2006 Oaxaca rebellion
The Mexican state of Oaxaca was embroiled in a conflict that lasted more than seven months and resulted in at least seventeen deaths and the occupation of the capital city of Oaxaca by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca. The conflict emerged in May 2006 with the police responding to a strike involving the local teachers' trade union by opening fire on non-violent protests. It then grew into a broad-based movement pitting the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca against the state's governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Protesters demanded the removal or resignation of Ortiz, whom they accused of political corruption and acts of repression. Multiple reports, including from international human rights monitors, accused the Mexican government of using death squads, summary executions, and even violating Geneva Conventions standards that prohibit attacking and shooting at unarmed medics attending to the wounded.
One human rights observer claimed over twenty-seven were killed by the police violence. The dead included Brad Will, Emilio Alonso Fabián, José Alberto López Bernal, Fidel Sánchez García, and Esteban Zurita López.
Despite the intensity of the protests, Governor Ulises Ruiz refused to step down. The Federal Government, headed by then-president Vicente Fox, deployed officers from the Federal Preventive Police in October 2006 to retake the city of Oaxaca.
Organisation
After the police fired on non-violent protesters, the teachers' union fought back and was able to force the police out of the city and establish a citywide anarchist community for several months. The teachers' union and other workers' and community groups form the APPO, which created large democratic assemblies for citizens.According to one activist who helped to found the APPO:
So the APPO was formed to address the abuses and create an alternative. It was to be a space for discussion, reflection, analysis, and action. We recognized that it shouldn't be just one organization, but rather a blanket coordinating body for many different groups. That is, not one ideology would prevail; we would focus on finding the common ground among diverse social actors. Students, teachers, anarchists, Marxists, churchgoers — everyone was invited.
The APPO was born without a formal structure, but soon developed impressive organizational capacity. Decisions in the APPO are made by consensus within the general assembly, which was privileged as a decision-making body. In the first few weeks of our existence we created the APPO State Council. The council was originally composed of 260 people — approximately ten representatives from each of Oaxaca's seven regions and representatives from Oaxaca's urban neighborhoods and municipalities.
The Provisional Coordination was created to facilitate the operation of the APPO through different commissions. A variety of commissions were established: judicial, finance, communications, human rights, gender equity, defense of natural resources, and many more. Proposals are generated in smaller assemblies of each sector of the APPO and then brought to the general assembly where they are debated further or ratified.There was deep tension in the group between the more radical and libertarian elements who rejected representative democracy and wanted to create a permanent self-organised society against the more conservative and moderate elements who wanted elections. Ultimately, the radicals were more successful, and most of the population boycotted the elections. The APPO was also able to organise festivals, defensive measures, radio stations and a neighbourhood watch. The festivals, the 'Guelaguetza', thousands of people attended for free to see indigenous culture, dress, and dancing, whilst graffiti artists packed the streets and covered the walls of the towns with anti-government and anti-capitalist messages. The APPO also used 'topiles' to maintain the peace. These were neighbourhood watches that also doubled as a militia which fought off government soldiers often with little more than rocks and fireworks. If a criminal were found disturbing someone, a bell would be rung to alert the nearest topile, who would either issue a minor fine or perhaps hold them for the night. The topiles were successful in organising first aid centres and garbage collection.
May and June 2006
In May 2006, a teachers' strike began in the Zócalo in the Mexican city of Oaxaca. 2006 was the 25th consecutive year that Oaxaca's teachers had gone on strike. Previously, the protests had generally lasted for one to two weeks and resulted in small raises for teachers. The 2006 strike began in protest of the low funding for teachers and rural schools in the state, but also called for the resignation of the state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz after 3000 police were sent to break up the occupation in the early morning of 14 June 2006. A street battle lasted for several hours that day, resulting in more than one hundred hospitalisations but no fatalities. Ortiz declared that he would not resign.Image:Oaxaca protests.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Protests in Oaxaca City centre on 22 June 2006.
In response to the events of 14 June, representatives of Oaxaca's state regions and municipalities, unions, non-governmental organizations, social organizations, cooperatives, and parents convened to form the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca. On 17 June, APPO reestablished encampments in the zócalo and declared itself the governing body of Oaxaca, plunging the city into a state of civil rebellion. Barricades were erected across some streets to prevent further police raids. APPO began seeking nationwide solidarity with its movement and urged other states in Mexico to organize popular assemblies at every level of social organization: neighborhoods, street blocks, unions, and towns. Various municipality offices across the state closed in unity. A popular mantra was, "No leader is going to solve our problems".
Image:APPO Guelaguetza.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Popular Guelaguetza organized by protesters.
Though APPO did not boycott the Mexican national elections on 2 July, Ulises Ruiz's Institutional Revolutionary Party suffered an electoral defeat in Oaxaca, a state they had ruled for seventy years.
APPO did agree to boycott the annual Guelaguetza festival in the final weeks of July. Protesters blocked access to the auditorium where the festival is held, using burned buses and other debris, preventing the completion of renovations to the facility. This action drew criticism due to the damage some individuals caused to the auditorium by starting fires and spray-painting graffiti. Some of the graffiti said: "Tourists, go home! In Oaxaca, we are not capitalists". As a result of the boycott, the government cancelled the festival celebration – in its place, the APPO held an alternative cultural festival over several days.
The action marked the lowest point of government for Ulises Ruiz, who subsequently left the State. He resided in Mexico City for a few months.
After a few weeks of absence, the APPO assumed control of the city and started implementing its own law, while confrontations with State Police escalated.
August 2006
On 1 August, APPO began its takeover of television and radio stations throughout the city. While all of these stations are no longer occupied by APPO members, the radio has remained an important facet of the movement. APPO utilized the radio resources to communicate about possible threats from police and armed gangs, demand the removal of Ulises Ruiz, and the release of political prisoners. During APPO's illegal occupation of the radio stations, pro-PRI and PRI-funded groups engaged in frequent late-night armed attacks on APPO-controlled radio stations and damaged their broadcasting equipment.Those attacks on the APPO-controlled radio stations represented an escalation of violence in a conflict that had remained relatively peaceful since the 14 June police raid. In what was called a "cleanup operation", armed groups of men attacked the APPO's barricades during the nights. The individuals involved were identified as members of pro-PRI organizations and as plain-clothes local police. These attacks, combined with other shootings and assassinations, resulted in the first deaths associated with the conflict, in which six APPO supporters were killed.
September 2006
On 14 September, striking teachers and APPO members took over the municipal building in Huautla de Jiménez, located in the Sierra Mazateca in northern Oaxaca. They retained control of the building until mid-January 2007, when Oaxacan state police briefly occupied the city, patrolling the streets with large guns and guarding the municipio all hours of the day and night.The leader of Mazatecan APPO, Agustín Sosa, was elected mayor of Huautla de Jiménez in November 2007, to a term beginning in January 2008. Sosa is a longtime activist who spent many months in jail in 2004, accused of murder in the death of a protester at a protest organized by Sosa. He bears no relation to Flavio Sosa, the still imprisoned leader of APPO.
October 2006
On 27 October 2006, Bradley Roland Will, a U.S. Indymedia journalist from New York who had entered the country under a tourist visa, was killed along with Professor Emilio Alonso Fabián and Esteban López Zurita, in what the Associated Press has claimed was a "shootout" between protesters and a group of armed men. Photographs by Brad Will, however, demonstrate that the protesters were throwing rocks at the gunman. Photographs of Will, after he was shot, show a man lying on the ground, surrounded by friends, and not the "armed gangs" that the Associated Press has reported. An autopsy by the Mexican government has concluded that "two shots" were fired at Will, one from in front and one from behind. The body was never examined for blood clotting in the second wound, which would have demonstrated that it was "implemented" in the morgue. Brad Will's body was cremated. The family of Brad Will visited Mexico to demand justice from the court system, and upon hearing the accusation that their son was shot at close range by a protester, they called it "ridiculous, false, without substance, biased, and unconvincing." They also accused the District Attorney of falsifying evidence and acting in bad faith.However, protesters claim the shooting was by a group of armed men against unarmed protesters. Oswaldo Ramírez, a photographer for Mexico City daily Milenio, was also shot in the foot. Lizbeth Cana, attorney general of Oaxaca, claims the shooting of the protesters was provoked by the protesters themselves and that the armed men who engaged them were upset residents from the area. The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, however, claims the men may have been local police. El Universal has identified some of the men as local officials. Protesters also allege that the men were police and not local residents. Indymedia claims from a first-hand witness that the man who shot Will was an "urban paramilitary" member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. A local news organisation, Centro de Medios Libres, claims that from Will's recovered videotapes, they have found that Pedro Carmona, a paramilitary who was the mayor of Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Santa Lucía del Camino, was the person who shot Bradley Roland Will. Another shooting took place later in the day outside the state prosecutor's office, leading to three injuries.
An Associated Press report by Rebeca Romero claims, "Most of the nine victims of the Oaxaca violence have been protesters who were shot by armed gangs..." One protester, in response to the massive denunciations of the state-controlled media, has said, "I saw a young boy shot in the leg, friends around me arrested left and right, bullets flying everywhere. The government needed someone to blame, and it fell heaviest on the people at the barricades, especially strategic ones like Cinco Senores. They called us vandals and thieves and delinquents."
The death of Bradley Roland Will prompted President Vicente Fox to send federal police to Oaxaca after months of attempting to stay neutral in what he considered a local issue.