The APPO Lives! (from Narco News)
FIRST: The APPO is more alive than ever in the hearts of the workers, indigenous people, campesinos, housewives, students, youth, children, and all the exploited and oppressed in Oaxaca and Mexico. The State Terror that has been unleashed on the people of Oaxaca and the international community with increased brutality since November 25 has not weakened our desire to be free men and women.
Nor has it made us change our minds about whether our struggle should continue to be a political, peaceful and mass movement, despite the fact that 17 people have been killed during this stage of the struggle, dozens of people have disappeared and hundreds are political prisoners; we consider this toll to consist of crimes against humanity.
APPO Leaders Arrested and Jailed (from Narco News)
According to various commerical media, Flavio Sosa, one of the most well-known leaders of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO, in its Spanish initials), was arrested Monday along with his brother Horacio, Ignacio García and Mareclino Coache for their supposed participation in “crimes” against the common good including robbery, attacks against transportation routes, sedition and inciting violence.
Marcos: The Attacks Against the People of Oaxaca Cannot Be Ignored (from Autonomy & Solidarity)
Hundreds of people detained illegally, dozens of people disappeared, tortures, searches, and beatings. Young men and women, indigenous people, children, elders. In other words: the people of Oaxaca who come from below. Above, there are the Federal Preventive Police, Ulises Ruiz’s paramilitaries, the mass media, the political class.
To be quiet in the face of this is to say “Oaxaca” from above, and to make top-down assessments that are cheerful…and idiotic.
Questions Raised About 11/25 Burning of Government Offices (from The Narcosphere)
During the battle for control of Oaxaca on November 25, fires damaged a hotel, comsumed cars, and gutted government offices. Few doubt that protesters armed with molotov cocktails were responsible for some of the blazes. But many Oaxacans are asking questions about who really started the fires that destroyed offices housing key records of the administration of Gov. Ulisses Ruiz.
Zapagringo has a great post up about the growing repression and resistance in Mexico. Z looks at how supporting political prisoners is a vital component of supporting social justice movements.
I spent a good amount of time while in Oaxaca with members of a political prisoner solidarity collective called Todxs Somxs Presxs (”We Are All Prisoners”). They originally formed to free those imprisoned from the 2004 repression in Guadalajara. They recounted for me that a pivotal moment in their development came when, in a meeting with Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, those in attendance were asked to recount the names of the prisoners. To Marcos’ astonishment, they could not produce a list of the detained. For Todxs Somxs Presxs, this story emphasized for them the importance of not letting the state disappear the struggle through imprisonment. The collective quickly got to work learning about, meeting with, and building bridges to political prisoners throughout their home state of Oaxaca.
Zapagringo also has an update about APPO’s Constitutive Congress.
Point People Needed for Oaxaca Solidarity (from BFP)
We need press contact people from several different areas across the nation to help put pressure on the mainstream media to tell the story of Oaxaca accurately.
Be sure to check BFP’s site for other updates, too.
You can listen to the latest english version of Radio Zapatista over at Indymedia
