Monday, October 9, 2006

 

Oaxaca, Mexico Unrest and Shadows of Tlatelolco

 

By Allan Wall

 

October 2, 2006 marked the 38th anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City, when the Mexican army and federal police opened fire on protesting students and killed many.

 

At that time, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) government controlled the media and kept the extent of the violence under wraps.  This in the days before 24-hour cable TV and Internet blogs, but the news eventually spread throughout Mexico by word of mouth.

 

The PRI claimed a revolutionary mandate to govern Mexico in the name of the people.  But Tlatelolco, and another massacre in 1971, helped to discredit the PRI regime in the eyes of the people while energizing a whole generation of activists who demanded change.

 

All of which brought about the gradual end of one-party rule in the following decades.  It showed that the PRI, though certainly preferring patronage, co-option and corruption to violence, if pushed against the wall would use force to protect its power.

 

Even today, 38 years after Tlatelolco, the fearsome massacre still casts a shadow over Mexican public life.  And yet, are the right lessons being drawn?

 

Definitely the Mexico of 2006 is not the Mexico of 1968.

 

Knowing when to use force to maintain public order requires a delicate balance of force and reticence.  Competing jurisdictions and levels of government complicate matters.

 

Such problems aren’t limited to Mexico.  In the United States, for example, there was the 1993 Waco Massacre, when federal forces stepped into a local situation and wound up killing over 80.

 

The administration of Vicente Fox has been reluctant to use force.  In 2002 Fox gave in to machete-wielding protestors of San Salvador Atenco, and scrapped plans for a new airport for Mexico City.

 

This year, Fox reluctantly authorized the PFP (Federal Preventative Police), a military style police force, to intervene against the Sicartsa steel mill strike and riots in San Salvador Atenco.  The results included several deaths, numerous abuses and public relations disasters.

 

Certainly there are important jurisdictional questions in such cases.  The federal government can’t go getting involved in any local police matter, especially if Mexico is to have some sort of meaningful decentralization of powers.  Yet at what point should the federal government intervene?  When does a strictly local problem become a national problem?

 

Which brings us to the Oaxaca problem.

 

The Oaxaca teachers have a strike every year, but this year Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz had them tear-gassed.  The striking teachers called for Ruiz’ resignation and were joined by a coalition known by the acronym APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca).

The conflict has dragged on for months, leading to killings, the takeover of downtown Oaxaca and general mayhem.  Yet the Oaxaca situation, bad as it is, remains isolated. However that could change, with the movement of Oaxaca protest marchers to Mexico City.

 

Meanwhile, the Oaxaca governor and a majority of its mayors are demanding that President Fox take action.

 

What should Fox do?

 

So far Fox seems determined to do nothing except make pronouncements and encourage dialogue.  He either hopes the situation will resolve itself, or just plans to pass it on to President-elect Felipe Calderon, who in turn claims to have confidence Fox will solve the problem before he takes office on December 1.

 

Tactically speaking, supposing Fox did take forceful action, what would he do?

 

A successful case of federal government intervention took place in 2000, under the Ernesto Zedillo administration (1994-2000).  Campus radicals took over the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, Mexico’s largest and oldest university. The protest went on and on as the protestors’ demands kept getting bigger and bigger.  Finally Zedillo ordered action, sending in the PFP who attacked the campus at dawn and took it back without casualties (the protestors were mostly asleep).

 

But Oaxaca would likely be a messier operation.  The PFP would have to fight its way through a colonial-style downtown, against determined defenders, with their barricades, pipes, sticks, stones, Molotov cocktails and who knows what else.  It could be very ugly.

 

Hopefully the situation can still be solved peacefully.  But if it can’t, will Fox take action or just dump it into Calderon’s lap?

 

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Allan Wall, a MexiData.info columnist, recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.  He currently resides in Mexico, where he has lived since 1991. He can be reached via e-mail at allan39@prodigy.net.mx.