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.

Public school teachers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca mobilized today as part of ongoing labor negotiations and to commemorate the anniversary of a police action that sparked a popular uprising 4 years ago today.

[dewplayer:http://www.fsrn.org/audio/download/6913/20100614SY.mp3]

(sound: barricade bottle rockets and chants)

The day of action kicked off at 4am local time with chants, bottle rockets, and barricades around the central plaza of Oaxaca City. While this has become an annual occurrence here, this year’s protests come just 3 weeks ahead of the elections to replace the governor the 2006 movement tried to oust.

During a pre-dawn rally in the central plaza, union representative Jose Alfredo Martinez, stopped short of calling for a punishment vote against the ruling party, but said the teachers’ union must continue to demand accountability for the political murders committed during the 2006 conflict.

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The ambush that killed a prominent Mexican human rights defender and a Finnish observer near San Juan Copala, Oaxaca may be the first time in Mexican history that paramilitaries have opened fire on an international humanitarian caravan, but it’s not an isolated act of violence. The fiercely independent Triqui nation has been steeped in years of bitter internal fighting which was itself preceded by decades of military occupation.

Francisco López Bárcenas, an academic who has written extensively about Triqui history, traces the current crisis back to the 1940s when the government withdrew recognition of San Juan Copala’s status as a county seat municipality – Mexico’s only political district with a distinctly Triqui identity.
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Two political opposition figures were targeted in separate attacks this week as election season here shifts into full gear. In the first incident, Sotico López Quiroz, a municipal-level leader of the center-left PRD party, was shot dead during an ambush as he traveled home from a late night meeting in the Oaxacan coastal town of San Andrés Huaxpaltepec.

Four parties from the political left and right have formed an alliance in Oaxaca to challenge the PRI, a party that has dominated state politics for 8 consecutive decades. This hegemony was a frequent complaint among protesters in the social uprising that gripped the state for much of 2006.

In the neighboring state of Veracruz, a mayoral pre-candidate from the opposition PRD party is in critical condition. Unidentified gunmen opened fire against him and a local PRD organizer Tuesday night. Martín Aburto López reportedly received an anonymous death threat last week warning him to step out of the race.

Voters in both states head to the polls on July 4th.