an email i received today from eric in oaxaca:

Everyone has either left or is in hiding. Those who feel less threatened,
or, I guess, are more valiant, are *just* laying low. Yesterday, I decided
to go, too, at least for a few days.

It’s been tricky getting out of Oaxaca. After Saturday, when the PFP and
PRIistas and police repressed — with teargas, slingshots, guns, threats,
and infiltrators — the attempt by hundreds of thousands of Oaxacans (and
others) to form a 48-hour human enclosure of the Zocalo PFP, the
authorities have been patrolling non-stop, rounding up teachers from
schools and bystanders from the streets. They’ve set up checkpoints on the
roads and some mail services are sending stuff out of the city only after
they check your ID. And then, on Nov. 29, the government announced it had
a list of foreigners it was looking to nab.

I managed to send out documents and such through a post office on the
outskirts of town (without having to show my ID — thanks for the consejo,
d.e.a.), and took small-town buses north to Huajampam, to avoid
checkpoints, and from there to Mexico City, where I arrived today at 4:30
a.m.

The teachers have now called a 48-hour strike to protect themselves from
the police round-ups.

On Saturday, what must have been a million people marched (for more than
15 kilometers in the hot sun!) to the center, with the plan of surrounding
it. I marched with Barricade 3 folks, some others from a libertarian
collective based in the colonias, and two CIPO village guys who had never
been to a march before.

We had left that morning in several busses (expropriated near Radio
Universidad) from the Barricade of Victory (formerly, ugh, the “Barricade
of Death”), which I wrote about in my last post. The compas there had
loaded the busses with all kinds of supplies, both to hold off PFP
aggression and to reinforce the human enclosure we were to set up later
that day.

After we arrived and set up at our intersection, some of us went to Santo
Domingo to get something to eat. There was always food there — just like
at so many of the barricades, plantones, and meetings I’ve been too — and
it was always free. It was skimpy that day — tortillas with rice and
pineapple juice — but the way people (almost always women) kept movement
people fortified with (free) beans, tortillas, hot chocolate, sandwhiches,
and atole over the last couple months is incredible, given the poverty and
atmosphere of repression.

The line for food was still long when the tear gas cannisters and cohetes
started booming. The folks around me lept up, started hopping with
excitement, and began to chant. Those, at least, were the ones I noticed.
Many, at that point, probably started to leave. And after several hours of
increasing violent street confrontations, it’s important to note that
there were maybe 1000 militants around, in different clusters. It’s hard
to estimate, and I know there were other groups at different points in the
city that night, but as I said earlier, there had been probably a million
at the march, and tens of thousands surrounding the Zocalo that afternoon.
On Nov. 2 and at other points, neighbors spilled out of their homes to
support the activities. That night, perhaps because of the darkness,
perhaps because of fear, and perhaps because of the violence (of the
police and of some folks on our side) they weren’t there.

It’s hard to know who started the back-and-forth, the property
destruction, and the violence. Was is the PFP? Provocateurs inside the
march? The protesters themselves? But it’s easy to see who profitted most
from it in the short-term: them. That night, hundreds were detained and
wounded, several buildings burned, and some — maybe — killed. (Near the
fountain of the Siete Regiones, many claim that between 3-5 people were
shot dead, and that the police carried away the bodies.) That night, the
PFP destroyed the Santo Domingo encampment. Friends who had the courage to
walk around the next morning saw a large pool of blood behind Santo
Domingo, with a bootprint of blood beside it, and a handprint of blood
further up the sidewalk.

Oaxaca, by 8 am Sunday, had entered a state of siege. Folks had already
been scared to walk alone, but the reality of being searched, detained
(which is itself a guarantee of being tortured), or worse suddenly became
much higher. The indigenous forum schedule for this week happened
nonetheless, but we were basically locked in because of all the
plainclothes police patrolling outside. (The first day, as a group of us
arrived in a taxi, a bunch of men jumped out of the back of a white
pick-up nearby and attempted to blend in with the passersby. It was eerie,
and scary. In passing, the guy with the newspaper looked like an ordinary
middle-aged Oaxacan, reading a newspaper. But why does he only glance at
it for a second or two, and then walk to the other corner and say a few
words to another man? And then sit down on the bench nearby? And then move
spots again, and getting closer to us?

If the networks of communities and groups and unions are the arteries of
this movement, the beating heart is its direct action. The Santo Domingo
planton and the Barricade of Victory directly blocked the circulation and
accumulation of money and power, and now they’re both gone. It was a game
of chicken, but they had a sharpshooter in their cab.

In solidarity,
Eric