Oaxaca, Mexico – The 48-hour strike called by Oaxaca shopowners and other businessmen to demand a solution to the serious crisis prevailing in the southern Mexican state for the past four months got off to an unimpressive start Thursday, but organizers said that it will gain strength in the coming hours.
At mid-morning, about 50 percent of the 6,000 businesses expected to join the strike were still open, the spokesman for the Citizens Movement for Justice, Peace and Development with Dignity for Oaxaca, Javier Perez, told EFE.
“We see that there is still a lot of movement, there are open businesses, but we think that little by little they will start joining this strike,” Perez said of the measure which is especially affecting Oaxaca city, the capital of the state.
The conflict began in May with a strike by public school teachers who began radicalizing their measures on June 14 after police action to repress the protest. So far, two people have died in the various confrontations.
The teachers, who have been joined by other social organizations grouped under the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, or APPO, say that their protests will end only when Gov. Ulises Ruiz resigns.
Perez, who is the head of Canirac, the National Chamber of the Restaurant Industry in Oaxaca, predicted the strike would gain force.
About a month ago, the same group staged a 24-hour work stoppage that left the city practically paralyzed from its public transport service to its department stores.
That move resulted in losses of some $7 million to local businesses, while the total losses to date from the teachers’ strike have risen to some $400 million.
The teachers have virtually laid siege to the city and have caused the tourism industry – the engine of the local economy – to take a nosedive, plunging to only about 10 percent of its former level.
In statements published by the daily Excelsior, the president of the Employers’ Confederation of the Mexican Republic of Oaxaca, Jose Escobar, estimated that 6,000 people have lost their jobs in the conflict, of whom 2,900 had permanent employment and 3,100 were contract workers.
Tired of the situation, Oaxacan businessmen are demanding that the government authorities find a solution to the turmoil, whether via dialogue or force, the latter of which Gov. Ruiz dares not undertake after the failed attempt to quash the strike last June, a move that only complicated the situation.
Ruiz and some state lawmakers are demanding that Mexican President Vicente Fox send federal security forces to the area, something the governor prefers to avoid, but has not ruled out.
Fox’s interior secretary, Carlos Abascal, said in an interview with El Universal that if the authorities resort to the use of force it will be “with prudence, but with decisiveness” and will be strictly “proportional.”
Meanwhile, the striking sectors are readying for a possible attempt by police to suppress the protest, some 2,000 barricades have been erected and the more radical activists are outfitting themselves with Molotov cocktails in preparation for any move against them by the security forces.
