folks... Furthermore accusing strikers and demonstrators of being thugs, criminals etc is the oldest propaganda trick going. As for Narco News, Al Giordano is a syndicalist not a marxist, most of the reports are populist in outlook, not marxist. If you are too ignorant to distinguish syndicalism and populism from marxism, that says more about you than Narco news. Maybe you should consider taking a few lower level poli si courses...

Too big a brush.

Anarcho

You are painting with too big a brush comrade. Just because someone is conservative doesn't mean they personally lied about WMDs. I mean come on. If you want to encourage clear thinking good dialogue, statments like:

"the bad karma you are creating through your lies and hatred are punishment enough."

only serve to reveal that you are stuck and bitter. Here we have a lively forum where people like myself are looking to inform themselves through debate and discussion. You have the opportunity to change some minds here... use it well.

Its the ideology prankster

It is the neocon ideology of the web ring that I am talking about. The neocons are a very coherent bunch ideologically, unlike progressives who are divided on any number of issues. The anti-APPO postings can only be seen as lying and hateful, and I repeat again, that these sort of attacks have a history. The Chartists and Abolitionists of 170 years ago were vilified using similar terms. Every group that has taken to the streets to fight for improvements has been slandered in this manner. I am not making this up, these are verifiable historical facts. The Oaxacans should be a "motherhood" issue, yet these neocons attack and slander them. How on Earth can anyone with a scrap of morality be against poor Third World teachers and beaten down indigenous villagers? My wife was a village teacher in Chile for 21 years and Chile is a wealthier country than Mexico, so I have some inkling of the situation. I cannot for the life of me see these right-wingers as anything but inhuman monsters. They will suffer, and if previous history is any example,I can guarantee the contempt of future generations, as has happened with the apologists for the slave trade, the limited franchise, the oppression of women, the gunning down of trade unionists, and Jim Crow in the South.

The worst

I just checked about 20 blogs that belong to the Conservative Web Ring of which the Mike the right wing Gringo is a member. Sickening. Oodles of anti-Mexican immigrant hatred, calls for re-establishing the Confederacy, protecting the "white working man" , crazy conspiracy theories, support for Bushes war in Iraq and endless venom poured upon the Democrats esp. Al Gore and Hilary (as "dangerous socialists" no less) This is even worse than I expected. Total nutbar stuff.

Full of Hate

Thank you Plankster for your voice of reason. For reasons unknown to me, Anarcho is filled with hate and has blinders the size of barn doors.

The web-ring reference is really unfair. It is a mechanism used on the Internet for many years to group similar topics but I believe is falling into disuse. It is not a political party. If one reads Mark's (not mikes) blog, you can find that he freely criticizes the Republican Party, Bush and the existing Mexican government when he finds it necessary. He seems to keep his "Conservatism" in check. He lives and works in Mexico and apparently promotes the export of Mexican handicrafts.

On my side, I'm a Canadian non-conservative who has lived in Mexico for 25+ years, has a Mexican wife and son (and dog) and have ties to people of different socio-economic levels. A number of my relatives (on my wife's side) are educators in Mexico and belong to different teacher's unions. My sources of information are current and actual and are not based on vicious, left leaning groups trying to maintain power with the help of deluded socialists and Marxists who like to obfuscate the truth by using poli-sci vocabulary that not 1 in a 1000 understand nor care about. Get your head out of your texts and live the real world and help and not hinder the progress of the third world.

Who is hateful, who is deluded?

Says it all. This is the language of someone with a very large ideological axe to grind. Needless to say, we have seen this rhretoric many times in history to attack progressive movements. Treating the progressive movement as monolithic also shows how little you know about us. Anarchists and libertarian socialists form a very important part of the movement down there, not just social democrats like the PRD. They and other groups to the left of the PRD are very suspicious of it. (read Sub Marcos on them) If what you say is true my people down there would be the first to express concern, I assure you. So far I have read no reports like that. This is a situation quite unlike that of Venezuela where my tendency is highly critical of Chavez. The libertarian left are not fools. We are the first victims of left-wing authoritarians and thus are always on the outlook for such tendencies. Oh, yes, you may have your friends and family down there alright, but what does that really mean? I know people in Chile who are Pinochet supporters. If, ignorant of history and politics, I listened to them I would end up as blinkered as you are. And another thing, you cannot equate the hatred one feels for the oppressors with the hate that an apologist for those oppressors feels for the people rebellingh against their oppression.

Mark the right wing Gringo

Mark the right wing Gringo may not be as nutso as some of his fellow knuckle dragging blog ringers, but it is only a matter of degree. His writings are still a rat bag of hate and stupidity ie, leftists = evil, socialists = evil, demonstrators = criminals etc. This is far right propaganda. The sort of rubbish you, Landowner, are spouting. By the way please stay in Mexico, with the Harpocrit in power we have enough of your kind up here now.

I am ignorant and proud says Landowner

i.e., Please don't confuse my mind with facts.
God help you that you mght learn something!

Stalin is a hero of APPO

Nowhere does the APPO, or myself for that matter, endorse Marxist Leninist ideology.
This comment by Anarcho is totally made up. When I was there in July there were banners everywhere with Stalin's picture on them.

Wrong march

the march took about 25 minutes to pass by. The march was not a “Megamarch” by the standards established before the November 25 government attacks, but it was respectable in numbers (I guess somewhere around 30,000) and lively.

This was not the last march. This march took place two weeks ago before the teachers were bought off. And 30,000 is a wild exageration anyway. You can do a little experimentation to determine how many people could pass by on a skinny little street barely two bus widths wide.
The papers reported ten thou like I said.
I didn't see the last march but the papers
said it was a fizzle.

Think for yourself

You are painting with too big a brush comrade. Just because someone is conservative doesn't mean they personally lied about WMDs.

I would like to add to this comment by plankster. The only politician that I can
remember talking against the war in Irak before the invasion was Pat Buchanan who (I think) was Reagan's speech writer and ran for president against George Bush. Some people think for themselves and don't
follow the party line.

More Dumb propaganda

That is like saying anti war marches are communist because the CP shows up with its banner. Let's face it you want the APPO to appear Stalinist, in the same way the pro-war types want the peace movement to apear as cP inspired. There is a Stalinist Party in Mexico. Everyone knows that. But they are just a tiny fraction of the movement. Read the APPO and CODEP statements. Do you think they sound Stalinist? If anyone should know if the APPO is Stalinist it is me. My tendency is directly involved and would know and report it fully.

Buchanan not a neocon

Buchanan represents a right-populist tendency that opposes to US war on Iraq and the empire in general. This tendency along with the right-libertarians such as AntiWar.com have similar views on this issue. I am talking about the bulk of what passes for conservatism, now the neocons, for lack of a better term, the pro-empire, pro-war, pro-NAFTA types, the loonier fringes of which are anti-immigrant and racist.

Wrong Again!

Not true. The report is dated Feb 5 and refers to the Saturday Feb 3 march. See

http://www.narconews.com/Issue44/article2526.html

Don't believe everything you read

Even the most basic reading of the materials show that the approach is one of populism.

This comment by Anarcho displays incredible naivete! Actions speak louder than words and the actions of APPO were destructive and suicidal. They trashed this town and intimidated it's citizens.
The people here breathed a sigh of relief when the Federales came to town. As I said before, the teachers were in it for the money, plain and simple. The big winner here is Calderon and by association his party the PAN. The PRD is hated for their support of APPO (belated and insubstantial) and the PRI because they are the party of the Governor who didn't resign and is suspected of lot's of dirty tricks. The PAN could cinch the takeover of the state of Oaxaca by promising to legislate a recall provision like in California, which is how they got rid of the last governor before he finished his term, and an impeachment provision which, just the threat of it, got rid of a president of
los estados unidos a while back.

Photos of Oaxaca

If anyone wants to see photos of the struggle and how the people stood up to the corrupt government,s thugs check this out. (And no pix of Stalin anywhere!)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mexicosolidarity/

Wrong march Part two

D.R. 2006 George Salzman
Excitement was running through the ground like electricity in anticipation of the Ninth Megamarch scheduled for Saturday, February 3, which was designed to show that the APPO is alive and to demand the departure of URO, as well as the release of political prisoners. Among the imprisoned is Flavio Sosa, a high-profile APPO activist.

On February 5 they are reporting about a march SCEDULED FOR FEBRUARY 3¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡

That picture of the march is of the march that took place LAST MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is the street I live on and I watched
the march from exactly the spot where that picture was taken. This month's march took a different route completely.

And the picture of the barbed wire is out of date too. The Federales are all gone now, off chasing the drug lords.

Quote:the actions of APPO

Once again this is the sort of propaganda that is always voiced in opposition to a struggle. I have seen and heard this many times before. If you stand up and fight some destruction is inevitable. The other possibility is to lie down and submit, which is probably what you would prefer. It is the same in any strike. Scabs get beaten up, sometimes things get broken. Friends of the scabs and the people who support the bosses are outraged and talk endlessly of how horrible it all was and how wonderful it is when the police come. Same in the aftermath of the Paris Commune, Same with the Pinochet coup. The point is why should I trust you?

Wrong March pt 3

If you read further the reporter describes the actual march as it takes place. First she describes the build-up to the march, then the actual march.

It is also very niave of you to believe what you read in the newspapers. A good rule of thumb with marches is to double the figure thge press gives. After all they are paid to mislead.

There is only ONE truth and that is Anarcho's

localokie Might as well give up. You can live there, see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears and Anarcho will tell you that it is not true. He will swing around his infallible source: Narconews And tell everyone what is REALLY happening and what you should think.

His lovely philosophy tells me to stay away from Canada as he has rights to live here but I don't, even though I'm as much a Canadian as he is. God, thank god he's not in power, he'd have his own purges for everyone who disagrees with him.

I know that despite its faults, I love my adopted Mexico and I hate seeing the poor and ignorant being used as pawns by any group, especially Anarcho's groups which are prone to violence.

Two truths, not one

No, I am not as hard headed as you think. I know it seems foolish to you who live there to have someone who doesn't, contradict your viewpoint. But you see, someone with knowledge and experience in these matters will indeed see it differently. Part of the problem, and this happens with other discussions too, lies with the format and the situation. Neither of us know each other, we are like blind men fencing. We get to natter at each other in dribs and drabs. It is very difficult to discuss something as complex and contradictory as a social movement in this context. It is possible, I should add, for two people to look at the same phenomenon and have two entirely different viewpoints. A lot of this has to do with experience, level of education, one's associates and position in society. Thus, what one person sees as monstrous, another sees as heroic. Who is right? Both are from their respective perspectives. Example – for an employer a victorious strike is a misfortune. For the worker a victorious strike is something to celebrate. Both are right and I think this applies to us as well.

WRONG MARCH PERIOD

¡ANARCO, YOU ARE AN IDIOT! Don´t bother answering me because I am outta here. There is nothing left of this godforsaken pile of
shit you call a movement and good riddance.
The teachers are back in school with their wallets full of ransom money and the APPO ringleaders are in jail where hopefully they
will get what they deserve: thirty years to
life for sedition. If holding a city hostage is your idea of heroism there is nothing more I can think of to say to you.

Well said!!

Well said localokie. The APPO are not representative of the "People" The ringleaders are of the same political groups that held Mexico hostage during 70+ years of PRI rule and the followers? Poor and unemployed who are given a ration of food to join the movement and are bused to the sites to protest. Who pays for the food and buses? misguided groups like Anarcho's.

Pure hate

I try to draw a reasonable conclusion to this argument stating that there are quite possibly two views here and this is what I get - hate and insults. My views on Oaxaca are drawn from 42 years experience as an activist-scholar, blue collar worker and trade unionist, as well as reading a wide range of viewpoints, social democratic like In These Times and Commondreams, independent left like Counterpunch, anarchist like Rojo y Negro and A-Infos, not just the incomparable Narco News. It should be noted that all these newsgroups and journals have people on the ground. Only the hard right has a hate-on for the movement there, so draw your own conclusions. Furthermore, as I have pointed out several times, never to be answered in any rational way, the accusations thrown at the APPO and the teachers are are the same as those that have been hurled at every protesting group. A lesson from history, and I don't need to go back hundreds of years. Paris 1968 - lots of destruction as the students and workers defended themselves against the riot cops. A big blow to the economy with the general strike. And the right screamed and ranted. Who remembers those right-whiners today? But '68 has become mythical. So will the Oaxaca Commune and its right-whiners will be forgotten too. And that is the best fate this couple of hate-mongers could have.

lacalokie

When reporters are shot dead by government officials because they are recording what is going on during the protests, I don't think the protesters are the out-of-control ones.

For instance: "Brad Will died as he was being taken to the hospital. He was 36 years old.
The Mexican daily El Universal has published photos of the alleged executioners. On Saturday, the mayor of Santa Lucia del Camino, Manuel Martinez Feria, said five men had been turned over to state authorities for possible involvement in the killing. He identified them as two members of the local city hall, two municipal police officers and the former justice of the peace of a nearby town."

There is a right to strike, demonstrate, and protest in a free and democratic society. Even if that shuts down the town. Celebrating that people will be locked up for 30 years to life for protesting the actions of government is absolutely disgusting.

To sum up

It isn't the experience that counts, it is how you interpret that experience. Someone who has never seen a plane before will think it a bird, for example. An ignorant person on hearing of a chronic welfare recipient will see a lazy bum to be punished, an educated person will see someone with emotional and/or social problems to be helped. Someone who knows nothing of social movements, unions, protest and the history of such in that in a country will only see chaos, destruction and criminality and of course (fan fare please) “marxism”. All you need to do is read a few sentences from someone to judge their level of knowledge. Landowner accuses me of using high-falutin' language and is unfamiliar with such common terms as “populist”, “syndicalist” and “social democrat”. His language is of the gutter press, “manipulated poor and ignorant”, “gangsters” and my favorite, that quaint J. Edgar Hooverism, “ring leaders”. In other words, he lacks the knowledge and experience to adequately interpret what happened and only uses the tools that he does have - the mass media inculcated prejudices of a politically uneducated person. Furthermore, if the PRD was ruling the APPO, I would know about it. One of the main tasks of the libertarian left is to confront and try to push aside party and union bosses to allow the assembly to take over. If such were the case, if the APPO was nothing more than a puppet of the PRD, there would be numerous reports of this, not least from Al Giordano who is a member of my tendency. My people do not like the PRD, as I stated several times before, and of course, was ignored.

Another Blog from Oaxaca

Needless to say, the rabble rousers will say that these two are also neo-con murderers but for anyone else who would like to get another view, not leftist, then here it is:
http://surrealoaxaca.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2006-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-06%3A00&updated-max=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=47

If you read it you will see quite a few contradiccions to anarcho's ravings.

I forgot to mention, there

I forgot to mention, there is a book coming out on the Oaxaca Assemby (APPO) called “The People Decide, Oaxaca's Popular Assembly” by Nancy Davies (Who is also in Oaxaca but with a bit different perspective than Landowner. See
http://www.authenticjournalism.org/

Another hate- monger

More right-wing bed-sheet wearing shite. Don't think I haven't heard this sort of thing all my life. Hatred of hippies, hatred of leftists etc. etc. Pure hate, even for Bradley of all people. These right-whiners are really sick. If this is the best you can do, you had better give up now.

A rehash of her NarcoNews articles

This book is simply a compendium of her Narconews articles. She is also a member of a Yahoo newsgroup call the Oaxacastudyactiongroup which seem to be made up of anarcho's group including a:
VÍCTOR MANUEL GÓMEZ RAMÍREZ* who describes himself as:
*Member of the Socialist Worker Party-Movement to Socialism APN
*Member of the State Council of the APPO

Gee, the Socialist Worker Party....

So what?

So what if a member of APPO is a socialist. Gee what a surprise! Such groups are made up of a variety of political forces. Before you called the APPO a front for the PRD now for the SWP, which is it? By the way thanks for the tip on the study group!

Good group!

A very interesting group, Landowner. I just joined up. You should join and voice your, er, erudite opinions. I am sure they would be appreciated as comic relief.

interpretation

anarcho you are right about people interpreting things in different ways but what i think, and i have been trying to say here, is that you have to have the ability to see things from more than one perspective and judge from what you can draw with MORE THAN ONE POSSIBILITY IN YOUR MIND. the thing that has got me to post here has been the distinct sense that you are so certain that you and only you are in possesion of the truth and that any other possible version of events HAS TO BE inherently part of the right-wing propoganda machine. that type of thinking is essentially fundamentalist and pays no tribute to the intelligence and years of education you claim to be in possesion of.

"Once again this is the sort of propaganda that is always voiced in opposition to a struggle."

are we to take this to mean that there is NO possibility that the town was trashed or locals intimidated whatsoever ? that any criticism of your side is made solely to discredit the movement and ensure profits and power for the rich ? a bit simplistic isnt it ?

it sounds like you have closed your mind to the possibilty that any part of "the movement" might be corrupt or have more complex motivations than peace and justice. has it ever occured to you that certain people hide behind movements like this becuase people are so hesitant to criticize them ? that they may ring the bells of freedom and democracy but ensure that their own goals are met at the same time ? churches have been pulled the same type of cover for centuries until people dared to question what really went on behind their shield or moral superiority and "ultimate truth".

none of what i am saying goes against my support for the principles of peace and justice and democracy, in fact i think it is essential to not accept anything at face value in order to ensure that those principals are put into practice in their true form. we debate the finer points because we believe in the worthiness of the cause, not because we want to derail it. this is where you and i seem to differ anarcho.

I know what you mean

Plankster, I know what you mean, but if you will remember an earlier posting of mine where I mention the difficulty of dealing with such complex questions in this format. To explain to someone like Landowner who is unfamiliar with this sort of thing and very biased to boot, the nature and complexity of social protest movements would take thousands of words. All I can do is give a rough, cartoon like out line of the situation. You are right. Of course, there are fools in any movement, of course criminal elements will take advantage of social unrest. This goes without saying. I have experienced this myself numerous times as an activist. In fact, other than a number of tightly controlled general strikes, I know of few instances where this sort of thing has not happened. But you cannot reduce the movement to these negative aspects. And this is precisely what right-wing propagandists have done throughout history. And of course, they have also done this when there were no trashings. The trouble is the bullies and exploiters put us in this situation - rebel and risk God knows what, or submit.But to remain human we cannot submit. (Are you familiar with Camus? If you are you will dig the problem.) I should also add that I am on record of opposing the window smashing in Seattle and the Black Block, something that made me very unpopular for a while with the movement, so I am not some niave optimist.

Countering blather from the defenders of Mexican ganster-fascism

Mexico does not deserve to be trashed by pseudo left activists like you. It has problems but supporting self-serving criminal gangs is not the way. These "teachers" shut down the economy of the state and caused millions in damages. Who is going to pay for it and put food in the mouths of the ones that were really hurt, the ordinary working stiff from Oaxaca.

Living in Mexico for 25+ years, obviously not in the capacity of an indigenous campesino or low-paid teacher or other non-expat, non-rico lifestyle, it's not surprising that Landover shares the rhetoric and attitudes of the gangster element still in power in Mexico. In those 25 years, deny it or not, Landover has also doubtless had to pay protection from the local authorities, or the local un-authority. Or, point blank, you just couldn't have lived there for 25+ year. Certainly not in Oaxaca, which is easily among the most corrupt of all Mexican state (and, not unincidentally, also one of the poorest).

It's one little line in the above post that caught my eye: "

Indeed, as Spock would say. Landowner's posts here are in open support of the "self-serving criminal gangs" of the PRI-Oaxaca, namely Ulises Ruiz and his lieutenants and henchmen, who can only be described a "self-serving criminal gangs", which is a pretty apt decription for most local Mexican regime, in fact, as well as of the richest-of-the-rich who run Mexico, or try to

The pretense that the protestors were violent and so therefore they should be condemned is one of those "blame the victim" cants that rightist apologists seem to able to spew without any sense of shame at the hypocrisy. Ruiz and the Oaxaca PRI and the various categories of thugs who work in alliance with them engaged in year of beatings, torture, death squad/disappearance activity, as well as the usual money-or-beatings mode of income enjoyed by Mexican "law enforcement" personnel. The person who was lashed by the crowd of APPO-istas, mentioned in another Landowner post, was no innocent bystander - he was Ruiz's head torturer and well-known to his victims, some of whom were in the crowd that apprehended and summarily punished him for the crimes of his past. Funny how Landowner didn't see fit to mention who he was, huh?

No, it's not funny. It's typical of the evasiveness and deception of the counter-propaganda about Oaxaca. I'd venture that Landowner has even been "asked" by the Oaxaca PRI, who he obviously has sympathy with, to "fight" the "leftists" etc. wherever in the Canadian media the issue raises its head. Same with Luckyloki or whatever the new shill's name is - making excuses for Mexican official-gangsterism by trying to pain the disenfranchised and abused poor as violent and stupid. But the violence, and the stupidity, are definitely in the PRI's end of the field.

As for trashing Oaxaca and holding it hostage; the PRI and its predecessors has held Oaxaca's people hostage since the days of Porfirio Diaz and before. And as for trashing the government offices etc around the zocalo, funny how Landover and Luckylokie (whomever) didn't see fit to equally condemn the thorough trashing of hundreds of Oaxaca city and adjoining neighbourhoods by plainclothes and sometimes uniformed thugs after the city was "liberated" by the PFP (NOT the "Federales", a term which means the Migracion police, not the army or security forces....).

I imagine Landover would like to go back to the nice days of the barbeques at the Governor's rancho, when the peasants were all suitably cowed and the rich Mexicans and expats left to enjoy their lifestyle. Landover's comment about being an "adopted" Mexican says it all - he's bought into the local system, including the built-in lies and self-justifying rhetoric or those who need to keep looking the other way.

Complaining about the violence of the poor while avoiding mention of the violence of the rich has only one interpretation. And it's spelled C-O-L-L-A-B-O-R-A-T-O-R.

The folowing quote from

The folowing quote from yesterday's APPO Bulletin shows what BS the idea is that the APPO is a front for the PRD

See
http://oaxacalibre.net/oaxlibre/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=22&Itemid=40

First rate Article

Here is a first rate article on the history and importance of the Oxacan struggle for direct democracy. See
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2007-01-31.htm

Now as for the article....

While I appreciate that The Tyee - alone of all BC and perhaps all Canadian media - has at last had a feature article on the situation in Oaxaca, though months after the crisis was at fever-pitch, I'm a little disappointed that this article is mostly about a comparison with BC labour politics an the perspective of the teachers here. There are comparisons to be made between Mexico and Canada, but not on such a - what is to me - a shallow basis, and certainly on more issues than teachers' role in political reform and protest and the particulars of labour law between the two countries.

Oaxaca is something much bigger and darker and also amazing at the same time; darker because of the shadow of violence that hangs over Mexican history, and the daily lives of contemporary Mexicans, and because of the dangers to the political system that the reforms advanced by APPO - of whom the teachers are only a part, yet I don't think are mentioned in the article (once even?) - are very clear in their absolute rejection of the representative government that pretends to run Mexico, and pretends to be representative. Just like ours, although we haven't yet been as emphatic as the people of Oaxaca, and we certainly haven't - not in recent times anyway - showed the willingness to fight for freedom that the defenders of "free Oaxaca" showed at Cine Universitaria and the Battle of Cinco Senores (a plaza at the university gates which saw one of the main confrontations).

In another post I'm going to explore some of the political implications of the Oaxaca crisis in terms of what it's caused in Mexican politics as a whole (I've been following all this on and off in El Universal and La Jornada)). But for now it's worth pointing out another parallel between Canada and Mexico, and a not so unsubtle one about why Canada is in no position to criticize Mexico - the betrayal of Flavio Sosa, the APPO spokesman, and his brother, who were arrested in Mexico City when they showed up to begin negotiations, and are now imprisoned in distant regions of the country (meaning their whole families have to move there to support them, as Mexican prisons don't come with room and board...well, "room" if you want to call it that). Why is that a parallel? Think Louis Riel, or Klatsassan (the Chilcotin War leader) and many others who were persuaded to surrender on terms of amnesty-in-time-of-war, and then arrested, tried (sometimes) and executed.

But with Sosa arrested, APPO has not evaporated; it has, in fact, gotten stronger, with even more local village councils joining the new constitution embracing the Oaxacan countryside (and some of the city, especially the Cite Universitaria, which like UNAM in Mexico City is independent of police interference - which is why La Jornada, the socialist paper, has its HQ on UNAM's campus, and also on their webservers http://www.jornada.unam.mx). And these villages are not joining APPO, and various blockades continue, not because of financial help from international socialists or namby-pamby college kids, but entirely "indigena", indigenous to the place. Similar organizations to APPO have been set up in other states, particular Michoacan and Guerrero, and the organizational model of local government as the priority level of government is "what the lid is on about" over Oaxaca.

It's so much easier to present it as labour trouble, as "just teachers on strike", when in actuality the teachers themselves were swept up in something much larger; perhaps igniting and inspiring it, but not something any more about them alone. During the Solidarity Crisis here in '83, the rest of the country heard the effective interregnum here was just "labour protests" and wasn't given the political debate that was going on in the province at the time about the nature of the beast of government and what was wrong with it. The First Kelowna Accord (now that there's a Second, although of a completely different nature) and the denouement it brought to the general strike looming that weekend, put an end to the "government that cannot govern" situation that Bennett was rapidly finding himself deeper and deeper into, and so the crisis never came to a head, and the political/constitutional debate got shuffled aside (as it has on various occasions since).

Oaxaca and APPO represent something much bigger and more fundamental than our little Solidarity bash and anything since maybe the riots here in Vancouver in the '30s; and I'm not comparing the parallel that both occasions were violent, so much more that they were times of politically-informed and economically-disenfranchised underclasses with nowhere left to turn, and with the courage to try to take matters into their own hands. In Oaxaca, they're succeeding in spite of the arrest of the APPO leadership and the local stalemate with security forces (the countryside is self-ruling right now, only the city is garrisoned and the main highways, as well as I'd imagine a cordon sanitaire of sorts around the resorts on the coast). The difference between there and us in the '30s etc is that in this case there's a working, self-generating popular organization that isn't staffed by profesional labourites or labour intellectuals; but by peasants and local councils and elders and so on, on a mass scale.

The APPO model is an attractive one throughout the impoverished countryside of Mexico, and in its vast urban and semi-urban/suburban slums, as it's often from the poorest of places that most of the wealth of the country is drawn (especially Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas, as noted in the article linked by Anarcho, as well as Michoacan and Tabasco, both also very poor). Set this in the context of the brouhaha of the presidential inauguration and the farce it exposed Mexican congressional politics to be like (I'll have more to say about that in a later post, or maybe an article somewhere....??), and the thin and already bloody knife-edge of civil war that Mexico perches on got a little bit sharper, as it was clear that no one could control the Mexican state apparatus; but someone else could control the countryside. There are further ramifications to all this that include PAN selling out to the PRI about Oaxaca in order to ensure the inauguration, and other aspects to the Fox-Calderon handover period.

All that I would have expected some Canadian media to have explored. Not just about teachers, and parallels with teacher politics in BC. Hint to ed. - what's a guy got to do to sell you an article anyway?

First Rate!

This is a first rate analysis of the Oaxacan events. Please have Skookum1 do an article on this for the Tyee.

Anarcho's thought

I'll second that motion anarcho.

I wonder if he's available.

But

Will they let me keep my pet pen-name?

Good question.

I don't know but I can't imagine why not...