(Name-mce) ListServ Indigenous teachers defend ´a just cause´

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_ (http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/20817.html) Indigenous teachers defend ´a 
just cause´  
Teachers build and defend thousands of makeshift  barricades throughout 
Oaxaca City 


By John Gilber/The Herald  Mexico
El Universal
October 07, 2006


OAXACA CITY - Every night  streets here become battlefields in waiting. But 
behind the commandeered city  buses, burned trucks, and coils of barbed wire, a 
group of atypical urban rebels  stands guard. 

Watching over a barricade where a small altar to the  Virgin of Guadalupe 
rests between tangled wire and sand bags, six women ranging  from their early 30s 
to their late 60s, none taller than 5 feet, huddle around a  small fire in 
the street, wrapped in blankets and without so much as a club in  sight. 

For over a month these six women, teachers from the southern  mountainous 
region of Oaxaca, have been poised on the front lines of a conflict  that has 
seized this colonial city, paralyzed the state government, and come to  dominate 
national headlines. And while they may not be threatening to a casual  
passerby, these women´s resolve to defend their barricade is implacable.  

"If they kill us, then we were born to die," says María, a Mixteca  
indigenous woman who teaches in Mixteco and Spanish in a rural elementary  school, a 
five-hour walk from the nearest road. 

"We are not afraid," she  adds, "because we are here defending a just cause." 

RAID BACKFIRES  

The conflict in Oaxaca began on May 22 as a teachers strike for better  wages 
and a higher budget to provide impoverished school children with uniforms,  
breakfasts, and basic school supplies. After refusing to negotiate with the  
teachers union, Gov. Ulises Ruiz sent the state police into Oaxaca City´s  
central plaza on June 14 to remove the teachers´ protest camp with tear gas and  
police batons. 

Hundreds were injured in the pitched battle that  resulted, and after a few 
hours the teachers, supported by outraged local  residents, forced the police 
out of town. They have not been back since.  

The teachers and members of the Oaxaca People´s Assembly (APPO) that  formed 
after the failed police raid decided to suspend the teachers´ original  list 
of demands and focus all their efforts on forcing the removal of Gov. Ruiz.  

Since June 14, they have subjected Oaxaca City to increasingly radical  civil 
disobedience tactics, such as surrounding state government buildings with  
protest camps, covering the city´s walls with political graffiti, and taking  
over public and private radio stations. 

Their struggle has led to a  severe drop in tourism and the economic impact 
of the empty restaurants and  sidewalk cafes has polarized the community, 
leading many who are sympathetic to  the teachers´ cause to clamor for an end to 
the movement´s grip on the city.  

"We do agree with some things the teachers demand, but this is affecting  too 
many people, " says Mercedes Velasco, a 30-year-old resident who sells  
banana leaves in the Mercado de Abastos in the southern reaches of the capital..  

TENSION INCREASES 

The tension shot up in late August when a  convoy of armed gunmen opened fire 
on the protesters´ camp outside Radio Ley,  killing 52-year-old Lorenzo 
Cervantes. From that night on, striking teachers and  members of the APPO, have 
built massive barricades across all the streets  surrounding the radio station 
and other strategic points near protest camps  around the city. 

Shortly thereafter, the U.S. State Department issued a  warning to U.S. 
citizens considering Oaxaca as a potential vacation spot.  

"U.S. citizens traveling to Oaxaca City should consider carefully the  risk 
of travel at this time due to the recent increase in violence there,"  states 
the announcement, which was extended to expire on Oct. 30.  

Despite the announcement, there have been no reported incidents of  violence 
against tourists during the conflict. 

Since the shooting on  Aug. 22, teachers and local citizens take to the 
streets every night between 10  and 11 p.m. to reinforce their barricades. 

Walking the desolate streets  at night, fires are visible at every 
intersection, as figures gather around  holding vigil. 

The visual impact is alarming: at many barricades men  with clubs and Molotov 
cocktails stand in the shadows with their faces covered  by bandanas or cheap 
surgical masks. 

As rumors of a federal police or  military intervention intensified this 
week, teachers and APPO protesters  extended their barricades throughout the city, 
making it impossible to navigate  the streets of Oaxaca by automobile at 
night. 

But this is no ordinary  battlefront. Rather than tanks making rounds, in 
this labyrinthine conflict zone  one finds instead families winding through the 
predawn streets, carrying large  stew pots filled with steaming coffee and hot 
chocolate for the night guards.  

The barricade guards are at times skittish, but not hostile. They ask  
pedestrians where they are going, and then tell people walking alone to be  careful 
and not to walk down dark streets. 

A well-dressed couple  returning home in the middle-class Colonia Reforma 
gave the barricade guards  near their house directions to their back door saying: 
"if anything happens, our  house will be open." 

At the barricade near Niños Héroes Avenue, the six  Mixteca and Zapotec women 
stay up all night discussing their favorite topic:  education. 

"I have to walk six hours to get to my school," says Estela,  a Mixteca woman 
who has been teaching in mountainside communities for 30 years,  "And then 
when I get there, I find that half the kids have not had breakfast and  the 
other half don´t have pencils or notebooks. I use my salary to buy these  
supplies, to prepare bread and tortillas. How do you expect children to learn if  they 
have not had breakfast?" 

OFFENDED BY REPRESSION 

Estela and  the other women expressed outrage and offense at Ruiz´s use of 
violence to  answer their call for a greater education budget, and that outrage 
fuels their  long nights at the barricades. 

"Ulises made a mistake when he attacked  us on June 14," says María as she 
leans away from the smoke of the street fire  where she warms her hands. "He 
thought that he was going to repress a small  organization, but the teachers 
union is large, and resilient."  

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