By Chris Thomas

Compañer@s:

Although the leaves aren't changing in Southern Mexico, change is nevertheless in the air with the CASA Collectives.

We miss and love Melissa, and are deeply grateful for the 2 and a half years that she spent down here coordinating the Chiapas project, but are nevertheless excited to be taking the house, as always, in new directions. Also underway is the new project in Oaxaca, Casa Chapulin, which our new coordinator Diana Denham is just now heading up. All of this, of course, is taking place during a particularly tense time in Mexico in the wake of this past July's electoral fiasco, and violent confrontations in San Salvador Atenco and Oaxaca City, which has been occupied by demonstrations since May 22nd of this year.

By chris thomas

Oaxaca. The name, for many, has only recently emerged from the mountains of southern Mexico after brutal state repression against the striking teachers of Section XXII of the National Educational Workers Union (SNTE , by its spanish initials) on June 14th of this year triggered massive a social mobilization that is testing the social and political fabric of Mexican society. Its capital, Oaxaca City, has been occupied since the strike began on May 22nd, and since the emergence of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO , by its spanish initials) the number of blockades has only increased as strikers currently occupy the nearly 2,000 blockades in the city's streets. But how is it that the APPO - made up of some 400 social organizations, collectives, and individuals - formed so spontaneously in the wake of the repression on June 14th? The answer goes further back than May 22nd of this year, and lays both in the history of the teacher's movement, and the growing contradictions in Oaxacan and Mexican society.

By Rudy Poe

Mexico has continued to struggle with its presidential electoral crisis, in which accusations of fraud have mobilized thousands of supporters of the left-wing Presidential candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, to demonstrate in the streets of Mexico City. With ample evidence of fraud - vote stuffing, vote buying, President Vicente Fox’s intervention, campaigning after the cut-off date which was one week before the election date, and the manipulation of votes at voting stations - the PRD candidate and millions of sympathizers demanded a full recount.

by Leila Whitley

We have all heard the stories of the May 3rd and 4th massacre in San Salvador Atenco. We have seen the blood that poured from the beaten bodies of the flower vendors and their allies. We have heard and repeated the name of Javier Cortés Santiago, the 14-year-old boy executed by a .38 caliber police bullet. (While the police continue to claim that they were unarmed in Atenco, we have pictures and stories and this death that speak another truth.) We have mourned the death of Alexis Benhumea, the 20-year-old student who was doubly violated by the extreme police violence; first when he was hit in the temple with a tear gas canister, opening his skull, and second while he slowly died, trapped in hiding for hours, unable to go to the hospital because of the violence that continued to dominate the streets. Listening to the stories of the women of Atenco, we have shuddered in terror and empathy, imagining the sexual violence they endured. As these women continue to be held in the prison of Santiaguito, under the vigilance of their violators, we go on worrying for their safety and the daily fear and humiliation they face. We are also moved by their courage, and the courage of all of the people of Atenco who have endured atrocity and resisted.

By Diana Denham

Project TUPA, Transmitters Uniting the Peoples of the Americas, conducts radio workshops in Oaxaca. A project of Free Radio Berkeley.