By Maureen Welch

The quality of alternating tension and patience during the ongoing magisterio protest is best evoked by the name of their encampment of the downtown: the plantón. In Spanish, plantón translates to seedling, or in the common colloquialism estar en un plantón, to be standing around in one place for a long time. Beginning on May 22nd, the teacher strike slowly unfurled until events reached a fever pitch on June 14th when state police were called in to violently eject the protestors from the city center. Now the regrouped plantón has settled in for another time of uneasy waiting and gestation, punctuated by large popular marches the likes of which Oaxaca has never seen and the creation of 350-organization strong Asamblea Popular de Pueblo de Oaxaca (APPO).

In the first weeks after Section 22 of the National Teachers Union (SNTE in its Spanish initials) strung up their tarps in the city center most Oaxaqueños appeared unperturbed. I was told that this had been an annual event for the last 25 years, and while disruptions in the transportation and the tourist industry were to be expected, everyone assumed the teachers would be placated before the time summer recess approached.

By the end of the second week of the plantón awareness grew that this year might be different. The most noticeable change was an increasingly insistent demand for the resignation of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the PRI governor of Oaxaca. By the second megamarcha on June 7th this demand was front and center. Ruiz,va a caer, “Ruiz is going to fall,” was a persistent rallying cry for the estimated 150,000 marchers. Sometimes this cry was changed to
Ruiz ya cayó, or, “Ruiz has already fallen.” There have been four megamarchas in support of the SNTE in all, with the last two drawing 400,000 to 500,000 participants after June 14th’s failed desalojo or “displacement” garnered considerable public sympathy for the teachers.

Ruiz has only been in office for eight months but has managed to alienate a significant number of the population. Several expensive renovation projects of the Zócalo , Plaza de la Danza, Paseo Juarez Park, and widening of the Cerro Fortin road were conducted without local consultation over planning and cost. The newspaper El Impartial published amounts spent on the renovation projects as well as public monies used for political campaigning.

The former amount especially enraged the union, who readily accuse Ruiz of using it to “destroy the cultural patrimony” with the renovations. The latter budget item gave rise to at least two occasions of civil disobedience where groups of teachers swept through the streets of Oaxaca pulling down the ubiquitous campaign banners.

The turning point of the teacher’s strike came as Oaxaca woke to the sound of helicopters circling downtown. Late on June 13th the teachers received word of a possible attack near dawn. State police first arrived at 4:55 in the morning at the teacher’s hotel where many leaders of the magesterio were taken into custody. Concurrently, 3,000 state police streamed into the center of town. With full-body riot shields and batons, the police entered into confrontation with the more than 30,000 teachers who were encamped there.

Helicopters drew down close to the crowd and launched tear gas canisters. In the overwhelming cloud of tear gas the teachers ran from the center and regrouped in side streets. The police destroyed the tent shelters and supplies that the teachers had set up over the 22 days of protest prior. The zócalo did not remain empty for long. The teachers were able to retake the plaza by 9:15.

The morning’s attack was widely reported as the desalojo fallado, or failed eviction. When I arrived at 3 in the afternoon at the zócalo the streets were strewn with trash, and piles of debris that the police had set on fire were still smoking. Remnants of tear gas wafted through the air. The remaining teachers walked around dazed and tense, most all carrying an improvised baton of piping or dismantled broomstick. The entire city of Oaxaca shut down to wait to see what would happen.

Another important context in accounting for the difference of this year’s protest and the use of police force is the violent events that took place on May 3rd and 4th in San Salvador Atenco. There 3,000 state and federal preventative police brutally seized Atenco in what was billed as a “law and order” action to clear a highway blocked in protest of police actions the day prior in neighboring Texcoco. Over 100 people were taken into custody, 23 of which were women who have filed complaints of sexual assault. At least 28 people remain in jail. Visible signs of solidarity with Atenco have run through the plantón like a current. During my visit on June13th, one sign read, Hoy Atenco, mañana puede ser Oaxaca,

“Today Atenco, tomorrow it could be Oaxaca.” Indeed, the Oaxaca plantón had its own violent police action not 24 hours later. Solidarity with Atenco can also be seen in one of Section 22´s demands: freedom for all political prisoners.

Other than the dismissal of Ruiz, the SNTE is also asking for a salary rezonification of Oaxaca to reflect the real cost of living, free textbooks for students, uniforms (including shoes), and improved classrooms and buildings. Local and federal government has both stated that the required money for the rezonification is not available.

The teachers have responded by comparing how much money was spent on renovations of tourist areas, campaign spending, salaries for the governor and senators, and the cost of tear gas alone in the attempted dispersal of the plantón.

Public opinion of the teachers and their demands is constantly in flux. Because the plantón has been such a yearly event in Oaxaca, many locals express a wariness or cynicism about the teacher’s intentions. They claim the teachers already receive a higher salary comparatively than many in poverty-stricken Oaxaca.

I have heard scorn for the “laziness” of the teachers, some of whom in rural areas only conduct classes three days a week because they commute from other towns. Some locals insisted that not all the teachers are literate.The teachers have been steadily trying to confront misinformation and PR campaigns waged against them by Ruiz and repeated in the television media. What has galvanized the public in spite of these expressed opinions is an almost universal dislike of Ulises Ruiz.

While perhaps it is true that the teachers make more than a rural farmer in the state, it is also true that their fight has universal appeal in getting at the roots of government mismanagement and corruption that keeps certain facets of poverty in place year after year.

The Oaxaca teacher’s union, 70,000 members strong, may be the only entity currently organized enough to take on a popular protest of this magnitude. Indeed, the unrest in Oaxaca has quickly moved past a teacher’s strike at this point with the creation of the Popular Assembly.

The Popular Assembly has ambitious plans to create a governing body free of political parties and conducted in the tradition of usos and costumbres, a locally situated consensus-based governance that harkens back to indigenous practices. The Assembly consists of the leadership and base of the magisterial, over 350 social organizations and NGO’s, citizens, and adherents to the Zapatista Other Campaign. APPO has defined a set of goals that begins with the removal of Ruiz and ends with restructuring the current state government to return more direct power to the citizens in the form of the Assembly.”

July 5th in the zócalo a small column of teachers marched chanting No al repliegue, no al repliegue, “We will not fold, we will not fold.” This impromptu march was not inspired by a recent threat from the government, but by a rift that has opened up at SNTE leader Rueda Pacheco’s announcement that the teachers would return to class the following Monday.

Without administering final exams, the school year would be considered lost for the students and none would be eligible for advancement to the next grade.

The announcement indicated the plantón would not be shut down, but suspended until July 22nd. In the coming week this decision may shift as the teachers negotiate this potential split in tactics. Whether back to the classroom or not, the SNTE will continue to seek its demands with petitions, highway blockages, and the occupation of municipal town halls.

The zócalo right now perhaps has never looked livelier. With vendors everywhere and teachers huddled together for meetings, this version of the zócalo truly feels like the city’s center of vitality. Many of the surrounding restaurants have reopened and a very relaxed environment prevails; yet the tension is never forgotten for long. Every few feet a small crowd gathers around a TV showing the latest pirated DVD: a compilation of footage from the desalojo, the megamarchas, and San Salvador Atenco.

Sources

1 A good article in English regarding the contested renovation of the Zócalo can be found at
http://www.planeta.com/ecotravel/mexico/oaxaca/oaxacacityzocalo.
html, including the quote, La renovación es como echar caca en el mole, “The renovation is like putting poop in the mole sauce.”

2 I witnessed the first banner-elimination event on May 24th. The preferred tool for slicing the plastic banners down was three pieces of wood wired together with an x-acto knife bound
around the top of the improvised pole. There was a big group of people with a pile of banners sitting in the traffic median of the Niños Heroes highway. I asked a man in the
group why they were cutting down the banners. He told me, “Because they are spending thousands of public dollars on them, and it is a waste.” The removal of election propaganda
is also mentioned in Daria and Santamarìa, “Police Unleash Repression Against Oaxaca Teachers,” on NarcoNews.com.

3 See Atenco and the “Rule of Law”: Whose rights are protected? by Maureen Welch for Chiapas
Peace House, http://www.chiapaspeacehouse.org/en/node/281.

4 “Porque aún faltan algunas condiciones que deben cumplirse, como son la instalación de las cinco mesas de trabajo y
la cancelación definitiva de las órdenes de aprehensión y averiguaciones previas, así como la liberación de detenidos.” “Because there are still some conditions that must be fulfilled, the installation of the five tables of work and the definitive cancellation of the apprehension orders, as well as the liberation of prisoners.” Milenio, “Maestros alargan
el paro en Oaxaca hasta el 2 de Julio.” Domingo 18 de Junio de 2006.

5 Two excellent articles about the APPO by Nancy Davis can be found at
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article1928.html and
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article1949.html