Teachers enforce mob rule in Oaxaca
Web Posted: 09/13/2006 11:05 PM CDT
Dane Schiller Express-News Mexico Bureau Chief
OAXACA, Mexico - The men quick-stepped through early morning darkness, some with bandannas pulled over mouths to hide their identities. Others clutched sticks or beer bottles converted to Molotov cocktails.
The men were herding two drunken prisoners, one was shirtless; the other had urinated in his pants. They were being marched to the town square to be judged for throwing bottles at a neighborhood-watch patrol.
The captors aren't police officers or trained soldiers. They're part of a movement of striking public schoolteachers and supporters that months ago declared their own government, including their own law enforcement.
Sentencing options for the drunken prisoners included sweeping sidewalks, having hair hacked off and spending the night cold and naked.
In the meantime, the prisoners were slapped, insulted and left to sleep it off blindfolded with hands tied behind their backs.
This is the face of justice in this besieged colonial-era city, where police stay off the streets.
Some fear what happens here could prove a model for Mexico City, where a national opposition party plans to launch its own government Saturday.
In Oaxaca, what started in May as an annual teacher strike for better pay and other benefits grew into a protracted battle of wills painted by anarchy.
"We have not seen anything like this since the (1910) Revolution," said Eduardo García, president of the local chamber of commerce. "How can they say this is a pacifist movement when they are holding this city hostage?"
The U.S. State Department warns American visitors to be wary. Streets that long drew tourists are unrecognizable. Hotels and shops are empty.
Burned hulks of buses, cars and trucks block intersections. Garbage piles near curbs. The main plaza has become a shantytown.
Most of the downtown's historic stone buildings are stained with graffiti.
The strike got ugly just before dawn June 14 when police with tear gas swept in to evict teachers camped in the plaza. Teachers fought back and recaptured it.
That was followed by a march in which José Jiménez, a teacher's husband, was killed. No one is charged.
The death and the arrests of activists now are battle cries.
"He did not die on his knees - he died for his ideals - and we want to wake up from this nightmare," said his widow, Florina Jiménez, who worries for her three children.
She had a batch of documents related to the case, including a drawing of the crime scene. Her 3-year-old daughter put her hand on the X and said, "My daddy died here." She then picked up his photo and kissed it.
After the clash with police, the union and its 70,000 members joined forces with civic groups to form the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, known as APPO.
The assembly considers itself the state and local government, ruling by committee. Its members have stopped government employees - from Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz to secretaries and cops - from doing their jobs.
Ruiz's satellite office in Mexico City declined comment, as did the mayor. The government still is in control outside a downtown-area zone.
Inside the zone, APPO-induced chaos reigns - proof that Ruiz can't keep order, APPO says.
The assembly's strategy is to make life unbearable enough to force him to resign - or to prod the federal Congress to declare a state of "un-governability" and set the stage for a new governor.
Activists violently occupied a television station and a dozen radio stations to spread the assembly's message. A so-called "mobile brigade" of about 125 activists patrol the zone to ensure government offices stay closed and no one works out of hotels or homes.
They knock on doors, look in windows and question neighbors.
Last week, a state police employee was snatched from an office after allegedly beating a teenage brigade member.
He was roughed up in turn, splashed with paint, hog-tied and walked through the streets holding the governor's portrait. Eventually, activists handed him over to the Red Cross at the insistence of federal negotiators.
"If they assault or attack us, we grab them and have a public trial," APPO spokesman Carlos Esponda said.
It's lost on no one that if APPO takes up arms, the federal government will send in the army and crush the movement. Activists say their enemies would like nothing more.
They fear being shot or kidnapped by paramilitary groups - possibly composed of angry police or hired goons said to roam in the night. Rumors run wild that hard-core convicts have been released from state prison to wreak havoc.
Neighborhoods have banners warning potential thieves not to enter. Fires glow from more than 100 barricades set up to control movement in the city, reinforced by sandbags, cars, furniture, tires and mattresses. They are linked by shouts, cell phones, whistles and drums.
At the first sign of trouble, a warning cry brings people pouring into the streets.
Last week, four men "arrested" by neighbors who accused them of being thieves were tied to a street lamp. One had his curls sliced off with a machete.
In the case of the two drunks, neighbors said the men threw bottles and refused to respect a roadblock. One was suspected of being a police officer, although he said he was a construction worker.
They were given to the APPO security force, and their escort to the town square was hurried, jittery and marked by confused shouts, as barricade crews and neighbors thought the security-force members were attackers or kidnappers.
No one wears uniforms or badges, and there is a long tradition in Mexico of crowds lynching criminals in their power. But aside from a few kicks, slaps and threats, the prisoners arrived unharmed.
It was decided they'd sweep the square in the morning and be paraded before the people.
The man with no shirt had a hand-scrawled sign placed over his abdomen: "I am a police agent sent by the governor to destroy the barricades."
"Public humiliation is always the best punishment," said one of the security-force members, who wouldn't give his name out of fear of retaliation.
He, like others, watches his back and rarely walks anywhere alone.
Given the recent clashes, police and teachers now are sworn enemies.
Looking for a government safe house where they feared friends were being illegally held, two teachers and a biologist had a nighttime encounter outside the APPO-controlled zone four weeks ago they'll never forget.
Their car was surrounded by police in civilian clothes. After finding teacher identification cards on two of them, they said police kicked and punched them all, yanked out their hair, burned them with cigarettes and sliced them with broken glass. Photos back up their claims of a savage beating.
They then were charged with weapons possession and face up to 15 years in prison. The arrested men insisted the charges are bogus and that they were framed as a warning.
"This is crazy. I'm not a leader or even part of a group or anything," said Ramiro Aragón Pérez, a biologist being held in prison just outside this city.
Aragón, who is not a teacher, said he hopes the case will be dropped, but that he's tried to learn from prison, enduring everything from bed bugs and cold showers to sharing a cell with killers.
He records the type of birds that land in the prison yard. His 3-year-old son has been told he's on a long business trip.
"I have never cried here - all that stuff in a part of my mind that I won't touch until I am free," he said through bars. "I will cry with my wife, my family, my parents."
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