Oaxaca: When one falls let 50 step forward February 16, 2009
Posted by raved in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Barcelona, 1936. Orwell and Trotsky February 11, 2008
Posted by raved in Spanish Revolution.Tags: anarchism, Catalonia, Commune, POUM, revolution, spain, stalinism, Trotskyism
add a comment
from Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell.
“This was in late December 1936, less than seven months ago as I write, and yet it is a period that has already receded into enormous distance. Later events have obliterated it much more completely than they have obliterated 1935, or 1905, for that matter. I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags ow with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workman. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Sen~or’ or ‘Don’ ort even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ or ‘Thou’, and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenos dias’. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also, I believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers’ State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed or voluntarily come over to the workers’ side; I did not realise that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as proletarians for the time being.
Together with all this there was something of the evil atmosphere of war. The town had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air-raids, the shops were mostly shabby and half-empty. Meat was scarce and milk practically unobtainable, there was a shortage of coal, sugar and petrol, and a really serious shortage of bread. Even at this period the bread-queues were often hundreds of yards long. Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. #Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers’ shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves. In the streets were coloured posters appealing to prostitutes to stop being prostitutes. To anyone from the hard-boiled, sneering civilization of the English-speaking races there was something rather pathetic in the literalness with which these idealistic Spaniards took the hackneyed phrase of revolution. At that time revolutionary ballads of the naivest kind, all about the proletarian brotherhood and the wickedness of Mussolini, were being sold on the streets for a few centimes each. I have often seen an illiterate militiaman buy one of these ballads, laboriously spell out the words, and then, when he had got the hang of it, begin singing it to an appropriate tune.”
. . . . .
Why was this ‘workers state’ or ‘commune’ obliterated? Trotsky answers:
The Class, the Party and the Leadership, by Leon Trotsky
This except is from an unfinished article written by Trotsky and first published in 1940.
[...]
Sophistry Of The Betrayers
In July 1936 — not to refer to an earlier period — the Spanish workers repelled the assault of the officers who had prepared their conspiracy under the protection of the People’s Front. The masses improvised militias and created workers’ committees, the strongholds of their future dictatorship. The leading organisations of the proletariat on the other hand helped the bourgeoisie to destroy these committees, to liquidate the assaults of the workers on private property and to subordinate the workers’ militias to the command of the bourgeoisie, with the POUM moreover participating in the government and assuming direct responsibility for this work of the counter-revolution. What does “immaturity” of the proletariat signify in this case? Self-evidently only this, that despite the correct political line chosen by the masses, the latter were unable to smash the coalition of socialists, Stalinists, anarchists and the POUM with the bourgeoisie. This piece of sophistry takes as its starting point a concept of some absolute maturity, i.e. a perfect condition of the masses in which they do not require a correct leadership, and, more than that, are capable of conquering against their own leadership. There is not and there cannot be such maturity.
Our sages object: but why should workers who show such correct revolutionary instinct and such superior fighting qualities submit to treacherous leadership? Our answer is: There wasn’t even a hint of mere subordination. The workers’ line of march at all times cut a certain angle to the line of the leadership. And at the most critical moments this angle became 180 degrees. The leadership then helped directly or indirectly to subdue the workers by armed force.
In May 1937 the workers of Catalonia rose not only without their own leadership but against it. The anarchist leaders — pathetic and contemptible bourgeois masquerading cheaply as revolutionists — have repeated hundreds of times in their press that had the CNT wanted to take power and set up their dictatorship in May, they could have done so without any difficulty. This time the anarchist leaders speak the unadulterated truth. The POUM leadership actually dragged at the tail of the CNT, only they covered up their policy with a different phraseology. It was thanks to this and this alone that the bourgeoisie succeeded in crushing the May uprising of the “immature” proletariat. One must understand exactly nothing in the sphere of the inter-relationships between the class and the party, between the masses and the leaders in order to repeat the hollow statement that the Spanish masses merely followed their leaders. The only thing that can be said is that the masses who sought at all times to blast their way to the correct road found no new leadership corresponding to the demands of the revolution. Before us is a profoundly dynamic process, with the various stages of the revolution shifting swiftly, with the leadership or various sections of the leadership quickly deserting to the side of the class enemy, and our sages engage in a purely static discussion: why did the working class as a whole follow a bad leadership?
The Dialectic Approach
There is an ancient, evolutionary-liberal epigram: every people gets the government it deserves. History, however, shows that one and the same people may in the course of a comparatively brief epoch get very different governments (Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain, etc.) and furthermore that the order of these governments doesn’t at all proceed in one and the same direction: from despotism — to freedom, as was imagined by the evolutionist liberals. The secret is this, that a people is comprised of hostile classes, and the classes themselves are comprised of different and in part antagonistic layers which fall under different leadership; furthermore every people falls under the influence of other peoples who are likewise comprised of classes. Governments do not express the systematically growing “maturity” of a “people” but are the product of the struggle between different classes and the different layers within one and the same class, and, finally, the action of external forces — alliances, wars and so on. To this should be added that a government, once it has established itself, may endure much longer than the relationship of forces which produced it. It is precisely out of this historical contradiction that revolutions, coup d’etats, counter- revolutions, etc., arise.
The very same dialectic approach is necessary in dealing with the question of the leadership of a class. Imitating the liberals our sages tacitly accept the axiom that every class gets the leadership it deserves. In reality leadership is not at all a mere “reflection” of a class or the product of its own free creativeness. A leadership is shaped in the process of clashes between the different classes or the friction between the different layers within a given class. Having once arisen, the leadership invariably rises above its class and thereby becomes pre-disposed to the pressure and influence of other classes. The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions. Precisely for this reason the working class is often caught unawares by war and revolution. But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilising the collapse of the old leading party. The Marxist, i.e. dialectic and not scholastic, interpretation of the inter-relationship between a class and its leadership does not leave a single stone unturned of our author’s legalistic sophistry.
How the Russian Workers Matured
He conceives of the proletariat’s maturity as something purely static. Yet during a revolution the consciousness of a class is the most dynamic process directly determining the course of the revolution. Was it possible in January 1917 or even in March, after the overthrow of Czarism, to give an answer to the question whether the Russian proletariat had sufficiently “matured” for the conquest or power in eight to nine months? The working class was at that time extremely heterogeneous socially and politically. During the years of the war it had been renewed by 30-40 per cent from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie, often reactionary, at the expense of backward peasants, at the expense of women and youth. The Bolshevik party in March 1917 was followed by an insignificant minority of the working class and furthermore there was discord within the party itself. The overwhelming majority of the workers supported the Mensheviks and the “Socialist-Revolutionists” i.e. conservative social-patriots. The situation was even less favourable with regard to the army and the peasantry. We must add to this: the general low level of culture in the country, the lack of political experience among the broadest layers of the proletariat, especially in the provinces, let alone the peasants and soldiers. What was the “active” of Bolshevism? A clear and thoroughly thought out revolutionary conception at the beginning of the revolution was held only by Lenin. The Russian cadres of the party were scattered and to a considerable degree bewildered. But the party had authority among the advanced workers. Lenin had great authority with the party cadres. Lenin’s political conception corresponded to the actual development of the revolution and was reinforced by each new event. These elements of the “active” worked wonders in a revolutionary situation, that is, in conditions of bitter class struggle. The party quickly aligned its policy to correspond with Lenin’s conception, to correspond that is with the actual course of the revolution.
Thanks to this it met with firm support among tens of thousands of advanced workers. Within a few months, by basing itself upon the development of the revolution the party was able to convince the majority of the workers of the correctness of its slogans. This majority organised into Soviets was able in its turn to attract the soldiers and peasants. How can this dynamic, dialectic process be exhausted by a formula of the maturity or immaturity of the proletariat? A colossal factor in the maturity of the Russian proletariat in February or March 1917 was Lenin. He did not fall from the skies. He personified the revolutionary tradition of the working class. For Lenin’s slogans to find their way to the masses there had to exist cadres, even though numerically small at the beginning; there had to exist the confidence of the cadres in the leadership, a confidence based on the entire experience of the past. To cancel these elements from one’s calculations is simply to ignore the living revolution, to substitute for it an abstraction, the “relationship of forces,” because the development of the revolution precisely consists of this, that the relationship of forces keeps incessantly and rapidly changing under the impact of the changes in the consciousness of the proletariat, the attraction of backward layers to the advanced, the growing assurance of the class in its own strength. The vital mainspring in this process is the party, just as the vital mainspring in the mechanism of the party is its leadership. The role and the responsibility of the leadership in a revolutionary epoch is colossal.
Relativity of “Maturity”
The October victory is a serious testimonial of the “maturity” of the proletariat. But this maturity is relative. A few years later the very same proletariat permitted the revolution to be strangled by a bureaucracy which rose from its ranks. Victory is not at all the ripe fruit of the proletariat’s “maturity.” Victory is a strategical task. It is necessary to utilise in order to mobilise the masses; taking as a starting point the given level of their ” maturity ” it is necessary to propel them forward, teach them to understand that the enemy is by no means omnipotent, that it is torn asunder with contradictions, that behind, the imposing facade panic prevails. Had the Bolshevik party failed to carry out this work, there couldn’t even be talk of the victory of the proletarian revolution. The Soviets would have been crushed by the counter-revolution, and the little sages of all countries would have written articles and books on the keynote that only uprooted visionaries could dream in Russia of the dictatorship of the proletariat so small numerically and so immature.
Auxiliary Role of Peasants
Equally abstract, pedantic and false is the reference to the “lack of independence” of the peasantry. When and where did our sage ever observe in capitalist society a peasantry with an independent revolutionary programme or a capacity for independent revolutionary initiative? The peasantry can play a very great role in the revolution, but only an auxiliary role. In many instances the Spanish peasants acted boldly and fought courageously. But to rouse the entire mass of the peasantry, the proletariat had to set an example of a decisive uprising against the bourgeoisie and inspire the peasants with faith in the possibility of victory. In the meantime the revolutionary initiative of the proletariat itself was paralysed at every step by its own organisations. The “immaturity” of the proletariat, the “lack of independence” of the peasantry are neither final nor basic factors in historical events. Underlying the consciousness of the classes are the classes themselves, their numerical strength, their role in economic life. Underlying the classes is a specific system of production which is determined in its turn by the level of the development of productive forces. Why not then say that the defeat of the Spanish proletariat was determined by the low level of technology?
The Role of Personality
Our author substitutes mechanistic determinism for the dialectic conditioning of the historical process. Hence the cheap jibes about the role of individuals, good and bad. History is a process of the class struggle. But classes do not bring their full weight to bear automatically and simultaneously. In the process of struggle the classes create various organs which play an important and independent role and are subject to deformations. This also provides the basis for the role of personalities in history. There are naturally great objective causes which created the autocratic rule of Hitler but only dull-witted pedants of “determinism ” could deny today the enormous historic role of Hitler. The arrival of Lenin in Petrograd on April 3, 1917, turned the Bolshevik party in time and enabled the party to lead the revolution to victory. Our sages might say that had Lenin died abroad at the beginning of 1917, the October revolution would have taken place “just the same.” But that is not so. Lenin represented one of the living elements of the historical process. He personified the experience and the perspicacity of the most active section of the proletariat. His timely appearance on the arena of the revolution was necessary in order to mobilise the vanguard and provide it with an opportunity to rally the working class and the peasant masses. Political leadership in the crucial moments of historical turns can become just as decisive a factor as is the role of the chief command during the critical moments of war. History is not an automatic process. Otherwise, why leaders? Why parties? Why programmes? Why theoretical struggles?
Stalinism in Spain
“But why, in the devil’s name,” asks the author as we have already heard, “did the revolutionary masses who left their former leaders, rally to the banner of the Communist Party?” The question is falsely posed. It is not true that the revolutionary masses left all of their former leaders. The workers who were previously connected with specific organisations continued to cling to them, while they observed and checked. Workers in general do not easily break with the party that awakens them to conscious life. Moreover the existence of mutual protection within the People’s Front lulled them: since everybody agreed, everything must be all right. The new and fresh masses naturally turned to the Comintern as the party which had accomplished the only victorious proletarian revolution and which, it was hoped, was capable of assuring arms to Spain. Furthermore the Comintern was the most zealous champion of the idea of the People’s Front; this inspired confidence among the inexperienced layers of workers. Within the People’s Front the Comintern was the most zealous champion of the bourgeois character of the revolution: this inspired the confidence of the petty and in part the middle bourgeoisie. That is why the masses “rallied to the banner of the Communist Party.” Our author depicts the matter as if the proletariat were in a well-stocked shoe store, selecting a new pair of boots. Even this simple operation, as is well known, does not always prove successful. As regards new leadership, the choice is very limited. Only gradually, only on the basis of their own experience through several stages can the broad layers of the masses become convinced that a new leadership is firmer, more reliable, more loyal than the old. To be sure, during a revolution, i.e., when events move swiftly, a weak party can quickly grow into a mighty one provided it lucidly understands the course of the revolution and possesses staunch cadres that do not become intoxicated with phrases and are not terrorised by persecution. But such a party must be available prior to the revolution inasmuch as the process of educating the cadres requires a considerable period of time and the revolution does not afford this time.
Treachery of the POUM
To the left of all the other parties in Spain stood the POUM, which undoubtedly embraced revolutionary proletarian elements not previously firmly tied to anarchism. But it was precisely this party that played a fatal role in the development of the Spanish revolution. It could not become a mass party because in order to do so it was first necessary to overthrow the old parties and it was possible to overthrow them only by an irreconcilable struggle, by a merciless exposure of their bourgeois character. Yet the POUM while criticising the old parties subordinated itself to them on all fundamental questions. It participated in the “People’s” election bloc; entered the government which liquidated workers’ committees; engaged in a struggle to reconstitute this governmental coalition; capitulated time and again to the anarchist leadership; conducted, in connection with this, a false trade union policy; took a vacillating and non-revolutionary attitude toward the May 1937 uprising. From the standpoint of determinism in general it is possible of course to recognise that the policy of the POUM was not accidental. Everything in this world has its cause. However, the series of causes engendering the centrism of the POUM are by no means a mere reflection of condition of the Spanish or Catalonian proletariat. Two causalities moved toward each other at an angle and at a certain moment they came into hostile conflict. It is possible by taking into account previous international experience, Moscow’s influence, the influence of a number of defeats, etc., to explain politically and psychologically why the POUM unfolded as a centrist party. But this does not alter its centrist character, nor does it alter the fact that a centrist party invariably acts as a brake upon the revolution, must each time smash its own head, and may bring about the collapse of the revolution. It does not alter the fact that the Catalonian masses were far more revolutionary than the POUM, which in turn was more revolutionary than its leadership. In these conditions to unload the responsibility for false policies on the “immaturity” of the masses is to engage in sheer charlatanism frequently resorted to by political bankrupts.
Responsibility of Leadership
The historical falsification consists in this, that the responsibility for the defeat of the Spanish masses is unloaded on the working masses and not those parties which paralysed or simply crushed the revolutionary movement of the masses. The attorneys of the POUM simply deny the responsibility of the leaders, in order thus to escape shouldering their own responsibility. This impotent philosophy, which seeks to reconcile defeats as a necessary link in the chain of cosmic developments, is completely incapable of posing and refuses to pose the question of such concrete factors as programmes, parties, personalities that were the organisers of defeat. This philosophy of fatalism and prostration is diametrically opposed to Marxism as the theory of revolutionary action. Civil war is a process wherein political tasks are solved by military means. Were the outcome of this war determined by the “condition of class forces,” the war itself would not be necessary. War has its own organisation, its own policies, its own methods, its own leadership by which its fate is directly determined. Naturally, the “condition of class forces” supplies the foundation for all other political factors; but just as the foundation of a building does not reduce the importance of walls, windows, doors, roofs, so the “condition of classes” does not invalidate the importance of parties, their strategy, their leadership. By dissolving the concrete in the abstract, our sages really halted mid-way. The most “profound” solution of the problem would have been to declare the defeat of the Spanish proletariat as due to the inadequate development of productive forces. Such a key is accessible to any fool. By reducing to zero the significance of the party and of the leadership these sages deny in general the possibility of revolutionary victory. Because there are not the least grounds for expecting conditions more favourable. Capitalism has ceased to advance, the proletariat does not grow numerically, on the contrary it is the army of unemployed that grows, which does not increase but reduces the fighting force of the proletariat and has a negative effect also upon its consciousness.
There are similarly no grounds for believing that under the regime of capitalism the peasantry is capable of attaining a higher revolutionary consciousness. The conclusion from the analysis of our author is thus complete pessimism, a sliding away from revolutionary perspectives. It must be said – to do them justice – that they do not themselves understand what they say. As a matter of fact, the demands they make upon the consciousness of the masses are utterly fantastic. The Spanish workers, as well as the Spanish peasants, gave the maximum of what these classes are able to give in a revolutionary situation. We have in mind precisely the class of millions and tens of millions. “Que Faire” represents merely one of these little schools, or churches or chapels who, frightened by the course of the struggle and the onset of reaction publish their little journals and their theoretical etudes in a corner, on the sidelines away from the actual developments of revolutionary thought, let alone the movement of the masses.
Repression of Spanish Revolution
The Spanish proletariat fell the victim of a coalition composed of imperialists, Spanish republicans, socialists, anarchists, Stalinists and on the left flank, the POUM. They all paralysed the socialist revolution which the Spanish proletariat had actually begun to realise. It is not easy to dispose of the socialist revolution. No one has yet devised other methods than ruthless repressions, massacre of the vanguard, execution of the leaders, etc. The POUM of course did not want this. It wanted on the one hand to participate in the Republican government and to enter as a loyal peace-loving opposition into the general bloc of ruling parties: and on the other hand to achieve peaceful comradely relations at a time when it was a question of implacable civil war. For this very reason the POUM fell victim to the contradictions of its own policy. The most consistent policy in the ruling bloc was pursued by the Stalinists. They were the fighting vanguard of the bourgeois-republican counter-revolution. They wanted to eliminate the need of Fascism by proving to the Spanish and world bourgeoisie that they were themselves capable of strangling the proletarian revolution under the banner of “democracy”. This was the gist of their policies. The bankrupts of the Spanish People’s Front are today trying to unload the blame on the GPU. I trust that we cannot be suspected of leniency toward the crimes of the GPU. But we see clearly and we tell the workers that the GPU acted in this instance only as the most resolute detachment in the service of the People’s Front. Therein was the strength of the GPU, therein was the historic role of Stalin. Only ignorant philistines can wave this aside with stupid little jokes about the Chief Devil.
These gentlemen do not even bother with the question of the social character of the revolution. Moscow’s lackeys, for the benefit of England and France, proclaimed the Spanish revolution as bourgeois. Upon this fraud were erected the perfidious policies of the People’s Front, policies which would have been completely false even if the Spanish revolution had really been bourgeois. But from the very beginning the revolution expressed much more graphically its proletarian character than did the revolution of 1917 in Russia. In the leadership of the POUM, gentlemen sit today who consider that the policy of Andres Nin was too “leftist”, that the really correct thing was to have remained the left flank of the People’s Front. Victor Serge, who is in a hurry to compromise himself by a frivolous attitude toward serious questions, writes that Nin did not wish to submit to commands from Oslo or Coyoacan. Can a serious man really be capable of reducing to petty gossip the problem of the class content of a revolution? The sages of “Que Faire” have no answer whatever to this question. They do not understand the question itself. Of what significance indeed is the fact that the “immature” proletariat founded its own organs of power, seized enterprises, sought to regulate production, while the POUM tried with all its might to keep from breaking with bourgeois anarchists who, in an alliance with the bourgeois republicans and the no less bourgeois socialists and Stalinists, assaulted and strangled the proletarian revolution! Such “trifles” are obviously of interest only to representatives of “ossified orthodoxy.” The sages of “Que Faire” possess instead a special apparatus which measures the maturity of the proletariat and the relationship of forces independently of all questions of revolutionary class strategy.
Oaxaca leads the workers and peasants struggle July 22, 2007
Posted by raved in Commune, Oaxaca.2 comments
The 14 of June of 2007 thousand of workers and farmers were mobilized headed by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) and Section 22 of the teachers’ union, included teachers’ educational delegations from Chiapas, Federal District, Guerrero, Jalisco, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Zacatecas, Valley of Mexico and Durango etc, that form National Coordinator of Workers of Education (CNTE), a radical faction within the national teachers union. This was the first anniversary of the formation of the Commune of Oaxaca. The Commune was formed by defeating to the police attack on their camp unleashed by the PRI state Governor Ulises Ruiz (URO).The camp was set up by striking teachers and the Commune took control of the central city, taking decision in a popular assembly, forming its own self defence squads, creating a temporary dual power of the APPO against the bourgeois state. The Commune was a popular response to the attacks of imperialism and the bosses on the workers and farmers on both sides of the border. The ghost of the Mexican revolution was seen looming over North America. Oaxaca became the vanguard of the revolutionary struggle of the masses against imperialism in Latin America, inseparable from the struggle of immigrants in the U.S.A. Like the workers and teachers Neuquén and Santacruz, in the Argentine Patagonia, and other struggles in Latin America, they were betrayed by the same treacherous class collaborationist leaders associated with the Zapatistas and the World Social Forum, and suffered the repression of the bourgeois state forces.
This 14 June the people went on the streets again demanding the immediate resignation of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the release of the political prisoners, the bringing to justice of those in charge of the repression, the withdrawal of all charges against members of the APPO and the demilitarization of the communities of the state of Oaxaca, following the defeat of the APPO in a heroic struggle against the forces of the PFP led by URO and President Fox and his successor Calderon (PAN)in October-November of 2006.
Now it is necessary to return to the fight to avenge the 24 comrades who died, free the hundreds of prisoners who still rot in the jails, and stop the persecution of the activists and teacher by the murderous regime of Calderón and Ulises Ruiz in Oaxaca which is still occupied by the Federal Preventative Police (PFP).
The workers and farmers who formed the commune put all their efforts into the struggle and yet were defeated. Not because of any lack of will to fight, or lack of heroism, quite the reverse. Nor was it the superior strength of the repressive forces. This defeat was the sole responsibility of the leaders of the political currents organised in the World Social Forum who left the heroic fighters of the Commune isolated and disarmed. The results are clear. Those who lead the APPO to defeat were the reformist leadership of the APPO associated with the Castroite Communist Party of Mexico-Popular Revolution (PCM-FPR) and the New Left (affiliated to the Democrocatic Revolutionary Party of Obrador – PRD). The union bureaucracies played a criminal role in isolating the APPO from all the other union struggles, in order to subordinate them to the PRD of Lopez Obrador and his electoral ‘democratic front’ backed by the World Social Forum. Missing in action was the ELZN, led by Subcommandante Marcos, of “the other campaign” who travelled across Mexico by motor scooter preaching his message that it is necessary to “go slowly” and that “we can change the world without taking power”. All disarmed the insurgent workers in the face of the bourgeois repression.
These currents are today raising resolutions in APPO to tie it to the PRD ‘Democratic Front’. “(…) to strengthen all the efforts at national unity against the repressive governments such as , like the APPM; the National Dialogue; the Democratic National Convention (PRD front); and the General Council of Struggles and the Other Campaign (EZLN front). The APPO will have to act on the proposals passed by the assemblies, ensuring that representation in these assemblies is plural and inclusive.” (2ª STATE ASSEMBLY OF the APPO, Oaxaca to 15 of June of the 2007). To leave no doubt where these reformist currents stand, in the declaration calling for a march on June 29 they say. “(…) the movement today must meet with all the other sectors to unite and demand the resignation of [URO] as soon as possible, as our objective has always been to replace the corrupt government of Oaxaca with a democratic government which serves all sectors of Oaxaca society; this can never happen under URO so it is necessary to change the articles of incorporation.” (APPO, 27 of June of 2007, City of the Resistance, Oaxaca).
The PRD led by Lopez Obrador , and backed by stalinism and the reformist currents in the World Social Forum has a ally in the EZLN of Marcos. They played the key role in preventing the masses from rising up against Fox-Calderón when they stole the Presidential election from Obrador, and turning the Federal District and all of Mexico into another Oaxaca. Instead the masses were contained by the “planton” (camp) in the Zocalo of Mexico City of two months by Lopez Obrador while he organised the “Democratic Front” against the electoral fraud of the PAN. The PRD and its collaborators thus prevented the masses from independent action and subordinated them to the fraction of the bourgeoisie that the PRD represents (as pro-imperialistic, antiworker and defending NAFTA as Fox, Calderón of the PAN as well as the PRI). It is this swindle of the PRD and Lopez Obrador against the exploited masses that is the real “fraud: that is, to make the masses think they can have “democracy” without breaking with imperialism, without throwing out NAFTA, and with the PRD/PAN/PRI state regime. Playing a supporting role, the EZLN and Marcos, in his knitted cap, comes to the aid of the NAFTA regime, when the masses threaten to make a revolution. They are the ‘celebrities’ of the World Social Forum, the Castroities and Chavistas, who want to make a “Bolivarian Revolution” in Mexico.
Thus they made a trap for the Comuneros of Oaxaca. While the Government Secretary promised to meet the demands of the teachers, including a wage increase, dropping legal charges against the leaders of the APPO, and to release the political prisoners, a Senate Commission declared Oaxaca to be in a state of “anarchy” creating the pretext for the massive repression that followed. . The leaders of the APPO, Castroites and PRD members and supporters of Marcos, knew of the situation and refused to prepare the masses for the attack. By entering the negotiations the class collaborators and conciliators of the APPO leadership opened the doors to the repression. The consequences of their policy today can be counted in the number of dead, dissappeared, tortured, imprisoned, wounded and persecuted comrades.
Inside the leadership of the APPO the Castroites of the PCM-FPR and the New Left (PRD members) did all they could to stop the struggle of the comuneros from coordinating and concentrating all the militant forces of Mexico in Oaxaca. They refused to call on the workers and peasants organisations in struggle to send mandated delegates of the base to Oaxaca to organize the defense of the commune and a national general strike in support. They prevented therefore – following exactly the policiy of Marcos and the WSF – that after 12 years of NAFTA, the workers and peasants from rising up against the the huge imperialist offensive to complete the privatisation and sacking of national assets, such as PEMEX (Mexican State Petroleum) and the national electricity company.
No honest observer it can have any doubt that the role of Marcos was fundamental. The EZLN had in their hands the ‘power’ to prevent Oaxaca from being isolated. It would have been enough to call on the workers and poor farners if Chiapas and Guerrero to rise up beside their oaxaqueños brothers and sisters with the demands that the EZLN first raised in 1994: “Down with NAFTA”, “Land for the peasants” and “Down with the hated regime”! When the workers and peasants of Guerrero also came together, following the example of Oaxaca, and creating popular assemblies, they were prevented by Marcos and the EZLN from answering the call of their brothers and sisters of the Commune of Oaxaca to unite in a same fight against imperialism and the NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD..
Because Marcos says it is necessary to “go little by little” the EZLN refused to make available of the defense of the Commune of Oaxaca all its resources and media to oppose the repression of the PFP. Meanwhile Marcos wrote poems travelled across Mexico building “the Other Campaign”, that is to say, the subordination of the masses to the bourgeoisie of the PRD. By his actions he prevented the unity of the workers workers and poor farmers of Guerrero and Chiapas to join the APPO to create a Federation of workers and peasants Communes of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas, that without doubt would have reopened the road to the Mexican revolution demolishinig the regime of the PRI, PAN, and PRD, the only way to smash NAFTA and guarantee the land for the peasants and the other demands raised by the chiapanecos from 1994.
But it is also in San Salvador Atenco where the consequences of the criminal policy of the EZLN can be seen. When the workers and peasants of the Peoples Front and Defence of the Land (FPDT) cut the Texcoco-Lecheria highway in May 2006, they were brutally attacked by the PFP forces. Two comrades were killed, many wounded, 28 jailed and 146 arrested and charged. And in Michoacán a state governed by the PRD, in April of 2006, when the heroic iron and steel workers, joined by the miners, occupied the Sicartsa plant, they were attacked also by the PFP, leaving 2 dead, tens of wounded.
It was obvious to all that in Oaxaca two alternative powers faced one another, two different and irreconciliable classes: on one side the power of the imperialistic monopolies, the national bourgeoisie, its armed forces and paramilitary bands; on the other, the power of the workers, peasants and poor people. Once again the purveyors of the ‘democratic front’, put the combative masses on their knees before the national bourgeoisie, and the result is a catastrophic defeat for the workers and peasants. Marcos and the Castroites in alliance with the PRD, they are the one really responsible for the defeat of the heroic comuneros of Oaxaca.
The struggle of the masses in Mexico is indissolubly linked to the struggle of the immigrant in the U.S.A. The class collaborationist policy the EZLN and the Castroites, along with Lopez Obrador and the PRD in Mexico, ensured that the Oaxaca commune did not spread to the Latino migrants in the US, subordinating them to the Democratic Party of Clinton and Obama. Thus, the ‘celebrities’ of the WSF helped to contain the political opposition to the Iraq war of the US working class behind the pacificist opposition of the Democrat Party left, and migrant workers faced a new attacks as happened in Los Angeles on May 1st.
Have Elections Split the APPO? June 13, 2007
Posted by raved in Uncategorized.add a comment
The Oaxaca Volcano Stews
|
|
Counter Punch
On the first anniversary of the beginning of last summer’s feverish uprising here, the city’s jewel-box plaza which had been occupied for seven months by striking teachers and their allies in the Oaxaca Peoples’ Popular Assembly (APPO) from May until October when federal police forced them into retreat, shimmered in the intense spring sunbeams. The only massive police presence on view was the city police department’s orchestra tootling strident martial airs to a shirt-sleeved crowd of gaffers. Here and there, handfuls of burley state cops, sweltering in bulletproof vests and helmets in hand, huddled in the shade quaffing “aguas frescas” (fruit water) and flirting with the senoritas. Evidence of last summer’s occupation has been obliterated. Surrounding government buildings have been scrubbed clean of revolutionary slogans and no marches were scheduled to commemorate last May 22nd when the teachers first established their camp in the plaza. Indeed, militant members of Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) were not encamped in the stately old square for the first time since the section’s founding 27 years ago. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO), the object of their fury, was still the despotic governor of Oaxaca.
Despite the relaxation of U.S. State Department travel advisories and the apparent calm, few tourists were strolling the cobblestone streets of Oaxaca’s “Historic Center”. long ago designated the patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO, and the cavernous colonial hotels around the plaza were virtually deserted. The 2006 uprising has put a serious kibosh on the international tourist trade, the backbone of the local economy. If the experience of San Cristobal de las Casas after the 1994 Zapatista uprising is any lesson, the tourist moguls will take years to recoup.
“Apparent calm” is a euphemism oft utilized to describe the uneasy lulls that mark social upheaval in Mexico. True to the nation’s volcanic political metabolism with its fiery spurts of molten fightback and sullen, brooding silences, the Oaxaca struggle seems to have entered into a period of internal contemplation.
Government repression, which featured death squad killings and the jailing of hundreds of activists, slammed the lid down on the social stew but did not extinguish it. Discontent continues to brew and fester, the bad gas building down below. The structures of the Popular Assembly and the teachers union, which served to catalyze this discontent throughout 2006, remain in tact.
To be sure, the rainbow of social movements that lit up red bulbs as far away as Washington last year, are not enjoying their best moments. Section 22, which itself is a loose amalgam of left factions, is wracked with division and dissonance and its titular leader Enrique Rueda Pacheco is held in profound contempt for having forced the strikers back into the classroom last October and abandoning the APPO to savage government repression.
Moreover, in response to the 70,000-strong Section 22’s rebellion against the leadership of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), union czarina Elba Esther Gordillo, a close confidante of President Felipe Calderon, chartered a new Oaxaca local, Section 59, to diminish the control that the militants exert over the state’s classrooms.
The division has put a dent in the teachers’ usual aggressive stance and instead of walking out this past May 15th, National Teachers Day, when new contracts are negotiated, Section 22 tentatively accepted a 4.8$ base wage increase (above the 3.7% Calderon had conceded to other sectors) and 122 million bonus pesos to “re-zone” Oaxaca for cost of living increases in this tourism-driven state.
Although the “maestros” did participate in a two-day boycott of classes in May to protest the Calderon government’s privatization of government workers pension funds, whether the teachers will take part in an indefinite national walk-out June 1st that has been called by dissident education workers organized in the Coordinating Body of Education Workers or CNTE, remains unresolved at press time.
Nonetheless, the teachers’ disaffection with Ulises remains strong and Section 22 spokesperson Zenen Reyes last week (May 23rd) called upon the teachers and the APPO to push for cancellation of the Guelaguetza, an “indigenous” dance festival in July that has become Oaxaca’s premier tourist attraction. Last year, the strikers and the APPO destroyed scenery and denied access to the spectacle, forcing URO to suspend the gala event. In its place, activists reclaimed this millennial tradition of Indian cultural interchange by staging a “popular” Guelaguetza in the part of the city they were occupying, and plans are afoot to repeat that celebration this year.
The Oaxaca Popular Peoples Assembly, which came together after the governor sent a thousand police to drive the maestros out of the plaza last June 14th and which at one time included representatives of the state’s 17 distinct Indian peoples and many of the 400 majority indigenous municipalities plus hundreds of grassroots organizations, is equally fractured. Having borne the brunt of the repression – 26 killed, 30 disappeared, hundreds imprisoned – the Popular Assembly has been reduced to a defensive posture when only months ago it was an aggressive lightning rod for social discontent.
Even more debilitating than the government crackdown has been the prospect of upcoming local elections August 7th to choose 42 members of the Oaxaca legislature and October 5th balloting for 157 non-Indian municipal presidents (majority indigenous municipalities elect their presidents via traditional assemblies.) While the APPO considers that its goals transcend the electoral process and rejects alliance with the political parties, some Popular Assembly leaders engage in a quirky dance with the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) which last July almost catapulted Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) into the presidency.
Prominent APPO mouthpiece Flavio Sosa, jailed by Calderon as his first political prisoner, is a former Oaxaca party leader and the PRD has mobilized to achieve his release.
Perhaps the cruelest blow the APPO and the striking teachers struck against Ulises came during July 2nd 2006 presidential elections. Although URO had promised the long-ruling (77 years – at least in Oaxaca) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) a million votes for his political godfather Roberto Madrazo, the popular movement inflicted the “voto del castigo” (punishment vote) against the PRI, handing the state to AMLO’s presidential bid in addition to electing both PRD senators and nine out of 11 federal representatives to the new congress for the first time ever.
The left party seemed positioned to bump Ruiz again in 2007 by taking the state legislature and neutralizing the tyrannical governor’s clout. But instead of rewarding the APPO and Section 22 for having dumped the PRI in 2006, the party has responded by excluding activists from its candidate lists.
“If, at one time, there was hope that elections could provide a solution to the conflict, exclusion of the APPO has canceled them,” writes Luis Hernandez Navarro who follows Oaxaca closely for the national daily La Jornada.
One Oaxaca-based PRD insider who preferred not to be named confides that APPO activists were vetoed by the left party’s national leadership least front-page photos of the candidates hurling rocks during last summer’s altercations lend credence to the perpetual allegations of the PRI and Calderon’s right-wing PAN that the PRD is “the part of violence.” Most local candidacies were distributed in accordance with the laws of PRD nepotism and amongst the party’s myriad “tribes.”
The exclusion of the APPO activists so infuriated 50 members of grassroots organizations led by Zapotec Indian spokesperson Aldo Gonzalez that they stormed the PRD’s Oaxaca city headquarters May 18th, leaving its façade a swirl of spray-painted anguish. The failure to select candidates from the popular movement, Gonzalez and others charge, throws the elections to URO, suggesting that the PRD has cut a deal with the APPO’s arch enemy.
Given the hostilities the upcoming elections have sparked so far, the August and October balloting could well signal another “voto del castigo” – this time against the PRD.
The election season was in full swing by mid-Spring in Oaxaca. PRD leader Felix Cruz who had just coordinated Lopez Obrador’s third tour of the Mixteca mountains (AMLO was conspicuously absent during last summer’s struggle) was gunned down in Ejutla de Crespo on May 21st. Juan Antonio Robles, a direction of the Unified Triqui Liberation Movement (MULT), a participating organization in the APPO, met a similar fate the next day. That same week, a car carrying a local candidate for Elba Esther Gordillo’s New Alliance Party was riddled with gunfire along the coast. Drug gang killings have also jacked up the homicide rate in the state – under Ulises’ governance, drugs and drug gangs have flourished.
Meanwhile, in classic “cacique” (political boss) style, the PRI governor is out and about dishing up the pork to buy votes, passing out cardboard roofing and kilos of beans, building roads to nowhere and bridges where there are no rivers to cross, to pump up his electoral clientele. Gifting opposition leaders with pick-up trucks to enlist their allegiances is a favorite URO gambit, notes Navarro Hernandez.
Despite the ambitions of some of its members, the APPO is not enthusiastic about participating in the electoral process. At a statewide congress in February, APPO members were allowed to run for public office as individuals and only if they resign from any organizational function.
Miguel Cruz, an APPO activist and member of the directive of the CIPO-RFM or Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca – Ricardo Flores Magon (Flores Magon was a Oaxaca-born anarchist leader during the Mexican revolution) is not a partisan of the electoral process. Seated in the CIPO’s open-air kitchen out in Santa Lucia del Camino, a rural suburb of Oaxaca city where police gunned down U.S. journalist Brad Will last October, Miguel explains his disdain for how the elections have split the APPO “when they were supposed to bring us together.”
“Everyone is working on their own agendas now and the so-called leaders are all looking for a ‘hueso” (literally ‘bone’ – political appointment.) This is a crying shame. The APPO is a mass movement, not a political party. Our consciences are not for sale.”
June 14th, the day last year Ulises sent a thousand heavily armed police to unsuccessfully take the plaza back from the striking teachers, is a crucial date. The APPO and Section 22 are planning one of their famous mega-marches which last summer sometimes turned out hundreds of thousands of citizens. Will June 14th signal a resurgence of massive resistance and if it does, will the popular leadership be able to restrain hotter heads and government provocateurs that last November gave the federal police the pretext to beat and round up hundreds? Miguel Cruz is hopeful the APPO will persevere. “Whatever the ‘leaders’ do and say, the APPO lives down at the bases.”
Up the steep, windy hill in San Pablo Etla where the cognoscenti live above the hurly-burly on the streets of Oaxaca, political guru Gustavo Esteva views the popular struggle down below geologically. “The popular movement in Oaxaca is like an active volcano” he writes in La Jornada, “last year when it erupted, the movement left its mark in the form of molten lava trails. Now the lava has cooled and formed a cap of porous rock that marks the point through which the internal pressure will find its way to break through to the surface again.”
John Ross is back in Mexico City hot on the trail of Brad Will’s killers and re-immersing himself in the real world. Write him at johnross@igc.org.
Reoraganization of the Oaxacan Social Movement May 23, 2007
Posted by raved in Commune, Oaxaca.add a comment
Alebrijes and Opportunists
On the Reorganization of the Oaxacan Social Movement
Roberto Ramírez
May 18, 2007
México -
There is a struggle within the Peoples’ Popular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO in its Spanish initials): how to reactivate and reorganize the movement after the brutal repression the people suffered on November 25, 2006. Part of this includes a fight for hegemony within the APPO’s council (a body created to give the organization structure) and it’s a fight that has had several matrices and has generated great discord.
After a period of re-articulation, the council’s first attempt to reactivate the movement was to convene the First APPO State Assembly for February 10th and 11th, 2007. The main issues to be debated were the upcoming August 5th Congressional elections and the October 7th elections in which 148 of the 570 municipalities would choose new government representatives.
Before this assembly took place, one sector of the APPO council met with the leaders of the Broad Progressive Front (FAP in its Spanish initials) regarding the elections. The council members had created a provisional list of electoral APPO candidates—going against the rest of the council which believed that whether or not the APPO would participate in the elections ought to be decided by the entire Assembly.
In light of this prior meeting, the discussion during the February State Assembly concerning elections was long and overshadowed all other agenda issues. This electoral question was a tactical concern for the group. In the long run, the struggle was against Governor Ulises Ruiz, for the transformation of the state and for the freedom of political prisoners. Some believe that Congress could be a battle ground and that APPO should enter. But others argued that participating in elections betrayed APPO’s fundamental principles and was disrespectful to member organizations who believed that the struggle should not enter the electoral ring. These organizations stated that APPO can’t be allowed to turn into a launching pad for politicians.
The discussion remained deadlocked on the night of Sunday the 11th. When dawn broke, many assembly members had already left, exhausted by the endless discussion. Member of the March 2nd Collective and of the Coalition of Oaxacan Women (COMO), delegate Guadalupe García Leyva had been attacking those who refused to participate in the elections. She also accused accused prominent APPO council member David Venegas Reyes—know as Alebrije*—of being a police plant.
David was a member of the Assembly’s debate roundtable and as a council member, had participated in the previous meeting where the elections question was debated. Also as a representative of the FAP, he made clear at other moments that he did not agree that APPO should take the electoral road.
Several delegates became furious on hearing Garcia Leyva’s accusations—to the point that it almost tore the APPO in two. But when it was his time to speak, Venegas Reyes stated: “these accusations only demonstrate that those APPO representatives who favor electoral advancement have no real arguments on which to defend their position,” and that since the accusations were obviously false, he would not respond to them directly.
After getting over this crisis, the session agreed that the APPO as an organization would not participate in the upcoming elections. Member organizations who decided to take part in the electoral process, would have to enter separately and not under the APPO name. In addition, any councilperson seeking election would have to resign from the APPO council.
Inventing Criminals
After the November 25th repression, APPO council members began to be persecuted. Despite the fact that the media was saying that all council members were subject to persecution indiscriminately, the truth is that the persecution was selective and included many of the people in charge of the blockades as well as active community members. Many were forced to leave Oaxaca because of the state-imposed repressive environment. Those detained were accused of various crimes including sedition, criminal association, and attacking outlets of communication, to name a few.
The coordinators of the main barricades—among them Alebrije Venegas—took measures to protect themselves but maintained contact with the APPO council. But a new phase had begun in which high government officials negotiated were negotiating with some parts of the APPO. Ulise Ruiz’s government would negotiate on the one hand, and criminalize those who refused, on the other.
It was in this context that Venegas was violently detained on April 13th near the El Llano Park. According to his comrades, his arrest was the government’s attempt to paralyze Alebrije’s activism within the newly created group, Oaxacan Voices Building Autonomy and Freedom (VOCAL in its Spanish initials). He had recently released a magazine named Barrikada and was planning on presenting it that same night in the Institute of Graphic Arts of Oaxaca (IAGO) and on the FM station “Radio sin mando.” He was also working within the APPO to prevent the dealing of electoral nominations.
His arrest was arbitrary; there was not even an arrest warrant issued. Twelve hours after his April 13th detention in the afternoon, David was brought before the legal body that deals with small-time drug offenses—the Unidad Mixta de Atención a Narcomenudeos (UMAN) in Spanish. Those who visited him during that period reported that he had been beaten—a claim confirmed by a photograph published later in ADNSureste. However the photograph also showed him with a bag that supposedly contains 30 grams of heroin, though to this date there is no proof that he was in possession of that bag at the time of his arrest.
On the morning of April 15th, after having spent one day in the custody of the Office of the National District Attorney, Alebrije was moved to the Ixcotel penitentiary. There, he was told that there had been another capture order issued for him—one that charged him with sedition and arson in relation to the November 25th burning of the Oaxaca Superior Courthouse. Many other APPO leaders are still being held on charges relating to this day.
The Power of Sowing Disaccord
During the weeks prior to the First APPO State Assembly, the Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR) had forged a series of alliances in order to strengthen their support for engaging the APPO in elections. Among their most important allies were the August 1st contingent of the COMO, the Democratic Coalition of Teachers, the March 2nd Collective, the Broad Popular Struggle Front (FALP) and the New Oaxacan Left. They also revived parts of the FPR—such as the Union of Mexican Revolutionary Youth, the Union of Poor Campesinos and the Union of Educational Workers. All of these organizations were, for the time being, carrying forward congressional candidates under the APPO name.
FPR operates indirectly: members of their group start rumors which the FPR later affirms with declarations or actions. Guadalupe Leyva’s accusations against David Venegas for his non-agreement concerning elections and for becoming her principle opposition is just one example. During council meetings, meeting with other groups and in neighborhood gathering, the rumors against Venegas and other VOCAL members were repeated. FPR relies on these types of mis-information schemes to generate mistrust within the APPO council and to strengthen the FPR block.
APPO spokesman and FPR member Florentino López, mentioned David Venegas’s arrest only once: “The anti-APPO offensive has been revived because there are now 43 political prisoners,” he stated. Despite the international mobilization to free David, the spokesman has stayed silent on the issue aside from this brief, indirect acknowledgement.
Analyzing this situation on her program Shotgun Radio, Doctor Bertha Muñoz explained her experience with being isolated and thus subjected to such mis-information campaigns: “While in exile, news only comes filtered by council member Felipe Canseco—like that Alebrije’s arrest was a government hoax to quiet the rumors that he was a member of the police.”
The Doctor also made declarations that the FPR had held meeting with Lopez Oprador on behalf of the APPO and that it had called on the organization to “close ranks and clean-up its own backyard.”
Despite all this and its negotiations with FAP, the FPR-led electoral block has thus far only managed to get one candidate on the Congressional plurinominal list. Zenén Bravo Castellanos is number 10 on the list and Carmen Jicayan’s nomination is still in doubt. Given the way elections work, this essentially means that the APPO members have almost no chance of entering Congress.
Alebrije Behind Bars
As the APPO’s internal struggle continues, council member David Venegas has written several letters from jail, speaking out against his incarceration and analyzing the movement. There has been international outcry demanding David’s release but David has also received threats in prison to force him to negotiate and quiet those who call for his freedom, according to a May 2nd letter he wrote.
The movement for his liberation also caused concern regarding FPR’s organizational tactics. In a public statement read on May 6th in the National Forum Against Repression, Zapatista leader Sub-Commander Marcos announced his support for Alebrije and criticized the FPR as a political organization “supposedly left-wing…that claims it agrees with the principles of the Other Campaign when it’s convenient but then distances itself when it’s not. These people are not looking for power to be able to persecute anarchists and libertarians because they are already persecuting others—they are persecuting those that think differently and those that have and struggle for a different vision of society.”
During the demonstration commemorating Day of the Teacher in Oaxaca on May 15th, one of David Venegas’ letters was read publicly in the heart of the city. In it, he expresses his unease, calls attention to the fact that some of the APPO council members had betrayed the movement and points to some of the odd happenings he witnessed before and after his arrest. Alebrije also described the criminalization of his VOCAL comrades and the FPR’s complicity in the face of these drastic situations.
After all this, and after the failure of the FPR to obtain any well placed electoral nominations, the fight in Oaxaca for control of the APPO council has worsened. Yet it’s important to note that the bases continue to mobilize and create their own initiatives that stay true to APPO’s roots.
It’s in this context that Dr. Bertha Muñoz commented in Shotgun Radio, that the “other phase of the movement” has begun—one in which not only FPR’s actions are publicly denounced, but also in which reorganization is needed and a new APPO State Assembly ought to be convened. We will soon see what happens…
- Alebrijes are well-known traditional Oaxacan crafts. They are colorful, creative figurines whose style and shape are derived from recent popular culture and imagination.
Why Oaxaca Matters March 24, 2007
Posted by raved in Commune, Oaxaca, Spanish Revolution.add a comment
-by James Cooke
For anyone interested in social progress, the ‘Oaxaca Commune’ stands out as an event worthy of attention and study. In the Mexican state of Oaxaca the overwhelming majority of people suddenly awoke from political hibernation and became active in shaping social life. In consequence, the old apparatus of the state, dedicated as it was to the interests of the rich, was destroyed, and a new structure, based on direct representation of the many, was established.
[This is clearly incorrect. The old state apparatus was not destroyed. Elements of dual power existed for some months as APPO occupied key parts of Oaxaca city. A new structure of power is in formation, but the old state exercised its state power and repressed APPO, killing and dissappearing many, and arresting many more. By treating APPO as an alternative power already in existence this article creates illusions in the struggle for power being possible without confronting existing state power.]
The ‘popular assembly’ (APPO) that arose out of the mass movement of Oaxaca was not the first of its kind. History has numerous examples of similar political formations, always birthed amid a revolutionary climate.
The first modern example took place in Paris in 1871, when working-class people revolted against the policies of ‘their’ government, and created a new form of social administration to suit the needs of the average person. Like Oaxaca, the ‘Paris Commune’ consisted of delegates from a varying political/social background, working together to enact policies that reflected the demands of the majority, in contrast with the previous government that ruled according to the interests of a tiny elite.
[But unlike APPO, the Paris Commune was an alternative power for some months as it exercised military control of central Paris and drove the bourgeois government out. But as a number of the post below show, the Paris Commune failed to follow through to use its power to destroy the existing state and suffered a massive repression and destruction.]
In 1905 Russia, unmistakably similar organizations sprang into existence. These worker’s councils, called ‘Soviets’, were the organizational basis for the failed uprising in 1905, and were reconstructed anew and on a broader level for the successful revolution of 1917. For several years, the coordinated efforts of the nationwide system of Soviets acted as the backbone of organization for the successful civil-war and subsequent reconstruction. Following the successes of Russia, soviet-style organizational methods were constructed throughout Europe in response to the widespread social turbulence caused by World War I. In 1919, the working class of Germany formed soviets of their own, which acted as the foundation for the heroic but failed revolution.
[The critical factor in Russia was that the Soviets won over the majority of workers, poor peasants and soldiers to its program: peace, land, bread. This left the bourgeois government of Kerensky without popular support or armed forces capable of destroying the soviets. Most important, however, the success of the soviets was due to the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, led by Lenin, which fought against an political concessions to Kerensky and maintained the armed independence of the workers, poor peasants and soldiers soviets.]
Years later, the Spanish Revolution made good use of the same independent method of organization, where in many towns, all the functions of normal government were revolutionized to an extent that the word ‘government’ seemed hardly applicable. After World War II, ‘worker’s committees’ and militias sprang into existence in Italy and Greece, accompanied by revolutionary upheavals.
[But what is not mentioned here, is that these attempts to form soviets foundered on the betrayals of the stalinists who stabbed the popular movement in the back in order to prop up the bourgeois republican goverment. This was the equivalent of the period between February and April in Russia, when in Lenin's absence, leading Bolsheviks like Stalin were prepared to join in the bourgeois regime to fight for a national democratic revolution. With the arrival of Lenin, the Bolsheviks were forced to recognise that only a socialist revolution could complete the tasks of the national democratic revolution i.e. parliamentary democracy, land reform etc. In Spain the Stalinists murdered Trotskyists and Anarchists who wanted to form a workers and poor peasants republic independent of the bourgeoisie.]
Because of their accomplishments, the above events are the most frequently cited examples of government via ‘popular assembly’, but such occurrences have happened— albeit on a smaller scale— countless times throughout modern history. In times of crisis, the inefficient, bureaucratic methods of the elite-run state become intolerable; people feel compelled to organize their communities themselves. The triggering event can be a variety of things: war, economic depression, a general strike (strike committees are notorious for evolving into ‘popular assemblies’), natural disaster, and in the case of Oaxaca, outrage caused by state repression. In fact, popular assemblies often come into being not because of mere desire, but because the old state has completely crumbled, and people are driven towards activity and cooperation out of necessity.
[There is much more involved than and elite repressing the people of Oaxaca. Mexico is a semi-colony of the US and not only is the Mexican state still functioning in repressing popular movements, it is backed up by the US state. The limits of the Oaxaca Commune are that it did not succeed in turning a strong alliance between the teachers of Section 22, the indigenous rural communities, and the working class population of Oaxaca, into a national movement that included the major unions to challenge the inauguration of Calderon in December last year. But to do that it would have had to advance a program for the taking of state power, and created APPOs every in the soviet style i.e. mobilising the majority of workers, poor peasants and winning over the rank and file of the military. However, this could not have materialised out of thin air. Revolutionary Marxists who are active in Oaxaca have to win the majority support for a revolutionary program to break out of the current impasse.]
The events of Oaxaca have proved, once again, that there is a better alternative to the type government we have always been taught is greatest. In any society were vast inequality prevails, the political structure that upholds the status quo inevitably gets separated from the wants of the average person. The wealthy and privileged steer government to meet their own interests by whatever means necessary— media, campaign financing, ballot restrictions, long election terms and consequent unaccountability, the police, voter disenfranchisement (especially minorities and the poor), intimidation, assassination, etc. Wherever far-reaching social progress has been achieved, the state as we know it, with its endless connections to the upper-classes, has been razed and then resurrected on a different, more democratic foundation.
[This is hardly a Marxist analysis of the seizure of state power. Rather it is a watered down concept of a peaceful transition to an 'equal' society that doesnt even mention the word socialism. I guess it is directed at what SA regards as 'backward' US workers who run a mile at the mention of the word 'socialism'. Running scared of this word means that SA is hardly going to build support for a socialist revolution.]
Like its organizational ancestors, Oaxaca’s Popular Assembly worked to overcome the above barriers and shorten the distance between voters and delegate. Unlike the modern, accepted form of democracy, where representatives are free to back-track on their promises the minute after being elected, the Popular Assembly model relies on direct democracy, i.e., delegates must do as expected, or else they are immediately removed. This is possible because voting is done not by region, where people from vast un-connected distances come together once every couple years, but instead, democratic discussion happens in local workplaces, organizations, or neighborhoods, followed by a binding vote. In this way, people are able to respond to events quickly and decide the best way to react; rather than sitting on their hands until the next election hoping that their new ‘representative’ will listen to them instead of the oligarchy.
[Of course workers democracy of this sort is a necessary condition of socialist revolution; but it is not sufficient. Missing in this discussion is any reference to a revolutionary party, program, and the arming of the independent organisations of workers and peasants i.e. workers' militias such as existed in Paris and Russia.]
Such a system is practical on a national and even international level because the majority of people in the world have similar interests. Most of the earth’s population consists of working people who desire the same things: peace, good wages and working conditions, education, health care, a decent standard of living, etc. Those opposing the more-democratic ‘popular assembly’ model of organization are the tiny minority who benefit from the current, vastly unequal system. Indeed, it is the predatory upper classes that ruthlessly squash all independent modes of organization, as they continue to do now in Oaxaca.
There are numerous elements of the Oaxacan movement that have international significance— people in nearly every country can relate to oppressive governments, institutionalized poverty, and barbaric dictators; Oaxaca has merely destroyed the myth that no alternative exists.
A revolution is democratic or it is nothing. The ‘popular assembly’ method of government lays the very foundation for a wider revolutionary process, where masses of people are drawn into social life and given the opportunity to actively participate. It is this element that the upper-classes fear most, and why they strive to destroy it whenever it rears its head.
[At last, some reference to the the fact that the capitalist state survives and is still repressing APPO! The formation of APPO defence squads or militias is absolutely vital. But this requires a consciousness that the old state backed by the US will not fall over by itself. Unlike the EZLN and other advocates of social change without taking state power, the failure to arm itself and win over the rank and file of the military, guarantees the continued military repression of the popular movement.]
In consequence, the elite-controlled international media has deemed the events in Oaxaca un-newsworthy. The task, therefore, of spreading the word about the still-evolving events in Oaxaca— as well as similar manifestations in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia— falls onto those genuinely interested in democracy and equality.
Break Calderón’s “Firm Hand” With Workers Struggle December 20, 2006
Posted by raved in Oaxaca.add a comment
State of Siege in Oaxaca, Arbitrary Arrests in Mexico City
Break Calderón’s “Firm Hand” With Workers Struggle
We Demand Immediate Release of the Prisoners and Presentation of the Disappeared Alive
The new Mexican government of Felipe Calderón is starting out under the sign of mass repression. Following the brutal crackdown of November 25, when federal police attacked participants in a peaceful mass march in Oaxaca, a state of siege has been imposed on the state. Currently the number of those arrested is estimated at 500, of whom some 300 are still behind bars. Another 100 were jailed in previous weeks, some 60 disappeared and 21 opponents of the bloody Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz killed. Now the manhunt has spread to the capital with the arrest on December 4 of Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, the most prominent spokesman for the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). Shortly after, the murderers of the American journalist-activist Bradley Will were released. The Grupo Internacionalista is calling for a national strike against repression and for workers actions internationally to demand the immediate release of all those arrested and the presentation of the dozens of disappeared alive.. Break Calderón’s “Firm Hand” With Workers Struggle (8 December 2006)
What’s wrong with the EZLN Global Mobilizations for Oaxaca? December 18, 2006
Posted by raved in Commune, Oaxaca.add a comment
We call for these actions to come together in a worldwide mobilization for Oaxaca on December 22, 2006.
[Problem is that this is not a serious call to action unless it takes up the main demand of APPO "All Power To The People!"]
December 2 of 2006To the people of Mexico:
To the people of the world:
Brothers and Sisters:
The attack that our brothers, the people of Oaxaca suffered and suffer cannot be ignored by those who fight for freedom, justice and democracy in all corners of the planet.
[Problem is that the EZLN, while giving 'lip service' to APPO has refused to break its agreement with the Fox government not to take up arms against the state. It's 'other' campaign is a utopian post-modern retreat from taking state power to coexistence with capitalist democracy. It mistakenly believes that international 'pressure' on the PAN government will force it to 'self-reform' and refrain from further military repression.]
This is why, the EZLN calls on all honest people, in Mexico and the world, to initiate, starting now, continual actions of solidarity and support to the Oaxacan people, with the following demands:
For the living reappearance of the disappeared, for the freedom of the detained, for the exit of Ulises Ruiz and the federal forces from Oaxaca, for the punishment of those guilty of torture, rape and murder. (en español)
[Problem is that since the EZLN signed a peace treaty with the PAN they and other rebels have been met with continual state repression. These necessary and immediate demands will fail unless backed up by an armed people capable of splitting the military and overthrowing the regime, and constituting a workers and campesinos government.]
We call to those in this international campaign to tell, in all forms and in all places possible, what has occurred and what is occurring in Oaxaca, everyone in their way, time and place.
We call for these actions to come together in a worldwide mobilization for Oaxaca on December 22, 2006.
[Problem is that these mobilizations will not bring APPO one inch closer to its objectives. APPO was formed by Section 22 of the teachers. This radical union group must take the lead and fight to generalise its strike action to all of Mexico, to teachers, steelworkers, miners, public servants. Only by mobilising the big battalions of the Mexican workers can the PAN government be overthrown and a people's government put in its place. Then when the US and other countries intervene to smash this revolution, that will be the time for global mobilisations to initiate labor strikes against the imperialist war machines.]
The people of Oaxaca are not alone. We have to say so and demonstrate it, to them and to everyone.
Democracy!
Freedom!
Justice!
[They are alone while these appeals for support are just words.
Democracy! Freedom! Justice! cannot be realised under capitalism and imperialism. Democracy, freedom and justice means SOCIALIST REVOLUTION]
By the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee – General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico.
[Problem is that the Liberation of Chiapas cannot happen without a Mexican socialist revolution. That means arming the mass of workers to strike, formed a people's militia, and win over the ranks ofthe army - i.e. TO TAKE POWER.]
Insurgent Subcommander Marcos.
Mexico, December of 2006
Oaxaca: The End of Tolerance November 29, 2006
Posted by raved in Commune, Oaxaca.1 comment so far
Why is this Repression Carried out Against the Popular Movement? And why Now?
By Luis Hernández Navarro
La Jornada
November 28, 2006
Oaxaca in 2006 is like Sonora in 1902. At the beginning of the 20th Century the government of Portifirio Diaz confronted the rebellion of the yaqui indigenous people and deported the first indigenous prisoners to the Yucatan, Jalisco, Tlaxcala and Veracruz. In the beginning of the 21st century, the administration of Vincente Fox is responding to the uprising in Oaxaca by sending the 141 detained persons to the prison of San Jose del Rincon in Nayarit.
Vincente Fox will end his six years in power with his hands full of blood. “The tolerance has run out” in Oaxaca, says General Ardelio Vargas, chief of the large force of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), and one of the “heroes”, along with Admiral Wilfrido Robledo, of the repression in Atenco. It is their dogs that are in the street. They throw tear gas, violently beat people, arrest without warrants, invade houses without authorization, destroy property, occupy hospitals and clinics, interfere with the free movement of citizens and sexually violate women.
In the streets the youth are indiscriminately arrested for the sole crime of being young. The prisoners are mistreated, tortured and jailed alongside common criminals. Judicial defense lawyers and family members are not allowed to visit. And, just as with Porfirio Diaz, they are deported.
But the abuses that are carried out against the civilian population by the PFP are not limited to those which are directly committed. Members of the PFP also act as the protectors of the hit men who work in the service of Ulises Ruiz. These gunmen and police, dressed as civilians, travel the streets of Oaxaca City in vehicles with which they kidnap and disappear members of the APPO. These are the caravans of death. These men have been responsible for most of the 20 homicides perpetrated against APPO.
Why is this repression carried out against the popular movement of Oaxaca? And why now? What happened that exhausted the “tolerance” of the federal authorities? Basically there is one reason: in less than a week the Chief Executive will take power in the middle of a huge crisis of legitimacy. Felipe Calderon demanded that Vincent Fox, since he had not resolved the conflict of Oaxaca, at least leave the social movement weakened enough to guarantee a future for negotiation under conditions favorable to the government. With prisoners and persecuted persons, one would imagine that reaching an agreement with the demonstrators would be easier and cheaper. Calderon demanded that it be the outgoing administration and not the incoming one that pays the price of disrepute for the repression of Oaxaca. In summary: that the way would be cleared. In this way, Calderon was able to discourage the massive presence of Oaxacans who would have contested his assumption of power during the coming first days of December.
The overwhelming presence of the PFP in Oaxaca since October 29 did not stop the protests against Ulises Ruiz from keeping up a vibrant presence. It did not break up the popular organization nor stop the revolt. On the contrary, the APPO excitedly continued with the formation of its congress and reaffirmed its internal unity.
Nevertheless, apart from the confrontations like those that occurred on November 2, the conflict at hand was relatively contained. Governability had not been reestablished, nor had the normality of daily life in the city, but points of informal communication existed between the federal government and the directors of the APPO: It was, at that time, a conflict that was relatively administered. This status, however, was inconvenient for the government and so it decided to enter the city and break the situation.
Did the popular movement do something that broke this balance? No, definitely not. The demonstrations of this past Saturday were absolutely peaceful. It was, obviously, a demonstration with much power, but it did not constitute an act of violence. The decision to use violence came from, as has been amply documented, the PFP. It was the members of this institution that threw projectiles and later tear gas at the demonstrators. It was they who began the aggression. And they did it brutality and with rancor. They were there to crush the demonstrators, and to make them pay with a vengeance. The repression was savage: three deaths, more than 100 injured, 221 detained.
And the PFP did all of this alongside the gunmen and the police, dressed as civilians who are in the service of Ulises Ruiz, while protecting them. They fired against and they kidnapped defenseless civilians, attacked those who were in the bus station of ADO (a bus company) waiting for transportation out of the city and did what they had done during the last few months: seed terror.
Simultaneously, Radio Ciudadana, popularly known as “Radio Patito,” the pirate station of state government loyalists, called upon those in Oaxaca to set fire to the homes of well-known members of the popular movement. This was not a joke. On Sunday, November 26, the offices of Flavio Sosa, one of the most well-known voices of the APPO, were burned. Of course, neither the PFP nor the state police prevented it.
“[The situation] is becoming normalized,” Ulises Ruiz said in one more of his involuntary jokes. “There will not be forgiveness,” he warned. As candidate for governor of the state, Ulises introduced himself as “a man of unity (unidad).” Today we know that at that time he was missing three letters from the word: Ruiz is the politician of impunity (impunidad).
The repressive violence in Oaxaca is the gold clasp in which Vicente Fox closes his six years in office, but it is also the card that presents Felipe Calderon. Without recognizing it, they have decreed a state of siege. The rights of the individual have disappeared entirely.
Nonetheless, the measure is not going to solve anything. Those who executed the state of siege have forgotten two small details. First, the enormous capacity for resistance that exists among the people of Oaxaca, and second, that what they have really done in suppressing the people is to further spread the recognition of the state’s crimes, indignation and the desire for revenge on the part of the citizens in many parts of the nation. The tolerance, understand this well, has also run out on the other side.
“All Power to the People” November 22, 2006
Posted by raved in Commune, Oaxaca.add a comment
CONSTITUTIVE CONGRESS OF THE
POPULAR ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLES OF OAXACA
GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS OF THE WORK GROUPS
WORK GROUP ONE:
AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERNATIONAL,
NATIONAL AND STATE CONTEXT
A. INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
- A Neoliberal economic model has been initiated at the world level, favoring the interests of big multinational finance capital and harming the welfare of the big social majorities.
- The characteristics of the above mentioned neoliberal model are the privatization of all natural resources, of biodiversity, and of the national patrimony; the destruction of the cultures of indigenous people, and the unraveling and disintegration of the social fabric; and the dismantling, amongst others, of the institutions that guarantee the economic, social and cultural rights.
- The said model uses a variety of methods to take over the land and natural resources: such as the destruction of the national legal framework; to interfere in the electoral process of sovereign nations; and the legalization of torture, repression, kidnapping, murder and preemptive war.
- All over the world multinational capital has developed technology by the overexploitation of labor.
- United States imperialism endeavors to control its competitors through the appropriation of world oil reserves and other strategic natural resources. For that purpose it has used a policy of war — which is manifested in its intervention in the Middle East and in Latin America through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Plan Puebla-Panama and the economic blockade over Cuba — by promoting big economic investments in strategic places by which it tries to impose its policies on the rest of the world.
- With globalization, capitalism is promoting more of its contradictions and it’s moving towards the next world war. In this context, the European Union is the result of the internal confrontation within capitalism, giving impulse to the opening of borders and the adoption of a single currency: the euro is a way to face the imperialism coming from the United States.
- Capitalism promotes a policy of dependence and indebtedness through multilateral finance organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, amongst others, which has grave consequences in the economic, political, social and cultural areas.
- In the face of this neoliberal aggression, some people and social sectors have been resisting and are preparing to face the adversity in an organized fashion, and with proposals. So big demonstrations have arisen in different parts of the globe with special attention to the resistance struggles of the people in the Middle East, of immigrants within the developed countries — in particular France and the United States — and the popular uprisings in Latin America.
- The popular struggle is also reflected in the election processes revealing itself as a form of anti-imperialist struggle. In Latin America we have definite examples in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Nicaragua.
B. NATIONAL CONTEXT
10. The economic policy of the United States and the finance oligarchy have demonstrated the imposition of their ideas and policies on national governments, especially on the Mexican government, which has provoked more and more organized reactions from the population.
11. This policy has been reflected in the dismantling of the main social rights inscribed in the Mexican Constitution, in particular those in articles 3, 27 and 123, which have left the most vulnerable social sectors without protection.
12. The current national context is framed by the arrival in power of the ultra right, specifically the Yunque group [translators note: the Anvil group], permitting higher levels of corruption, and the pillage by national and foreign capital. This has made the workers poorer and has concentrated wealth to a smaller number of families. That is, it makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
13. This policy of entreguismo (the giveaway of the national patrimony) has caused the destruction of the internal market with the signing of NAFTA and other commercial treaties, advancing the introduction of foreign products and causing the ruin of national producers.
14. This aggression has been particularly alarming for the case of traditional agriculture and the growing and harvesting of corn, which have been the material and spiritual base for the indigenous people in Mexico in living together.
15. The contradictory aspect of this policy is that the number of immigrants grows more and more, strengthening the economy of the United States while causing our country to become weaker. This is reflected in low wages and deepening economic inequalities between geographic regions, in particular between the north and south of Mexico.
16. Current governments lack legitimacy and electoral processes have demonstrated that taking part in elections is no guarantee that political parties are at the service of the majority of society.
17. Political parties have accepted the rules of the Mexican State, and electoral fraud at the state and national level has been constant.
18. One feature of the Mexican government in this period has been an increase in repression against all popular and social movements in order to try to stop the advancing social discontent of the Mexican people. We can mention concrete cases, amongst others, the Pasta de Conchos, SICARTSA, Atenco and the open repression towards the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO).
19. The model of the Mexican State, attempts to deliver all natural resources to big consortiums, impoverishing people even more, instead of guaranteeing the protection and custody of those resources to local communities. This has created a more organized and wider response with the popular sectors that oppose this policy.
C. STATE CONTEXT
20. We are living a deep political crisis with the current state of ungovernability, where political, legal, social and religious institutions have been completely bypassed by society.
21. This crisis has aspects that are of great concern to the indigenous population who live with permanent attacks on their political institutions and judicial systems.
22. The most serious and damaging aspect of this crisis is shown by the existance of a State Executive Branch that symbolizes the authoritarian, corrupt and a cacique-like power which, lacking all legitimacy, uses the repressive means within its reach, violates social peace, and worsens conflicts and ungovernability in all aspects and social levels.
23. The Legislative Power has, during recent times, passed legislation behind the back of Oaxacan society, a situation that has been aggravated in the current context of ungovernabilty and violence.
24. Currently, there is a systematic violation of human rights, individual and social rights. This has been aggravated by the State Government carrying out a policy of state terrorism directed, in particular, towards organizations, authorities and social leaders who are opposed to this illegitimate regime.
25. A special mention must be made about the aggression that the independent media has suffered such as the newspaper Noticias, Radio Universidad and different indigenous community radio stations that exist in the state.
26. The public powers that claim to represent us are not doing so. They are exclusive institutions at the service of the political and economic elites, and that are becoming more and more difficult to transform.
27. There is a denial of justice to indigenous populations and, in general, to the poorest and most vulnerable social sectors.
28. The existence and contribution of Black people to the development of life in the state has been denied.
29. It is obvious the discrimination against sexual minorities, in particular the lesbian, gay, transsexual and transgender communities who have been the subject of exclusion, hate and homophobic campaigns.
30. There is total corruption and a lack of transparency in the use of public resources. Also, there is no involvement of the citizens in the design, allocation and follow up process of said resources.
31. The government pushes globalization plans favoring multinational investments that monopolize wealth by making mega-projects, such as: the trans-isthmic train Coatzacoalcos-Salina Cruz, the wind power project in La Venta, the tourist corridor Pinotepa Nacional-Huatulco, and the privatization of mineral resources in the Sierra Sur mountain range.
32. There is a severe destruction of the natural and cultural wealth of the communities and people of Oaxaca. This is worsened by land conflicts that persist in all regions of the State, without the attempts for real solutions through dialogue and reconciliation.
33. As a response to this situation, the people of Oaxaca have mobilized to form the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca that, nowadays, constitutes a new form of struggle. It has extended its experience and similar assemblies have been created in different places: in seven states of the republic and in the Unites States. And this perspective appears to be forming the Popular Assembly of the People of Mexico.
34. The result of this mobilization is that at the state, national and international level there is a correlation of forces in favor of the exit of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO), the withdrawal of the Preventive Federal Police (PFP) from the state, the presentations of those missing and the liberation of political prisoners.
35. APPO has had the capacity to bring together other unifying efforts such as “La Otra Campaña”, the National Democratic Convention (CND), the PUNCN, the National Dialogues, Unions, Social and Indigenous Organizations, Groups and Collectives — giving impetus to increased national unity.
WORK GROUP TWO:
A CRISIS OF THE INSTITUTIONS
The crisis of the institutions is derived from the crisis of capitalism in its most violent expression. In this economic model the institutions only respond to the interests of the class in power. We are therefore facing a crisis at a national and global scale where the economic, political, judicial and social system is being questioned. And since it is based on corruption, lack of legitimacy and anti democracy it can only remain in power through repression.
This crisis of the institutions originates in the fact that they no longer represent the legitimate interests of society, which has made the people stop believing in them. That is why society itself is looking for new organizational and representative ways, building democratic spaces that would permit them to face this severe crisis.
In the case of Oaxaca, the observed crisis is a result of the authoritarian, corrupt, pro-corporate, and cacique-like politics of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz — who represents the end of authoritarian governments using corporativismo and paternalism to control people, and the beginnings of those using open repression. That is why the society of Oaxaca is demanding his ouster because he represents the authoritarian regime. [translators note: a repressive authoritarian regime]
It is in this context that APPO appears: the beginning of a new power that transforms from an organizational model, initially defensive, to an organic proposition with ample capacity to summon people to exercise their popular sovereignty.
APPO should strengthen local processes, that Oaxacan society has been building for quite some time, and processes that have been accomplished during the current period of struggle. This should be done through ways that allow us to build from below a new life project, a new social pact, a new convention to write a new constitution and a new way of social living based on justice, democracy and peace.
In this way, APPO has at the moment three urgent tasks:
- To construct an organization and a space at the state level at the service of the people of Oaxaca.
- To transform this popular revolt into a peaceful, democratic and humane revolution.
- To connect and join the national and international context in the fight against neoliberalism and against any form of injustice against society.
As the repository of sovereign power, APPO has already carried out some governing acts: such as the creation and consolidation of the Oaxaca Teacher’s Police Force (POMO), the creation of the Honorable Corps of Topiles, and practices of the citizen’s impulse for self-defense, among others — which show the need to continue building upon and strengthening this newly born process.
The community assemblies are recognized as a basic unit in the decision making process within APPO, because of the traditional way by which the people establish their representatives. We have demonstrated that using the method of the Assembly is the only way to generate wide discussion, the participation of the community, decisions reached by consensus, as well as the participation of those who, because of their age, have community experience. That is why, faced with state laws which do not represent nor solicit democratic proposals of the participants in the current process, we should be pushing to exercise our own regulatory system.
APPO should be strengthened with the widest and most pluralistic participation striving to integrate those sectors that are not present, while continuing real transformation through peaceful struggle and wide mass mobilization.
Even though the immediate goal of APPO is to fight for the ouster of URO, it is necessary to immediately begin discussions with all sectors, in order to generate a new social pact and the necessary reforms that would allow the transformation of institutions; and to start establishing, as a central part of the struggle, the creation of an assembly to write a new constitution.
As the seed of the new power, tactically, APPO should be proposing the creation of democratic institutions as well as, strategically, the strengthening and building of popular power and towards the creation of an assembly to write a new constitution. This in order to issue a new constitution that contains the basic regulations for political and social cohabitation for all the men and women of Oaxaca.
Some of the proposals that should be immediately set forth in order to carry out the social transformations, in the opinion of this Constituent Congress, are the following:
The political area
- To make the division of the government branches real and effective, we must fight to have judicial power that is really independent in its decisions and resolutions. Collegiate bodies of judges should be established in order to make the judicial system more democratic and open to citizens. In a similar way, we have to work very hard for Legislative power to have real autonomy before Executive power — it must be widely controlled by society through effective, transparent and democratic means.
- To review the pacto federal, to influence the necessary national legislative changes needed to favor the interests of the people of Oaxaca.
- Judicial recognition of Popular City Halls that have been created during the current period of mobilization. The members of the overthrown municipal governments must be audited and charges laid for any unlawful activities they may have done against the people.
- Make the human rights institutions more accessible to citizens and really independent from the powers of the State. This is of great importance because, up to now, the Human Rights State Commission, far from defending the basic rights of the people of Oaxaca, has been attacking the citizens and covering up the actions of bad government.
- To substantially reform the current County Organic Law (Ley Orgánica Municipal) since it doesn’t recognize the fundamental rights of the population of the counties, agencies and community groups (nucleos comunitarios). We need a new County Law that truly reflects the multiethnic, multicultural and diverse composition of Oaxacan society.
- To build and strengthen new forms of struggle by retaking experiences based in the community (tequio, community assemblies, a system of roles and collective ownership of the land), by the organization of popular neighborhoods, the barricades, the juntas de buen gobierno which have allowed us to advance in social organization and in the exercise of autonomy.
- Recognition and respect for free determination and autonomy of indigenous people in all aspects (political, economic, social, educational and cultural) and at all levels (community, county and regional).
- Elimination of the Government Delegations because they have become controlling and manipulating bodies for the municipal authorities and in all cases they are intermediates between the State Government and County Governments in open contradiction of article 115 of the Federal Constitution.
- With the purpose of strengthening the autonomy of municipalities and communities, it is suggested to write and consolidate our own regulations such as the Community and County Bylaws.
- To provide incentives and encourage the participation of women in politics by creating the conditions for it within the assemblies and spaces for citizen decisions.
- Strict respect to the separation of Church and State. No to Church meddling in state and national political life.
In the electoral area
- Abrogation and derogation of the constitutional reforms and of the state laws that have been issued by the current Local Legislature, since they have been made without the participation of society and they go against the basic principles of democracy, peace and justice in Oaxaca.
- At the same time, it is proposed that the county authorities present before the Supreme Court, the constitutional controversies to annul the electoral reforms made by the Local Congress, in which it extends itself for a period of one more year and this was done without any consultation from the population.
- To establish new forms of citizen participation and legitimacy in democratic life through the recognition of the referendum, the revocation of mandate, popular consultation, the plebiscite, popular initiative, a second round in elections and the creation of a Council of the People as a body to watch government actions, among others.
- Recognition of ways and processes of participation and representation of indigenous people at the state and national debating-decision making bodies, based on their conceptions and democratic practices arising from their political and legal systems.
- Elimination of representatives of plurinominales.
- To support the participation of citizens in institutions and election processes, as well as initiating an austerity program with the purpose of avoiding the plundering and squandering of the electoral institutions and political parties. The money saved should be used for social programs. The electoral institutions and political parties must serve society in a real and effective way and not serve the political class and its leaders.
Translation: Dean Gibson
Economic aspects
- To establish mechanisms of supply and commercialization where the consumers and the producers have a direct relation and to avoid being victims of intermediaries.
- To demand and promote cooperatives and other economic mechanisms in which the means of production are in the hands of the workers.
- Orchestration of regional sustainable development projects. It is proposed that Oaxacan society should promote legislation about sustainability and the environment.
- We should put a stop to the exorbitant salaries of popular representatives and of public functionaries. Equally, we should promote a law of transparency where all functionaries should produce accounts to the populations, under the principle of leading by obeying. We roundly reject the recent law of transparency approved by the Local Congress.
- Put the internal treasury office under citizen control and implement a popular fiscal body.
- Make information respecting the federal and state economic resources destined for society transparent, particularly sections (ramos) 28 and 33 that correspond to the municipalities and establish mechanisms for vigilance in order that they commit those resources adequately and opportunely. Also, we should implement mechanisms for participation in the distribution of those resources, so that agencies and localities of the municipalities decide on their application.
- Given the social and political crisis in which we are living, we exhort the Federal Chamber of Deputies in order that the budget corresponding to the fiscal year 2007 destined for Oaxaca does not pass through the hands of the governor, but that by means of the regionalization of the state they establish with those resources a trust with equitable funds in order that they are administrated and exercised by the municipal agencies, county, communal and traditional authorities, the associations of municipal authorities and the community and regional organizations by means of works, projects and actions that they freely determine.
- Judicial, economic and fiscal recognition and valorization of communal labor commonly known as tequio which already constitutes an economic contribution of our communities and municipalities. This proposal should be taken up in the framework of budgetary reform, since currently this law harms the majority of the population and many of their capabilities are not understood by society.
- Respect the autonomy of indigenous peoples so they maintain the control, use and enjoyment of their lands, territories and natural resources.
- Implement the necessary legal mechanisms before the International Labor Organizations (ILO) in order to delay the economic mega-projects that they are implementing in diverse regions of Oaxaca, especially Plan Puebla Panama.
Social aspects
- Implement mechanisms that guarantee the health and safety of workers, making effective the quality and freedom of those services. Health and education services should be brought to all corners of the state.
- People with disabilities also have a right to a dignified life. We propose the implementation of a pension for the differently-abled for their access to medical treatments and the granting of scholarships to study in their particular conditions. Labor opportunities should be open for this sector of the population without discrimination.
- Concerning the education question, the magisterio, and society in general, plan to implement an emancipatory, critical, scientific, liberating and free education, which respects and promotes inter-culturalism and the values of communitarian ethics.
- The promotion of a true intercultural, bilingual, indigenous education in all educational spheres and levels. The use of indigenous languages in the schools should be rescued and strengthened.
- Education should be a patrimony for all. For this it is suggested that there is total economic support for children until they can satisfactorily complete their formative activities, in particular those that do not have the necessary resources for their studies.
- It is proposed that educational institutions, in all areas and levels, stop charging inscription quotas; have scholarships for students of limited economic means; offer a discount of at least 50% for all students that use the transport system and that they implement programs of civic and political education for all society.
- We propose the amplification of scholar matriculation and inscription in the Bilingual and Intercultural Normal School of Oaxaca, likewise the creation of the Degree of Preschool Bilingual and Intercultural Education.
- Create a commission in the Local Committee of Conciliation and Arbitrage, formed by union representatives in order to ensure the exact observance of the Federal Labor Law. Also, we propose that complaints of employer aggression against workers proceed and that there are severe punishments in cases in which they violate the law, including the possibility of the closure of their businesses and prior compensation of the workers. Equally, we suggest that there be a sharing of profits.
- Promote the establishment of common means of communication and to gain access to the public and private means of communication in order to contribute to spreading the social reality.
- The Constitutional Congress of the APPO energetically rejects the recent reforms of the Federal Law of Radio and Television and the General Law of Telecommunications, which favor opening the large channels of radio and television to the detriment of the community and social initiatives in matters of information and communication.
- We propose that the Oaxaca Radio and Television Corporation pass into the hands of Oaxacan society.
- The diverse religions that exist in the state should strictly respect the forms of life and organization of the indigenous peoples and if necessary contribute to maintaining and strengthening their cultures.
- The guelagetza is an ancestral festival of the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca. It is a harmonious festival that should bring together Oaxacan society. We should promote and strengthen it from the perspective of being popular and free. This festival should be organized by the Cultural Commission of the APPO.
- The control and administration archeological zones should be passed to the hands of the indigenous communities and peoples.
- We demand that the state company PEMEX adopt the policy of ending the contamination of the Mexican Pacific with hydrocarbons. We should stop the continued destruction of fisheries and marine crustaceans in the zone, leaving our fisher people unemployed and lacking the possibility of support, which has obligated them to migrate to other regions of the country and the world.
- We should legislate and implement governmental policies and programs in agrarian matters in order to resolve the current conflict, privileging dialogue and reconciliation between the involved parties. This legislation should be based on the original letter and spirit of article 27 of the Federal Constitution.
- We reject completely the Certification and Accreditation Program of the Communal and Ejidal Properties promoted by the Agrarian Attorney’s Office that has already manifested an aggression to the collective systems of land tenure and only seeks privatization of ejidal and communal lands.
- Society should recover the Verde Antequera. For this we should demand the restitution of green stone to the zócalo, the reconstruction of the fountain of the seven regions and the llano, the repair and compensation for the damages to the hill of Fortín. Also, we should halt the construction works on the ADO bus terminal in the neighborhood of Jalatlaco. In all, we should demand an end to the aggression that the city of Oaxaca is suffering on the part of the Municipal and State Governments. It is necessary to organize ourselves for the defense of the natural and cultural patrimony of Oaxaca.
TASKS
- Determine, in the present stage, the objectives that the APPO should set as a resistance movement constructing popular power, applying the agreements and resolutions from the Forum “Constructing Democracy and Governability” and the agreements of the “Citizen Initiative of the Dialogue for Peace, Justice and Democracy in Oaxaca” and the diverse resolutions of the events that we have held.
- Consolidating and constructing the APPO as a force of the bases that are concretized in the communities, municipalities, towns, regions and in the state.
- Exercise the right of information and communication by means of the creation and, in some cases, the appropriation and use of community communications media.
- Organize and spread the proposals emanating from this assembly, in what are referred to as the organizational, legal, tactical and strategic aspects.
- That the agreements that emanate from this Congress are taken through consultation to all of society so that they are improved and complimented, guaranteeing that all feel reflected and represented in the approaches of the APPO. The State Council of the APPO should immediately organize thematic sessions in order to deepen each of the themes’ development in this section.
- That this Congress approves and forms a Citizen Commission that investigates the property holdings that Ulises Ruiz has inside and outside of Oaxaca and that those interests are confiscated and used for the benefit of society.
- With the new acts of violence and ungovernability that have occurred in Oaxaca, caused by the bad government, this Congress energetically solicits the Senate of the Republic to decree the disappearance of powers in the state and a political judgment (juicio) against Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
- Forming a technical plural commission, that gathers together the popular proposals and gives substance to the political, economic, social, educational, and cultural nature and these proposals.
- Promoting the State Forum of the Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca to be held in the city of Oaxaca on November 28 and 29.
- Promote the realization of the second Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Mexico to be held on November 18 and 19 in the auditorium of SITUAM.
WORKGROUP THREE:
THE POPULAR ASSEMBLY
OF THE PEOPLES OF OAXACA
I. DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES
- COMMUNITY AND AUTONOMY. The APPO will rebuild the communalism and autonomy of the indigenous peoples in order to strengthen their struggle and guarantee its continuance.
- DISCIPLINE AND RESPECT. The members of the APPO should follow and carry out the agreements of the State Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca and the structures of coordination. Likewise, all APPO members will have the obligation of mutual respect in their actions.
- HONESTY AND TRANSPARENCY. These principles will be carried out as norms of conduct for all members.
- REVOCATION OF THE MANDATE. For all the State Council representatives and the other positions in the APPO.
- PLEBISCITES AND REFERENDA. They will be held in order to approve and sanction the fundamental and important decisions of the movement.
- DEMOCRACY. All decisions that are taken by the APPO shall and will be analyzed and discussed in the bases. The Councils and the APPO, in the state, regional, district, and municipal levels, will be integrated in a democratic, honest, inclusive, transparent, and pluralist form.
- NO RE-ELECTION. No member of the State Council may be re-elected.
- EQUALITY AND GENDER EQUITY. All members are equal, with the same rights and obligations, regardless of sex, social condition, or creed.
- EQUALITY AND JUSTICE. All agreements and decisions of the APPO will always seek equality and justice.
- SERVICE. To lead and represent by obeying. To serve to people, without receiving pay for carrying out functions.
- UNITY. All the people, sectors, regions, organizations, communities, municipalities, neighborhoods, colonias, subdivisions, amongst other participants in the APPO, will seek and always prioritize the unity of the movement above all.
- MEMBER AUTONOMY. Each organization, person, community, or collective, will maintain their autonomy without infringing the resolutions of the APPO.
- INDEPENDENCE. The APPO is independent politically, organizationally and ideologically from the state and political parties. There cannot be leaders or members of the PRI and PAN as members of the APPO; this assembly is not a political trampoline.
- INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY. The APPO is in solidarity with the struggles of all the people of the world.
- CONSENSUS. All decisions will be made through consensus. The decisions and positions of the APPO will come exclusively from the Assemblies and collective discussions.
- LIBERTY. We will always respect ideological and religious plurality and freedom, when not violating our other principles.
- CRITICISM AND SELF-CRITICISM. At all times we will practice criticism and self-criticism as methods for internal discussions.
- INCLUSIVITY AND RESPECT OF DIVERSITY. The character of the APPO shall be pluralist, broad, popular, inclusive, democratic, multicultural and respectful of diversity, including sexual diversity.
- ANTIIMPERIALIST, ANTIFASCIST AND ANTICAPITALIST, this economic and social model has already assaulted us, and the APPO should look for a new model of life.
- PEACEFUL SOCIAL AND POLITICAL MOVEMENT. The APPO, in order to achieve its goals, should implement dialogue, conscientization and the permanent political-ideological formation of its members.
II. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
- The number of members of the Council is important, if it is too large it is less operable. This Council will be composed of 10 representatives of each region, five men and five women. The length can be two years and the Regional Assembly can revoke any member that does not fulfill their duties.
- That each region has ten representatives except for the Central Valleys. In the valleys participation will consist of representatives of colonias, barricades, women, communities, municipalities, and organizations. We propose that there be 3-5 representatives per sector and, taking into account the petition of the comrades of the health sector, there should be representation of all sectors, communities and regions.
- The council will rotate and have a length of one to two years.
- That after the naming of the Council a date is set in order to name regional, district, municipal and local representatives in order to achieve the true structure of the APPO.
- There are various organizations that work for the environment and rural development, and they should be included in the structure.
- That the election be proportional, according to the number of members from each organization.
- The following are included in the composition of the Council: Felipe Martínez Soriano, Mendoza Nube, Felipe Canseco, Dr. Víctor Raúl Martínez, the rector of the University.
- For the membership of the Council there be 10 individuals from each region, 20 from Valles Centrales, and five from each sector.
- Also, it is suggested that the following commissions are formed: Popular Councils, Colonias and Barricades (or Neighborhood Vigilance), Gender Equity, Defense of Natural Resources, Communication, Indigenous Peoples, Community Development.
- That the Commissions are composed of two people, a man and a woman.
- Create departments for attention to health, livelihood, education, elderly safety, differently-abled.
- Name a draft commission that systematizes the material of the declaration of principles, organizational structure, government bodies, programs, tactics, strategies, etc., and integrates this in a single document and presents the proposed structure of statutes of the APPO, for its approval through our decision-making process.
Internal commissions of the Popular Council of the Peoples of Oaxaca:
1. Commission of Organization and Planning
2. Commission of Liaison and Relations
3. Commission of Press and Propaganda
4. Judicial Commission
5. Safety Commission
6. Finance Commission
7. Education Commission
8. Commission of Culture and Recreation
9. Commission of Comprehensive Health
10. Human Rights Commission
11. Commission of Honor and Justice
12. Commission of Administration and Conflict Resolution
13. Technical and Editorial Commission of APPO documentation
14. Commission of Indigenous Peoples
15. Social Security Commission
16. Commission of Popular Councils
17. Commission of Colonias and Barricades
18. Commission of Gender Equity
19. Commission of Defense and Development of the Territories, Natural Resources and Environment
20. Commission of Communication and Transportation (Radio and Television)
21. Commission of Community and Rural Development
22. Student Commission
23. Commission of Labor and Union Rights
III. PERSPECTIVES
The APPO is the expression of the sovereign power of Oaxaca that concretizes and globalizes the just and dignified struggle of the peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico and of the world. The APPO is a large plural and diverse movement, and the great strength and legitimacy that it represents is the foundation for the construction and exercise of popular and sovereign power.
- The APPO has to be concerned with democracy, pluralism, transparency, and balance of accounts.
- The APPO has to also be representative of the indigenous peoples, blacks, women, the young, etc., with legitimate representatives, ensuring the respect of popular wishes and power.
- It is important that the APPO promotes a popular continental front.
- It is important that the APPO includes all the demands of the people of Oaxaca.
- The APPO has to be pluralist and democratic, in this sense the participation and activities of women are important.
- The APPO should fight for the freedom of expression and defend the respect for community radio and independent media.
- Consolidation and promotion of the APPOs in working-class housing, colonias, neighborhoods, communities, municipalities, and regions.
- Assume as a body the defense of human rights; demanding a stop to repression, a presentation of the disappeared alive, freedom for all political prisoners and prisoners of conscious in Oaxaca and the whole country, the political exile Raul Gatica, likewise a demand of a trust for the family of the fallen comrades in this stage of struggle.
- The APPO will be a promoter of State and National unity under the premise that power should be at the service of the people.
- Support the defense of Public Education.
- The APPO will support the construction of democracy and governability in a participatory, inclusive, horizontal and plural form.
- Maintain as a principal demand the exit of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, at the same time, pushing for a profound and cross-cutting transformation of the authoritarian regime, through promoting a new social pact, a new constitution and political program that emanates from this Congress, under the premise of transparency, balance of accounts, and revocation of the mandate.
- Promote an agreement restoring the social fabric, including a punishment for those responsible for the murders, tortures and disappearances in the state.
- This congress echoes, from this moment on, the resolutions from the Forum “Constructing Democracy and Governability” and the resolutions and products of the Citizen Initiative of the Dialogue for Peace, Justice and Democracy in Oaxaca.
- he APPO will promote the construction and strengthening of a popular power and respect for the popular will, linking with the national and international movement.
- Begin to exercise acts of governance that strengthen the popular government.
Translation: Chris Halvorsen
I. 6. ACTION PLAN
DATE ACTIVITY PLACE PARTICIPANTS
- 13th November March 10h from the Procuraduria to Santo Domingo General public
- 14th November Student march in defense of UABJO autonomy and to kick out PFP 10h from Radio Universidad to Santo Domingo Students and APPO; Strengthening barricades at Ciudad Universitaria, Santa Lucía and Cinco Señores Ciudad Universitaria, Santa Lucía and Señores. There is a proposal to blockade the Avenue of Patriotic Symbols. Groups of people converging on the basis of particular activity. Establishing blockades of government offices Every public government office Youth propose that they could start this activity.
- 15th November March against the URO report 9h from the Juárez monument (Guelatao exit) to Santo Domingo; 8h rally at the Chamber of Deputies in Jalpan, march to Santo Domingo; 8h rally at the Brenamiel Junction to block the report from being released in the Conventions Centre APPO calls on general public.
- 15th November Meeting to protest against Felipe Calderón 10h in the Federal District, house of compaña de Felipe Calderón Organizations in Mexico City
- 16th November March 16h from the Puente Carrilo Port to the Municipality of Santa Lucía del Camino Barricades at Cinco Señores and Santa Lucía and the general public.
- 17th and 18th November long walk/motor caravan from all the region. Leaving from the regions to arrive on the 20th November in Oaxaca City. March together with the inhabitants of the City and taking over of Palace. Regions and general public.
- 17th November Human Chain in Mexico City 10h at the PFP offices in the Federal District Organizations in Mexico City
- 17th November National Encuentro with APPO: “In Defence of Oaxaca” 10h Club de Periodistas. Filomeno Mata Number 8, Historic Centre, Mexico City. Peoples, organizations and citizens from throughout Mexico.
- 17th and 18th November Attending the CNI event 10h, Mezcala, Jalisco. A delegation from APPO
- 18th November Second Ordinary National Congress of the “Promotion for National Unity Against Neoliberalism” 10h in section 9 of SNTE in Mexico City Various organization.
- 18th November Preparatory Assembly of the 4th National Dialogue in Mexico City Mexico City. In the Alliance of Tram Workers, located in Dr.Lucio No. 29. Near Balderas metro Various organizations
- 18th and 19th November Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Mexico, with participation of APPO. 10h at SITUAM. This activity should be broadly supported by APPO. APPO and other organizations.
- 18th November Mobilization in la Venta La Venta, Istmo Organizations from the regio.
- 19th November Assembly of the Peoples of Zapoteco, Mixe and Chinanteco de la Sierra Norte From 10h onwards, Guelatao de Juárez, Oaxaca, Authorities, organizations and citizens of the Zapoteco, Mixe and Chinanteco Peoples.
- 20th November Commemoration Day of 96 years of the Mexican Revolution, with the arrival of seven motorized marches in the City of Resistance in order to hold a political-cultural meeting. Venustiano Carranza Park Regions and general public.
- 20th November Taking of Government Palace. National civic shutdown Oaxaca and Mexico APPO.
- 21st November Start of a hunger strike at embassies in Mexico City Embassies in Mexico City APPO and national solidarity organizations.
- 25th November Mega-march demanding that URO and PFP leave Oaxaca. Leaving from Santa María Coyotepec to the Zócalo in Oaxaca City. Blockades of the entrances to Mexico City are also envisaged APPO and the general public.
- 28th and 29th November State Forum of the Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca 10h at the Church of the Poor Authorities and organizations of Indigenous Peoples from Oaxaca.
- 30th November Beginning of a day of state, national and international protest and mobilization against Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon. Throughout all the regions of the state, and in Oaxaca City. APPO and the general public.
- 1st December Continuing massive national level mobilizations against Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox. Occupying federal government offices and toll booths of major roads. Oaxaca City and all the state’s regions. APPO and the general public.
ACTIONS AND GENERAL MEASURES
- APPO Councilors should be present at the barricades in order to coordinate activities and to avoid confrontation with State forces. It is also suggested that there be a meeting with barricade participants to decide which will be installed.
- Organizing coordinated marches throughout the State.
- State-wide and national civic shutdown.
- Mobilization of different social sectors.
- Take over of town halls, government offices and major roads. Regional actions and mobilizations should be carried out in coordination with the actions in Oaxaca City, especially with regard to setting up new barricades in the City.
- Strengthening the encampments in Santo Domingo and Mexico City. Organizations are asked to strengthen plantones in these places.
- Appointing an APPO commission to support the two groups of applicants to the Normal Schools.
- Take over all transport in order to analyze the services on offer and their costs.
- Open a bank account for APPO’s expenses and publicly spread information about how donations can be made.
- Destroy all URO propaganda and plaster the city with APPO propaganda instead. Make new graffiti.
- Promote within APPM and other national level spaces the need for more solidarity caravans going to Oaxaca.
- Campaigns of brigades throughout the country to foster popular unity within every state.
- Call for a popular and peaceful insurrection at the state and national levels on the 1st December to support the demands of the People of Oaxaca and to protest against electoral fraud and the Bad Government.
- Carrying out an intense campaign (at the state, national and international levels) against the repression in Oaxaca. Youth have proposed to join together with other youth, in order to coordinate amongst themselves.
- Appoint a Commission to represent APPO in Mexico City. This representation must be appointed by the Council of APPO. The same applies for any other occasion when representation before official bodies is deemed appropriate.
- Occupation of the means of communication (radio and television).
- A Mega-march and total blockade of the entrances and exits of Oaxaca City at 10 in the morning on the 25th Novemeber. This march will start at the Casa de Gobierno (seat of the state government) located at Santa María Coyotepec and to finish at the zócalo.
- Formalize the commitment to community radios in order to establish a good channel of communication amongst them and the APPO State Council. It has been proposed that Radio Zaachila and Radio Universidad are turned into APPO’s official communication channels. It is also suggested to give support to Radio Hit.
- To convene and benefit from national and international solidarity in accordance with the actions outlined in this plan.
Actions for the 15th of November
a. At 8 in the morning there will be a massive rally at the Chamber of Deputies, and people will march from there towards Santo Domingo. The aim is to block the report being issued in the Chamber of Deputies. Section 22 are organizing a massive rally at the Juárez monument, and at 8am the same day, there will also be a massive rally at Brenamiel Junction, whose aim is to block the URO report from being released in the Convention Center.
b. Reactivate the mobile brigades to take over and close down government buildings. Our Youth brigades will shut down public offices on the 15 of November.
c. Setting up barricades in front of all the government offices on the 16th, and grafitiing them up from the 16th onwards.
d. A counter report against the government in Santo Domingo will be broadcast \by Radio Universidad on the same day.
e. Closure of work, tomorrow
f. The compañeros that will participate in the hunger strikes at embassies in Mexico City will leave on the 15th of November, and will include five representatives per organization and two per delegation.
g. On 16th November there will be press conference at the Carrillo Puerto settlement barricade in order to denounce the disappearance of 4 APPO compañeros.
V. PROCLAMATIONS
This Congress resolves and demands
- The immediate ousting of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, insisting that this demand is neither retractable nor negotiable.
- Our disappeared friends must be returned alive.
- Immediate and unconditional freedom for our political prisoners and prisoners of conscience and for those currently facing penal processes, both throughout the state of Oaxaca and the country as a whole.
- The immediate cancellation of all arrest warrants against APPO members.
- A halt to the persecution, intimidation and threats against APPO members.
- A halt to harassment, persecution and arbitrary and illegal detentions of members of barricades.
- The immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the federal forces of Oaxaca (PFP, SEDENA, MARINA, AFI).
- Respect for freedom of expression, including the demand for guarantees and respect for the community radios and independent media to be able to carry out their work.
- The Attorney General (PGR) begins investigations for the murders committed in this period of the fight againt Ulises Ruiz, Heliodoro Díaz Escarraga, Lizbeth Caña Cadeza, Jorge Franco Vargas, Mario Moreno Rivas, Aristeo López Martínez, Lino Celaya, Elpidio Concha Arellano, Hector Anuar Mafud Mafud, Bulmaro Rito Salinas, Francisco Santiago José, and Alejandro Barrita, as well as the mayors of Santa Cruz Amilpas, Santa Lucia del Camino, Santa Maria Coyotepec, San Antonino Castillo Velasco, among others.
- That the Federal Government publicly informs the people of Oaxaca as to the location of the “Mobile Court House”, so that those detained illegally and arbitrarily have their right to defense and due process safeguarded.
- We denounce Plan Juárez and demand respect for Trade Union autonomy, as well as for the University Autonomy.
- This Congress guarantees and respects the decision of Section XXII to start teaching school courses again, so that the right of girls, boys and teenagers from Oaxaca to receive an education comes into effect, as part of the struggle to kick out Ulises Ruiz. For this purpose, APPO will watch and accompany, step by step, that the safety, physical and psychological integrity of the members of Section XXII is guaranteed, and as such will blame Mr. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz for any violent incidents that may occur.
- This Congress makes a respectful and cordial invitation to Mr. Raymundo Riva Palacios to familiarize himself with struggles of the people of Oaxaca and gets to know us personally, as we are concerned that he is an apologist for repression.
- The repeal of the laws approved by the Congress of State during the political and social crisis which the people of Oaxaca are living through.
- A restructuring of the organs of government of the Oaxacan Health Secretary.
- An increase in the number of people enrolled in rural schools.
- Against the construction of “La Parota” hydro-electric project.
- Punishment for those responsible for violence against, and murder of, women.
- Charges against and demand punishment for those responsible for the forced sterilization of indigenous women, and recognition that the IMSS Oportunidades program is simply a tool for manipulation and control.
- No to the privatization of health, water and electricity (CFE), as well as other services.
- For the rescue of the National Bank of Mexico, Telmex, Mexicana de Aviacion, Mexican National Railways, the Caravana Mining Complex, Immecafe, Fertimex, TV Azteca, among others.
- APPO denounces and positions itself against the wind energy generation project in La Venta, located on the Istmo de Tehuantepec. We call upon all the citizenry of Oaxaca and of the Isthmus to mobilize against the possible presence of Vicente Fox and Ulises Ruiz at the inauguration of La Venta’s wind park scheduled for the 18th November.
- Protection and recognition of traditional Indigenous medicine must be promoted.
- Defense of all Normal Schools (teacher’s training colleges) throughout the country, and the automatic assignment of jobs for those who have graduated from these schools.
- The Cinco Señores barricade should not be removed until URO falls, the PFF has withdrawn, and our disappeared compañeros have been returned alive.
- The Federal Government should press ahead with the auditing of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
- Recall of deputies belonging to the LIX Local Legislature. We do not recognize them as our representatives, given that they took advantage of the crisis to pass laws which are detrimental to the people of Oaxaca.
- We hold Apolonio Vasconcelos Terán (Municipal President of Huautla de Jiménez), his Cabinet, the Regional Delegate of the Government Humberto García Estrada, as well as the ex-deputy Elpidio Concha Arellano responsible for what ever might happen to compañeros who participate in APPO in Huautla and throughout the region of Cañada.
- Condemn the attacks and intimidation against compañera Carmen López Vásquez.
- Against the construction of the hydro-electric dam “Benito Juárez” de Santa Maria Jalapaya which is part of the privatization agenda of the Plan Puebla Panama.
DECISIONS CONCERNING THE CONSTITUTION OF THE APPO STATE COUNCIL
- The Congress agrees that in the APPO State Council there must be a minimum representation of 30% women.
- With regard to the composition of the State Council it is resolved that it must contain representation from all the nucleos, groups, sectors, unions, collectives, communities and peoples of Oaxaca from the state’s 8 geographical regions.
- With respect to the number of State Councilors, it is suggested to take as a basis the following: there will be 10 members, both men and women, for each of the state’s geographical regions. The exception will be the Valles Centrales which will be represented by 20 members. This concerns the following regions: Cañada, Costa, Istmo, Mixteca, Sierra Norte, Sierra Sur, Tuxtepec y Valles Centrales.
- It is agreed that there will be a representation of 3 – 5 people per social sector. Amongst others, these sectors include the following: Settlements and neighborhoods, Barricades, Women, Civil Organisms, Indigenous Peoples, Trade Unions, Municipal Authorities, Youth and Students, Peasants and Producers, Religious men and women, Enterprises and Traders, Academics and Intellectuals, Transport Workers, and the Cultural and Artistic Sector.
- It is agreed that Section 22 will have 40 representatives, 27 of whom are present and have already been approved, and the remaining 13 still need to be selected by the State Assembly of Teachers.
- Activity within political parties shall always be respected so long as it is fully compatible with APPO’s principles. There shall be no participation in the PRI and the PAN since these parties have dedicated themselves to aggressing the peoples’ movement of Oaxaca.
- The composition of the APPO Council must be decided on by each region, fulfilling the requirements agreed on in the Plenary, guaranteed that there is a plural and fair representation.
- The Councilors’ period of office will be for two years.
- The seat of the State Council will be the ex-palace of the government, located in the historic city center.
- Honorary ambassadors (both men and women) shall be appointed to spread the voice of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca at the national and international level. The list is open and will consist of everyone who has contributed to and supported the just struggle of the Oaxacan people.
- The official logo of APPO agreed to in the plenary is:
LIST OF THE MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL ACCORDING TO THE DECISION TAKEN BY THE REGIONS AND SECTORS WHICH MAKE UP APPO
REGIONS
Cañada
1. Alberto Carrera Marín
2. Rutilio Martínez García
3. Jorge Reyes Simón
4. Enedina Hernández Jiménez
5. Valeria Díaz Contreras
6. Demetrio García Estrada
7. Martiniano Lites Toledo
8. Agustín Sosa Ortega
9. Fausto Enríquez García
10. David García Martínez
11. Prof. José Santiago Luís
Costa
12. Esteban López Damián
13. Palemón Vásquez Cajero
14. Víctor Mendoza
15. Cesar Luís Díaz
16. Guadalupe Mendoza Mendoza
17. María Elena Tapia Vásquez
18. Castulo López Pacheco
19. Antonio Santiago Gonzáles
20. Elías Gonzáles Venegas
21. Mateo Gregorio
22. Felipa Cuevas Hernández
23. Juan Sosa Maldonado
Istmo
24. Delfino Juárez Toledo
25. Rosalía Rodríguez Sosa
26. José Alvarado Salva
27. Roberto Girón Carrasco
28. Rubén Valencia Núñez
29. Nemorio Pérez Núñez
30. Pablo Castillo Gonzáles
31. Justino Velásquez Jiménez
32. Sonia Fuentecilla López
33. José Juan Maldonado Avendaño
34. Erangelio Mendoza González
35. Lesvia Villalobos Sosa
36. Fidelia Valderrama Castillejos
37. Alberto Juan Castillo
Mixteca
38. Gustavo Adolfo López Ortega
39. Irma Vivar Valles
40. Tomás Hernández Monjaraz
41. Soledad Ortiz Vasquez
42. Jorge Albino Ortiz
43. Severo Sánchez Gónzales
44. Jesús López Rodríguez
45. Santiago Ambrosio Hernández
46. Rubén Eleuterio Santillan
47. Francisco Arbola Alfaro
48. Salatiel Mendoza
49. Modesto Riaño Bautista
50. Domingo Cruz Salvador
Sierra Norte
The Councillors in this region will be elected in a Regional Assembly of Indigenous Authories and Organizations, which will take place on the 19th November this year in the Community of Guelatao. Until they are elected, compañeros Aldo Gónzales, Joel Aquino and Adelfo Regino will remain as provisional liaisons.
Sierra Sur
51. Tomás J. Martínez Pinacho
52. Carlos Jiménez García
53. Felipe Fabian Morales
54. Florentino Hernández
55. Flora Gutiérrez Gutiérrez
56. Hortensia Tinajero Camacho
57. Donaciano Valencia
58. Alfredo García García
59. Rogelio Santiago Mendoza
60. Catalino López Carreño
61. Jorge Barrios Pacheco
62. Gabriel Manuel Santiago
Tuxtepec
63. Sandra García Luna
64. Renato Cruz Morales
65. Ruperto Santiago Reyes
66. Eliel Labastida Toro
67. Juan Colorado Padilla
68. Roberto Álvarez López
69. Tania Santillana
70. Eric Castillo Aragón
71. Martín Pérez Hernández
72. Mariano Sevilla Enrique
73. Felipe Canseco Ruiz
74. Eucadio Jerónimo Sánchez
75. Julián Santiago Soriano
76. Andrés Tirado Juárez
Valle Centrales
77. Ulises Reynosa
78. María del Carmen
79. Juan Ramírez
80. Felipa Cruz
81. Isabel Araceli Blas Pacheco
82. Arcadio Hernández Morales
83. Zenen Bravo Castellanos
84. Florentino López Martínez
85. Roberto García Lucero
86. Flavio Sosa Villavicencio
87. Cesar Mateos Benitez
88. Gervasio García Martínez
89. Eduardo Martínez García
90. Jaime Enrique Cabrera
91. Victor Manuel Gómez Ramírez
92. Dolores Cuamatzin
93. Juan Manuel López
94. Antonio Gómez
95. Santiago Santiago Caballero
96. Guadalupe García Leyva
97. Martiniano Galván
98. Irma Valdivieso Suastegui
99. Rafael Rodríguez
100. Casiano Luis Mejía
101. Julio Cesar Audelo
102. Arturo Cruz
103. Rosario Gómez Hernández
104. Bertha Muñoz
SECTORS
Traders
105. Luís Alberto Jiménez Blas
Artesans
106. Cristina Sanchez Merino
107. Natalia Sandoval Barrios
Juridical
108. Gilberto Hernández Santiago
109. Israel Ochoa Lara
110. Fortino Silva Cruz
111. Romeo Gonzalez Playas
112. Moisés Vasquez
Civil Organizations
113. Jessica Sánchez Maya
114. Marcos Leyva Madrid
115. Tzinia Carranza
116. Fernando Melo
117. Aline Castellanos
118. Alma Delia Gómez Soto
Popular Town Halls
119. Esteban Abel Sánchez Campos (San Antonino Castillo Velasco)
120. Manuel Coronel López ( Zaachila)
121. Manuel Eleazar Perez Velasco (Xoxocotlán)
122. Procopio Julian Caballero (San Antonio Huitepec)
123. Jorge Sosa Campos (San Bartola Coyotepec)
Grassroots Eclesiastical Communities
124. Yolanda Bautista Hernández
125. María J. Gaspar Ramírez
Transport Workers
126. Carlos Ruiz Elorza
127. Jaime Cruz Velasco
128. José Hernández Ramírez
129. Toledo Delgado Vargas
Women
130. Alba Cruz
131. Mireya Smith Martínez
132. Daniela Gonzáles
133. Davy Caballero
134. Leila Zenteno
Barricades
135. Fidelia Rodríguez Siguenza
136. Francisco Martínez Sánchez
137. David Venegas Reyes
138. Miguel Cruz Moreno
139. Eduardo Cruz Ruiz
140. Tania Fernández Moreno
Settlements
141. Arturo Reyes
142. Minerva Quiroz Nicolas
143. Erubiel Hernández Garnica
144. Emiliano Gutiérrez Vásquez
145. Neftali Santiago Santiago
146. Dayse Cristina Juárez Cecilio
147. Carlo Ramos
148. Feliciano Santiago Caballero
149. Valente Gómez Duran
150. Luz Adriana Toro Rodríguez
151. Gabriela Cruz Vargas
Trade Unions
152. Marcos Villanueva Coronado
153. Rosario García García
154. María Belem Salas Salazar
155. Patricia Jiménez Alvarado
156. Miguel Juárez Alvarado
157. Miguel Angel Schultz Dávila
158. Jose Luis Velásquez León
159. Jose Antonio Rivera Ramos
160. Marcelino Coache Verano
161. Rosendo Ramírez Sánchez
162. Martimiana Bejarano
163. Heiser Ariel Vasquez Salazar
Section 22 of the Teachers Union
164. Esteban Benitez Reyes
165. Mario Lorenzo I. García
166. Mario Cruz López
167. Lourdes Montaño Martínez
168. María del Carmen López Vásquez
169. Cesar Bolaños
170. Bernardo Osorio Marin
171. Edgardo Martínez Canseco
172. Jose Luis Meraz Pacheco
173. Gervasio Martínez Pérez
174. Pedro Pablo Osorio
175. Alfredo Trinidad Aquino Julian
176. Severino Villegas Aquino
177. Rodrigo Reyes Salgado
178. Zosimo Aquino Bustamante
179. Jorge Villegas
180. José Santiago Luis
181. Nadxeli Santiago López
182. Bernabé Jiménez Ríos
183. Huberto Román Reyes
184. Casiano Hernández
185. Enrique Rojas Espinoza
186. Enrique Velasco Flores
187. Augusto Reyes Medina
188. Juan García Ortega
189. Rogelio Acevedo Jacobo
190. Angelica Garcia Perez
191. Lucas Martinez Hernandez
Youth
192. María Santiago
193. Francisco Antonio
194. Lilia Ruiz
195. Eric Zabaleta
196. Guietzhil López
197. Hitandehui Margarita Pérez Delgado
Students
198. Víctor Jiménez
199. Nancy Figueroa
200. Antonio Cortéz
201. Cuauhtémoc Pérez
202. Noe Bautista
Prisoners, Persecuted and Exiled People
203. German Mendoza Nube
204. Raúl Gatica Bautista
205. Joel Gómez Hernández
206. Samuel Hernández
207. Ramiro Aragón
208. Jacqueline López Almazan
209. Catarino Torres Pereda
210. Alejandro Cruz López
211. Abraham Ramírez Vasquez
212. Josefina Martínez Martínez
213. Felipe Martínez Soriano
Indigenous Peoples from the Valles Centrales region
214. Simitrio Ruiz Martínez
215. Victoria Santiago Velasco
216. Pablo Martínez López
217. Primo Aquino Cruz
The indigenous organizations and authorities present decided to name the corresponding councilors to represent the indigenous peoples at the Popular Council on the 28th and 29th of November this year when the State Forum of the Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca will take place.
DISCUSSION TABLE
Zenén Bravo Castellanos
President
Joel Aquino Maldonado
First Vice-President
Jesús López Rodríguez
Second Vice-President
Felipe Canseco Ruiz
Third Vice-President
Francisco Salud Bautista
Fourth Vice-President
Felipe Castellanos Cruz
Fifth Vice-President
Armando Contreras Castillo
Sixth Vice-President
David Venegas
First Secretary
Adelfo Regino Montes
Second Secretary
Juan Sosa Maldonado
Third Secretary
Severo Sánchez
Fourth Secretary
Mario López
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Delfino Juárez Toledo
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Rutilio Martínez García
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Enrique Rojas Espinoza
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Fidelia Valderrama Castillejos
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Aldo Gonzáles Rojas
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Roberto Álvarez López
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Mario Cruz López
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Gustavo Ponce Gil
Scrutineer/Canvasser
Rubén Eleuterio Santillán
Scrutineer/Canvasser
LONG LIVE THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE! LONG LIVE APPO!
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca, City of Resistance the 13th of November 2006
Translation: Kolya Abramsky
