The teachers' protest camp in downtown Oaxaca City
The Sección 22 union local representing public school teachers in Oaxaca announced today that it will maintain its strike through Friday, June 3rd. The strike began on May 23rd and is part of what has become a ritual in budget negotiations with the state government.
Oaxacan teachers have used the tactic of camping out in the streets during May negotiations for nearly three decades now. While it’s effectiveness as a pressure tactic is questionable given its repeated use, it is a common ground for teachers from around the state to meet and it establishes a certain cohesion among the union’s membership.
The camp itself is massive, taking up around 20 city blocks in the state capital, including the central plaza, known as the zócalo.
A painted banner from the displaced persons camp in Oaxaca
Families displaced by violence in the Mexican town of San Juan Copala are attempting to return to the homes they fled last year. The rural town in the southern state of Oaxaca declared itself autonomous in January of 2007, but differences among factions in the region led to what many call “a paramilitary siege” which lasted for 10 months.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
In the early months of the siege armed men blocked vehicular access to and from San Juan Copala and fired shots from the hills that overlook the town. As the situation intensified, snipers targeted the families of those who supported the autonomy project – often wounding people who left their homes or who attempted to flee the town on foot.
By mid-October of 2010, more than a dozen of the small town’s residents were dead and many others had been wounded by gunfire.
Some residents who have escaped the conflict fled to Oaxaca City where they set up a protest camp in front of the Government Palace. Women here swept the side walk this morning ahead of their departure for Mexico City as part of a caravan.
The 513 migrants found crammed into the trailers of two 18-wheelers Tuesday came from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Asia. State police discovered the migrants via an X-ray machine at a checkpoint near the state capital of Chiapas. According to statements made to police, each migrant was to pay 7 thousand dollars upon arrival in the United States.
State police turned over the migrants to immigration authorities who are processing deportation orders.
Thousands of undocumented migrants enter Mexico every week in an attempt to reach the United States, often travelling in dangerous and denigrating conditions. Allegations of corrupt officials are common along the migrant trail. In recent years, organized criminals have muscled into migration routes – setting up smuggling rings, kidnapping for ransom, and trafficking victims into prostitution and forced labor.
Had the migrants discovered yesterday made it all the way to the United States, the smuggling ring would have been owed more than 3.5 million dollars in fees.
Burials are being held for victims of a massacre in Oaxaca over the weekend which has been linked to an electoral dispute. Ten people died and another 8 were left wounded when members of 2 indigenous communities were ambushed by gunmen Saturday en route to the town of Choapam. They had been traveling to what is – in practice – the rural area’s county seat to witness the inauguration of a new electoral council.
Police reports indicate the ambush occurred at a spot in the road that had been blocked by large mounds of dirt. Three of the trucks the victims were travelling in were set on fire.
A dispute has been festering in Choapam since December, when a local election was annulled due to irregularities. While the conflict may go beyond the simple politics of which political faction controls the town, details have been sparse. The town is a ten hour drive from the state capital, which prevents reporters with same-day deadlines from visiting the crime scene. This logistical detail also means that many of the comments on the situation cited in news reports come from politicians based in the state capital.
Choapan is located near Oaxaca’s border with Veracruz, a region that has experienced it’s share of drug violence. Most of said violence has been in and around the city of Tuxtepec. In the state capital, the massacre has led to furious finger pointing between members of the new reformist government and the party that controlled the state’s politics for 8 decades.
Ongoing excavations in north-central Mexico have unearthed the largest mass graves yet in the country’s drug war. As of Tuesday night, 188 bodies had been recovered from mass graves in the state of Durango – surpassing the number of dead exhumed last month in the state of Tamaulipas.
Whether the dead were civilians, kidnapping victims, or members of rival criminal groups is unclear. Mexico has witnessed a spike in cases of missing persons in the past 3 years.
The digging continues in Durango…unlike in San Fernando, Tamaulipas – where state authorities suddenly stopped giving updates on mass graves there, without explanation. State and local authorities in Tamaulipas are widely believed to have strong ties to organized crime and the self-censored press there often remains silent on the issue. At least 183 bodies were recovered from dozens of shallow graves in San Fernando throughout the month of April. It’s the same town where 72 migrants were massacred last August.
While the Durango discovery has become the largest mass graves case in Mexico’s ongoing wave of drug-related violence, it’s unlikely to be the last.
