World Watching And Politics

What Now For Oaxaca?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Local analysts argue about whether the causes of the popular social movement here in Oaxaca are utter corruption and the history of political bossism by the PRI party, the effects of transnational/neoliberal policies created by NAFTA, the lack of economic development by federal and state authorities…or just plain infighting between any and all political and social groups.

In Oaxaca State, the main employer has been the government.

Outside of Oaxaca City the lost jobs are mainly in agriculture and that results in a huge migration to the US and Canada. The Isthmus is in an uproar over the wind farms. They were “rented” by intermediaries who gave the local owners next to nothing (100 pesos annually per hectare) and then turned around and rented the land to the transnationals at hefty prices. They are making grand profits while the local people are left behind.

This last weekend the APPO met, while other APPO activists are in Mexico City or the USA or Europe or somewhere, trying to get support. The biggest decision now has to do with how to approach the elections.
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Crack Down on Mexico’s Crackdowns

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Last Saturday, in Oaxaca City’s Centro, I watched the 9th MegaMarch enter the Plaza de la Danza. They had walked five miles in sweltering heat from the airport. The teachers and their supporters are letting people know their demands are not over by a long shot.

Today the respected Christian Science Monitor posted this article online:

President Calderón must improve human rights by reining in abusive police.

By Robert M. Press
OAXACA, MEXICO – Before he was tied up, thrown in the back of a truck, and tortured in prison, Gonzalo heard words he’ll never forget. “The poor will always be poor and the rich will always be rich,” a police officer taunted. “So why don’t you go home and abandon your struggle.”
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Khmer Rouge Trials

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Ever since visiting the killing fields in Cambodia in 2002, (for pictures click on the category for Cambodia on the right-hand side of the screen) I have watched closely the development of an international tribunal that hopefully will try the remaining Khmer Rouge killers of as many as 1.7 million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979. Anyone who was educated…even wore eyeglasses…was targeted in the interest of blasting Cambodia back to the stone age and creating an agrarian society, leaving Cambodia one of the most destitute and corrupted countries in the world today. So much for ideas. Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge’s despotic leader, died a free man in 1998. Many of the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders, including Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s chief deputy known as “Brother Number Two,” are aged.
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Learning Spanish Amid “False Normalcy”

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Have been taking Spanish lessons in one of the local schools…Amigos del Sol. Three hours a day sitting in a chair. Only one other student in my classes so I can’t space out. Present, past and future. I have memorized them but try recalling which verb ending you need in a conversation! Practice, practice, practice, Rojelio, the school’s director, tells me. So I am taking a couple weeks off to talk to Mexicans. One of my Spanish teachers says Miles Davis is his favorite jazz musician. He says it is very difficult finding jazz music here so I burned some CD’s of Miles and John Coltrane who he had never heard of. Will be interesting to get his reaction.

I am having the brakes checked on my car. Coming down out of the Sierra Norte a few weeks ago the brakes got hot and my foot hit the floor-board! Next, an appointment to have my teeth cleaned. Trying to get ahold of Josh and Amy in Beijing…and check up on Doug in Oregon. Greg usually returns my calls.

Finally found the right office to inquire about my car having to cross the border at six months. With Ana’s translating help I found out I don’t have to go to Guatemala by Feb 2 as I thought…as long as I have an FM3 year long visa I am ok. Still would like to drive through Chiapas to Guatemala but at least i can do it in my own time. An old friend is threatening to come visit but will believe it when I see it.

We don’t have TV, so often in the evenings when Oscar is in bed, Ana and Steve come over to watch movies with me on my 20″ flat screen that i finally got a connector for. “Does it have English subtitles,” I ask the kid on the street selling bootleg movies for $1.50 each. Oh, yes, he says with great certainty. So yesterday I slide the DVD of “Volver” into the computer and guess what…no English subtitles. Was excited to watch “Little Miss Sunshine” again and for Ana to see it. Dubbed voices! Won’t due having Robert Duvall “speaking” in Spanish! Most of these movies have been made with hand-held camcorders pointed at a movie screen and the audio is terrible. Then there is the problem of opening a case and the movie you thought you purchased is a different one altogether! I can rent legitimate movies at a rental store if I can figure out which titles go with which movies. They retitle movies in Spanish that often have little to do with the commercial title so you have to decipher the Spanish description and look at the names of actors to guess which movie you are renting. “Children of Man” has been renamed an unrecognizable “Sons Of the Men” (Hijos de los Hombres) which is a whole different connotation. “Pointe Blank” becomes “Punto de Quiebra.” Fine distinctions are difficult to translate into Spanish and the same goes for Spanish into English.

Then there is the almost daily fireworks. Yesterday, Sunday, fireworks at 5:30am. What’s the deal I ask Ana. St. Thomas Day she said. Oh.

In the meantime the daily news in the Noticias and La Jornada is not good. Since the APPO was driven out of Oaxaca City, it appears that the Governor’s battle has been moved to the pueblos around the state. It has been reported that about 250 schools are engaged in physical (and sometimes gun) battles over which teachers to allow in their classrooms, a fight involving the CCL, Section 22, Section 59, parents, PRI, etc. While the teachers were on strike, other people, often without credentials, were hired in some schools to take their places. Now there is disagreement as to which teachers should continue teaching. 59 and CCL are the anti-APPO forces.
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What’s Up With Oaxaca Now?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Blog
Marc Lacey, The New York Times, 28.12.06
December 28

Oaxaca: Painting Over Signs of Strife to Tidy Up for the Tourists
There is a new smell in the air here, competing with the aroma of mole sauce that routinely wafts through Oaxaca. It is the smell of paint fumes.

Work crews are everywhere, retouching the colonial facades that give Oaxaca its charm and draw tens of thousands of visitors a year. But in this politically charged city in southern Mexico, where protesting is as much a part of the culture as the distinctive cuisine, even the cleanup is causing arguments.

Just weeks ago, Oaxaca was a wreck. Graffiti marred its buildings. Burned-out vehicles blocked its roads. Angry protesters confronted riot-equipped police officers around the charming central square.

The protests, which began with teachers seeking a pay raise but grew to include an array of leftist groups and indigenous organizations, are continuing sporadically, but officials have begun trying to scrub away the evidence of what occurred.

Not everybody agrees on the best approach.
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Calderon Takes Oath Of Office

Posted on by Laughingnomad

It was reported on a discussion site that “Felipe Calderon took the oath of office as president of Mexico this morning in a ceremony that lasted four minutes. The house of legislators came to blows several times before he arrived, and the shouting continued throughout with a pause for the national anthem.

The PFP surrounded the building.

The video camera showed Arnold Shwarzeneger approaching the chamber, smiling as if he were about to be interviewed as a star presence. I think the whole thing ended before he got in the door.”

It has also been reported in the Mexican media that the Governor has a list of 100 foreigners they are looking to arrest that helped out the resistance here. I imagine these are mostly journalists and others from countries like Cuba and Venezuela. But some expats here are worried that their visas won’t be renewed if they have been found supporting APPO.

I want to make it clear that I have posted no articles to any foreign press nor have given any financial or other assistance to the APPO nor to anyone supporting APPO. I do scan blogs and discussion sites for information that I can use to assess my safety here. As a foreign expat I am keeping a very low profile. I don’t want to risk not being let back into the country.

International Tourists

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Tomorrow Thursday at 10 AM there will be a people’s consulta at Santo Domingo Plaza in front of the church, which the “international tourists” will attend, carrying their cameras and wearing a hat and sunglasses.”

Note: I will not attend…don’t want to get deported for interfering in Mexican politics.

Lovely Oaxacan Family

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Last night I visited a gentle sincere Oaxacan family that lives about 20 minutes in the mountains northwest of the city in San Andreas Huayapam. The couple roasts fragrant locally grown coffee and delivers it to outlets all over.

I gave them flowers I bought at the 20 November Market and they made some of their fresh coffee…but only after insisting I have a glass of Oaxacan Mescal.

The couple and one of their best friends and my colorful Mexican translator, who spent several years meandering around the States, and I sat for hours at their outdoor kitchen table and talked…about coffee…and a hundred other things. Two other couples stopped by for a few minutes.

Shirin Ebadi

Posted on by Laughingnomad

In Bangkok, in April of 2005 at the Thailand Foreign Correspondent’s Club I listened to a talk by Shirin Ebadi…a strong brave woman lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for defending human rights in Iran. Yesterday the NY Times reported (below) that she has been threatened with arrest if she doesn’t close her Center for Defense of Human Rights in Tehran.

Ms Ebadi is a self declared human rights activist, having already been jailed once, and one of the many attorneys who are working together with many of the nearly 200 journalists who are currently incarcerated in Iran. She said that it is impossible to determine the exact number of people jailed for their human rights work because the statistics are not released by the government and families do not want to tell why their members are in jail for fear of reprisal.

Her most adamant point was that violence and war solves nothing but instead intensifies conflict. She added that Iran is not in a position to pose any danger to any of it’s neighbors. Then she continued by saying that it is left up to various Non-Governmental Organizations in Iran to go into neighboring countries with messages.

In describing her work, Ms Ebadi stressed that “the power of the pen is much stronger than the power of arms…the work of the pen can do more than an entire army,” she said.

“So human rights activists are fighting for the freedom of the pen,” she said. “All societies need freedom of expression…the first stepping stone of democracy.” Regarding Burma, she said that the role of mass media is critical and the media should demand that the democratically elected leader and Nobel Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, be given her freedom from house arrest.

She said it is impossible for one person to make a complete change in a country and any change must take place through the people. “The world is a mirror that reflects the good and bad in us eventually,” she concluded.

I am afraid she will suffer reprisal.
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Unexpected Adventures

Posted on by Laughingnomad

At Pachote Organic Market while sampling Mezcal, an alcoholic beverage made in Oaxaca from the agave plant, I met Juanita, a lovely Mexican-American woman, who was here visiting her daughter. We connected immediately and it turns out that after having one child in Guadalajara and three in LA, she lived for 30 some years in Highland Park…two blocks from where we lived while my husband was doing a pediatric internship and residency at LA County Hospital. We left a couple years before she moved in but her husband’s brother lives on Marmion Way…the same short street our next door neighbors moved to shortly before we left LA. Juanita has just left her husband and moved back to Mexico.

So, after meeting her daughter, Veronica, in her little casita north of the Zocalo, we all drove to a nearby hilltop overlooking a little valley to visit Willie, a Swiss expat, artist and industrial designer. He graciously served us avocado and tomatoes and grated carrots with lime and salt and we had a bowl of Veronica’s black beans. Besides designing lamps and such out of sticks of cane gleaned from the hills around him, Willie is helping an international organization design an eco lodge in the Sierra Madre mountains.

Veronica, born in Mexico but raised and educated in LA is teaching English to third graders. I get an insight into the teacher’s strike when she tells me her husband never went beyond primary school but was able to purchase a teaching permit. This permit can be held until he decides to retire…or just not teach anymore…and then the powerful Teacher’s Union will pay him retirement wages. He can pass the permit down to his children or sell it to someone else. My landlord, Gerardo, had told me that many of the teachers are not qualified so it was interesting to hear this story. Veronica is currently estranged from her husband…he is busy striking while she is supporting their one and a half and six year old children. The other side of the story.

That evening Juanita and I decided to go out dancing but when we found the club closed we walked up to the Zocalo to find other entertainment. We found a traditional music and dance performance called a Calendula in front of the Cathedral depicting political commentary…boys under huge 15 foot tall paper mache “bodies” swinging back and forth wildly out of control.

Then the fireworks started directly above us. It felt weird being seeing all the sparks rain down directly upon us…possibly dangerous I thought. The fireworks were being lit too close to the Cathedral and started bouncing wildly off the walls and roof instead of up in the air. Then all of a sudden fireworks began shooting horizontally at us and people stampeded backward. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the fireworks stand was on fire. Juanita and I ran smack into a vendor’s tent and fell but quickly helped each other up. All I could think of was the other stampedes I had heard of, but most of the people around us didn’t seem too concerned so there was no panic…they’ve seen this before I thought. So that was the end of that.

We got a cup of coffee further up Alcala St. and sat in front of another Cathedral listening to some boys drumming…and watching a fire-stick twirler…finally making our way home about midnight in the cool night air.

Then came another unexpected adventure. I turned on the stairway light just as I was reaching to put the key in the door when I noticed what I thought was a salamander hugging the wall by the doorknob. I touched him…expecting him to scurry up the wall but he didn’t move. Don’t touch it, Juanita quickly warned…it’s a scorpion! Big one!