The "Other Campaign" and the Left: Reclaiming an Alternative*

 

 

 

 The puzzle of Oaxaca

 

 

In this context, the puzzle of what is happening now in Oaxaca has special relevance, and has generated enormous interest in Mexico and in the world, but it is not well understood. Is it a revolt? A rebellion? What kind of social movement is manifested by this popular insurrection? Is it the beginning of a social revolution, or a mere popular outburst against a tyrannical governor?

 

          The indigenous majority and the physical configuration of Oaxaca give it unique characteristics. It has one-fifth of the municipalities in the country with little more than three percent of the population. The municipality is the basic political unit in Mexico.  Created by the Spaniards to divide and control,  the Mexican government has used it for this same purpose. But in Oaxaca the municipality has a different significance. Four out of five municipalities are governed by "uses and customs", which is a way of saying that the people set up their authorities without electoral processes, and in their communal assemblies they make decisions for themselves that affect their lives in common.

 

          In 1994, the then governor, fearful that the Zapatista insurrection would spread, promoted a "New Accord" with the indigenous people in order to govern the state with them. One of the terms of this accord was a change in the Electoral Code that recognized the autonomy of the indigenous municipalities to constitute their own system of government. In 1998, this legal reform was supplemented by a new law for the indigenous people and communities of Oaxaca, which is the most advanced in the American continent, though it has been continually violated by the successive PRI governors since its proclamation, and has intrinsic problems and limitations.

 

          The discontent that accumulated during the corrupt and authoritarian administration of José Murat brought about an alliance for the first time, in the year 2000, of all the political opposition forces against the PRI, which had until then maintained control over the electoral system. Ulises Ruiz, the PRI candidate, lost the elections but managed to take over the government through very evident fraud. Ruiz is known as the master of PRI electoral frauds. All the electoral agencies of Oaxaca were under his control and ratified the result that favored him. The opposition contested the election before the Federal Tribunal, which acknowledged the fraudulent conditions of the process, but stated that it could not nullify the election since it was a local affair.

 

          This decision provoked great frustration among those who had made the effort to vote, in spite of their traditional distrust in the voting process and the majority's lack of faith in the system of representation. Three months after the governor's election, the municipal elections took place. In four out of five of the municipalities, the people constituted their authorities in their traditional manner, but in those where elections by political parties took place, abstention was overwhelming. In the state capital, the new mayor won office with only 11% of the votes.

 

          The new governor, lacking all legitimacy, set about creating a despotic government, with constant aggression against popular movements, autonomous organizations and initiatives of civil society. His administration included the systematic destruction of the natural and historical heritage of the state, particularly in Oaxaca City. He undertook all kinds of senseless public works, with federal funds, which had the double purpose of gaining votes and generating resources (taken in a corrupt manner) for the presidential campaign of the PRI candidate.

 

          As the date of the presidential election, July 2, approached, the government increased its acts of pressure against voters. They pulled out all the stops: there was intimidation, threats, incarceration, direct violence, vote-buying, illegal use of public resources, etc. In spite of a long history of fraud and manipulation by the PRI, there had never been anything like it seen before.

 

          On May 22, the Teacher's Union, Section 22, started a sit-in strike. This union is one of the largest and most corrupt in the country, and has traditionally been subject to the manipulation of the PRI and the government. Two decades ago, teachers from Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas, along with some from Mexico City, rebelled against the PRI union leadership, intending to position themselves on the left of the political spectrum and to form a subgroup ("coordinadora"), without leaving the union.

 

          The Oaxaca section of the Teacher's Union has had a very complex history, which is not possible to relate here. Every year they carry out demonstrations that interrupt classes and traffic in the capital city, and every year, without fail, the leaders get some additional sinecures for themselves and the teachers.

 

          When the demonstrations began this year, people didn't pay much attention: it was the same as usual. When the teachers occupied the main square of Oaxaca City, with their modern tents and intentions to remain for a long time, and began to close streets and commercial establishments, people began to get worried ... and annoyed. The government thereupon launched a media campaign against the teachers, saying that it was making an extraordinary effort to give them everything that it could and that it was seeking dialogue, but that the teachers were responding with absolute refusal.

 

          The government then believed that it had created a climate of public opinion sufficiently opposed to the teachers, and on June 14, mounted a clumsy repression that caused many injuries among the teachers, and the police as well. This action was the straw that broke the camel's back. Those who had been increasingly annoyed by the teachers suddenly took up their cause. People began express, in a spontaneous manner, all their resentments against the governor. Overnight a movement arose to oust him from office, with the slogan "Out with Ulises"!

 

          Throughout the state, people went out into the streets. They occupied public buildings in 22 municipalities governed by the PRI. They participated in the largest citizens' march in memory, an estimated 25% of Oaxacans taking part. Thus the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People (APPO for its initials in Spanish) arose, which quickly attracted hundreds of social organizations and groups and began to articulate diverse peoples' and groups' initiatives and integrate them into the teacher's movement.

 

          The results of the elections on July 2 took everyone by surprise. There was a high degree of citizen participation, but instead of the million votes that governor Ulises Ruiz promised to the PRI, it suffered the worst defeat in its history. It practically disappeared from the state. The PRI won in only one of the eleven of the electoral districts; in the federal deputies' election, it lost senators and its presidential candidate registered a very weak vote. It was evident that people had decided to use their votes to express their rejection of the governor and the system, as APPO had requested.

 

          Until July 2, Governor Ruiz had maintained hope that he would occupy a top-level position in the federal government. After the defeat of his party, he feared that his abuses would be uncovered and he might end up in prison (for corruption as well as murder).With the shameless support of the constituted powers, Ulises Ruiz has stubbornly hung on to the governorship and refused to acknowledge that he has lost all capacity to govern while the movement symbolized by APPO has spread, strengthened and acquired, after passing through various mutations, a profoundly innovative character.

 

          For Oaxacans, and for Mexicans generally, Oaxaca has come to represent both a foretaste and a threat.  The source of this ambivalence, in part, is the present polarization of social classes and sectors nationally.  But there is something deeper and even more general going on.  What is being built in Oaxaca, many feel, anticipates our future and carries a great burden of hope.  But for the very same reasons, certain sectors of the current power structure feel threatened by a movement they are unable to stop, and are willing to use violence against those leading the transformation.

 

          The present movement is the product of a slow accumulation of forces and many lessons gathered during previous struggles. 

 

APPO synthesizes the local political culture, born in the popular assemblies, the teachers' union, indigenous communalism, municipal autonomy, religious outreach, the radical left, the regionalism and ethnic diversity of the state. It also expresses new forms of association that were created in Oaxaca based on the peaceful popular uprising: the organizations of poor neighborhoods of the city of Oaxaca and its suburbs, the libertarian youth networks, and the barricades [against the Federal Police]. (Luis Hernández, La Jornada, November 21, 2006)

 

          The movement has creatively applied the policy of one NO and many YESes, with the people united in a common rejection, for various motives, reasons and ideals, acknowledging the real plurality of society with an attitude of inclusiveness.

 

In particular, three different democratic struggles have converged in the single one being waged by APPO.  The first joins together those who wish to strengthen formal democracy whose weaknesses are well-known in Oaxaca.  People are tired of fraud and manipulation, and those who wish to rely on the electoral system want it to be clean and efficient.  The second consists of those who want a more participatory democracy.  Besides transparency and honesty they want more civil involvement in the workings of government through the use of popular initiatives, referendums, plebiscites, the right to recall elected leaders, participative budgeting, and other such tools.  The third includes a surprisingly large number of individuals and groups that desire to extend and deepen autonomous or radical democracy in accordance with political conceptions that have their own unique sources, the particular, autonomous forms of government that has been legally recognized by Oaxaca's state law since 1995, it but continues to be the subject of pressure and harassment.  What the advocates of autonomous and radical democracy hope to do under the present circumstances is invert this struggle: to pressure and harass the state and federal governments, to subject them to civilian surveillance and control.  The ultimate goal is to move from community and municipal autonomy to an autonomous coordination of groups of municipalities, from there to regions, and eventually to an autonomous form of government for the entire state.  While this is an appeal to both the sociological and political imaginations, it is also firmly based on historical experience with autonomous self-government, both legally and in practice.  The people of Oaxaca are not waiting for the inevitable departure of Ulises Ruiz to put these ideas into action; there are already many APPOs operating around the state on community, neighborhood, municipal, and regional levels.

 

In Oaxaca, the fraudulently constituted powers are no longer functioning. Over a period of six months, the displaced officials have been forced to meet in secret in hotels or private homes; they have not been able to go to their offices, which have been closed by APPO. The local police have been able to leave their quarters only at night, surreptitiously, along with their stooges, to launch guerilla attacks against the people. Problems of governance have not arisen because APPO has shown itself to be surprisingly capable of governing, while the people accepted the new state of affairs and daily rejected the authoritarianism of the remnants of the old regime. It is finished in the hearts and minds of those who suffered under it. Its empty shell is crumbling.

 

          I cannot recount the innumerable incidents and many initiatives and efforts that have given the movement its current configuration. Some anecdotes can illustrate its nature:

 

• At the end of a march, on August 1st, a group of women from APPO peacefully occupied the studios of the state radio and television network. Through its outlets in Oaxaca, the network had continually been used by Governor Ruiz for propaganda against the movement.  Now instead the occupiers disseminated the ideas, proposals, and initiatives of APPO as well as opened both radio and television for members of the public to express their own opinions 24 hours a day. Despite every imaginable technical difficulty (the women occupying the network had no previous training for this), thousands who called the stations made it onto the air.  Eventually, a group of undercover police and mercenaries invaded the facilities, shooting up and destroying the equipment and injuring some of the APPO "broadcasters."  In reaction, a few hours later APPO occupied ALL private radio and TV outlets in the city. Instead of one, APPO suddenly had 12 options to disseminate information about the movement...and to give voice to the people. A few days later they gave the stations back to their owners, keeping only one powerful enough to cover the whole state.  Although it must be said that the station was not under the control of APPO per se, but of some of its radical components, it continued to broadcast information about the movement 24 hours a day until it was jammed at the end of October.  Until November 30, Radio Universidad successfully continued to disseminate information about the movement until it voluntarily returned it to the university authorities.

 

• After several initial skirmishes, state and city police apparently refused to obey the governor's demand to repress their fellow citizens, forcing Ruiz to keep the police in its barracks.  As a result, from June until the end of October, no police, not even traffic police, were seen in the city.  Instead, APPO, which had first organized to defend itself against the state, has continued sit-ins around the clock in front of all of Oaxaca city's public buildings, as well as in all the private radio and television stations and the public station in its hands. One night, a convoy of 35 SUVs, with undercover agents and mercenaries, drove by the sit-ins and began shooting. They were not aiming at the people, but trying to intimidate them.  APPO reported the situation instantaneously on its radio stations, and within minutes people started organizing barricades to impede the convoy. In one place, they were able to close the street with a truck and actually trap one of the SUVs and all its occupants, who escaped.  The vehicle, with its official insignia on the doors, was parked as an exhibit in Oaxaca's central plaza.  Unfortunately, in another street a bystander was killed when the attackers started shooting.  As a result, every night at 11 pm more than a thousand barricades close the streets around the sit-ins and at critical crossroads, to be opened again at 6 am to facilitate circulation. 

 

• In spite of the guerrilla attacks of the police, a human rights organization reported that in the last months there was less violence in Oaxaca (dead, injured) than in any other similar period in the last 10 years.

 

• By mid-August, a violent brawl erupted during a private party in the Alemán neighborhood of Oaxaca.  A half-drunk couple stumbled out onto the street. "We should call the police," he said. "Don't be an ass," she said, "there is no police." "True," he answered, scratching his head; "let's call APPO."

 

• "Fucking kid," said the gang leader to the young baker Diego Hernández, in the very center of town, "Don't be an asshole, or I'll burn down your shop. This territory is mine. You may be bosses in your homes, but I'm the boss here, in the streets." And he took out a pistol, while his thugs surrounded him. But Diego wasn't afraid, "You don't scare me," he said, "behind that pistol is a coward." They were about to attack Diego when he set off three firecrackers, as they did in the APPO barricades, to call for help. That was enough, at least for now.

 

 

These incidents were not drunken brawls, empty stances or outbursts by individuals or groups. They reflect a new state of affairs, for which a new political frame of reference is urgently required, but has not been able to be created. First of all, what is needed is to recognize that political power is a relationship, not a thing. This relationship presupposes trust and credibility and concerns the whole body of government.  C. P. Snow once asked Mao what conditions governing required.  "A popular army, enough food, and people's trust in the government," Mao replied.  "And if you only had one of those three things, which one would you choose?" Snow asked.  "I can do without an army.  People can manage hunger for a time.  But without their trust there's no government."

 

          For a while, Ulises Ruiz will be able to continue to abuse the patience of the people of Oaxaca. But he will never be able to govern them. He has lost their confidence.

 

          Oaxaca is thus an extreme example of the strange phenomenon of the disintegration of political power. This is not the best form for the transition, because it  poses many risks, but the situation is also filled with opportunities.

 

          In Mexico, political power is fading because an abusive and ultimately self-destructive political class has so misused people's trust that they have withdrawn it.  It is a political class that over the last 25 years has systematically dissolved the state apparatus and its corresponding functions, either openly, as in the case of CONASUPO (Compañí­a Nacional de Subsistencias Populares, the state agency in charge of regulating the market of basic staples), or surreptitiously, as in the case of PEMEX (Petróleos Mexicanos, the national oil company).  When President Fox was told he couldn't sell PEMEX, he sought instead to bankrupt it.  Although he failed in that as well, he did manage to get further than anyone could have expected.  This year PEMEX attained a double record: the highest income ever, and the lowest percentage of investment.  In a time of record high oil prices, the company is being crushed by debt.

 

          The political classes destroy the power remaining to them when they cease to fulfill their public function and oppose the will of the majority. The disintegration of political power always kindles the threat of repression.  There  is the belief that  power and governance can be saved or restored through violence.  It is an amateur's mistake. Two men of great power, Mao and Napoleon, knew that by experience. Mao preferred the confidence of the people over the army, as he said to Snow. Napoleon was even more convincing when he said "there are many things that can be done with bayonets, except sit on them." Thus he discredited amateur dictators who intend to govern with the army or police. Arms can cause great damage, even destroy a country -- as we are seeing in Iraq and Lebanon. But one cannot govern with them.

 

          APPO has wisely refrained from attempting to seize power and has kept as close as possible to the political traditions of Oaxaca's indigenous communities.  Rather than climbing into the empty chairs of those who abused power, APPO seeks to establish new types of relationships between the people and those presently coordinating their collective endeavors, to strengthen the social networks of Oaxacans and reinforce their dignity and autonomy.  In place of the failed model of seizing power, the proclamations of good government decrees of APPO represent an appeal to free men and women who, with extraordinary courage, a healthy dose of common sense – the sense you get in a community – and surprising ingenuity are attempting to rebuild society from the bottom up and create a new set of social relations.  As the Zapatistas advised, rather than trying to change the world, Oaxacans today are more pragmatically trying to construct a new world.

 

          Seeking a peaceful resolution to the impasse between APPO and Ulises Ruiz, on September 21, five thousand Oaxacans set out on foot for Mexico City to present Oaxaca's claims to the incoming federal senate, which has the power to resolve the situation by declaring the state "without government" and appointing an interim governor.  The members of the PRI and PAN parties, who constituted the majority of the previous senate and had just left office on September 1^st, had rejected all previous petitions throughout the spring and summer in order to avoid interfering with their candidates' campaigns for the July 2^nd presidential elections.  After the elections, this inaction continued: given the uncertainty about how a governing coalition would be assembled in the fall, both the PRI and the PAN expressed their full support for the governor and refused to oust him.  Oaxaca was thus reduced to just another piece in the complex negotiation between the PRI and the PAN parties.  Among the difficulties of such negotiation is that after its humiliating defeat in the presidential elections, the PRI was, and remains, in full disarray: there is no person or group able to organize a serious negotiation. 

 

          Meanwhile, in the last week of September the teachers' union organized a massive consultation with its members. There was universal consensus to continue the movement until Ulises Ruiz was removed, with a solid majority also agreeing not to return to classes (though many teachers also thought it would be good to continue the strike but open the schools because many parents and communities that support the movement have no other way to care for their children).

 

In an astounding act of cynicism, leaders of both the PRI and of President Fox's PAN party, as well as members of Congress, demanded the use of public force "to restore order" in Oaxaca.  Although it is in the nature of these leaders to rely on violence when they have lost the people's trust and can no longer conduct affairs in a civil manner, and although under present circumstances the use of force will undoubtedly cause great harm, it will not restore their power.  They will have bloodied their hands in vain, for the people of Oaxaca will not back down under this threat.  And in a choice between the politicians and the people of Oaxaca, other Mexicans will undoubtedly side with the Oaxacans.  In our struggle, they see a sort of mirror in which they can glimpse the future of their own battles to rescue Mexico.

 

The march that started on September 21 gathered massive support in the states it crossed before reaching Mexico City on October 8.  With thousands of citizens and many organizations supporting them, the exhausted marchers established a sit-in near the Senate. 

 

While this was happening, on October 4, the Minister of the Interior convened a meeting in Mexico City of one hundred prominent Oaxacans, most of them from the political class but also including a few well-known personalities like the painter Francisco Toledo.  The minister's goal was to get everyone to sign a pact agreeing an end to confrontation.  Of those convoked, three renowned indigenous leaders, two famous intellectuals, and Toledo abandoned the meeting as soon as it started, declaring to the press that the people of Oaxaca themselves were not represented – there being, for example, no real representation of the two-thirds of the state who are indigenous.  [Editor's note:  Although he does not say it here, Esteva was one of those who walked out of this meeting.]  Many of those remaining in the meeting, close allies of Ulises Ruiz, explicitly demanded the repression of APPO.  Unable to fulfill its function of diffusing the federal government's responsibility, the meeting broke up.  No pact was signed, and a second meeting scheduled for October 11 was cancelled.

 

Meanwhile, the sit-ins and the barricades back in Oaxaca were attacked for weeks during the night by paramilitaries. After the Ministry of the Interior's failed meeting on October 4, those political and financial groups that favor repression continued to demand a restitution of power and respect for those institutions they themselves have been undermining. They were neither able nor wanted to understand what was happening.

 

          It is clear that in Oaxaca there is a popular insurrection, which since June has prevented the man who flaunts himself as governor from carrying out his functions. Technically, all the conditions exist that are necessary for the Senate to declare the "absence of governance" -- the legal and institutional procedure for revoking the mandate of a governor, but the Senate has repeatedly refused to do so.

 

          It was not APPO, but the constituted powers of Oaxaca that disrupted and violated the rule of law and order. The authoritarianism and corruption that characterized the government for many years reached an unbearable extreme this year. The aberrant situation in which there is no division of powers in Oaxaca and that we have a kind of monarchic and racist Constitution is not something new. Nonetheless, in the hands of Ulises Ruiz, that authoritarian mechanism has become an instrument of destruction that affects not only the political and social life of Oaxaca, but also its historical and natural heritage. The people have risen up to defend what belongs to them against the prevailing disorder. It's not the people who have violated the social order and broken the law, as they have been saying; their rebellion has re-established law and order. They have rebelled not in order to return to the previous "normality", to the regime of gangsters and the patronizing local strongmen, but rather in order to create a new social order, an authentic rule of law.

 

"They're trying to force us to govern, but it's a provocation we're not going to fall for."  ["Nos quieren obligar a gobernar. No caeremos en esa provocación."]  This subtle bit of graffiti on a wall in Oaxaca reveals the nature of the present movement.  It doesn't seek to take over the current power structure but to reorganize the whole of society from deep inside and establish new foundations for our social life together.

 

          In the face of the "dis-government" that prevails, the people skillfully confront the difficulties of the current situation and prepare for deep-rooted changes. They will not return to "normality."

 

          On October 12, during an open dialogue inaugurating a new kind of collective reflection to generate consensual decisions, a businessman addressed his colleagues in wonderfully lucid terms: "We have been asked to endorse the use of public force, ostensibly to reestablish rule of law.  Yet we know that, on many an occasion, rule of law has been disrupted in much more serious ways by the government itself.  It's as if all excesses are sanctioned in Oaxaca – except for speaking against negligence and injustice!"  Pro-Oax, a prestigious NGO, immediately validated this argument by pointing out that Oaxaca has never had "rule of law," that it has always been undermined by the very authorities who were supposed to maintain it.

 

          In spite of continual offenses, and in spite of the "dis-government" of the constituted authorities, Oaxacans have continued to appeal to the national institutions, which in turn shut their doors, fail to fulfill their moral and political obligations, and destroy their own authority.

 

          This kind of irresponsible arrogance, in turn, has nurtured resentment among the impatient youth, stoking their political passion with heroic rancor.  As the weeks wore on, one young man wrote on a banner "Fucking government! They won't even deliver their war!"  Let this serve as a premonition of the bloodbath that would ensue if the government tried, as our irresponsible president announced, to impose a "peaceful occupation" of Oaxaca.

 

          For Gandhi, non-violence was the greatest virtue and cowardice the worst vice.  Non-violence, he added, was for the strong, while the weak had no choice but to use violence in order to avoid cowardice.  Unfortunately, it is hard to explain to the youth of Oaxaca that they are the strong ones, that the weak are those in the political class whose use of violence only hastens their self-destruction.  We must not allow ourselves to be provoked by them, to answer violence with violence, since this will only feed the fire. 

 

          On October 27, paramilitaries and municipal policemen loyal to the governor attacked the barricades that APPO had set up throughout the center of Oaxaca.  In one of these, they shot and killed Brad Will, an American journalist for Indymedia who had a deep sense of sympathy for the peoples of Oaxaca. Violent confrontations broke out around the city, and that evening President Fox used the murder as an excuse for his decision to send the Federal Police (PFP).

 

          That decision made everyone aware that the current government uses violence to protect itself from the people; that they can shamelessly hide one of theirs from the popular anger and general discontent, without regard to the quantity and quality of abuses he has committed. That is why they employ their legal monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

 

          The use of police force also serves a reminder of the relationship between protection and obedience. "I protect, therefore I oblige" has become the "cogito ergo sum" of the modern state.  Since Hobbes, political theory has been based upon the notion that the state must teach its citizens that there is a contract by which the state provides them with institutional protection in exchange for civil obedience.  Under present circumstances, trying to teach this lesson to the people of Oaxaca would be worse than a crime, it would be a serious mistake.  Not only would it set the state on fire, but it could lead to years of violent backlash.  Instead of resulting in submission and compliance, it might turn the insurrection into a full-blown rebellion, at the price of exposing it to severe risks, among other things, being forced to reveal its identity before the proper time.

 

          At first, officials, bureaucrats, political parties, and analysts treated the events in Oaxaca as little more than a local revolt.  And of course, when we Oaxacans first took to the streets, that's what we thought it was too, solidly in the tradition of the popular outbursts that occur when a local tyrant becomes unbearable, or when some new official imposition drives people over the edge. 

 

          The insurrection was next seen as a rebellion, a larger kind of violent reaction, because its participants refused all attempts to subdue them, and filled with a sense of their own dignity, stepped up their protests.  By thousands, by tens of thousands, they came out into the streets of Oaxaca City from throughout the state to cry "Enough!" to the governor and his arbitrary rule.

 

          But if the insurrection became more than a simple revolt, it soon became more than just a rebellion as well.  Rebellions are like volcanoes, mowing down everything before them.  But they're also ephemeral; they may leave lasting marks, like lava beds, but they die down as quickly as they catch fire.  They go out.  And this one hasn't.  In this case, the spirit of defiance has become too strong. Although Ulises Ruiz was the original focus of popular discontent and he possessed some of the worst traits of an oppressive system, ultimately he was just the detonator that touched off an explosion where there was already a profound, widespread feeling of discontent. Finally, his legacy will be that his political misjudgments became the catalyst for a lasting movement of transformation to a peaceful, democratic society.

 

            It is a social movement that comes from afar, from very Oaxacan traditions of social struggle, but it is strictly contemporary in its nature and perspectives and view of the world. It owes is radical character to its natural condition: it is at the level of the earth, close to the roots. It acquired an insurrectional tint after trying all the legal and institutional ways and finding the political routes that it traveled to be blocked. But it does not dance to the songs that they play. It composes its own music. It invents its own paths when there are none.

 

          The battle of November 2, when the masses of Oaxaca resisted an attack on the university by the Federal Police, was the largest and most violent clash between civilians and police in Mexico's recent history, and perhaps the only one that resulted in an unquestionable popular triumph. The fight was certainly unequal enough: although the police were outnumbered five or six to one if we count children, they had shields and other weapons, not to mention tanks and helicopters, while the people had only sticks, stones, a few slingshots, and some uninvited molotov cocktails.

 

          Shortly before the battle, president Fox announced that peace and tranquility had returned to Oaxaca. The Interior Ministry also reported that everything was in order, and the governor declared that out of Oaxaca's 570 municipalities, the entire rebellion was limited to one street in the capital and a handful of foreigners.  Anyway, he insisted, it was almost over; whereupon the national television networks called their camera crews back to Mexico City, their task of minimizing the strike complete.

 

          For months, the government and the upper classes in both Oaxaca and Mexico City have condemned APPO in the name of law, order, public security, human rights, and stable institutions.  All these rationales were employed to justify the use of police force.  But without realizing it, the authorities have given us a lesson in revolutionary civics.  The Federal Police became the vehicle for an offensive and massive violation of human rights: searches and arrests were carried out without warrants while the number of dead, wounded and disappeared increased.  Only PRI's hit squads and the government's own hired guns were allowed to travel freely.  Meanwhile, the army and police obstructed those trying to reach the city of Oaxaca, especially if they came to support APPO.  And finally, the Federal Highway Patrol cruised the city and transported troops amid a climate of chaos and insecurity.

 

          APPO explicitly decided to resist non-violently, avoiding confrontation.  And in the face of the Federal Police, with its tanks and all the paraphernalia of power, the people of Oaxaca exhibited enormous restraint. In many cases, unarmed citizens stopped the tanks by laying their own bodies on the pavement. Groups of women offered flowers to the police. Adults held back young people wanting to express their anger, although there were cases of stone-throwing and even a few molotovs.  When the police reached the main plaza of Oaxaca City, APPO fell back and abandoned it.  APPO regrouped on the campus of the university, protecting their radio station, which had been transmitting the decision to remain non-violent and to avoid confrontation and provocation.  Outside of the university, meanwhile, the police began to selectively arrest APPO members at the barricades or in their homes.  By the end of the day, there were three dead, many injured, and many more disappeared.  Those picked up by the police were sequestered in military barracks.  Human rights organizations, including the government's own National Commission on Human Rights, were unable to visit or even identify those who had been picked up because the police moved them secretly from one place to another.  In the following days, there were also many reports of people coming from surrounding villages to support the movement who were pulled out of trucks, beaten, and arrested.

 

          On November 17, at three in the afternoon, a 48-year old woman was sexually abused in the main square of Oaxaca, which had been transformed into barracks by the Federal Police. When she escaped, humiliated and insulted, they said to her mockingly: "You can go to Human Rights, we don't give a shit." They showed the same scorn that their chief, the Secretary of Public Safety, expressed toward the recommendations of the National Commission for Human Rights regarding this same police force months earlier in Atenco, where there were deaths, injuries, women raped ...

 

          In the occupied city, these police daily commit all kinds of abuses, while Ulises Ruiz's thugs and hit-men go about their business with impunity. The president of the local legislature, which asked the federal police to re-establish "the rule of law," publicly congratulated a pirate radio who day and night incited violence against APPO, advocated civil war and brazenly celebrated Ulises Ruiz. He was protected by the same agency that interfered with the transmission of University Radio, from which emanated a continuous call for non-violence, to avoid confrontations.

 

          It was a peculiar feat to successfully celebrate, under these conditions, the Constitutive Congress of the APPO from November 10-12. At this meeting, APPO established statutes, a declaration of principles and plan of action, and created a coordinating body of 260 members. Its agreements began to circulate 48 hours after the end of the event. This is no small accomplishment.

 

          The language of APPO contributes to the confusion that its newness engenders. It serves new wine in old wineskins. It does not yet have the appropriate words for its innovations. For example, it started to establish itself on June 20, went through various constitutive changes, and continues in the process of establishing itself. What then, was the nature of its Constitutive Congress?

 

            APPO is a political initiative of the Oaxacan people, which established itself as the main player in the political life of Oaxaca, and has expressed itself organizationally as an assembly. The initiative started out in the form of a revolt and rebellion, until it crystallized into a social and political movement of a new stamp. Born at the grassroots, from the deepest entrails of Oaxacan society, it expressed a discontent as old as it was generalized, which found in Ulises Ruiz an apt emblem of all that it wanted to change. Guided by a vigorous transformative impulse, it is oriented toward the creation of a new society and brings to the world, in the midst of a rarified political environment, a fresh and joyful wind of radical change.

 

          In the face of the aggressions and provocations by the constituted powers, APPO has reacted with a spirit of non-violence, which defines its central vocation, and the enormous ingenuity and bravery of the people. It now needs something more: the capacity to coordinate the actions of its innumerable components in order to carry forth its transformative pledge.

 

          How can such an immense diversity be given coherence and expression? How to create an organization, forged in the heat of struggle, in the midst of daily battle, when not enough time has passed for the movement to mature in mutual understanding and indications of the road to follow? How to avoid the habitual vices of the left, with its capacity of dividing itself and its propensity to always channel things to its own ideological or political position, sacrificing unity? How to avoid the risk that the resulting organization might become rigid or closed, in ideological or operational terms, or that the movement suddenly burst out of control?

 

          In spite of the risks, it was indispensable to try. The external pressures were provoking dispersion and disconcertion. The provisional leadership of 30 people, created when the spirit of revolt still predominated, was no longer adequate.

 

          The APPO Congress brilliantly confronted all these risks. It created a flexible and open organization, capable of articulating and supporting collective tasks without trying to control the multiple autonomies that formed it. It retains its vitality and creative impulses, which continue to call to the sociological and political imagination, in order to give appropriate outlet for those impulses.

 

          It now confronts a new challenge. APPO must create or extend alliances with other organizations, on the national and international scale, and it will have to do so with those who, because of its particular character and organizational style, are its opposite. In spite of having much in common, they will be like oil and water. They will have to learn to work together, but not intermixed.

 

          APPO has more than enough capacity to confront this challenge. It was born out of plurality. Its principal merit is perhaps to have known how to bring together such diverse impetuses as those that formed it. It is for that reason the very forerunner of the world it wishes to create: a world in which many worlds fit, as the Zapatistas say.

 

APPO is a consolidated force in Oaxaca. Its future does not depend on what happens to Ulises Ruiz. If he goes or remains, the Assembly will survive. Its activity has made the regional system of domination in the state explode into air. The relations between the government and society in Oaxaca will never be the same. (Luis Hernández, La Jornada, November 21, 2006)

 

 

The national panorama

 

   Soon after he became mayor of México City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took on the aspect of a presidential candidate. He was almost immediately perceived as a threat to the political establishment. President Fox, the PAN, the PRI and the media firmly allied themselves against him. The president even tried to force him out of office, though a process called "desafuero," which in fact substantially increased his popularity. The campaign against him intensified when he was officially declared the presidential candidate of the PRD. Since the massive propaganda against him did not have the desired results and AMLO maintained a 10-points lead over the other candidates in the polls, the campaign took on unprecedented virulence in an effort to provoke fear and hate among voters. AMLO was presented as a danger to Mexico and his opponents began to commit very serious irregularities, openly violating the electoral laws: illegal statements by president Fox, private companies and the church, defamatory radio and television spots (some of which were tardily suspended by the electoral authorities, the Federal Electoral Institute), etc. As the date of the election approached, errors committed by AMLO, more than the negative campaign, reduced his lead in the polls until he technically reached a tie with Felipe Calderón, the PAN candidate. The day before the election, massive substitution of polling-place officials took place under conditions that raised suspicions of fraud.

 

          Election day, July 2, passed without incident. That night, however, the election authorities began to exhibit strange behavior that continued for weeks. Both Calderón and AMLO declared victory that night. On July 3, the country was divided: the votes for president, deputies and senators were sharply distributed between the northern states (for Calderón and PAN) and the southern states (for AMLO and the PRD). In general, the voting followed very clear class lines: the middle- and upper classes voted for PAN, the lower classes for AMLO. The PRI was clearly relegated to third place.        After several days of confusing and contradictory information, the Federal Electoral Institute finally declared Calderón the winner, by a margin of a little more than 0.5% of the votes. The coalition of left parties that supported AMLO presented 225 complaints of irregularities, which corresponded to almost half of the polling places, to the Federal Electoral Tribunal, and started a campaign with massive mobilizations throughout the country and extensive "resistance encampments" in Mexico City, demanding that all the electoral packets be open and counted "vote by vote, polling place by polling place."

 

          The electoral results for deputies [members of the lower house of Congress] and senators gave a first-time plurality to the PAN in both houses, recognized a substantial advance by the PRD (which duplicated its historical high level of voting) and relegated the PRI to third place, which had until then held pluralities in both houses.

 

          While the court of last appeal for elections, the Federal Electoral Tribunal, processed the complaints, AMLO changed the orientation of his campaign, giving more weight to political initiatives. On August 13, he invoked Article 39 of the Constitution, which affirms popular sovereignty, to convoke a National Democratic Convention (CND, for its initials in Spanish) on September 16 [Mexican Independence Day]. The National Democratic Convention was to elect a legitimate president and put forth five initiatives: to combat poverty and inequality; to prevent the privatization of natural and energy resources; to defend the right to information; to combat corruption; and to renovate public institutions.

 

          The Federal Electoral Tribunal agreed to recount only a small number of polling places, which slightly reduced Calderón's lead, and on September 5, declared him President Elect. It acknowledged the validity of some of the central complaints made by AMLO's supporters, but ruled that it could not determine their impact on the election in spite of the fact that it was obvious that some of them, like the participation of president Fox in the electoral process, could have had an influence in the small difference in the number of votes between the candidates.

 

          On September 15, more than a million delegates from throughout the country participated in the National Democratic Convention, proclaiming AMLO as the "legitimate president" and approved a plan with six points: to not recognize Calderón; to inaugurate AMLO in office on November 20 [Mexican Revolution Day]; to authorize him to form his cabinet; to plan  short-term acts of resistance and prevent Calderón's taking of office on December 1; to continue to hold regular meetings and create three coordinating commissions.

 

          A few days later, the coalition of parties that had supported AMLO formed the Broad Progressive Front, registered with the Federal Electoral Institute, and decided to support the National Democratic Convention.

 

          On November 20, more than a million people proclaimed AMLO as the "legitimate president." In the subsequent days, AMLO announced his cabinet, presented a 20-point plan and announced the first one, a bill on "competitive pricing," which attempts to level the prices of some goods and services in Mexico to international prices.

 

          Since August there had been great tension in Congress. The PAN and PRI agreed to change the internal law of Congress and to violate a previous accord in order to give PAN the position of Speaker of Congress (which should have been given to the PRD), and to divide between themselves the main committees. On September 1, the PRD legislators physically occupied the legislative chamber in order to prevent Fox from delivering his final report. A huge deployment of security was established around the Congress because of the threat that AMLO's followers, who were gathered in a demonstration in the main square of Mexico City, would come and take over the building.

 

          Throughout this time, both the parliamentary faction and the leaders of the PRD as well as the CND had declared that they would disrupt Calderón's taking of office, saying that they would not recognize him as president. Some PRD governors, in contrast, have had meetings with him, expressing their formal recognition.

 

          Felipe Calderón, the PAN and the federal government affirmed that the taking of office would take place under any circumstances. The Speaker of Congress asked for the deployment of armed police forces, which completely militarized the Congressional building.

 

          During the last days of November, Calderón announced his cabinet, consisting of politicians and technocrats clearly affiliated with the neoliberal agenda. In general, with their orientation and positions, they deepened and furthered the right-wing position of president Fox, with his commitment to the private sector, disregard for human rights, recourse to the use of force in dealing with social movements, and his "market fundamentalism."

 

          The new president will find the coffers empty, the country sacked, and national and international commitments that he cannot renounce, which will greatly restrict his ability to maneuver. Although he has maintained a low profile, Calderón has put forth continuous calls for unity, dialogue and conciliation, which have not been accompanied by pertinent negotiations and have had no resonance. Apparently, he does not recognize the depth of the division, in terms of class and cultural differences and in economic-political terms, and for that reason all agreements are reduced to circumstantial accords with special interest groups on limited issues.

 

          The parliamentary coordinators of the PRI in both the House and Senate have acted with consummate skill, negotiating positions in Congress and exercising de facto power much greater than their real proportion in both houses, combining their votes with those of the PAN in order to marginalize the PRD in decision-making. However, the PRI confronts a period of intense re-accommodation that could reach to the point of putting its survival at risk. It has the majority of state governorships and a substantial presence in all the local legislatures, but it increasingly responds to regional and union interests, with their Mafia-style structures. There is no person or group that seems capable, in these circumstances, of getting a hold on the direction of a party accustomed to verticality and subordination. Though they will soon elect new leaders, the internal tension will remain and stimulate dispersion.

 

 

The perspective

 

Felipe Calderón took office in the midst of an open social and political confrontation. It seems inevitable that in his administration, the State's crisis of legitimacy will deepen, as well as the social polarization and the economic difficulties, along with continuous acceleration of the destruction of the environment, violence in all spheres, and social decomposition. He will use repression or open militarization more frequently against the growing popular discontent, which no longer seems to be containable, and more often turns into direct action.

 

          On September 24, 1913, Venustiano Carranza warned: "People of Mexico, know that once the armed struggle is finished... you will have to begin, formidable and majestic, the social struggle, the class struggle." The struggle that took place under the auspices of the Constitutional Congress of 1917 was not majestic, but it did have many formidable moments.

 

          Everything makes one think that the political classes are determined to organize something similar in 2006. They have prepared it carefully, for a quarter of a century, with blind neoliberal policies, with market fundamentalism and globalizing fanaticism. They have carefully concealed their anti-democratic practices. They triggered the process in political campaigns based on hate and polarization, to the point that on July 2, the country was clearly divided into classes and regions. They make ready for more confrontations.

 

          In Oaxaca, they have rehearsed various possible extremes. With some shame, since not all of them are totally lacking shame, the entire political apparatus supports a disreputable governor and spectacularly demonstrates that the monopoly on legitimate violence has as its objective attacking the people in order to protect the powerful. But it is not hygienic to spit against the wind. He who sows violence, reaps it in kind. That is where we are.

 

          In the march by the adherents to the Other Campaign, which took place on July 2 in Mexico City, subcomandante Marcos said:

 

We are very happy because for the first time in the history of this country, on an election day, we, who are not looking up above, finally have a place to look and to organize ourselves, below and to the left. This afternoon, those below will have something to recount. They won't have anyone above who might listen to them, but they have in us, in the Other Campaign, a space. From tomorrow on, the people of Mexico will know that there is another alternative, another road, another form of doing politics. (La Jornada, July 3, 2006).

 

Luis Villoro was a prominent consultant to the Zapatistas in the negotiations of San Andrés and is one of the most prominent intellectuals in Mexico. He was part of the consulting board for López Obrador in his campaign. On July 13, he sounded an alarm to our divided nation. He concluded in a manner that leaves no room for doubt: "It is confirmed then, that the Other Campaign remains the only possible way." (La Jornada, July 13, 2006). I believe that he is right, but it is a way is bristling with obstacles. On November 23, subcomandante Marcos, who resumed his tour of the country at the beginning of October, declared, in Bagdad, Tamaulipas that the taking of office by Felipe Calderón on December 1 will be:

 

the beginning of the end of a political system that embedded itself and began to deceive, since the Mexican Revolution, generation after generation, until the current one came  and said, ¡Ya basta! That's enough. (La Jornada, November 24, 2006).

 

Marcos added that Calderón "is going to start to fall from his first day" and that "we are on the eve of a great uprising or a civil war." When they asked him who would lead that uprising, he replied:

 

the people, each in their place, in a network of mutual support. If we do not accomplish it that way, there will be spontaneous uprisings, explosions all over, a civil war ....

 

He cited the case of Oaxaca, where "there are no leaders, nor bosses:  it's the people themselves who are organized." That is how it is going to be in the whole country; Oaxaca is an "indicator" of what is going to happen all over. "If there is not a civil and peaceful way out, which is what we propose in the Other Campaign," he warns, "then it will become each man for himself ... we won't recognize Calderon nor López Obrador as president. For us, it doesn't matter what is above. What matters is what is going to arise from below. When we rise up, we are going to sweep away the entire political class, including those who say they are the parliamentary left."

 

          This is a clear definition of the challenges that lie ahead. The nature, composition and behavior of the political classes do not inspire much hope regarding their capacity to understand the current crises, to deal with the existing conflicts and those that will rise up everywhere, and to make the changes needed. Nonetheless, an important part of the discontented, the excluded, have grouped around López Obrador and seem determined to follow him in is ambivalent effort, which noisily challenges the institutions and yet remains wedded to them. These groups and the Broad Progressive Front have exhibited various disagreements and resentments against the Zapatistas. They openly scorn the Other Campaign, considering it to lack political realism and a national project - which, for them would be a requirement for any valid political initiative.

 

          The Other Campaign and the Zapatistas, therefore, find themselves exposed to a two-pronged attack: the constituted powers and paramilitary or PRIista groups that systematically threaten them, while the institutional left tries to isolate them, marginalize them and discredit them. It will be difficult, in such circumstances, to achieve the articulation of the "pockets of resistance" that exist throughout the country into a "network of mutual support." To this date, they have not accomplished this, when they tried to activate it in Atenco (the great repression that interrupted the Other Campaign in May), the political prisoners, or the support of APPO. This might well be attributed to the political climate, given the public attraction that elections had; there persist doubts about the capacity of the Zapatistas to unify all the discontented into broad coalitions that could put into practice their "national program of struggle" in a great civil, democratic and peaceful uprising. But the alternative could not be worse. While a new Apocalypse emerges, with a government that will try to rule by force and with the market and the reign of drug dealers spreading and deepening -- openly willing to use violence to maintain their hegemony -- various forms of civil war increasingly violent will continue to explode throughout the country, in which the discontented, the organized people, will confront the constituted powers, the local mafias created by the PRI (which now operate independently), and all kinds of paramilitary groups and their own demons.

 

          Villoro is right. Although the Other Campaign is not exactly the only possible way, it is the only option again indescribable disaster.

 

-- San Pablo Etla, November, 2006

_______________________________________________________________

*This text is based on a talk given in the Center for Global Justice conference "Another World is Necessary: Justice, Sustainable Development and Sovereignty," in San  Miguel de Allende, July 29-36, using extensive excerpts from the book Celebration of Zapatismo (Mexico, Ediciones ¡Basta!, 2005). In November, I prepared this new version, updating information and analysis, usng some excerpts from my columns for the La Jornada daily newspaper during the period August-November 2006.