Good news! The magesterio announced yesterday on Radio Universidad that nobody died in the June 14 attack on striking teachers by the police in Oaxaca City.
Immediately after the attack, the rumor spread that at least four teachers, including a child, had died and that the bodies were being held at the police station but no one had been able to confirm or deny this until now.
I picked this up on TripAdvisor.com…a travel site:
As I’ve posted in a couple of threads, my wife and I are planning a trip to Oaxaca next week and had some concerns regarding the escalation of the protest activity. You all have been so helpful. On the advice of one responder to my posts I did contact the consular office in Oaxaca and here is the reply I received:
Sir: the teacher dispute with the state govt here is ongoing and no solution is in sight, at least not to public knowledge. you will not see the downtown of Oaxaca at its best, but I do not believe that the teachers, or the govt, represent any danger to tourists. The State Dept. information re this matter is to not participate in demonstrations and to avoid getting caught up in them, by going in an opposite direction, should you encounter one. I believe you will be safe here.
Mark Leyes
US Consular Agent
Oaxaca, Mexico
Today, friends Sharon and Sueki, a woman visiting from Tucson Texas who we met at Pachote Oganic Market, and I joined a tour of Mexican artist’s homes in San Agustin Etla…about half an hour north of the city. Many of these artists are famous in Mexico and beyond and their art was striking…one a ceramicist who has develped a new process mixing clay with polyester that burns out in the firing…leaving air tunnels in the tile so his gigantic wall hangings are lighter.
One…a hand-made paper artist…gave us a history of paper and an ecological perspective. We also visited a jaw-dropping art museum that is located in an old huge thread factory that has recently been restored under the tutelage of the famous Mexican artist Toledo. The four colors of clay found in Oaxaca…orange, green, yellow and red…combine to create a beautiful setting for a gallery and paper factory overlooking the San Augustin valley.
Then we join photographer, Marietta Bernstarff, (born in Mexico but educated in the U.S. and who also led the tour through the thread factory) in her beautiful home overlooking the mountains and valleys of San Augustin. http://www.laluztalleres.com/about.htm. She remarked that most of the people in this valley are not Oaxacans but descendents of the workers imported here from all over Mexico to build the original factory.
After stopping at a small open-air restaurant for Comida Corrida (midday meal) where we had chicken mole and a beer, we stopped by the home of a Dutch couple that have lived in San Augustin about 15 years. Ineke Granstadts is a jewelry-maker whose daughter markets her jewelry all over the U.S. including Manhattan. We wanted to see her studio she made by hand out of straw bales and stucco.
Then we circled through some other valleys..a beautiful day in a monsoon rain…taking pictures along the way….ending the day with hot chocolate in Oaxaca City.
People ask me what I do all day! It is different every day. The first six weeks, since I arrived May 30, all my time was spent running errands and setting up the apartment while trying to keep track of the activities of the teachers strike.
I live in a two-story four-apartment complex inside a walled compound. There are huge red locked metal doors that open into a pebble and stone “plaza.” Visitors ring a bell and someone always runs to open the doors. A family downstairs manages the apartment and I get my apartment cleaned whenever I ask for it.
I have WiFi internet access in my apartment that helps keep me connected with my kids and my friends in the U.S. One friend, who recently moved to Querataro, north of Mexico City, has already visited me with her Mexican husband…on June 14…the day the police routed the teachers out of the Zocalo (see blog entry “Police Try To Rout Teachers.”)…which was also my birthday.
One of the first things I was determined to do was find a place that sold thick foam pads for the top of my rock-hard bed…so after several walks around the city I finally found what I needed…
I turn the corner outside my apartment and buy fresh hot corn torillas from a torilleria up the street…3 pesos or 30 cents for about a dozen.
For grocery shopping I walk three blocks to the bus stop on Periferico…kind of the main big ring road that runs south and east around this city of 250,000…to take a bus north to the Chadraui Market…a nice big supermarket that also has dry goods. Here I can buy some of the many Oaxaca cheeses.
Or I can continue on the bus…on around the corner on the right to Plaza del Valle with a collection of stores that cater to gringo expats…Soriano Market or on up a couple more blocks to Sam’s Club (like Costco), Office Depot, KFC Chicken, Burger King, Sears etc. If I have a lot of groceries I bring the taxi back to my apartment for $3. ($3 will get me around most of the city but I am slowly learning to take the buses for 3 pesos or 30 cents.) This will take up half a day. I bought a comfortable Italian black leather chair at Sam’s Club because the kitchen chair I was sitting on at the kitchen table to use my computer was killing me. Sam’s Club is the best place to buy meat….and strawberries picked in Watsonville California! But I miss my Walla Walla Sweet onions…here onions are strong and bitter.
For fresh vegetables and fruit, however, I can walk about 5 blocks to 20, November covered market…and maybe buy fresh flowers and hot tamales from Zapatec women who sit on the floor in the aisles with their baskets of food. Benito Juarez Market, across the street, is full of food booths that is the best and cheapest place to eat…hot soups…mole and freshly made corn torillas. On the way I can buy delicious ripe mangoes from a street vendor. Or on the corner of Bustamante and Colon about 4 blocks north I can go to a smaller corner market where I can buy milk, eggs and staples if I only need a few things. On Fridays there is a great market in a small park about 10 blocks north where local people shop for fruit, veges and all manner of miscellanous things…clothing, CD’s etc.
Then about 3 blocks west of there, on Fridays and Saturdays, I usually go to Pachote Organic Market where I have met several interesting expats and tourists who patronize the market. I can buy organic free trade coffee beans and honey here…fresh from the fields sold by Elvira…a lovely Zapotec lady who brings the bus in 5 hours from her farm in the mountains. Last Friday I tasted and bought three kinds of Mescal while visiting with a Mexican-American lady standing nearby. She had lived most of her adult life in LA and moved back to Durango Mexico two weeks ago. Her U.S. university-educated daughter has recently moved to Oaxaca. We plan to visit again.
The water in Oaxaca City is undrinkable, so every few days we listen for the guy on a bicycle pulling a cart with huge water bottles yelling “El Agua, el Agua!” Then we run out into the street and tell him we want water…14 pesos a bottle…about $1.50 a bottle.
Yesterday, my friend Sharon, who I met on the plane to Oaxaca, went to the huge Abasto Market several blocks east of my apartment that rivals, but not quite, the souk in Marrakech or the Covered Bazaar in Istanbul. On Fridays and Saturdays farmers bring their fresh produce from outlying areas to sell. Besides some tender cactus leaves and some zucchini, yesterday I bought some green glazed Oaxacan pottery dishes.
I found a video store on Bustamante where I can rent DVDs to watch on my computer. Also had some personal cards made up at a stationary store nearby with my name, email address and phone numbers.
For miscellanous kitchen articles I walk one block up from my apartment to a plastics store for cheap stuff…bought a plastic three shelf stand to set my food stuff on.
My landlord is 25 year-old Gerardo Alcala who comes to my apartment regularly to practice his English and answer my questions. I have made friends with his mother, who gives cooking lessons in her home, and also with many of her friends. I am their “amiga” she says…a part of their family now. Gerardo’s father is a retired judge and his 27 year-old cousin is a national congresswoman. I am slowly getting to know his politics…and he is slowly trusting me enough to tell me.
The first day after I arrived, Gerardo picked me up at the Paulina Hostal and took me to his home for coffee and then with him to the Botanical Gardens while we waited for the carpenters to finish installing my kitchen cupboards (see earlier blog entry for pictures of my apartment.) The next Friday I joined Soccoro (Gerardo’s mother) and several of her friends at the “El Pescador Restaurant (with two bands and two dance floors) for salsa dancing.
A few days after that I joined the family to watch a couple of the soccer games that Mexico was playing in the World Cup games. After Mexico won it’s first game, the whole city turned out to celebrate at one of the plazas in the Centro of the city and we joined them with flags waving from the car windows (see blog entry). Gerardo’s family usually has guests in their home who are here studying Spanish and they joined us too. Ticketmaster finally reimbursed my tickets for the cancelled government Guelaguetza and Monday, I will go with the family to watch the free Guelaguetza in the outdoor amphitheater. Then on wednesday Soccoro and I will go to her hairdresser before my hair turns grey!
I spent one morning going to the Mexican immigration office with Sharon while she got her one-year visa. I am in the process of completing all the requirements for my one-year visa and will return to immigration soon.
One day Sharon and I took a bus to nearby Tolucalula to visit the wonderful market there. Another day Gerardo took an Australian couple and I on a tour to the ruins at Tula and to a rug factory that uses natural dyes and original Zapotec weaving practices. I bought three beautiful rugs for my apartment!
Many days, I just walk to the Zocalo.
We are very high…about 6-7000 feet and the weather is mild…cool in mornings and evenings…warm in the afternoons. The hotter months are Jan, Feb, March and April…ending with the rainy season in May, June and July and August. September through December are supposed to be the best months for weather.
It is said that there about 350,000 people in Oaxaca City…but that just includes the city limits. There are more than a million in the immediate region.
So every day is different…
The Asemblea of teachers and social groups succeeded in shutting down the indigenous dance festival, the Guelaguetza, that was scheduled for the 17th & 24th of July. Governor Ruiz announced the festival would be postponed but no other date was given.
It is said that the Asemblea is planning an alternative free dance festival.
Governor Ruiz has asked President Fox for funding to help the hotel association and the secretary of tourism reimburse tourists and hotels for lost revenue.
Hopefully Ticketmaster will refund the tickets for my friend and I.
The first picture is out the back…trees full of singing birds. The second picture was taken outside in front of my upstairs apartment.
Now if the round-the-clock explosions up on the hill where the road to the Gueleguetza Auditorium is being constructed…would stop…
Photo From “Oaxaca Noticias”
The local “Oaxaca Noticias” newspaper estimated 500,000 marchers at the 4th Oaxaca Megamarch…a historic event that included supporters from several neighboring states.
Starting with a motorcycle cavalcade and many automobiles, the fourth mega-march to oust the Governor stretched out along five miles of the nine-mile route from the airport road to Benito Juarez Soccer Stadium. When the first marchers arrived at the stadium many were still at the airport road.
By 11pm my friend and I who had been watching from the Soccer Stadium were exhausted and went home. By that time the street was still full of marchers coming from the airport.
Yesterday I went to Tule…a small town of about 15,000 near Oaxaca City. What a charming place. Most of the men are gone up north, my driver said (as a huge brand new black diesel pickup backed up to a vendor’s booth) and come back before Christmas. Yes, I know, I said.
I read that as much as 70% of Oaxaca’s budget is augmented by money from the migrants. The problem is that this takes the pressure off the local political system to make substantive changes in the economy.
I am finding out that some migrants up north are willing to live in crummy conditions so they can save every penny and then come back and build a house and buy a car. Everyone’s dream. On their web site June 17 MSNBC featured an article entitled “Migrant’s Money Goes A Long Way In Mexico. The article goes on…”Last year, Mexican migrants sent home a record $20 billion, making them Mexico’s biggest foreign earner after oil, according Mexico’s Central Bank. In the first four months of this year, the amount was $7 billion, a 25 percent increase over the same period last year. Half of it flows into poor villages like Boye, a corn-growing community of 900 people founded by Otomi Indians long before Europeans came to the Americas. Clementina Arellano grew up with her six brothers in a shack in this dusty town. She now has a home with Roman-style pillars at the doorway and a garden full of flowers and singing birds. How did she transform her fortunes so dramatically? By waiting tables and sweating in a furniture factory for about 10 years in Hickory, N.C., and sending home up to $500 a month.”
I am still emailing a girl I mentored for several years while working with a violence prevention/alternative education program for Latino school drop-outs. Her Mixtec family lives/lived high in the Oaxacan mountains. The girl, I’ll call her Maria, isn’t in the US legally and can’t come back, but she told me in an email that I could go with her family to her village next time they came down. She said they had a huge house that was “big enough for the whole village to fit into” and there would be plenty room for me. I know because I saw a picture of it when I was in her home. In the summers, when other migrant children were attending the Summer Migrant School Program, Maria and her siblings would continue working in the fields to help their parents earn money.
Maria had never been anywhere in town except school and wasn’t socialized vis a vis US culture. She and her cousin were angry…had joined a gang and were getting into fights in school. I used to take them places…would always have a thermos of coffee in the car with me. Now Maria says whenever she smells coffee she thinks of our trips…cute. Most of the Mixtec families from Oaxaca were wonderful and I fell in love with the people.
Maria had two incisors that were growing straight out of her gums. A local dentist was willing to extract them for free (write it off) and give her braces. At her last appointment she sold her jacket to buy him some flowers. I told the receptionist later to make damn sure he knew where the flowers came from.
The parents would leave the children, some just toddlers, on their own for two months every year and return to Oaxaca to work on “their land” so they wouldn’t lose their right to it…since the land is communal and if it isn’t worked a certain amount of time each year, they would lose access to it and would also be ostracized from the community, Maria said.
Maria was in the program for nearly 8 years…from the time she was in the 7th grade until she was a junior in high school and finally went to a live-in alternative high school program. She is now living with a significant other…has a two year old and is in a nursing program at Portland Community College and working. Her primary language is Mixtec. She has done this on her own. She was very artistic and had dreams of being a clothing designer…or maybe just wearing the clothes that designers design. She would draw these jaw-dropping pictures of girls in gorgeous elegant dresses…
I understand why the teachers are striking! Basta!
Yesterday my friend Sharon and I hopped a diesel-spewing bus for the hour ride to Tlacolula, southeast of the city, where vendors from multiple little villages around the Oaxaca Valley come on Sundays to buy and sell. The market is huge and we haven’t managed to cover it all by 4pm when it begins to close.
Crispy Rendered Pork Fat When Broken Up Into Pieces Is Called Chicharones
On the way out I buy boiled goat meat in a delicious sauce for my dinner. We stand in the aisle of the bus on the way home. I will return to buy a rug for my bedroom.
This is an eye witness narrative written by my friend Patricia Gutierrez from Queretaro who, with her luck and mine, visited me the night of the attack on the teachers in the Zocalo in Oaxaca City on June 14, my birthday…14 days after I arrived in Oaxaca.
Last Tuesday, June 6, my newly minted husband, Jose Roberto, and I, decided to go visit my dear friend Zoe Goetz, from Salem, Oregon, who had just moved to the city of Oaxaca, the state capital of Oaxaca, around the 1st. This same city is described in a travel guide as being quaint. Unfortunately like many of its citizens we got another, non-touristy, view of things.
When we arrived, at my friend’s apartment on the 14th, around midnight, we saw some people, teachers specifically, gathered in the Zocalo which is in the heart of this historic city, sitting under tarps and holding signs protesting their education system, salaries, etc. They are also demanding the ouster of their governor, a member of PRI the country’s very corrupt and sole governing body for over 70 years up until 2000 when Pres. Vicente Fox won. In general they blame the governor for their bleak and further deteriorating situation. We had seen something of these protesting teachers (protesting for over 20 days) on the evening news in Queretaro where we live, but from what happened next things had clearly been downplayed in the media. And truth be told I guess we are like most people in that it really doesn’t seem real when you watch these types of events playing out on TV, over and over I might add, in the general comfort of one’s living room, sandwiched in between commercials for Pepsi and the World Cup and Condoms (yeah this is Mexico they’re more honest about their sexuality I guess).
When we woke up the next morning at Eunice’s, Jose and I were suffering with terrible sore throats, burning sinuses and headaches. So we figured a little bit of Vitamin C and aspirin from the local pharmacy would help. Zoe pointed us two blocks up from her apartment, toward the Zocalo. So off we went.
There was a strange odor hanging in the air. Our eyes, noses and throats burned even more. There were barricades made up of lines of people (in other areas we would also see small buses) near where we were stopped. We asked two passers-by about a pharmacy as nothing appeared to be open. We were informed that we would probably find nothing open as the police had swept the area intent upon removing the protesting teachers, and their supporters, at about 4 a.m. with tear gas and bullets dropped from overhead by low-flying helicopters. Several people gathered around us when they realized we were tourists and we were asking questions as to why all of this had occurred?!
We also heard unconfirmed reports from those present, that the police had shot and killed two children and four teachers. When we asked where the bodies were we were told that the police had them hidden in their police station.
There were so many injured from amongst the teachers that the local hospitals said that they could receive no more injured. There was a confirmed report of 50+ injured protesters.
There is a confirmed report of one police officer being injured.
We met many, many articulate, concerned and compassionate individuals. Talk about grace under fire. These folks were the epitome of it. And, like the rest of us, wanting only to be heard and treated with respect.
You can imagine our reaction to all of this. We definitely were a long way from Salem, Oregon, that’s for sure. We became even more alarmed when we realized there was a police helicopter flying very low right above our heads and we turned and saw a man with a broken piece of mirror trying to obstruct their view by shining it on the helicopter while someone else on the ground near by was taking a video of the scene. Jose and I rushed back to the apartment feeling utterly overwhelmed by what we had seen, heard and smelled at the Zocalo.
When we shared all of this with Zoe we realized why she had gotten an odd text message from her landlord earlier that morning advising her to not leave the apartment and not go downtown (to the Zocalo). We clearly never do as we are told. Jose decided that if nothing else he would go back and take pictures of the situation and share these over the Internet. He made Eunice and me stay behind. That lasted about 10 or 15 minutes. Zoe and I decided that we had to go and find him and not leave him out there on his own, and see for ourselves.
Everyone simply shared their story with us. No one demanded anything of us.
Jose asked permission to take the pictures that I am passing along here. We were escorted past the barricades so that we might speak with a spokesperson for the protesters. We met a local human rights worker who had been told all of the same things we had heard. He was trying to collect evidence so that he might further assist them in their cause, and call in support from the federal level. We also met a teacher who was beaten by a police nightstick. He had 2000 pesos stolen by the police. He only makes 3200 pesos every two weeks. It takes about $11.40 in pesos to purchase one U.S. dollar right now. Someone else had an empty canister of tear gas. A young woman said that they had collected shell casings from what appeared to be a large caliber weapon. We encountered a few healthcare workers who were volunteering their time trying to care for the injured protesters.
Since Jose and I arrived here we have watched on the evening news, on a daily basis, some form of civil unrest in various states across this republic. Mostly on a very large scale. When we go grocery shopping or to the movie theater it is customary to see police officers patrolling outside, in the parking lot, and inside of the theater with an AK-47, sub-machine gun and the like.
Here the authorities are scarier than any criminal element that may be lurking about.
At no time did we feel threatened by any of these protesting teachers.
Laughingnomad 