2006 Oaxaca protests

The Mexican state of Oaxaca was embroiled in a conflict that lasted more than seven months and resulted in at least seventeen deaths and the occupation of the capital city of Oaxaca by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). The conflict emerged in May 2006 with the police responding to a strike involving the local teachers' trade union by opening fire on non-violent protests. It then grew into a broad-based movement pitting the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) against the state's governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Protesters demanded the removal or resignation of Ortiz, whom they accused of political corruption and acts of repression. Multiple reports, including from international human rights monitors, accused the Mexican government of using death squads, summary executions, and even violating Geneva Conventions standards that prohibit attacking and shooting at unarmed medics attending to the wounded.
One human rights observer claimed over twenty-seven were killed by the police violence. The dead included Brad Will, Emilio Alonso Fabián, José Alberto López Bernal, Fidel Sánchez García, and Esteban Zurita López.

Organisation

After the police fired on non-violent protesters, the teacher's union fought back and were able to force the police out of the city and establish a citywide anarchist community for several months. The teacher's union and other worker's and community groups form the APPO which created large democratic assemblies for citizens.

According to one activist who helped to found the APPO:

So the APPO was formed to address the abuses and create an alternative. It was to be a space for discussion, reflection, analysis, and action. We recognized that it shouldn’t be just one organization, but rather a blanket coordinating body for many different groups. That is, not one ideology would prevail; we would focus on finding the common ground among diverse social actors. Students, teachers, anarchists, Marxists, churchgoers — everyone was invited.

The APPO was born without a formal structure, but soon developed impressive organizational capacity. Decisions in the APPO are made by consensus within the general assembly, which was privileged as a decision-making body. In the first few weeks of our existence we created the APPO State Council. The council was originally composed of 260 people — approximately ten representatives from each of Oaxaca’s seven regions and representatives from Oaxaca’s urban neighborhoods and municipalities.

The Provisional Coordination was created to facilitate the operation of the APPO through different commissions. A variety of commissions were established: judicial, finance, communications, human rights, gender equity, defense of natural resources, and many more. Proposals are generated in smaller assemblies of each sector of the APPO and then brought to the general assembly where they are debated further or ratified.

There was deep tension in the group between the more radical and libertarian elements who rejected representative democracy and wanted to create a permanent self-organised society against the more conservative and moderate elements who wanted elections. Ultimately, the radicals were more successful and the elections were boycotted by most of the population. The APPO was also able to organise festivals, defensive measures, radio stations and a neighbourhood watch. The festivals, the 'Guelaguetza' thousands of people attended for free to see indigenous culture, dresses and dancing whilst graffiti artists packed the streets and covered the walls of the towns in anti-government and anti-capitalist messages. The APPO also used 'topiles' as a method of keeping the peace. These were neighbourhood watches that also doubled as a militia which fought off government soldiers often with little more than rocks and fireworks. If a criminal was found to be disturbing someone, a bell would be used to alert the nearest topile, who would either give them a minor fine or perhaps hold them for the night. The topiles were successful in organising first aid centres and garbage collection.

May and June 2006

In May 2006, a teachers' strike began in the Zócalo in the Mexican city of Oaxaca. 2006 was the 25th consecutive year that Oaxaca's teachers had struck. Previously, the protests had generally lasted for one to two weeks and had resulted in small raises for teachers. The 2006 strike began in protest of the low funding for teachers and rural schools in the state, but was prompted to additionally call for the resignation of the state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz after 3000 police were sent to break up the occupation in the early morning of June 14, 2006. A street battle lasted for several hours that day, resulting in more than one hundred hospitalizations but no fatalities. Ortiz declared that he would not resign.
In response to the events of June 14, representatives of Oaxaca's state regions and municipalities, unions, non-governmental organizations, social organizations, cooperatives, and parents convened to form the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO, from its Spanish name, ''Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca''). On June 17 APPO reestablished encampments in the zocalo and declared itself to be the governing body of Oaxaca, plunging the city into a state of civil rebellion. Barricades were constructed across some streets in an effort to prevent further police raids. APPO began to seek country-wide solidarity with their movement and urged other states within Mexico to similarly organize popular assemblies at every level of social organization: neighborhoods, street blocks, unions, and towns. Various municipality offices across the state closed in unity. A popular mantra was, “No leader is going to solve our problems”.

Though APPO did not boycott the Mexican national elections on July 2, Ulises Ruiz's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) suffered electoral defeat in Oaxaca, a state they had ruled for seventy years.

APPO did agree to boycott the annual Guelaguetza festival in the final weeks of July. Protesters blocked access to the auditorium in which the festival is held using burned buses and miscellaneous trash, thus preventing the finalization of renovations to the facility. This action drew criticism due to the damage that some individuals did to the auditorium by starting fires and spray painting graffiti. Some of the graffiti said: "Tourists, go home! In Oaxaca we are not capitalists". As a result of the boycott, the government cancelled the celebration of the festival – in its stead the APPO held an alternative version of the cultural festival over the course of several days.

The action marked the lowest point of government for Ulises Ruiz, who subsequently left the State. He resided in Mexico City for a few months.

After a few weeks of absence, the APPO assumed control of the city and started implementing their own law, while confrontations with State Police escalated.

August 2006

August 1 saw the beginning of APPO's break in of television and radio stations throughout the city. While all of these stations are no longer occupied by APPO members, the use of radio has been an important facet of the movement. APPO utilized the radio resources in order to communicate about possible threats from police and armed gangs, demand the removal of Ulises Ruiz and the release of political prisoners. During APPO's illegal occupation of the radio stations, pro-PRI and PRI-funded groups engaged in frequent late-night armed attacks on APPO-controlled radio stations and damaged their broadcasting equipment.

Those attacks on the APPO-controlled radio stations represented an escalation of violence in a conflict that (despite constant rumors of threats) had remained relatively peaceful since the June 14 police raid. In what was called a "cleanup operation", armed groups of men attacked the APPO's barricades during the nights. The individuals involved were identified as members of pro-PRI organizations and as plain-clothes local police. These attacks, combined with other shootings and assassinations, resulted in the first deaths associated with the conflict, in which six APPO supporters were killed.

September 2006

On September 14, striking teachers and APPO members took over the municipal building in Huautla de Jiménez, located in the Sierra Mazateca in northern Oaxaca. They retained control of the building until mid-January 2007 (months after the government regained control of Oaxaca City), when Oaxacan state police briefly occupied the city, patrolling the streets with large guns and guarding the ''municipio'' all hours of the day and night.

The leader of Mazatecan APPO, Agustín Sosa, was elected mayor (''presidente'') of Huautla de Jiménez in November 2007, to a term beginning in January, 2008. Sosa is a longtime activist who spent many months in jail in 2004, accused of murder in the death of a protester (at the hands of the police) at a protest organized by Sosa. He bears no relation to Flavio Sosa, the still imprisoned leader of APPO.

October 2006

On October 27, 2006, Bradley Roland Will, a U.S. Indymedia journalist from New York who had entered the country under a tourist visa, was killed along with Professor Emilio Alonso Fabián and Esteban López Zurita, in what the Associated Press has claimed was a "shootout" between protesters and a group of armed men. Photographs by Brad Will, however, demonstrate that the protesters were throwing rocks at the gunman. Photographs of Will, after he was shot, show a man lying on the ground, surrounded by friends, and not the "armed gangs" that the Associated Press has reported. An autopsy by the Mexican government has concluded that "two shots" were fired at Will, one from in front and one from behind (which, the government alleges, was fired by a protester). The body was never examined for blood clotting in the second wound, which would have demonstrated that it was "implemented" in the morgue. Brad Will's body was cremated. The family of Brad Will visited Mexico to demand justice from the court system, and upon hearing the accusation that their son was shot at close range by a protester, they called it "ridiculous, false, without substance, biased, and unconvincing." They also accused the District Attorney of falsifying evidence and acting in bad faith.

However, protesters claim the shooting was by a group of armed men against unarmed protesters. Oswaldo Ramírez, a photographer for Mexico City daily ''Milenio'', was also shot in the foot. Lizbeth Cana, attorney general of Oaxaca, claims the shooting of the protesters was provoked by the protesters themselves and that the armed men who engaged them were upset residents from the area. The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, however, claims the men may have been local police. '' El Universal'' has identified some of the men as local officials. Protesters also allege that the men were police and not local residents. Indymedia claims from a first-hand witness that the man who shot Will was an "urban paramilitary" member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. A local news organisation, Centro de Medios Libres, claims that from Will's recovered videotapes, they have found that Pedro Carmona

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