Support for Oaxaca Growing

Friends,
-Military in Oaxaca to support Ulises Ruiz. It is now evident that the military was sent into Oaxaca not as a neutral action but to support Ulises Ruiz:
1. The federal government continues to claim the city has been successfully "retaken".
2. PRI governors jointly proclaim "Con Ulises Hasta la Muerte/With Ulises Until Death".
3. Ulises made a public appearance in Santa Maria Coyotepec, a small and formally tranquil town 20 minutes outside Oaxaca that he is using as his base, with around 500 troops as security force, among whom were photographed PRI members known to be directly responsible for the killing of teachers.

-Rage is Building over the Pretense of Justice, Brad Will. The government has moved quickly to arrest and charge the men who shot and killed Brad Will; Brad had his camera in his hands when he was shot, his final images are of his murderers. There is also plenty of visual and verbal evidence surrounding other killings at the barricades, of Mexicans. None of the killings of Mexicans have been investigated: Marcos Garcia Tapia, Andres Santiago Cruz, Pedro Martinez Martinez, Pablo Martinez, Jose Jimenez Colmenares, Florenzo San Pablo, Arcadio Fabian Hernandez, Alejandro Garcia, Panfilo Hernandez Vazquez, Emilio Alonzo Fabian, Esteban Zurita Lopez, Jorge Alberto Lopez Bernal, Fidel Sanchez Garcia. Other bodies have been found, victims of executions. Many people are missing.

-Support for Oaxaca Growing:
1. Francisco Toledo, Internationally respected Zapotec artist and activist, is holding a news conference at IAGO, the graphics museum and the largest art library in Mexico that he established, which is just across from Santo Domingo. He also published a strong letter against the military occupation of Oaxaca in Monday's La Jornada. (posted below)
2. Rosario Ibarra de Piedra's son was disappeared in 1968 during military reprisal against students demonstrators. She has become an esteemed activist for government transparency, free speech, and human rights. Rosario is in Oaxaca and will speak in front of the Santo Domingo Cathedral, the new base of APPO/The Popular Assembly of Oaxaca.
2. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the ex-governor of Mexico City who won the majority of votes in the recent presidential election announced a demonstration in Mexico City for Wednesday.
3. Zapatistas announce they are closing all roads in Zapatista territory in Chiapas today, November 1, and will close roads in the state of Chiapas on November 20, anniversary of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. November 20 is also the day Lopez Obrador will be sworn in as the president of Mexico. The fraudulent president-elect Felipe Caulderon will be sworn in as president of Mexico December 1.
4. Massive demonstrations were held in Mexico City yesterday, including the temporary closing the the Mexico-Pueblo Freeway.
5. There were and continue to be demonstrations demanding the Federal troops be removed from Oaxaca and that Ulises step down to avoid any further bloodshed.
6. Portland, Oregon: Two activists chained themselves to the door of the Mexican Consulate yesterday morning. Interestingly, police mounted a curtain to conceal the lengthy arrest and removal of the activists. In the afternoon, speakers addressed an extensive crowd and media, and marched to the Federal Building. Two consuls made an appearance requesting a passage through the crowd be cleared for people trying to access their offices, and requesting a written statement from the crowd.

-Day of the Dead Altar for Ulises in the Zocalo. People will be testing the governments claim that civilians now have "limited" access to the zocalo when they set up a Day of the Dead altar to Ulises Ruiz there today.

-Zocalo Businesses Emptied. Owners of the small shops inside the kiosk at the center of zocalo issued a public statement yesterday after the shelves of their stores were raided and emptied: "The teachers were here five months and nothing was ever stolen from us. The military is here one night and our shops are emptied. This shows you the kind of people we are dealing with".

-InterAmerica Human Rights Commission continues to maintain a table in front of Santo Domingo to receive family and friends of people who have disappeared.


Francisco Toledo's letter to Mariano Palacios Alcocer, president of the PRI/Partido Revolucionario Institucional/Institutional Revolutionary Party:

LIC. MARIANO PALACIOS ALCOCER
PRESIDENTE DEL PARTIDO
REVOLUCIONARIO INSTITUCIONAL
PRESENTE;

As you surely must know, the social and political conflict of Oaxaca has entered a period of uncontrolled violence; before the eyes of public opinion, especially of the Oaxacans, the political class has acted with disdain, calculated party interest, nefastic euphamisms.
Since last Sunday, with the arrival of the PFP (Policia Federal Preventativa), there began a series of detentions and kidnappings against supporters of the social movement; these actions, outside the law and the margin of human rights guarantees, has converted these three days into political occupation on a daily basis, demented and pernicious.
I call to you, to you and your party, to respond to the exhortation, growing, urgent, nearly unanimous, to solicit Ulises Ruiz Ortiz to leave his post as governor of the state of Oaxaca with the intention to generate better conditions towards the resolution of the shameful crisis. There is not the least doubt that this urgent decision is the next step in the promised transition, transparent, truthful, safeguarded, while the lives of Oaxacan citizens are at risk of being incorporated in the statistics of those killed in the conflict.
In anticipation of your honorable response, aware of your civic committment y ethic to this moment, I take advantage of the occasion to greet you.

Atentamente,
Francisco Toledo

thanks,
un abrazo,
ann