The Oaxaca Struggle Continues

[Wiley50]

Oaxaca. Friday 5 January 2007

Friends,
Two new items posted:
Popular Assemblies and the Growing
Popular Assembly Movement
commentary from Oaxaca
by Nancy Davies <[e-mail]>
4 January 2007

this page is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2007-01-04.htm
and
Anonymity, a cloak for cowardice
and treachery in Oaxaca

by George Salzman <[e-mail]>
2 January 2007

this page is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2007-01-02.htm
And just today, another sign of the hopelessness of the Oaxaca state government in its effort to squelch the spirit of the people. The following letter was posted to the Oaxaca Study-Action Group website a few hours ago. It is message #2214, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oaxacastudyactiongroup/message/2214 .

THIS MESSAGE CAME TO ME INDIVIDUALLY AND I AM FORWARDING IT TO ALL OF YOU. IT WAS SENT TO HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS HERE IN OAXACA.
I HOPE SOME OF YOU WILL PUBLICIZE THE LETTER, AS X ASKS

Ulises Ruiz hinders children's Day of the Kings event
This morning, January the 5th, 2007, I decided to donate some presents for poor people's children in our poor State. Tomorrow is January the 6th, Epiphany of the Wise Kings, and traditional children day for getting presents in the Hispanic tradition. Dia de Reyes. There were two posibilities.

One, a state goverment sponsered site at the main city square, the Zocalo. With TV support, lots of balloons and popular singers, it was a showy statement about who has the political power in our State.

Unfortunately nobody was donating presents there. It was a desolate as a cemmetery.

The other site, was at Santo Domingo Square, another of our traditional squares, mainly for rich people but now, thanks to our great artist Francisco Toledo and to its flag institution the IAGO (Oaxaca Institute of Graphic Arts) located in this square, a haven for the popular struggle to get a just society. The site for gift donating was very pooor: a group of nice ladies, some few balloons, but lots and lots of joy and sahring. The square started to get full of presents for the poor kids.

And what happened? Our loved goverment, feeling threatened by people's attendance, decided to prohibit the presents delivery. They sent the armed police to stop the flow of presents! At this time they are positioned at the square under the strong sun (thanks God it is very hot and sunny!), showing very proudly how to step on everybody's rights! Francisco Toledo opened the IAGO library (free and one of the best in Latinamerica) to provide a place for all the gifts...

How poor an image for a tourist city! What a culture! I lamented not having a camera to take thousands of pictures and register this shameful act! Is delivering
presents for children a terrorist act? Is not Mexico the president of the UN council on Civil Rights? Has not Mexico signed all kind of treaties supporting the defense of those rights? What kind of civil education can we teach our children with this official acts?

I'm full of rage and shame. It is impossible to express it in a right way. I hope that some powerful people there, in the wide world will react and will demand to our goverment stop acting as criminal gorillas (I'm sorry gorillas for this but I can not find any other word, maybe Mexican politicians would be better).

With a bitter shame....
__________________________________________________________

All comments and criticisms are welcome. <[e-mail]>

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[Jcrowley]

1. K&R n/t

[EFerrari]

2. K&R

[me b zola]

3. k&r

[Contrite]

4. K&R n/t

[autorank]

5. Great Reading on Popular Assemblies KR

"The “elected”, whether honestly or fraudulently installed in office, have a paying boss who is different from the voters from whom the officials are distanced by both their membership in the “political class” and their isolation from the lives of the multitudes they supposedly “represent.” The politicians are often very corrupt; they are often overtly and murderously repressive against their own populations in Mexico (not just Oaxaca), Latin America and around the globe. Some nations like the United States and some European countries keep their repression under wraps; one need only consider the number of persons imprisoned in the United States (According to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2.2 million in federal or state prisons in December 2005).<2> Some seek to run the prisons as lucrative privatized businesses." Nancy Davies
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2007-01-04.htm

[druidity33]

6. yikes!

How low can they go? I'm surprised the gov't didn't steal the presents that were already there and bring them to their Zocalo site. Or did they?

[rman]

7. k&r

[Wiley50]

8. .

[leftchick]

9. thank you Wiley

.

[dogday]

10. K&R