Oaxaca Anniversary - Solidaridad con Sección 22

by angryindian | June 16, 2007 at 01:29 pm | 371 views | add comment

This is a perfect example of Indigenism in action. Unlike Aboriginals in the United States, First Nations peoples in Mexico and Canada stand up for their human and civil rights.

The one event in Mexico I would like to see recognised is the Acteal Massacre in 1997 when more than 50 Indigenous people, primarily women, children and several elders, were shot to death by right-wing paramilitaries funded and armed by the Clinton administration. Clinton and his group of bad guys denied any knowledge of a connection between the U.S. and the kill squad but it was later proved that the killers were armed with American-made M16's and boots with treads that exactly matched those of general issue to American soldiers.

The victims were members of as were Las Abejas, a pacifist group that focused on activites against the drug lords that occupied their territories to grow coca and force their men to harvest the crop. And folks ask why the Zapatistas exist. This is why - The Angryindian
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AT AROUND FIVE in the morning on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 hundreds of fireworks cracked the quiet dawn and burst in the sky above Oaxaca City, Mexico.

Though the streets remained still, people began waking up and movement chants could be heard coming from the windows of houses. “If Ulises doesn’t go there will be no peace!” This isn’t like any other day in Oaxaca. Thursday marked the one year anniversary of the violent attempted eviction by the state police of the Section 22 teachers sit in strike in the Zocalo, and what happened that day set off a chain of events that led to a statewide uprising and a popular movement with millions of participants to remove the right-wing governor Ulises Ruiz from office and replace the entire state government with popular assemblies. An organization of thousands of civil groups was formed, called the Peoples’ Popular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO). Physically removing local governments from office, the APPO lived autonomously in the capitol city and other communities for nearly five months until the entrance of the Preventive Federal Police in the last days of October.