APPO Report & Updates
Resistance Continues from NYC to Oaxaca!
photo by Rine...taken from Saturday's brief re-occupation of the Charas squat in Manhattan's Lower East Side...part of the weekend's activities honoring the life of Brad WillThis weekend's memorial for Brad Will here in NYC was powerful. Sadly, I was unable to attend Saturday's amazing events but yesterday's Oaxaca Teach-in/Encuentro was great. We were probably pushing a hundred people packed in for almost 9 hours of presentations, popular education activities, and movies about about what is going on in Oaxaca, the meaning(s) of solidarity, the Zapatista women's struggle, and more...
Organizing here in New York City in solidarity with Oaxaca continues with a consulate protest today and later a meeting to build a longer-term campaign. The report below makes clear the necessity of continuing this organizing. The government's war against the Oaxacan people continues and, without increased resistance, could lead to a full-blown massacre.
All that being said, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) just held a Constituent Congress in order to move forward in the most democratic way possible and a call has been put out for a national meeting in mid-November in Mexico City to form a Popular Assembly of the Peoples of MEXICO!
Organizing continues for a Mexican general strike (and accompanying international actions) on November 20th called by the Zapatistas in solidarity with the people of Oaxaca...as well as the APPO call for a popular peaceful insurrection on December 1st if the corrupt and repressive governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, has not stepped down by then. This coincides with the date that Felipe Calderón is to be imposed as the new president of Mexico and the accompanying protests of Obrador's National Democratic Convention movement. Now here's the APPO report on the situation in Oaxaca...
A Report from the APPO's Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the People
12 November, 2006, 16th day of the occupation of Oaxaca by federal forces
(translation by Colin McKenzie of the Oaxaca Study Action Group)
Whomever has a minimal knowledge of history cannot hear at certain hours of the day the noise of the motor of a spy plane or pass by the historic center of the city, Channel 9, or the Parque del Amor where that federal forces are posted, without thinking of Musolinni, Hitler and Franco and feeling the indignation that is provoked by the attempt of the established bourgeois in Oaxaca to maintain Ulises Ruiz Ortíz in power in order to preserve, at all cost, their privileges, using, in order to do this, the whole weight of the repressive apparatus at their service and the impunity with which they continue transmitting, via clandestine radio, their messages of approval of the presence of the Federal Preventative Police (PFP), their demands for the punishment and lynching of those who fight for the respect of the rights of the people, while the [Mexican federal] Secretary of Governmental Affairs [Interior Secretary] and the Secretary of Communications and Transportation take no notice of the public denouncements of the interference of Radio Universidad.
In this context, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca continues in their third day of the Constituent Congress to confront, with better organization, the neo-fascism that Felipe Calderón is trying to implement in the country and with which he is experimenting in Oaxaca, where the people have demonstrated tenacity and courage in response to centuries of injustice.
Thanks to the popular resistence, the freedom of 131 arbitrarily detained, during the occupation by the PFP, compañeros has been had, even though, in accordance with information provided by human rights organization, through 11 November, the following persons are still detained:
- Humberto Jiménez Ríos
- Jaime Guerrero
- Gerardo Martínez
- Héctor Guzmán Acosta
- Joaquín Benjamín López Castillo
- Marcos García Martínez
- Miguel Angel García
- Valentín Pérez Hernández
- Víctor Hugo Martínez Toledo
The compañeros are being accused of sedition, delinquent association, extraordinary resistance and attacks on the general means of communication and they are confined in the prisons of Tlacocula de Matamoros, Cuicatlán and Ejutla.
Similarly, the following are still disappeared:
- Alejandro Merino García
- Ángel Santos Callejas Rodríguez
- Ángel Soto Gallegos
- Armando o Arnaldo Rojas Galán
- Camilo Domínguez de los Santos
- Erick López Ortiz
- Felipe Pérez Tomás
- Félix Ricardo Méndez Venegas
- Fernando Ruiz Santos
- Isaías Pérez Mireles
- Jesús Martínez Hernández
- Máximo Reyes Pérez
- Pedro "N"
- Teodoro Tiño Verado
- Ubaldo García Guzmán
- Yeni Jarquín Aguilar
- Diego Magdiel Rodríguez Hernández
- 12 more taken from the barricadas of the Felipe Carillo Puerto and Avenida Ferrocarril neighborhoods.
With the appropriate indignation of one who sees their sky, public parks and plazas turned into visible signs of repression...
LEAVE, ULISES RUIZ AND THE FEDERAL OCCUPYING FORCES, FROM OAXACA!
IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL FREEDOM FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS!
HAND OVER, ALIVE, THE DISAPPEARED!
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES IN OUR STATE!
FOR OUR DEAD, PRISONERS, AND THE DISAPPEARED, NOT ONE STEP BACK!
For the Defense of the Rights of the People,
Constructing the Power of the People!
COMMITTEE FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE
POPULAR ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLES OF OAXACA
4 comments:
As if the appo really represented Mexicans and as if we Mexicans did not have other means of participation in the public and democratic life in our country. What a nice website of naive imbeciles who really believe these appo thugs and their prd radical allies are helping us Mexicans in any way. They are trying to create chaos because they lost in the elections and since they cannot advance their totaltarian agenda, supported by dictators like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
Our electoral system and our democracy getting hurt by your stupid and false stories. Get real, we have a competetive electoral system in Mexico, it works and there are several political parties, PRI, PAN, PRD, PT, etc. and they all participate freely in clean elections. Bastards like you are only hurting the democratic aspirations of the mayority of Mexicans. Appo does not even represent 10 % of the people of Oaxaca.
Hey anonymous,
I'd like to direct you to this recent proposal from OIDHO (Indian Organizations for Human Rights in Oaxaca) as part of their participation in the APPO.
OIDHO is a group that I observed in Other Campaign meetings in Oaxaca City as well as visited and interviewed several times at their space in Atzompa while working for Narco News in Oaxaca at the beginning of the year.
The fact that you conflate the APPO with the PRD with Castro and Chavez means you've been watching a bit too much commercial television. The fact that you equate the electoral system with democracy means you've believed in that TV a bit too much as well.
As a gringo, I'm working to organize against the problems we struggle with here in the USA, as well as amplify those voices at home and around the world, such as OIDHO, that deserve to be heard and yet are silenced. I hope you choose to read their statement as I think it might help to clarify some things for you about what democracy, representation, elections, and totalitarianism mean to some of the people struggling right now in Oaxaca.
FYI, I probably won't waste any more time with you so don't be surprised if you find yourself deleted in the future...as i've already made clear, this isn't a forum for anonymous haters...
yours,
RJ
hi Rj,
saludos de vik, de paso en el mexico en llamas, felcidades por el blog y tu trabajo,
shine on,
zapata vive.
v.
ey vik!
great to hear from you...would be great to see you and matteo sometime again...please send along some stories when you get a chance...
abrazos,
R
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