We love traveling in Mexico. The people, the language, the food, the beer, the beaches… we love it all. Through the many journeys we’ve made, the only bad experiences we’ve encountered were those of our own making, and had nothing, really, to do with the country or the culture.
Two years ago, on an especially wonderful January night, we married in the beautiful city of Oaxaca, on a balcony overlooking the historic main plaza, or zócalo. The entire city that night was ours: the children with their balloons, the strolling couples, the flower vendors and street musicians, the café patrons and their attendant waiters – all were our witnesses.
In anticipation of our second anniversary, we started planning our return trip to Oaxaca City ten months before we went. Trying to plan a vacation that far ahead is like trying to decide what you’re going to have for dinner next month. But hey, have you tried using your frequent flier miles lately? It seemed so simple and easy… buy the tickets and wait.
The waiting became difficult however, when we started hearing unsettling news from Oaxaca. None of the mainstream media reported much of what was going on, so it wasn’t news so much as rumors of protests and strong government crackdowns. Searching the Internet for other sources of information from Oaxaca, a picture began to emerge, albeit a fuzzy one.
Apparently the unsettling started in May with a demonstration by the local teachers’ union to protest poor wages and under-funded public schools. This is an annual event, one that usually ends after a few days of speeches and marches, sometimes even resulting in a minor increase of pay for the teachers. This year though, the political climate was different, and the response of the state government totally unexpected.
In May, Mexico was preparing for national elections, including the office of the presidency. The many political parties had already long been campaigning for ascendancy to the seat of power, but only two of these parties actually wielded enough influence and had the finances to be considered serious contenders.
The ruling National Action Party (PAN), which had ridden to power six years previously with Vicente Fox, was now facing a strong challenge from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) under the leadership of the upstart mayor of Mexico City, Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The old Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had held power for most of the 20th century until Fox and PAN chased them from the capitol in 2000, was really not deemed a player at all. Except in the state of Oaxaca.
The PRI lost its national power base amid charges of corruption and political oppression. In Oaxaca however, the state with the largest Indian population and the second poorest per capita income, the PRI tradition lived on in the name of Ulises Ruiz, governor of the state. When the teachers gathered in the zócalo for their annual protest Ruiz, rather than negotiate, sent in state police units to shut them down. Teachers were beaten, arrested, and hauled away. The event received little notice from the rest of the nation, preoccupied as it was with the furor of the upcoming elections. Few took notice too, at the surprising response to the strong-arm tactics of Ruiz.
Rather than run away, rather than sit back in silence, the teachers and their supporters responded in kind, taking over the zócalo in overwhelming numbers. They called on others to join them in their opposition to Ruiz, and over the ensuing month thousands of people joined the fray under the umbrella of a newly coined name – La Asemblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca (APPO).
In a short time the name changed slightly from the singular “pueblo de Oaxaca” to “los pueblos de Oaxaca,” reflective of the whole tapestry of disparate and diverse groups that came to give voice and action to their issues. La APPO settled into an occupation of the main city center that would endure for months and, as tensions escalated and acts of violence increased, would draw the attention of the world.
Here at home, in an attempt to keep up with events in Oaxaca, we found that the best source of information was the Planeta.com website. There we were able to access Mexican on-line journals, several Oaxacan newspapers, Prensa Latina from Cuba, an interesting site called Narco News, several independent news sites, and of course all the normal Associated Press (AP) and Reuters posts.
Interestingly, all this reportage served only to confuse the issue, as each source put its particular spin on the events happening in Oaxaca City. The one common theme was that the APPO demonstration had become more than just a sit-in. Factions within APPO had taken over radio and television stations in the city while others had barricaded banks and blocked streets in the city center with burning vehicles. Demonstrators had armed themselves with slingshots, sticks, and Molotov cocktails.
Even more disturbing were reports of masked vigilante groups searching out and “disappearing” key organizers of APPO in midnight raids.
As the situation became evermore dire, the U.S. State Department issued an official warning to avoid travel in or near Oaxaca City, describing the situation as volatile and dangerous. On the heels of that warning came news of the death of Brad Will, a U.S. citizen and reporter for the Independent Media Center (Indymedia) based in New York City. Reporting at the scene of a demonstration, Will was shot by some unknown gunman. APPO supporters charged that the gunman was in fact an out-of-uniform state police officer and PRI member. It appeared that Oaxaca City had become the frontline in a war between the classes, between the haves and have-nots…or had it?
In our initial planning for our return to Oaxaca, we had considered attending one of the many language schools available in the city. Checking their websites we couldn’t find much information on current events, so we emailed them with questions.
What came back surprised us. Yes, the zócalo was occupied by demonstrators and yes, some streets were blocked by barricades, but the city was not paralyzed, in fact foreign visitors were still able to enter the zócalo and move among the demonstrators without any fear. Rather than describing a war zone, the schools spoke of a unique opportunity to see history in the making: “Please come, don’t be afraid. The media has blown this all out of proportion.”
Where was the truth?
As the year neared its close, the outgoing Fox administration at last sent in military and federal police units to retake the city in direct confrontation with APPO. In parallel with that action, federal negotiators met with APPO representatives in an attempt to resolve some of the most outstanding issues.
The negotiations failed. APPO wanted nothing less than the removal of Ulises Ruiz from office, an act within the power of the federal government, but one the new Calderon administration was reluctant to enact. Unable to get satisfaction, APPO walked away from the talks.
In the end, the nearly eight-month-long occupation of the city center was over, and Ruiz was still in office. This was the state of affairs in Oaxaca when we decided to stay with our plans to return. We made our preliminary contacts, enrolled in a language school, and headed south.
We arrived in Oaxaca City to beautiful weather, happy people, freshly-painted buildings, vendors selling crafts, smells of chiles roasting, and a city so clean you would never have known anything had happened…unless you paid close attention to details: like postings on the walls at the language school advising students not to question their teachers about politics. Like vestiges of graffiti on sidewalks and walls with obvious political messages: “¡Fuera Ulises!”
As we got closer to the main plaza, we noticed that police uniforms became increasingly diverse with federal and state units joining the expected municipal cops. At the zócalo, portable barricades stood ready to block all four entrances to the plaza. The zócalo itself felt different somehow, a tension that was just barely palpable under the surface calm.
On January 10th, that tension popped.
On that day, during the mid-morning break at school, we noticed small groups of people gathering on side streets with signs, an air of urgency in their movements. After school, a visit to the zócalo revealed all the barricades up and police units in full riot gear. The sidewalk cafes were all open, but few people lingered over coffee or meals. Questions to the waiter at our favorite café were answered vaguely – a rumor that La APPO was planning a march. We sat around for a couple of hours waiting to see what would happen, but the afternoon lingered on without event. Finally we went home, a bit disappointed, yet also relieved, to join our host family for the traditional late afternoon meal or comida.
Several hours later, by pure chance, a walk around the corner from our host home abruptly introduced us to La APPO. They came walking down the street, carrying hand-lettered signs and chanting. Onlookers scurried on both sides of the street jockeying for vantage points, we along with them.
At first we felt very uncomfortable, not knowing where this might go. The obvious presence of plainclothes police on all sides heightened our anxiety, particularly one directly across the street from us talking into his newspaper. We knew as foreigners we shouldn’t participate in any way, but we quickly found ourselves standing in the middle of at least 1,000 demonstrators. (Later we learned that the press here reported 10,000, a gross exaggeration.) The plainclothes across the street certainly noticed our surprise and didn’t see us as a threat, or at least that’s what we hoped he was saying while talking into his newspaper, which must have been concealing a radio.
The march detoured off the street and down a long flight of steps into the courtyard of a large church, Plaza de la Danza. From our vantage point on the sidewalk above, we watched the surrounding crowd and began to feel more comfortable with the situation.
Then, a middle-aged man approached and started talking with us. An obvious supporter of APPO, he told us how the people had been abandoned by the government, both at the state and federal level. In his view, and obviously the view of all those gathered there, La APPO represented their values and provided a legitimate outlet for their frustration.
His words struck a chord in us. Perhaps without realizing it, we had embarked on our journey having already taken sides in the conflict? This was the classic struggle: the poor and disenfranchised standing up to a corrupt and indifferent power structure. With our admittedly liberal viewpoint, where else would we stand?
Within minutes of leaving the march however, we were exposed to a different viewpoint, one that would lead us to some unanticipated truths and some unexpected feelings in ourselves.
Upon returning to the house after the march, we were full of emotions and couldn’t wait to share our experience with our host, Magdalena. Our excitement level dropped considerably however, when Magdalena shared her opinion of APPO. In a quiet yet passionate manner, she stated that APPO did not represent her family, her friends, or Oaxaca. La APPO had held her city and her family hostage. Her children didn’t attend school during the strike. She and her husband had almost no income for six months, but the bills didn’t stop coming. We were the first students she’d had since the start of the troubles in June 2006.
Economically, the city had been battered. Emotionally, the populace had been brutalized. “How has this helped us? We are not better from this. We are worse.” You could feel her pain had not passed.
Magdalena’s story left us feeling confused and a bit ashamed of ourselves. Could we have been so one-sided in our beliefs that we closed our minds? It was hard to put a finger on, but one thing was clear; this was a pivotal moment for us, a reminder that we could not hold judgment here.
The next day it was easy to follow the path of the march. Fresh graffiti scarred the way. It was APPO’s signal that they had not been defeated. Anarchist youth had spray painted “Muere Ulises” (Death to Ulises) and “Libertad los Presos Politicos” (Free the Political Prisoners) on the walls of private residences and businesses, walls that had been repainted more times than could be remembered.
More heartbreaking was the graffiti on antique wood doors and colonial stone churches that couldn’t be erased with a coat of paint. The graffiti lead us right past the main zócalo where La APPO had held camp for 6 months. It was obvious that APPO had marched right in front of the police barricades – an act of defiance to the Federales who had gassed them out just a couple of months earlier.
On the same day, while taking pictures of some recently painted graffiti, I was yelled at by a woman in a passing car: “No seas tonta!” (Don’t be a fool!). She wagged her finger in admonition as she yelled. I had this huge desire to explain what I was going to do with these pictures. I wanted to scream, “I take no side in your politics!” but she was gone…
Once again, I felt confused and ashamed. To counter the confusion, we began asking questions of everyone we could. We asked waiters in restaurants, fellow students, our teachers (even though we weren’t supposed to), small business owners, street vendors, people of all ages and economic classes. They all shared the same opinion – and it wasn’t the side of La APPO. The general consensus was that the annual teachers’ strike had mutated into much larger-scale civil disobedience as a result of the strong government crackdown, but without leadership or a goal.
La APPO had no organization, no control over the many disparate groups under its umbrella, and chaos resulted. To many it felt random, like a soccer game with everyone wearing a different jersey, 6 balls and no goal posts.
These sentiments contrasted dramatically with what we witnessed and heard on the night of the march. It was clear that Oaxaca was still deeply divided and worse, there appeared to be no middle ground. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots did not go away with APPO’s forced departure from the city center. If anything it seemed to have become deeper.
After all the strife and violence, what had been gained? Ulises Ruiz and the PRI still hold power in the state. The federal government has gone on to other priorities, leaving Oaxaca to figure out its own solution.
Today, a tentative peace exists in Oaxaca City. Slowly but surely the Oaxaqueños, desperate to have their city return to normalcy, are putting things back together. They dance again in the zócalo to the music of the marimba. They buy flowers from pretty women vendors and watch their children play with big balloons.
Over it all, they are actively promoting a message to the outside world: “Come back!” In our final days in the city, this message came through loud and clear. An air of expectation had replaced the tension, a sense that maybe the worst had passed and better things were to come….
The problems at the root of the civil strife still exist. La APPO still organizes periodic marches to keep the protest alive, although some of its members have apparently fled to avoid incarceration and torture. Some day it may all explode again. All we know is that, as we walked through the zócalo on our last day for one more glimpse of our balcony, we had made the right decision to return to Oaxaca and to the memory of the one night when the city was all ours.
As a young man, Mark Flippo spent 3 years living in Ecuador, developing a love for birds. As a young woman, Kym spent her summers in Baja California surfing with her parents. Now they spend their time together searching for birds, beaches and beer in Mexico whenever they can.
