Oaxaca, Mexico – Some 2,000 people took to the streets here Tuesday to denounce the striking teachers and grassroots groups that occupied this once-lovely state capital for months to demand the resignation of Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz.
The march set out from Oaxaca city’s residential northside and ended in Juarez Plaza, near the colonial-era downtown from which more than 4,000 federal police and troops cleared members of the anti-Ruiz APPO coalition in a clash-fraught operation on Sunday.
Chanting slogans such as “APPO Out” and “Ulises, hang tough, the people rise up,” the marchers crossed the city without incident, though they did exchange insults with partisans of APPO and the teachers.
Among the marchers were several white-clad women from Oaxaca’s middle and upper classes who told EFE that the procession was announced via Radio Ciudadana, one of only two functioning stations in the city and rumored to be controlled by the Ruiz administration.
The other station that is still on the air, Radio Universidad, has served for months as the voice of the teachers union and the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, or APPO, an umbrella organization of civic, Indian and peasant groups.
A woman waving a sign which read “Honest citizens who want peace” told EFE that her presence should not be interpreted as support for the governor.
“I don’t speak out for either of the two sides, I speak out for peace,” she said, declining to give her name.
“The government has made mistakes. The PRI (Ruiz’s party) has governed for more than 70 years of extravagant corruption,” the woman said, referring to the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s reign in Oaxaca, which dates from 1929.
At the other end of the spectrum was a man – also preferring to remain anonymous – who hailed Ruiz as “the only one who turned off the money tap to the teachers union, which year after year blocks streets with its demonstrations.”
Oaxaca’s crisis began brewing in May, when the state’s poorly paid teachers, in accord with a three-decade-old tradition, went on strike to demand an increase in their salaries.
In the past, authorities invariably granted the teachers a small pay hike to ensure labor peace, but Ruiz balked at dealing with the strikers, deciding instead to use force to clear protesting union activists from the main square of Oaxaca city.
The ensuing clashes left more than 90 people injured and gave rise to APPO, which joined with the teachers to demand Ruiz’s ouster.
Now back in the state’s executive mansion thanks to federal riot troops, the embattled governor continues to defy persevering protesters and the national Congress, which urged him to help resolve five months of crisis, chaos and conflict by stepping aside.
“The (national) Congress does not have the power to call for my resignation,” Ruiz said from Government House on Monday during his first encounter with the press there since being forced by broadening protests to abandon it three months ago.
He also said the request that he step down, backed even by some legislators from Ruiz’s PRI, “violates the state’s sovereignty.”
Ruiz, who many believe gained office in 2004 by way of electoral fraud, was able to return to the governor’s mansion thanks to Sunday’s federal intervention.
Oaxaca city, a major tourist attraction before the current strife began, remained early Tuesday a scene of blight and nervousness. Charred vehicles littered the streets and plazas along with remnants of burned barricades, collapsed tents where demonstrators had been camping for months, discarded placards and garbage.
But pedestrians returned to the main square and many shops were again open for business, as were the city’s banks, whose entrances were jammed by scores of residents anxious to cash checks or make withdrawals.
Meanwhile, hundreds of APPO supporters remained on stand-by for more marches and demonstrations on an esplanade near the Santo Domingo convent not far from the main square, or Zocalo, they were booted from Sunday.
The conflict in Oaxaca prompted the U.S. Embassy in Mexico to renew its advisory cautioning against travel to the southern state. The embassy put the number of dead from the strife at 13, though figures on victims vary according to the source.
The Zapatista movement, a former guerrilla band in neighboring Chiapas, said it would block highways in that state beginning Wednesday in solidarity with the Oaxaca protesters.
The teachers’ strike that was the nucleus of the anti-Ruiz protest before the broader and more militant APPO became its main protagonist in June, was supposed to have come to an end Monday with the return of educators to classrooms statewide.
Some schools reopened outside the capital, but continuing tension in Oaxaca city kept schools here shuttered.
President Vicente Fox, whose six-year term ends Dec. 1 when he hands power to fellow conservative Felipe Calderon, said in Mexico City on Monday that “today our brothers and sisters in Oaxaca have returned to order, peace and tranquility.”
But most residents of this city, at least, appeared far from convinced that tranquility was the right word to describe their situation.
Ruiz told the Government House press conference that the protesters were “a minority that does not represent the people.”
“I have a mandate from a majority of Oaxacans and I am going to fulfill it. From that point of view, I say the situation in Oaxaca will be decided and defined by Oaxacans,” he said.
In Mexico City, the leftist coalition that supported Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the country’s disputed July 2 presidential election urged the Fox administration to push for Ruiz’s removal.
The coalition and Lopez Obrador also said in an open letter that the federal armed intervention in Oaxaca was “unacceptable” and only “deepened the political crisis.”
Lopez Obrador, who refuses to recognize Calderon’s election victory and vows to establish a “parallel government,” scheduled an event for late Tuesday in Mexico City to show “support of the people of Oaxaca.”
