A Tucson friend, Lila, writes from Oaxaca City:
Writing here from Oaxaca because the situation here has gotten more extreme. Varo and I were in San Juan Cotzocom, which is in the Sierra Mixe for about 10 days. We returned to the Zocalo to find it filled again with people. Recently, as the struggle has been renewed and APPO has been focusing on boycotting and disrupting the gelaguetza (a celebration of Indigenous culture which is originally founded on cultural and economic sharing which has been coopted as a money making tourist attraction).
The situation here has become more intense recently as APPO has directly blocked and taken control of the planned location of the Gelaguetza. There are many rumors of impending violence as a plane full of fedral police (the same ones who came to Atenco) landed today in the Oaxaca airport, as well as 5-6 busses of state police. All of the information is in the offical release from CIPO which I sent to most of you.
Things have been stressfull here as four days ago, our first night back in Oaxaca city, we had to quickly clean out the CIPO office at 3:00 am because there was threat of a police raid, and have been rotating on night match ever since. Itīs hard to judge the level of danger, because in these types of situations you never know until something happens.
[...]
P.S. if you are interested in finding out more about the desalojo on the 14th of june, activist groups here and other Oaxaca stuff, the Oaxaca indymedia site is awesome. They also put together a great film of the desalojo (the police raid) which I think you can download online...
I don't know where the Oaxaca Indymedia site is, I just put that link there as a starting point for your searches.
So many struggles everywhere. In a way, modern communications technology is a double-edged sword, I think. It enables everyone everywhere with an internet connection to know about what's going on everywhere else immediately. And yet the information overload that results sometimes produces paralysis. I just read a pretty good article, for mainstream press, in the SF Weekly about a related phenomenon: that the huge number of activist protests and demonstrations in San Francisco may do more harm than good.
In fact, some political analysts and longtime activists contend the dizzying number of rallies harms progressive efforts by fracturing public support amid a glut of competing interests. With more groups jostling for media attention, voters can grow weary of the scrum, as evinced by the meager turnout for last month's primary elections, slowing the pace of policy reform. Posted by steev at Julio 17, 2006 07:57 AM