APPO, Teachers, Unions and Oaxaca

Donaji Carreno sat hunkered beneath a large tarp on the night of May 19 as a heavy rain fell on the plastic overhead. She was not alone. Around her spread tents, tarps and ropes, all keeping her fellow teachers dry in the early days of the rainy season in Oaxaca´s Zocalo.

This state capital in southern Mexico has been occupied by the state’s teacher union, Section 22 of the national union, SNTE, for what will be a 21 day rotating strike.

But this is more than just a hum drum teacher`s strike. It is a challenge to the unpopular governor as well as a demand for a redress of past abuses.

Those abuses occurred at the last teacher`s strike, which turned into a popular uprising after federal and state security forces were brought in to end the strike. After violently evicting the teachers from the Zocalo, broad support arose for the teachers. Police and federal law enforcement officials were forced from town and barricades were flung up to shut off the city from the authorities.

Life most definitely did not continue as usual. From June to Nov. 2006, Oaxaca was run by APPO, or the Popular People’s Assembly of Oaxaca. What began as a teachers strike turned into a political uprising that made the news and galvanized public support. It also turned the teacher`s union and APPO into symbols of the left and examples of self government.

Now, for the first time since 2006, the center of Oaxaca has been taken over by a tent city of teachers. This strike-slash protest is as much a test of the authorities as it is a demand for better schools and pay.

“This is a consequence of 2006,¨said Domingo Cabrera Vazquez, the union´s representative at the rally.

In the current strike, the union has a bevy of the usual demands: free school lunches, better materials and pay as well as better schools.

But this strike is also aimed at the union`s national leaders, a less militant group who are activley trying to end the current strike. The state union claims that the ruling structure of the union is top-down and therefore anti-democratic.

But section 22`s motivations don’t stop there. Their larger aims are political. They want to free seven political prisoners taken in the 2006 uprising. In demanding the release of these prisoners they are also showing their continued opposition to state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz of the PRI, as well as the national government. Both, they claim are corrupt and all to willing to use violence to put down popular unrest.

While the 2006 uprising was finally put down by force, not much has be resolved in what has become a battle for much more than pay or materials.

Candido Elbbort, who was camped under a blue tarp with a group of other a PE teachers, said that while this strike is about the union`s structure as well as better pay, on a larger level it is a challenge to the government. “This is a kind of test to see what the government will do this time,” he said.

Every three days teachers from one of the state´s seven regions will take their places under the tarps that now cover most of the square. Everyone from Spanish teachers to physical education instructors will take their place in a camp that spreads from the Zocalo out along city streets like a star.

Except for the leftist literature for sale, the Che tee shirts and the communist party booth, the gathering appeared fairly a-political. The feel on the street was more that of holiday than a protest. But there is no doubt that this strike has a special significance. The banners, many with APPO prominently painted across them, slung across the gazebo and through the Zocalo attest to that. an

“The labor question is secondary here,” said Vasquez of the protest.

The day before the protest began, security forces in camouflage uniforms patrolled the streets of down town Oaxaca, some lingering in groups waiting. For what, no one knows.

 

Oaxaca

A Family on their way out of Mexico City

The road from Mexico City to the state of Oaxaca goes up, and then up again, and finally down.

In the still light of the early afternoon, the bus chugged through the massive outskirts of Mexico City and then up into the surounding hills. Covered in green pine trees, the forested landscape was Mexico City`s opposite; I saw men walking behind mule trains.

Once the road rose above the torpid haze of the Valley of Mexico, and then passed the plump pine-tree-coverd hills, storm clouds rose above the plain that reaches across much of the state of Puebla. Some rich ranch land spread across the flatland here and then everything became dry and cacti covered. The small trees that did rise beside their prickly friends seemed thin and frail and grew out in a flat shape at their tops. The land that wasn`t covered in brush or cacti was almost chalk-colored and corroded, streaks of rain water ran down barren hills, dragging topsoil away. The plain was being drenched by a heavy thunder storm and muddy rivulets ran their course.

Once into the state of Oaxaca, past Puebla, we came upon more mountains. The Sierra Madre de Oaxaca raced above and below us in such steep defiles it seemed they might drop at any moment. Not much held the soil in place here except more of the cacti and small brush and trees that had covered much of Puebla.

Oaxaca city was wet. The sun had set, and all that could be gleaned of the city was the dull light of houses climbing up blackened hills. My cab driver maneuvered his way through the small dark streets, hunkered down in his VW bug, wrapped in a long rain coat. He told me that tonight was the year`s first rain.

In the Zocalo, children raised their hands to the sky as if in thanks to the gods. Their happy faces damp with rain drops. Hidden forms under umbrellas passed across the square. It was as if a long held tension had been released and the population was in celebration.

Outside of my hotel room, competing sounds mixed with one another; the beat of Ranchero music playing against the muffled sound of a soccer game; cheers, announcers, scoooooooore. Tarps – blue, orange and clear- covering much of the road, slopped water onto the sidewalks. Raw light bulbs ,hanging from street vendor booths, struke the darkness violently, creasing across the street in shards of light. Cabs squeezed down the crowded street as a shop women flung her baby by the arms to the um pa, um pa of a nearby stereo.

On Monday this mood may come to and end; the state`s teachers plan a strike. In the past, teacher strikes in Oaxaca have been anything but calm.

 

Mexico City

The Zocalo´s barren expanse of grey pavement stones mirrored the sky´s grey hue just as the rain began to wet the streets. As the last few stragglers ran across the plaza, a mob of cars spun around them, leaning into the turns as if on a race track.   The crowds hid from the rain, congregating under the arcades around the plaza. They looked out from under stone archways as the rain began to wet the paving stones. By the time lightning and thunder began to shuddered across the sky, Mexico City´s largest public space was empty. The rainy season had finally come, at least to Mexico city.

That night, looking south from my fourth-floor window, the view was clear across the darkened valley; I could see lights spread across the distant hills. The day´s smog had been blown away by the storm. I heard crickets.

But by the next morning, the hills were obscured behind a hazy smog that tickled my iritated throat. Aside from the pollution, Mexico city presented a much different reality than expected. Its colonial churches, tree lined avenues and cobbled streets all created an atmosphere as human and approachable as any well maintained city.

The megalopolis nightmare city that you think of when you think Mexico City does not appear to exist. While their is smog and there are crowds, it is much less of a crowded place, it seems, than Manhattan. The subway is cheap and easy to use, the streets feel safe and the bustle is only what you would expect in any capital city.

A day after I arrived, the city´s spiritual, political and historical center was crackling with a healthy amount of activity. Shoe shiners, harmonica players, beggars, tourists and street vendors filled the side walks with the constant song and dance that is street life.

Under the shadow of La Catedral Metropolitana, drums rang out and half naked shaman with plastic ceremonial costumes held cauldrons of smoking incense and rubbed down tourists, locals and old ladies, even, with cleansing herbs.

Nearby, the excavated ruins of the once magnificaent Aztec Templo Mayor spread across a large piece of uneven ground like the decaying carcase of an animal; the remnants of what the Spaniards did not destroy opened up like an onion.

A hundred yards away, the national palace with its serious colonial facade, patrolled by armed guards, stared squarely down at the Zocalo.

To the the east of the historic district, the city´s high rises ran along the spine of Reforma. This grand, tree- lined boulevard, studded with towering monuments, tares across the city in a diagonal slash. To its north and south the fashionable districts of Roma, Zona Rosa and Condesa spread under leafy streets. Here the hip set eats late night dinners in overpriced sidewalk cafes.

Walking across town, taking a cab or the subway, I was continually surprised by not only the city´s variety but also by its distinctness; Mexico City feels so, so… un-Mexican. It feels very much like a Buenos Aires or Barcelona or any cosmopolitan city, which, no doubt, it is.

Mexico City´s politics differ from much of the nation´s as well. With a left wing government, progressive policies here serve two purposes: to serve the electorate and to oppose the ruling PAN party. Here are a few examples. Abortion was made legal here, same sex marriage too. And unlike the rest of the country there are an abundance of women police on the streets here.

 

News of Killings

Front Page of Today´s News in Mexico City

It has been a bloody couple of days for Mexico, in an already bloody year. Two top police officials were killed in Mexico City this week, according to reports in local media. One of the killed was the head of the federal police, which is the equivalent of the head of the FBI being killed. Mexico, it seems, is like Chicago in the 1920s, times ten. These high profile killings follow on the footsteps of two other assassinations this month of top federal police officials in the capital. 

Although it is unknown who was behind theses killings or what motivated them, it is speculated that they were hits put on police by the head of the Sinalao cartel, Jaoquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is in hiding after escaping from prison.  

Several of today`s newspaper head lines read “Enough,” in aparent frustration over the federal government`s apparent impotence when it comes to controlling the powerful drug cartels. Despite military operations in conjunction with local and federal police, the bloodletting continues. In addition to these hits on officials, ten more dead were found this week in northern Mexico.

Last year drug cartels in Mexico killed 2,500 people and thus far the 2008 death toll is more than 1000. For a country not at war this is a heavy death toll.

May 14-  The central government has increased the pressure on the waring drug cartels in Sinaloa by sending more troops to a region already inundated with soldiers. Almost 3,000 soldiers and federal police have occupied the capital of Sinaloa, Culiacan and a nearby town, in a show of force. Like much of the government’s efforts in the north of Mexico against drug cartels, militarization seems the last card the government can play in this battle. If this latest attempt to crack down on the drug trade fails, it will be more than an embarrassment for a government who is already battling drug cartels across much of northern Mexico. It is not clear if they are winning or not; the daily death toll does not seem to be lessening. The use of military force in a police matter worries some despite the ill paid and partially corrupt local and federal police forces. But these strong arm tactics are what President Felipe Calderon hopes will finally break the backs of the organized crime groups that have made parts of Mexico increasingly lawless.

- For more posts on Mexican media as well as the drug war look below.

 

Lake Patzcuaro

Lake Patzcuaro

It was a sultry, cloud filled, kind of day. The air was thick. Penitents draged their knees across the floor of Patzcuaro´s basilica. It looked as if it might rain. Haze lay over lake Patzcuaro like cheese clothe.  And from the launch that pushed across the water towards Isla Janitzio, the distant mountains could hardly be made out. 

The boat´s yellow benches were filled with uniformed students. Their chatter buzzed below the hum of the boat´s motor. A few tourists sat, peering through their sun glasses at the brown lake. 

A Purepecha women (the local indigenous group)  sat down beside me with her little boy and husband. She carried a large metal wash basin from which her little boy pulled a toy truck. She sat kicking her feet, as they dangled above the floorboards. A red and black checkered skirt fell across her legs and a white hand-knit cotton blouse peaked out from under the shawl she had draped over her head. The purple and black fabric covered her face from the wind. She quietly laughed as her husband, perhaps, told her a joke. 

The boat dropped us at a dock at the foot of a steep little island. A paved foot path, edged by stalls and restaurants like some kind of gauntlet, led to the isalnd´s peak.

“Pasale joven. Tenemos, comidas, ropas etc.,” called the women lining the path as if they were reciting some incantatory prayer. Then the women would turn back to their needle work; bright thread sewn in patterns into large splashes of white cotton that would become their dresses. I could hear, but not understand, their perepecha as they spoke amongst one another.

Mexican day tourists laboured up the island, many capped in goofy over sized sombreros they´d purchased at one of the nick knack shops. The island´s peak, crowned with a huge statute of Morelos, had a panoramic view of the lake below.

A Statue of Morelos

As I leaned against the statue´s base, looking across the lake, a little boy meandered up and asked me for “monedas” as he drove a wooden toy truck against the statue. I asked him what he wanted the money for and he told me for pencils. Then, with his toy truck, he made like he was writing letters against the stones of the statue.  I gave him six pesos and told him not to eat to many sweets. He said, “Thanks,” in English.

The boat ride back across the lake was filled with the songs of a three man ranchero band: two men and a boy. They performed for a Mexican family who were drinking Cuba libres. A middle aged Perepecha couple sat to the bands´ back with their eyes closed. As the base thumped and the drums rolled, families aboard the boat took snapshots of their children and looked out across the water. 

Almost hidden, amidst the crowd sat an old Purepecha women, alone, her shawl over her face. She gazed curiously from the protection of her shawl as it began to sprinkle over the lake.

Down Town Patzcuaro

 

Callejeros de las Streets

Mexican Payasos

The streets and plazas of Mexico are the place to make a buck, or a peso in this case. Car washers, street vendors, beggars and everything in between fill most public places in this country. Among this pavement panorama, street performers are in abundance; from mariachi and ranchero groups to dancers, jugglers and even clowns. They are collectivley know as Callejeros.

Payasos (clowns) Eric Pozos Perez and Emilio Lopez Felix (in the photo above) are both professional street performers. In some ways they represent the intersection between officially sanctioned art and Mexico´s ubiquitous street theater.  I met them in Morelia where they were teaching a clown class to kids through the Instituto Nacional Bellas Artes. 

Morelia´s Central Plaza Where Callejeros Often Perform

They spend much of the year following local festivals and fares around the country. But you might be surprised by their back grounds. Both are university trained performers. They work the streets instead of in theaters for several reasons: there are few jobs with theater companies and street performing gives them more freedom. And most years, they make enough of a living on the streets to supports their families. As they point out, if they wanted jobs that were about making a lot of money they wouldn´t be clowns. 

There have been other barriers to their profession other than money. “If you came here six or seven years back we couldn’t walk the streets,” said Lopez Felix. Either the cops would take what you earned or they would run them off the streets or both. The government didn´t want “rabble” filling the streets, they said.

But in the last five or six years their lives have become much easier since the government has removed many of the road blocks that formerly made street performing in Mexico a difficult and often frustrating profession.  Now, getting the permits needed to work, which are many, has become a much easier task. There is even a database which lists performers as well as fairs and events that need their services.

But these changes haven´t stopped local performers, who think they have some kind of monopoly, from trying their hardest to keep outsiders off their turf. The competition, it seems, never stops.

 

Media and the Left

La Jornada´s Michoacan Version

There is no doubt that Leftist politics continue to have a large influence on things  here in Mexico. The Zapatistas of Chiapas continue to make the news; a Marxist guerrilla army, the EPR, recently blew up oil pipelines in the state of Veracruz. The former mayor of Mexico city, Lopez Obrador of the PRD, a national opposition party of the left, lost the presidential election in 2007 to Felipe Calderon by a hair. This influence is seen very much in the press.

La Jornada: This national newspaper out of Mexico City is perhaps the premier newspaper of the left. Its pages are usually filled with reporting on human rights abuses, political corruption, social issues and leftist opinion.  Today there was a piece about Karl Marx´s birth on May 5, 1818. The paper did not publish on May Day. Besides its leftist leanings, La Jornada does a good job of covering politics and has a crusading edge, which to a reader of U.S. papers like me is a breathe of fresh air.

La Jornada also covers art and culture with a vengeance. Besides their daily insert, enmedio, which often carries essays on writers and thinkers such as Jose Marti that span pages, their is a feeling that this paper is really committed to culture. For instance, a recent front page had the byline of none other than novelist, cultural critic and journalist Carlos Monsivais. While you might not have heard of Monsivais before, he is very much a somebody here. And besides, when was the last time you saw on the front page of any U.S. newspaper the name of a writer of any note? The answer would be, about, never. U.S. papers just don´t seem to have a real connection to the literary world. It´s not that U.S. papers don¨t write book reviews or about writers, they do. The fault, if that is what it should be called, lies rather with U.S. culture.  Writers in America don´t hold the same kind of cultural influence that they still seem to in Mexico.

TV: Now this is something you won´t see at home: Cuban television. Any day of the week you can flick your TV on and watch Cuba´s national news cast on Cuba Vision. You can see thousands of Cubans marching on May Day in down town Havana or watch a special on the arts. While this is a low budget operation, it does manage to produce some interesting television. There is nothing like watching television from a country that is vilified by the American political establishment. You feel a little naughty.

The News: This English-language newspaper isn´t exactly of the left, but it does cover social justice issues pretty well. Many of its pages are filled with wire services stories, yet this nicely laid out daily, which has been published in Mexico for 58 years - with a brief hiatus - does have a staff that writes some good features and news on indigenous issues, freedom of speech as well as culture.

 

Morelia and the Mountains

The Tanned Me

After tanning myself to no end on Mexico´s Pacific coast, and trying to surf a bit, I now find myself in the western highlands. And what a different place it is. The air is lighter here, the light different. The smells less pungent.  And these two worlds are only a day´s car ride apart.

On the day-long bus trip up from the coast, from a surf spot called Nexpa to Michoacan´s capital, Morelia, I saw the landscape change from tropical palm-fringed vistas to pine forests and colonial churches.  As the bus wound its way upward, we passed first dry mountain-frindged plateaus and then climbed again until we had completely left behind any remnant of the coast; palm trees, coastal breezes, coconuts and all.

 

Sierra Madre Sur

The Plaza de Armas, Morelia´s center, was humming like a child on a sugar high the night I arrived. Celebrating crowds filled the streets and fire works exploded in the dark above the cathedral. Long arcades surrounding the square were filled with coffee-sipping locals watching the crowds pass by. The park-like square across from the cafes resonated with activity; the sounds of screaming children mingling with the rhythm of a band playing salsa.  Huge piles of animal balloons, bilious and teetering, climbed above the clamor. Above it all, the cathedral`s two silent towers lit up the night. It was May Day.

But plaza was not only filled this night in order to honor the working men and women of the world, for May is also the beginning of a month-long celebration of Morelia´s founding by the Spanish, 467 years ago.  That`s pretty old for a city in the New World.

While Morelia may be in Mexico´s heartland, this seems a very Spanish city. Its square stone buildings with massive wooden doors and its many church spires give it a very heavy, old feeling. And as the capital of Michoacan and the former capital of the Tarascan empire - the indigenous power here before the Spanish invasion - this high city has good reason to feel old.

The only smudges on Morelia´s colonial elegance and celebratory spirit were the hand bills pasted on walls throughout much of the city. The two dimensional face of Francisco Paredes Ruiz peered from these posters at passersby. Last September Ruiz disappeared from the streets of this city without a trace. While kidnapping is all to common in Mexico, many think Ruiz´s disappearance was no mere kidnapping. As the head of a human rights organization, Ruiz faught for human rights here in Michoacan and was no doubt a thorn in someone´s side.

A Church in Morelia

 

The Other Media

While Mexico is full of daily newspapers, good and bad, it also has a wide variety of cultural magazines as well as a weird selection of, well, off -beat publications.

Alarma: Where to begin? This truly tasteless magazine is like a mix between soft porn and the driver´s education favorite Red Asphalt. Here is a taste, for you dear readers, of a recent issue. The cover photo was a lovely shot of a very dead women with a piece of steel coming out of her forehead. Or was it going in? In any case, her eyes were still open. No joke. Every time I hold this magazine I gage a little. The truth be know, I can`t even make it through one issue without turning my head in disgust. To add to this vile collection of car wrecks and shooting deaths, the centerfold is, yes, a centerfold. Sex and violence, what more could a young boy ask for? All I can say about this yellowest of yellow journalism is that maybe in Mexico, where most news organizations show pictures of dead bodies almost daily, this is not as horrible as it might be in American. I have heard that US newspaper editors have an unspoken agreement amongst themselves; they will not show unnecessary gore in the pages of their newspapers. I guess I am used to the G-rated news. And yes, you can thank me for not posting the cover of Alarma on this blog. This is a family blog, as a teacher of mine used to say, sort of.

Porn Mags: While there is not much outright porn on Mexican news stands, there is some. Most Mexican pornography, in print at least, comes in an interesting format; pocket-sized photo magazines or, more commonly, as pocket-sized comic books. This cartoon porn is by all counts the most common. Maybe they have laws they have to get around, or maybe men feel less guilty buying dirty cartoons rather than dirty picture mags? I have no idea. Anyway, while these comics tell cowboy stories, crime stories, etc., in the end they all do the same thing with the same overly sized ladies filling up much of theses booklets´ pages. I heard all of this from a friend, of course.

Now for the more enlightened magazines of Mexico.

Tierra Adentro (Interior Territories, roughly): This monthly magazine out of Mexico City is a very nicely put together cultural forum. It has long interviews with poets; short stories, cultural criticism and even photo essays. While this and other publications like it are not what you find on every street corner, it is pleasantly surprising to find so many such publications here.

 

Observations on the Road to Barra de Navedad

Through a slit in the bus`s window shade, the countryside south of Puerto Villarta came in flashes – bush, cropland, bush. It came in scenes; a roadside stand and its plastic chairs covered in a gush of dust; a man playing guitar for a little girl. And it came in still-lifes; burnt patches of ground, black and white with soot; plodding electrical lines, running like a scratch above the road.

When the view opened up for long, corn fields glittered with silver metal strips, dancing in the breeze. Beyond the cultivated lands the hillsides and flat lands were covered in what looked like a New Jersey forest in December; all leafless trees.

Small nameless towns passed without announcement. Vendors, the only sign of habitation, jumping aboard to sell their wares. They attempted balance, walking down the middle of the bus as it heeled around corners. Once they had sold all they could of their, pizza slices, empanadas or sweets, they would jump off at the next stop.

Strange how these places between destinations remain like blank spots in the mind. I pass from one island of knowledge to another, through a silent sea of space. It is just the surface I see, the landscape, the name of a town perhaps, nothing more. It is like looking at a post card that you can smell and taste and feel, yet still a post card.

But, since the bus driver was taking corners like he was driving a Porshe, blindfolded, I didn`t have much energy for reflection. I was too busy trying to keep down lunch.

We reached Barra de Navedad by dusk. I made it to the beach just as the big fat sun dipped under a bank of clouds.

This little town is on a spit of land shaped like an ice cream cone. It narrows as you head south; the main drag following the town as it slowly thins. It is a resort town with shops full of plastic things: inner tubes, sun glasses, beach towels. On the beach, weekenders were being gleefully flung onto the sand by the hard surf as it violently crashed at the water`s edge. Indian women sold hammocks or fruit or jewelry. Some one was drinking a beer. The ocean sounded. Night fell.