Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca

The APPO, short for the Asamblea popular de los pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca), is an organization that was assembled in response to the ungovernable political situation in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, in the early days of July, 2006.

History

At 3:30 in the morning of June 14, 2006, after 23 days of peaceful demonstration in the Zócalo (main square) of Oaxaca de Juarez (the capital city of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico), the 70,000 teachers who had gathered there engaged 3500 armed Oaxacan municipal police, some local firefighters and troops from the Policía Federal Preventiva, supported by helicopters in street fighting. At many points in the altercation, shots were fired. Reports vary as to the number of casualties sustained in the struggle: Lizbeth Ocaña Cabeza, the judicial procurator, claimed that there were no deaths, 11 teachers detained, 4 police injured, and 1 teacher injured; Enrique Rueda Pacheco, head of the section 22 of the Mexican teachers' union, claimed that there were 4 dead (3 teachers and 1 child), 12 seriously wounded, 70 wounded or dead in total, and 15 teachers detained. Both sides have since then shifted their numbers, and the actual results of this violent attempt to remove the teachers from the plaza remain uncertain. What is certain, however, is that the police failed to remove the teachers from the plaza, and the teachers where in fact able not only to expel the police from the Zócalo but to push them out of the entire center of the city as well. After hours of conflict, the teachers, joined now by their sympathizers from throughout the city who had come out of their houses to aid them, where able to claim the center of the city as their own and begin to construct a system of barricades that would make it impossible for the police to return via the roads.

In the following weeks, the teachers where given reinforcement by a wide range of other citizens of the city, who helped them with the construction and protection of barricades made of wood, concrete bricks, corrugated metal sheets, and disabled cars. For a number of weeks, these roughly constructed barricades have been effective in repulsing the entry of police into the central part of the city that surrounds the Zòcalo. The police return only occasionally to conduct night raids, in which they roam the open streets in trucks that held between 10 to 15 police officers who, as they drive past, spray bullets on the barricades and those that are there to protect them. A particularly harsh string of attacks occurred in the mid days of August, in the five days before the mid-month Thursday by which Ulises Ortiz Ruiz, the governor of the state of Oaxaca, had vowed to clear the plaza.

There are a number of reasons that "Ulises" had begun to garner hatred from from the people even before his strike upon the plantón in the Zòcalo... [The green stone in the plaza]

In the light of this situation, and in the recognition that the repressive 'government' had become effectively powerless in governing, the APPO was created and convened for the first time at the end of June 2006. It declared itself the de facto governing body of Oaxaca. Its body included representatives of Oaxaca’s state regions and municipalities, unions, non-governmental organizations, social organizations, and cooperatives. It encouraged all Oaxacans to organize popular assemblies at every level: neighborhoods, street blocks, unions, and towns. Its leaders empasized that “No leader is going to solve our problems,” and asserted the need for common civilians to organize and work beyond the scope of elected officials.

In this respect, it follows roughly what is perhaps intended by the Sixth Declaration of the Lacondonian Forest, a State of (and Call for) the Union of sorts by the EZLN, a partisan group based in the Mexican southern state of Chiapas.

The Popular Assembly of Oaxaca "aims at nothing less than expanding the traditional idea of general assemblies of citizens to form a new state government. Such assemblies, under the custom of allowing Oaxacan villages to operate under the common rule of 'usos y costumbres,' oversee the execution of their resolutions by their municipal authorities. That is to say, 'the executive branch' (the authorities) is charged with accomplishing the tasks the assembly gives it. The municipal president, foremost among the authorities, leads (as the Zapatistas’ phrase explains) by obeying."

"For the population of Oaxaca, the idea of governing by consensus remains part of the common cultural heritage. Therefore, as APPO was convoked, the modest people who comprise 80% of Oaxaca’s population, recognized it immediately. And they support it, despite the obvious difficulties of convening authorities from around the state. Since these authorities receive no pay, a trip to the capital city is not easy. But it’s happening."

The APPO met with the officials of the official government on the first week of September.

Foreign governments such as the USA, recommend their citizens consider the situation in Oaxaca before going to visit the state. .

Aftermath

On October 29th, 2006, Vicente Fox ordered about 4,000 elements of the federal police (PFP), to enter the city and secure the main square, among other key locations in the Oaxacan capital. These policemen were recieved with stones, to which they replied by firing water cannons and pepper spray. As of October 31st, the federal government bills this as a bloodless act, while the APPO claims somewhere between two and four deceased.

See also

• 2006 Oaxaca protests

External links

• http://www.asambleapopulardeoaxaca.com/
• http://vientos.info/cml/?q=node/3786
• http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/06/15/003n1pol.php
• http://www.narconews.com/Issue43/article2138.html