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 Editorials | Issues | October 2006 
APPO Acts Earn Mixed Reactions
 John Gibler - The Herald Mexico
| | These brigades have sought to put pressure on the Senate to vote that the state government has lost control in Oaxaca - a vote that would lead to Ruiz´s replacement. |
At noon on Wednesday, about 80 men and women belonging to the Oaxaca People´s Assembly (APPO) huddled in Oaxaca City´s Zócalo. Armed with sticks, homemade rocket launchers, slingshots, and iron rods, they listened intently to one of the group´s provisional leaders, who urged them to stay calm and "resist provocation."
The activists were planning their next "mobile brigade."
Since late July when the APPO stepped up its civil disobedience campaign against Gov. Ulises Ruiz, protesters have organized these brigades to travel quickly throughout Oaxaca City in commandeered buses, symbolically closing government offices and covering city walls with political graffiti.
These brigades have sought to put pressure on the Senate to vote that the state government has lost control in Oaxaca - a vote that would lead to Ruiz´s replacement.
During one such excursion last week, a day before a Senate sub-committee visited Oaxaca City on a fact-finding mission for the vote, gunmen opened fire on the protesters, wounding four people.
In response, APPO leadership announced they would "close state offices and suspend public works projects."
This would require more "mobile brigades."
ADDING TO THE FLEET
On Wednesday, the activists commandeered three buses in less than two minutes. The drivers and passengers put up no resistance, with the passengers getting off, resigned, to wait for another bus.
The drivers stayed on, but it was made clear they would have to follow APPO orders.
For nearly four hours the brigades drove through the upscale Reforma neighborhood, targeting government offices and construction projects authorized by Ruiz. When they arrived at a targeted building, the protesters ordered the drivers to park the buses diagonally across the street, blocking traffic.
Demonstrators then forced state employees to evacuate the buildings before symbolically shutting them down and jamming the locks with splinters and spray paint. The secretariats of government, indigenous affairs, transportation and infrastructure all received this treatment.
At the Secretariat of Indigenous Affairs, one APPO leader shouted: "Our movement is peaceful. One of the agreements of the APPO assembly is not to hurt anyone," as the employees filed out.
"What is he talking about? This is peaceful?" asked one state employee who declined to give his name. "Look how they show up with pipes and sticks. This is not peaceful, this is intimidation."
Gerardo Vázquez, an engineer and owner of Los Cocos Construction, came out of his building, which he shares with the Oaxaca State Archives, and asked the brigade not to paint on his section of the wall or sidewalk.
"I´ve got nothing to do with the government," Vázquez said. "Go paint the houses of state officials, they have robbed everybody. Go paint there, where all our tax money has gone."
Vázquez said he has spent over US$4,000 cleaning up graffiti and fixing broken windows on his properties and that his business, even after laying off over 100 workers, is on the edge of collapse.
"I am not in favor of one side or the other," he said. "Some of the things (the APPO) do, they are correct. But sadly, the government does not pay the slightest attention."
´NEED TO CALM DOWN´
"They need to calm down," said a 69-year-old local resident watching as protesters climbed up on a ledge of a compound across the street to see if there were any workers inside. She declined to give her name.
"We support them," she said, "but if office doors are closed, they really don´t need to go climbing up on walls. They should really calm down."
APPO protesters also approached construction workers at several public works projects telling them the APPO was suspending their work for the indefinite future.
Workers at the Fountain of the Seven Regions renovation project agreed to suspend work, hurrying to pack up their tools as protesters spray-painted the newly laid tiles of the fountain´s base with slogans like: "Tourists do not want modernity, they want history, tradition, and culture."
"These are unnecessary public works that were never approved by the people," one protester told the workers. "They are building these to justify the money they have spent." He accused Gov. Ruiz of using construction boondoggles to cover-up money laundered for the presidential campaign of Roberto Madrazo.
By 3:30 p.m. the APPO organizers directed the buses back toward the Zócalo, getting off and releasing the drivers exactly where they had stepped in front of their buses three hours before. |
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