Mexican riot police, soldiers enter troubled city
OAXACA, Mexico – Federal riot police and soldiers toting shields and automatic weapons swarmed on this beleaguered colonial city Saturday in a bid to end a five-month standoff between striking teachers and supporters of state Gov. Ulises Ruiz, amid escalating violence that included the Friday shooting deaths of a U.S. journalist and two Mexican men.
Hundreds of army troops and officers of the Federal Preventative Police began arriving here Saturday morning by plane and bus. They were dispatched by President Vicente Fox, who for months had resisted calls by Ruiz and Oaxacan businessmen for the federal government to intervene directly to end the confrontation that has paralyzed Oaxaca City, the state capital, since the strike began in May.
Some members of an umbrella protest group that is supporting the teachers and demanding Ruiz’s ouster, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, known by its Spanish-language acronym APPO, have vowed to fight to the death to maintain the occupation.
In recent days they have barricaded city streets with tree trunks, sandbags and overturned buses and vans.
“We will not hand over the city of Oaxaca to the Federal Preventative Police,” APPO spokesman Florentino Lopez said Saturday evening.
At nightfall, it was still unclear exactly how many police had taken up positions in and around the capital, what tactics they might use and whether the show of force was mainly aimed at persuading the protesters to seek a peaceful resolution to the stalemate.
Protesters estimated that 2,000 to 4,000 police had arrived, but federal officials refused to confirm or deny those numbers.
Fox’s decision to send federal police came one week after the state’s 70,000 teachers tentatively agreed to return to their classrooms in exchange for a 30 percent raise over six years. On average, Oaxacan elementary school teachers earn about $600 a month.
The decision also was made just hours after the death of Bradley Roland Will, 36, a New York City political activist and journalist with Independent Media Center, or Indymedia, an Internet-based alternative news agency, who had been in the region for about six weeks documenting the conflict with photographs and video.
Will was shot in the abdomen Friday afternoon while attempting to conduct interviews at a street barricade and died en route to a hospital, according to witnesses and Indymedia’s Web site. Some witnesses said that Will was shot by a plainclothes undercover policeman.
Tony Garza, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, issued a statement calling Will’s death “senseless” and saying that it “underscores the critical need for a return to lawfulness and order in Oaxaca.” The embassy issued an advisory Aug. 24 cautioning U.S. citizens about the risks of traveling to Oaxaca.
At least nine people have been killed during the dispute, which began last spring when teachers went on strike to demand better wages and working conditions.