Aaaaawwwwwwww!
Friday night cat blogging. Our kitties are cuter than americablog’s and dailykos’ kitties any day. These jaguar cubs were born at the Leon, Gto. zoo. (Photo, Notimex).
Mexico City passes (Gay) Civil Unions law!
This is HUGE!
Mexico City Legislature (ALDF) passed the “Ley de Sociedades en Convivencia” or “Civil Unions” bill which will allow couples who are of legal age, of the same or different genders, to register their unions at Delegation offices, the same as marriages are registered now. Registration confers inheritance and pension rights as well as the social benefits available to married couples. The bill passed 43 to 17, with 5 absentions.
PRD, PRI, PT, Convergencia, Alternativa y two Nueva Alianza deputies voted in favor. One PRD deputy and the three Green representatives abstained. PAN and one Nueva Alianza deputry voted “no.”
Based on French law, “Sociedades de Conviviencia” provide property, pension, inheritance and even co-parenting rights. They say nothing about adoption, and specifically exclude relationships between close blood relatives. One specific feature of the bill is that couples who are turned away by a delegation official can appeal to the Federal District’s Adminstrative Law Court, which can sanction or fine civil servants who — by action, negligence or omission — discriminate against citizens on the basis of, among other things, sexual orientation.
Alberto Cuenca, in El Universal wrote in this morning’s edition (before the vote was taken) that the bill is “designed to give legal recognition to a social reality, and in no way affects existing forms of marriage. An estimated 2.1 of the 26 million households in Mexico are formed by unrelated and unmarried persons.
Reuters reports that the Coahuila State legislature is debating a similar law this week.
“These reforms are going to cause a snowball effect that no one will be able to stop,” said David Sanchez of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, one of the few openly gay national congressmen.
The Sociedad Mexicana de Sexología Humanista Integral estimates that 20 percent of Mexicans have had — or will have — same sex relations during their lifetime. According to the 2005 “Primera Encuesta Nacional sobre la Discriminación”, 94 percent of gays and lesbians said they had been discrimated against because of their sexual orientation.
The bill has been languishing for the last five years, until today. Ironically, the bill’s author, lesbian activist and then ALDF deputy, Enoé Uranga, blamed the delay in passage on “old socialists,” specifically Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who besides being much less a fire-breating radical and more an old fashioned middle-class social worker than outsiders realize, also could not, during his tenure as Jefe de Gobernacion in DF, nor when running for President, could afford to alienate “traditional values voters” or the Church.
From this morning’s El Universal (my translation):
Alberto Cuenca
El Universal
Ciudad de México
Thursday, 9 November 2006Enoé Uranga, who during her tenure as a Federal District Deputy first introduced a Civil Unions bill (“Ley de Sociedades en Convivencia“) said that the imminent approval of this proposal, expected as early as today by the Federal District Assembly (ALDF, “Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal” in Spanish) showed that the “modern left” has supplanted the “conservative left”.
Uranga added that the present PRD legislators “have rectified the effors” of previous PRD legislatures, dominated by those opposed to the law.
However, Ms. Uranga said that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, when he was Chief of Government for the Federal District, was the main impediment to passing a Civil Unions bill, and his objections were the main reason no vote held on the matter until now.
In April 2001, Uranga, then a local deputy, presented to the ALDF tribunal the first iniative for a civil unions bill, with only minor differences than the one presently before the Assembly.
Five years later, the former assemblywoman, active in the gay-lebian comunity, said he has never lost confidence that the original proposal would eventually be approved.
However, the Green Party has said they will vote against the measure [my note: the Greens abstained]. The gay-lesbian community is seeking the expulsion of the PVEM (Mexican Green Party) from the Green Party International, on the grounds that support for Civil Unions is an intergral part of the Green platform at the interntional level.
Mexico City bombings… maybe not so serious
Last night, I was speculating that the bombings COULD be the work of agentes provacateurs… there were similar bombing incidents (late at night, designed to do minimal property damage, and … more importantly, done with the idea of blaming “leftist radicals” for the result) before, like the one in Tlanapantla, Morelos when that municipio’s people rose up to throw out a corrput PRI presidented, who had been fraudulently elected, but was defended by the state’s PAN governor (himself having barely survived impeachment through open bribery of the legislators).
There COULD be a few guerilla groups working to destabilize …. well, any number of situations, but the APPO and the Lopez Obrador folks are denying any connection to these guys. The only guerilla group with a conection to the APPO, the ERP also denies any connection… and they normally do take credit for actions when they can.
These other groups may be “fronts” for PRI — or PRI dissident — factions. Still too soon to tell. Kelly Arthur Garrett, as always, has the clearest, best reporting on the bizarro-world of Mexican politics. I’m not likely to post today… I’ve got to make a living, and am busy reporting on the muy bizarrolandia of Texas politics. It’s election day in the U.S., and this is the strangest election I’ve ever seen, even compared to Mexican ones.
After blasts, tense calm in the capital
By Kelly Arthur Garrett The Herald Mexico/El Universal
Martes 07 de noviembre de 2006
Despite three pre-dawn bomb blasts in strategically targeted buildings, Mexico City stayed calm Monday and business proceeded as usual – or at least what passes for usual in these times of daily street-blocking protests, occupied monuments, graffiti-marred historic buildings and competing “legitimate” presidents-elect.
Security at the international airport was heightened Monday, but the alert level stayed at the same phase (“2”) that it´s been at since September 11, 2001. The Foreign Relations Secretariat building was briefly evacuated at mid-morning, but officials insisted that action was a “drill.”
Still, the concern level notched up as evidence emerged late in the day that the three explosions at the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) headquarters, the federal Electoral Tribunal building and a Scotiabank branch are not all of what had been planned.
The armed revolutionary organizations that took credit for the blasts said another bomb had been planted at the PRI building and one at a Sanborns across the street from it. Two bombs were planted at the tribunal site and two at the Scotiabank, as well as one other at another bank branch.
Mexico City´s police chief, Joel Ortega, said Monday evening that it was entirely possible that eight explosive devices were set to go off. Thus it was likely that the three explosions were from two bombs each, while the Sanborns and second Scotiabank devices were discovered by police before they detonated.
Ortega also said that the claim by five armed groups that they were responsible for the violence was credible. “We think there is one more group involved in these acts as well,” he said during a radio interview.
Ortega did not name the sixth possible group, but he could have been referring to the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) that has been closely identified with the Oaxaca movement. On Friday, the EPR released a communiqué congratulating demonstrators from the Oaxaca People´s Assembly (APPO) for preventing the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) from entering the Benito Juárez University in Oaxaca.
But the EPR did not sign on to the message sent to the media Monday afternoon claiming credit for the bombings, which caused no injuries.
Two of the clandestine organizations taking credit for the bombings had previously threatened violence if the Fox administration sent police or military troops into Oaxaca. In a communiqué dated September 24, the Democratic Revolutionary Tendency-Army of the People (TDR-EP) and the Lucio Cabañas Barriento Revolutionary Movement (MRLCB) said, “If the Mexican army and the various police bodies enter Oaxaca to remove the teachers and citizens,” the armed groups would “enter into action.”
The PFP entered Oaxaca on Oct. 29 and the bombs went off in Mexico City just after midnight on Nov. 6.
APPO was quick to distance itself from the bombings Monday, although they were carried out, according to the armed groups´ statement, with the same aims that APPO has expressed – the ouster of Gov. Ulises Ruiz from office, the removal of federal forces from Oaxaca, and a radical political reform in the state.
“We don´t have anything to do with those bombings,” said APPO spokesman Flavio Sosa. “Our compañeros (in Mexico City) are encamped peacefully in front of the Senate.”
Before the five clandestine groups made their statement, representatives for the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) said they suspected that the bombings were the doing of right-wing forces seeking to discredit the Oaxaca popular movement.
The PRI, the one party directly victimized by the violence, demanded a full investigation. Emilo Gamboa Patrón, coordinator of PRI deputies in the lower house of congress, called on President Fox to cancel his upcoming trip abroad in the final weeks of his presidency to focus on the inquiry.
Wagging our weenies across the Rio Grande?
Texas political writers sometimes have it too easy… even if our politicans are fools and crooks, they’re always first-rate entertainment. Everyone is familiar with Molly Ivins. Less well known are “Juanita Jean Herownself” who has plenty of comedy material just in Fort Bend County (home of Tom DeLay) and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Bud Kennedy.
Kennedy has lately been amused — or bemused — by our anti-immigration folks. We don’t have to import our wackos from California or Arizona. We are perfectly capable of making fools of ourselves all on our own. Sometimes, we even use our tax dollars to do it.
Texas’ border video webcams were unveiled Friday, and so far, all they’ve caught is one spelling violator.According to our state Homeland Security office, we are supposed to sit at home in our Bermuda shorts and watch eight test cameras, then e-mail if we see any felons or terrorists with dirty bombs sneaking across the Rio Grande.
Sure, dude. I’ll crank up the computer and tune in today during the football games. Come to think of it, it’d be easier to find the TCU Horned Frogs on TV if they would play in front of the border cams.
From what I could tell Friday afternoon from http://www.texasborderwatch.com, Texas’ border is already far more secure.
Absolutely no immigration violators will sneak past what appears to be a line of moving cars, the scene from Camera No. 1.
Other cameras seemed to show a parking lot and a lake dam near McAllen, all apparently innocent scenes but obviously sensitive locations in the war on terror.
I didn’t see any intruders on the Web site Friday.
But I did call Austin to report one alien speller.
For most of the day, the page promised eight webcams and complete “public access.”
Well — not exactly.
The original Web site dropped a strategic letter from public.
Either somebody made a mistake, or Texas was going into the peekaboo video industry.
When I called to report this incursion against the English language, nobody in Austin seemed to know how to fix the Web page, much less how to fix the border.
“That’s not our Web site,” said Bryan Bradsby of the state Information Resources Department, the registered source of state government Web pages. With a groan, he added, “I have no power to edit anything on that page.”
I tried the Texas Department of Public Safety. After all, the Web site bears the state seal and declares that its purpose is “Securing the Border for the People of Texas.”
I figured the DPS would want to know about a — er — public mistake that was borderline embarrassing.
“We don’t deal with that,” said DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange. “You’ll have to call the Homeland Security office.”
The receptionist took a message.
I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t reporting a terrorist.
Finally, I called the Plano company that designed the cameras and Web site. According to a San Antonio Express-News report Friday, TRGear was paid $100,000 for the Web test. It’s one of seven companies trying out for a contract to build the state’s proposed $5 million “virtual wall” of border webcams, officially the Texas Virtual Neighborhood Border Watch Program.
“Can’t talk about it,” said Jack Woodmansee, a retired Army lieutenant general and president of TRGear, which sells tactical and rescue equipment and operates security services.
Not even about bad spelling? “Can’t talk about it,” Woodmansee said. “You’ll have to call Austin.”
By this time, the entire Web site was overloaded under the weight of 35,000 viewers, all keeping a sharp eye out in case any dope smugglers or terrorists tried to crawl past that line of cars.
Eventually, Kathy Walt of the governor’s office called back.
“This is a stress test,” she said.
This isn’t the final version, she said, “but it’s working and people are accessing it.”
Some of the cameras are focused on fixed landmarks to test the clarity of the webcams, Walt said.
Eventually, she said, the cameras will be aimed at locations where law officers find “significant criminal activity,” such as drug-running.
If we see anything on camera — after giving an e-mail address and downloading video software — we’re supposed to click an e-mail link marked “Report Suspicious Activity Here.”
The e-mail will go to a state command post in Austin and also to local authorities. State officers will replay the video and decide whether to respond, Walt said.
She didn’t know about the misspelling.
The embarrassing typo was finally fixed at midafternoon Friday. By then, thousands of CNN viewers had logged in to see the border cameras and giggled at those dumb Texans.
Apparently, nobody noticed the mistake for 16 hours.
Hope we’re better at catching crooks.
The eyes of Tezas are upon yew…
Ulises Ruiz… in the total spin zone
You can tell a politician is lying when his lips move… but Ulises Ruiz Ortiz isn’t even slick with his lies. I thought it was just Republican congress-varmits who were clueless when they were caught.
(My translation, from a 4 November Proceso article, “Responde Ulises Ruiz: No pediré licencia ni renunciaré, reitera” by Rosalía Vergara, José Gil Olmos and Pedro Matías. Photo of Ruiz, courtesy Proceso)
Oaxaca, Oax., November 3 (APRO). – Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (PRI) questioned the the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) ruling that his response to a Congressional vote that he should leave office was inadmissible on constitutional grounds.”They did not enter the bottom of the subject”, he said, reiterating that “I am not going to request license (permission to retire); I am not going to resign; I have a commitment to the people of Oaxaca”.
Earlier today, around the seven in the morning, a paramilitary group, presumably composed of ministerial police, used AK-47 and M1s to fire on the antennas of Radio Univeridad, in an attempt to knock the station off the air. The station has been broadcasting information that the Governor’s forces claim “spread the activities” of the social-political protest movement.
Also today, municipal authorities in Sierra Juarez sent a letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, asking the Commissioner to intervene with President Vincente Fox, and urge him to “take necessary measures to restore respect for human rights, and to withdraw the Army and Federal Police (PFP) from Oaxaca, and to require the resignation of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, since his stay in office damages the rule of law.
In further news today, COCEI (the Isthmus [of Tehuanatepec] Workers, Farmers and Students Coalition) announced they will be expanding actions on Sunday, to include blocking highways connecting Oaxaca with Chiapas and Veracruz, as well as roads leading into the State Capital. The blockades, according to the COCEI leader Roberto Rosas Lopez, will continue until Ulises Ruiz Ortiz resigns as Governor.
The ex-rector of the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca, Alava Martinez, was quoted as saying that the teachers’ strikes and popular uprising have shown that there is a crisis of legitimacy in the teachers’ organization in particular, and throughout the state in general. He added that he was dishearted by the “dirty game played by special interests” and that PRI and PAN leaders are using the conflict as an excuse to “punish” Oaxaca for the state’s votes against the two parties in the 2 July national elections.
This evening, the governor was forced to meet with the national media, who earlier had complained about the discrimination shown by the State authorities in granting access to foreign press representatives. After clarifying that he was not the one making the decision to send in the Federal Preventative Police (PFP, for their initials in Spanish), Ruiz went on to say that the conflict in the streets had been reduced to a single avenue. He said that he did not consider the failure to clear the Cinco Señores barricade a failure, since there were other access routes to the city that were opened.
The Governor added that the talks sponsored by the Interior Ministry were advancing towards a solution to the crisis. Ruiz claimed that the majority of people backed his government, with only a few leftists and members of the APPO holding out.
Ruiz emphasized that he is not “governing with the PFP”, and said he continues to make work-related tours throughout the Capital, though he avoids conflicted areas, claiming that his presence would be a pretext for “provocative acts”. At his time he said his expects the capital to return to normalicy shortly, and that once normality returns, the PFP can be withdrawn.
However, he did admit that the Federal Prosecutor’s office, and the local Federal District Attorney has issued 52 arrest warrants that still have to be served by the Federal Police. The Governor insists that those responsible for the conflict are not from Oaxaca, but “that there are outside agitators, Panchos Villas [presumably meaning members of the leftist Pancho Villa Revolutionary Front], Atencos [the ejito and municipio libre in the State of Mexico, that has been in conflict with both the State and Federal government over proposals to sitiuate a new Mexico City airport on ejito land] and some foreigners. Those who are in charge of the investigations will realize that there is evidence of outside involvement.”
Finally, the Governor claimed that investigations of the conflict will not lead to an “adjustment of accounts” because “we are already creating a new relationship with the people, who have respect for the transparency of our budgetary and operational activities.”
And today’s response from the citizens, courtesy of Reuters…
Oaxaca… it’s gonna get stranger before it gets better
An astute European, with family and business ties to Oaxaca, made the following observations about the Oaxaca situation on one of the tourism websites:
‘Si los que dispararon (a Brad Will) son militantes del PRI, tendrán nuestro apoyo jurídico’. (“If the ones that shot at (Brad Will) are PRI activists we will help them with their legal defense”).Héctor Pablo Ramírez Puga Leyva, Leader of the PRI in Oaxaca.
The PRI leader in Oaxaca has offered to “help” the feds to “clean up” Oaxaca. He is saying that he could mobilize 20000 armed men and have them answer any “agressions” by the APPO. (reported in both El Universal and el Diario de Yucatan.
He adds this warning: If it comes to confrontations between PRI and APPO we will surely see what happened on Friday (the killings at the barricade where Brad Will was shot) repeated many times. The PRI leadership and militants have nothing to loose in Oaxaca. I am afraid that they will try to cling to power for as long as they can, using the methods they have learned – fraud, murder, repression.
One thing to note about Governor Ruiz. The number of votes he received (or, rather were counted) that give him his victory over Gabino Cué, the Convergencia politican supported by both PAN and PRD, was exactly the same as the number of votes received by an minor party candidate that jumped into the election at the last minute. What were the odds on that? Probably about the same as Calderón’s margin of victory over AMLO. And Mexicans are good mathematicians…
More Oaxacan news of the weird:
All Mexican papers are reporting on the two interlopers found on Benito Juarez Autonomous University campus today. An Army intellegence officer, and a Oaxaca State Police officer in plainclothes have been held by the students. Photo courtesy EFE printed in Vanguardia.
The APPO is threatening to widen the rebellion, taking municipal headquarters (ayuntementos) throughout the state. Ulises Ruiz is trying to hang on, with PRI support, but the APPO STILL will not negotiate with him.
The APPO, Congress, the Supreme Court, the Catholic Church… besides PRI, who wants Ulises… oh, yeah… Esther Elba. SNTE says the teachers strike is settled. Section 22 (which started the whole thing) begs to differ.
No classes Monday, kids.
He’s baaaak… AMLO
I was tickled by the idea of a “Department of Honesty and Thrift”… imagine a whole bureacracy dedicated to saving money! Good luck, Sr. Romero Oropeza!
(my translation is from today’s Jornada, “Presenta López Obrador su gabinete” by Jaime Avila)
Reverting to the combative language that marked the long sit-in on the Zocalo – eliminating the dominant “neofascist” class, attacking the “the media of the worse” and, in obvious reference to Cuauhtémoc Cardenas, “political leaders that in other times defended popular causes but are tired and think in the past” — Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador presented his alternative cabinet, one that will not be “a shadow cabinet”, but one in the “total light of day”.
The team of six men and six women have experience in public administration or academia, and will head the 12 offices corresponding to the present cabinet positions, but with different names: instead of “Governacion” (“Home Secretary” or “Interior Ministry”), “Public Relations”, for example. The presented members would be called Secretaries of International Relations, Public Property, and Justice and Security, instead of the “official” Foreign Relations, Hacienda and Public Credit and State Prosecutor.
There are also conceptual innovations, like the title given to Luis Linares Zapata, who will head the office of “Economic Development and Ecology, an office designed, in AMLO’s words, “to establish balances between the one and the other” and the office of “Honesty and Thrift”, which is not the public comproller of “Pejelandia” but will be charged with overseeing the Calderon Government’s spending. Octavio Romero Oropeza has taken this position.
Raquel Sosa will head the Department of “Education, Science and Culture”, and Marta Elvia Perez Bejarano, “State of Well-being” (Public Benefits might be a better translation).
A few positions are the same in both the “offical” and “alternative” cabinets: Secretary of Labor (Berta Luján Uranga), Secretary of Health (Asa Cristina Laurel), Public Housing (Laura Itzel Castillo) and National Patrimony (Claudia Sheimbaun).
The “legitimate president” has entrusted portfolios to people who will be in the eye of the hurricane, as is already apparent.
The ceremony was one of Juarista-style austerity, in contrast to the Porfiriana-style elegance of the restored (during Lopez Obrador’s Mayorality) Teatro de la Cuidad on Virginia Fábregas street. The ceremony started just after five in the afteroon, with writer Laura Esquivel, dressed in traditional Chiapas highlander clothing, reading a brief and moving speech.
Esquivel spoke of the difference between the two worlds of the legitimate and the spurious. The legitimate, she said, is genuine, allowed, true, and certain thing; the spurious is the opposite: false things, uncertain things, illicit things. As an example of the spurious, she mentioned the “so-called legal president who will assume a government that is fruit of a conspiracy between the the uncertain, and the illicit,” a paragraph that received an enthuastic ovation.
The novelist introduced Caesar Yáñez, who will be the alternative government’s Director of Social Communication, who put an end to the speculation of who the six men and six women were who were defying the “legal government” by joining this cabinet. Lopez Obrador was then introduced, wearing a gray business suit with a light tri-color on his lapel, radiating more energy than he displayed last Tuesday at the Juarez Hemiciclo, where he will also speak this coming Tuesday.
He began reading a fluid, precise speech peppered withstrong adjectives that was neither applauded nor rejected by the audience. What was new was AMLO’s references to “the media of the worst” and to writers and intellectuals “bitter and dried up” by those in power. It said nothing new, though the language was.
In a change from the verbal fireworks, Lopez Obrador did make an announcement that didn’t seem to excite the party leaders. He will personally visit each and every one of the 2,500 municipalities in the country, to construct a “a new political organization” giving form to the “travelling government” and “impregnating democracy” in every town, calling for mobilizations when the spurious president tries to roll back the gains made by the 1910 Revolution.
Nothing was said about preventing the “other” President from taking office on 1 December. The ceremony lasted just under an hour. Before, during and after, 5000 people were outside the theater, continuously shouting “It is an honor to be with Obrador,” even after the “legitimate president” had left the building by private automobile.
PFP attack Benito Juarez Autonomous University?
I’ve been getting conflicting reports on this… mostly from people who don’t have a clue, or who have an obvious agenda — Narco News and Mark in Mexico (yeah, I’m more sympathetic to Narco News, but that doesn’t mean I accept their reports on face value).
Just a word of explanation. AUTONOMOUS Universities are just that — autonomous. Under the constitution, the universities MUST receive funding (there’s a percentage level in the national budget which is automatically reserved to the Universities) and they are self-governing entities. Only the Rector can approve of other governmental agencies coming onto his (or her) turf. There have been clashes before, when police have entered universities (notably in 1980, when the police did a room to room sweep at UNAM) and they’ve usually ended badly for the Government.
Given their shameful role in 1968-72, the Mexican Army itself does not want to be involved in civil conflicts, thus the presence of the PFP. They are not the old “Federales” (though a lot of U.S. reporters don’t understand that — the Federales were disbanded some years ago). These are paramilitary troops… their officers are recruited not from police academies, but from the military schools. They generally have a reputation for professionalism. They’re bad-asses, but not necessarily bad guys.
My sense is that their officers, like other military officers, are not keen to take sides in political issues. My sense is they want to “bottle up” the APPO and striking students at the University, rather than lay seige to the campus. A report this morning from Oaxaca has the Catholic Church offering to host negotiations, and the Supreme Court is considering the call from both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate for Governor Ruiz to resign.
I’ve quoted, in its entirety, a report from the English-language Mexico City Herald.
By John Gibler/Special to The Herald Mexico El Universal Viernes 03 de noviembre de 2006OAXACA CITY – The disparities were enormous. At 10 a.m., several hundred fully equipped riot and special operations officers from the Federal Preventative Police (PFP) supported by armored riot tanks and military helicopters flying overhead stood face-to-face with a small crowd of university students and local residents with nothing in their hands.
But from this disparity grew a pitched battle that lasted over six hours, left dozens injured, and ended with the PFP in retreat and the streets filled with thousands of protesters.
The PFP reported 10 of their officers were injured and at least three journalists suffered injuries, including EL UNIVERSAL photographer David Jaramillo.
The Oaxaca People´s Assembly (APPO), the grassroots organization leading the protests the past four months, said afterward that 200 protesters were treated for injuries by university medical personnel.
After the initial skirmish at 8 a.m., the tension rose two hours later as more students climbed over the walls surrounding the Autonomous University of Oaxaca to join the ranks of those shouting at the police, bringing with them rocks, Molotov cocktails, and homemade bottle rocket launchers.
On both sides of the university grounds, PFP officers shut off roads to clear away barricades, which they said was their sole objective.
“This is the last intersection we need to recover,” said the coordinator of the federal support troops, who declined to give his name.
Students burned tires, carried the scorched remains of cars, fallen telephone poles and piles of trash to build makeshift barricades in front of the police lines.
The police commander insisted the PFP did not plan to confront the protesters or enter the campus. “The university is occupied by students,” he said. “They are in their house, and we did not come to kick them out.”
But 200 yards away, police fired tear gas into the campus grounds and the students responded with a furious volley of rocks and Molotov cocktails.The line of about 50 riot police attempted to advance on the protesters, firing tear gas and returning the rocks thrown at them.
The PFP later issued a news release insisting the conflict began after the university radio station – controlled by APPO – announced that the authorities were trying to enter the campus and people flocked to the area and attacked the troops.
Along the avenue, opposite the campus, a mid-day soccer game in progress came to a grinding halt, but the players paused only for a moment before they scurried to find rocks and join the protesters in throwing them at the police from the field.
Men and women pushed shopping carts filled with rocks up toward the front line. They shouted to those coming from surrounding streets to bring rocks. An elderly woman advanced into the clouds of tear gas offering water that had been blessed by a local priest to the students.
The police were forced back, but only to open the way for a coordinated attack by riot tanks and their water cannons – with water laced with pepper spray.
Inside the university grounds, protesters coordinated brigades to rush Coca-Cola and vinegar, their remedy for the immediate burn of tear gas, out to the protesters. Announcers inside the university radio station called for supporters to bring food, water, and Coke to the university.
The battle then turned into chaos. The PFP drove their tanks up and down to disperse the crowd; three military helicopters flew overhead firing tear gas grenades. The protesters rushed the police and the tanks with thick volleys of rocks and then ran back to take cover and wash their burning faces in Coke.
By late afternoon hundreds more had joined the protesters, pushing the police back from the university, capturing a riot tank and setting it aflame. Two helicopters flew over, dropping tear gas grenades, but too late: at 3 p.m. the PFP were in full retreat.
Late Thursday night, APPO spokesman Florentino López said 55 protesters had been detained by the PFP. “Since the authorities have routinely tortured our supporters when detained, we now declare that there are no longer conditions to continue entertaining dialogue with the federal government,” he said.“However, we would like to make a direct call to President Fox to sit in personally on our dialogue with the Interior Secretariat” and this might convince APPO to return to the negotiating table, he said.
López also said the protesters had rebuilt several more barricades to replace the three that had been dismantled by the PFP during Thursday´s operation.
Reliable report from Oaxaca — On the Bradley Will murder, etc.
Predictably, right-wingers in the U.S. (and some in Mexico) have been trying to spin it as APPO’s fault. A trained journalist, and Oaxaca resident has been posting from Oaxaca on a tourism website. She also analyzed the videos Will …
I still maintain, in the face of many counter-arguments, that the protest in Oaxaca has been a peaceful one. There has been much damage to property, i.e. buses, and other vehicles, and much graffiti on buildings, but I think the death toll is still only about 10, in more than five months. I feel sad for the victims, but I think the low number is a credit to how this protest has been conducted and to the behavior of the policing officials. Oaxacquenos are not being given enough credit in the press, which naturally likes to sensationalize EVERY death. I have not felt in danger, using common sense. I just had to do an errand near where I THINK the next police/protest confrontation might occur so I stuffed a vinegar-soaked face cloth in mi bolsa. (Good against teargas, I learned).
I DO NOT have inside information re the corruption by the governor, but something tells me he’s gone over the edge. This is a HUGE (in numbers) protest and BIG (in longevity). There has to be a reason that so many people are pissed for so long at such a high economic cost to all. The Federal Police are armed, but not using their fire power…yet…as far as I know…2:20 p.m. Monday. This protest has been about getting the attention of the Federal government about political wrongs….I guess I should say perceived political wrongs…in Oaxaca.
I was only 50 percent right in my prediction last week: Right: teachers won’t go back to class on Monday. Wrong: the Feds won’t come. …
I almost didn’t go out tonight after reading the horrific news reports. I guess I just don’t go into the right parts of town to feel in danger. I find people being ultra friendly. Because city buses aren’t running, those with pickups and vans are filling the gap. They paint their destination on the windshield and people flag them down. You gotta love the ingenuity of the Mexican people.
I wish people would keep in mind that given the duration and size of thi protest, less than 10 people have been killed. It’s not like there are big shootouts going on all the time at every barricade! It didn’t get much press coverage in the U.S. because not enough people were getting killed, I think. Violence sells newspapers.
…
I understand that two or three local police have been arrested in that killing. If you listen carefully to Brad’s video, you can here the protestors yelling, “porro, camissa blanca, camissa blanca, porro.” They spotted a porro (goon/hoodlum/infiltrator, not one of their own) and they ALL ran. “Vamanos. Vamanos,” they yelled. The even hollared, “Vamos guero,” a warning to Brad, I assume. Their running, their fear at the shout of “porro” is clear on Brad’s video. (Of course there were a lot of men in camissas blancas, so it’s hard, at least for me to spot the porros.) The feeling here is that it was local police in street clothes who did the shooting. They infiltrate the protestors to provoke them into violence. At least that is on-the-street talk here. They would naturally target Brad, since he was photographing them and they didn’t want to be identified.
Season of the Spirits….
The following article isn’t meant to creep anyone out. It’s a description of a serious annual celebration in Mexico. Though it’s called a “celebration”, it’s not a fun celebration along the lines of Carnaval. It’s a highly ritualized tradition which reinforces the ties that bind generations together. Some of the practices may seem very strange to those of us who have completely differing views of death than most Mexicans. Try to keep an open mind as you read on.
The Day of the Dead is being celebrated by the people in Mexico. Nov 1 and Nov 2 are the days when Mexicans pay tribute to their relatives and friends who are no longer living. Traditions vary from region to region, but in general, it’s a time when the living make visits to the graves in honor of their dead family members. Some make altars in their homes and some take their elaborate altars directly to the panteons (cemeteries) . Arches are decorated with marigold pedals and ofrendas of homemade breads, candies (skull shaped), tamales, fruits, photographs of the dead, and calaveras (skeletons/skulls) etc. are displayed on makeshift altars under the arches. Candles or resin lamps are lit to guide the spirits along the path to the altar.
The first night is celebrated for the spirits of the dead children and the second night for the spirits of the departed adults. It is believed that once or twice a year, the spirits are allowed to travel back to their families for an evening of eating, singing and drinking. It is a religious and spiritual ritual that dates back to the pre-Hispanic era.
Poet laureate Octavio Paz wrote that the Mexican does not fear death but “chases after it, mocks it, courts it, hugs it, sleeps with it; it is his favorite plaything and his most lasting love.”
In some parts of Mexico (Michoacan for instance), family members spend the whole night in the cemetery whereas in other regions, the rituals are practiced more privately in the home.
There is a town in the Yucatan called Pomuch which goes much further in their rituals. Pomuch is a Mayan town (7,800 pop.) which is about 7 miles outside the town of Tenabo in the state of Campeche. In this town and a few others through the area, Mayans exhume the bones of their loved-ones and ritualistically cleanse their bones with soft cloths or small brushes in preparation for the Day of the Dead celebration. It is not macabe or ghoulish. Family members carry out the tasks with love and respect.
Here is The tale of the Pomuch Mayan ritual as reported by Greg Brosnan (Reuters)
POMUCH, Mexico (Reuters) – Eighty-three-year-old Maya Indian Cenorio Colli gazed lovingly at his wife’s long brown hair and recalled how carefully she combed it when she was still alive.
Then he went back to cleaning her skull and every bone she left behind.Grieving Maya Indians in a sweltering village deep in the limestone flatlands of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula painstakingly cleaned the remains of their late loved ones on Monday during a unique annual family reunion with the dead.
In a tradition dating back centuries, families in Pomuch exhume their dead after three years in the grave and transfer their dried bones and skulls — often with hair attached — to wooden crates on permanent display in open funeral niches.
Every subsequent year in a two-day ritual preceding the November 1 and November 2 Day of the Dead festival, families gather at the brightly painted tombs to replace the boxes’ embroidered cloth linings and give the remains themselves a spruce up.
The festival brings back floods of painful memories for mourning kin struggling with the loss of life companions.
“I was talking to her,” Colli, a widower of nine years, recalled as he lifted his dead wife Concepcion’s brittle pelvis from a large pile of bones and dusted it off with a cloth. “She lowered her head and that was it.”
But the retired farm hand said he took solace from knowing she was at peace. “I feel happy because she died happy.”
THE NEXT WORLD
According to Mayan beliefs, death is a stage in life in which the deceased evolve into higher, more spiritual beings. In Pomuch, the dead are believed to be “purified” during the first three years after their death. They are then exhumed and welcomed back as highly respected members of extended families in which past and present generations merge.
Old women in colourfully patterned traditional dresses chattered in the Mayan language on Monday as they fussed over the bones of long lost mothers and the skulls of babies who barely lived a day.
Marta Helena Chipool, 35, lovingly cleaned the remains of a mother-in-law she never met and the twin girls who died with her 40 years ago in childbirth.
“You go to the cemetery and you can see your dead sister, mother and father and talk to them,” said Lazaro Tuz, an anthropologist from Pomuch who has spent years documenting the ritual. “This keeps the family together.”
“The dead person is no longer dead because you can touch him,” he said.
“She is not dead to me, she lives in my heart,” Maria Euan, a 52-year-old woman with braids and bright cross-stich flowers spread across her white blouse, as she and her husband arranged her dead mother’s bone. “This is her party.”
The origins of the ritual, which is celebrated almost exclusively in Pomuch, are murky, and it is unclear whether the practice predates the Spanish conquest of Latin America. One theory suggests that villagers, faced with an overflowing cemetery, may have begun digging up their dead for sanitary reasons.
Some fear the tradition is dying out as Pomuch’s youth, increasingly hooked on video games, action films and racy reggaeton music, embrace modern culture.
According to village folklore, the spirit of a Pomuch native can become angry and wonder lost through the streets if proper care is not taken of his or her remains.
Martin de Porras cleaned his dead father’s thigh bone, still bearing the shiny metal prosthetic ball joint that made his last months after a road accident misery, and wondered whether his children would do the same for him.
“I can’t make them do it,” he said. “But if they don’t, I don’t know where I’m going to end up.”
Another link to a story about the Pomuch D.O.D. ritual : Mayans celebrate Day of the Dead
Oaxaca… from the web, not from me
Newscaster Ana Maria Salazar (writing in English) gives a recap of the Oaxaca news in Mexico Today.
Diego Enrique Orsino, in the English-language Narco News, manages to quote a local Oaxacan mayor DEFENDING the killers in Oaxaca as ” police acting in legitimate defense against the threat of an occupation of City Hall”… confirming my belief that vilence in Oaxaca has been orchestrated by the State, not by the APPO.
Jornada reports that the Senate has unanamously voted to recommend that Ulises Ruiz “separate himself” from the State Governorship… and other words, quit before he’s fired. This was the key demand of the protests all along. Strange at it may sound.. it looks like the protesters have won.
Still… there are other demands to be met, and Ruiz has yet to formally step aside…
Loureds Garcia Novarro reports for *English language) National Public Radio that more protests are expected today. Alfredo Narváez Lozano, in his Spanish-language blog, “citrius64”, posts a letter today asking more unanswered (and perhaps unanswerable questions about Oaxaca.
(AP photo from Jornada)
“Mark in Mexico” and the shooting…
“Mark in Mexico,” despite his extreme rightist views (his links are to U.S. websites concerned with the more reactionary wing of the Republican Party, and have little, or nothing, to do with Mexico… other than maybe those to various anti-immigration writers, like Michelle Malkin or the odious racist Vox Day) does get some good photos from Oaxaca.
He claims he has a “source” who slips him the photos before they get to Notimex… which may be true… but, if so, then they were intended for public distribution.
That secret source would also SEEM to work against Mark’s claim that these photos were taken by Will Bradley Roland (opr “Bradly Will”)… unless Mark is claiming to be in possession of evidence in a criminal case with international reprecussions. Which I don’t think he is.
Both photos from “Mark in Mexico” (UPDATE: 3:30 AM — yeah, I’m up too late)… the photos are by Raúl Estrella of El Universal, and I’ve changed the links from Mark’s page to those in El Universal. Make of it what you will.)
Mark tries, valiantly, to claim that the APPO is responsible for the shooting … and, he darkly hints, there was something behind the fact that the media was there The possibility that the media were the target of the shooters hasn’t crossed his mind, I guess.
Then an APPO operative begins backing a large dumptruck down the street towards the shooters with a contingent of about 20 using the truck for cover. However, the shooters continue moving forward and the dump truck driver gets cold feet, throws the truck into a forward gear and accelerates back towards his own people. At this point everybody started running like hell to both avoid getting shot and run over by the dumptruck…
The newsman on Televisa said that the Oaxacan authorities had not been able to identify the shooters. That would mean that they are not holed up in the Municipal Palace as was being reported earlier.
[Or, it could mean the Oaxacan authorities are lying… what a shocking concept]
The Televisa newscaster showed his film several times and pointed out that the shooters appeared to have arrived and then waited some distance away. Televisa had cameras both behind and in front of the shooters. They are shown looking back over their shoulders several times and then suddenly moving forward in concert. The newscaster said that this indicated that they were awaiting a command from someone. He may or may not be right about that. It is apparent that two of the shooters move forward simultaneously as though on command.
[Mark refers again and again to the APPO as a “mob” or “neanderthals”… if he’s right, they wouldn’t show this kind of discipline. I still say police]
The TV Azteca newscaster has just interviewed Governor Ruiz Ortiz live on the air. He pointedly asked the governor, “Were those your men who did the shooting?” The governor replied that no, all of the state’s policemen are confined to their barracks and have been for a month to avoid just such a confrontation and subsequent result. He blamed the shooting on pro APPO forces vs con APPO forces and said that it was a result of the environment of general lawlessness that exists today in Oaxaca. He clearly blames APPO for all of the violence just as APPO blames the governor for it all.
Mark in Mexico often performs a valuable service, and some of his reporage has been surpurb. I’ve recommended it before. I may recommend it again (and I always have rcommended his photos — whatever the source). But, something is off — beyond the usual WND or FOX NEWS style spin about this story.
mexfiles.net 