The wreckage of the teachers´ encampment is strewn across Oaxaca´s streets in the aftermath of attempts by the Magisterial Police to remove them from the city center.
11AM
I can smell the tear gas. It smells just like the insecticide spray I use to kill cockroaches, an uncomfortable parallel, considering it is being used on human beings four blocks away. Then there are the sirens, which just fail to drown out the teacher’s shouts. Just as unsettling is the absence of the usual sounds, the venders’ shouts of “Agua,” “ta-ma-LES! “and the advertisements blaring from the gas trucks.
The shouting started at 5AM. My mind misty with sleep, I assumed it was just another march by the teachers who’ve occupied the city center for the last 24 days. I smelled insecticide and wondered what the neighbors were doing spraying at this hour.
At 6:30 I got up and turned on the TV. The national news was reporting that in Oaxaca the State Police were cracking down on striking teachers. I stepped out on my balcony just as a police helicopter whirred overhead. I climbed up on the roof and watched, along with my neighbors from their respective rooftops, as the helicopter swooped low over the city center and dropped something flaming from its haul, which I later learned was tear gas.
I went downstairs and joined my neighbors at the entrance of the family compound. We could see the tents of the teacher encampment still standing four blocks away. Ambulances driving the “wrong” direction up a one-way street. A neighbor rushed up, apoplectic with rage. She’d talked to the priest at the Compañía`` de Jesus, the Jesuit temple in the Zócalo (See "A Nice Agnostic Girl Goes to Church") He’d taken in wounded teachers, including children.
“They’re shooting!” she insisted, then proceeding to curse Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the governor. Just yesterday it seemed that everyone was against the teacher’s sit-in, but with the breakout of violence in our beloved city, usually a tranquil oasis of multicultural celebration, people are singing a different tune.
(As I write, the shouting is increasing in volume, does this mean the second wave of police have arrived? A neighbor has informed us that the streets are closed; downtown residents are under virtual house arrest. People stand bunched up just outside their doorways or on their roofs, scanning in the direction of the city center.)
At the airport, all appearances were of business as usual, but the police crackdown was all anyone talked about. Employees kept rushing into the office with new rumors: there were two dead, no, three, police were setting fire to tents in the zócalo, a truck had crashed into a hotel, troops were being flown in from across the country.
My student, Mr. Rangel, the son of a schoolteacher and veteran of the 1968 student movement in Mexico City, expressed support for the police action.
“I believe in fighting for a just cause,” he said. “But the teacher’s movement is not a just cause.” He echoed what many long-time Oaxaca residents have told me: that public school teachers earn what’s considered good money in Oaxaca (an average of 12,000 pesos a month plus benefits) and the movement is really a political power play on the part of union leaders. The academic performance of Oaxacan students is among the poorest in Mexico, which Mr. Rangel and others blame in part on the strikes which leave thousands of children without classes each summer.
My other student, Mr. Rangel’s secretary, Madahi, isn’t sure what side she’s on, but worries about a friend who’s taking part in the sit-in with her 3-year-old daughter.
“It’s not her choice to be there,” she says. “If she doesn’t go she will lose her privileges as a union member.” These include benefits and desirable job assignments.
“They use the children as a shield,” says Mr. Rangel disgustedly. “so that the police won’t dare use force.” But Madahi says her friend is a single mother, and there is no one else to take care of her daughter while she’s on strike.
In the van on the way back from the airport, we see the police regrouping. In a field beside the highway, they appear in full riot gear, bulletproof vests, shields and nightsticks.
A city bus intentionally crashed into a storefront by rioters.
Local teens wielding PVC pipes, waiting for their chance to play Che Guevara against the police.
We don’t know what to expect when the van drops us off south of zócalo. My colleague Paul and I cautiously skirted the edge of the occupied zone, where the smell of tear gas was intense but not overwhelming. We heard shouting coming from the zócalo and stayed away. The streets were strewn with wreckage of tents and propaganda. We saw broken windows, simmering ashes, a city bus crashed into a storefront. But what was most surprising to me is how many teachers remained, huddled around the debris, conversing in low tones. They wore bandannas or blue surgical masks over their mouths to deter the tear gas. An old woman went around selling surgical masks. That’s Mexico for you; it could be the middle of the apocalypse and there would be someone trying to sell you chicles.
What's left of a teacher's tent on Fiallo Street near the Zòcalo.
Teachers wore bandanas and surgical masks as protection against tear gas as they sharpened sticks and stones to battle the police.
The teachers were preparing for battle: sharpening sticks and collecting rocks. When they saw my camera, teachers and residents encourage me to take pictures:
“Show the world what happened here, because this is an injustice,” said a fashionably dressed girl as she tripped by in high heels; she didn’t look like she was part of the sit-in.
At the corner of Murgía and Pino Suárez we met Martha Juarez Diaz, a teacher form Haujuapan de Leon in northwestern Oaxaca. I scribbled frantically in my notebook as she spoke breathlessly.
“It’s a lie that we want the money for ourselves,” she insisted. “We want breakfasts, shoes for the children (because they come barefoot to school) uniforms, free books… We ask for help for the children, and they send us tear gas.”
She pointed across the street. “They killed three children, you can see the blood.” Later we discover a bloody rag on the sidewalk, which tells us little.
“We don’t care about the money, we care about the children. We want all the world to know that Ulises (the governor) is bad, that Oaxaca is dangerous.”
From a convenience store sounded the voices of Radio Plantón, the underground broadcast of the teacher’s movement. They urged the public to unite behind the teachers, calling everyone to participate in a march down the street of Independencia.
I had to cross independencia to get home. An army of teachers was gathering in front of Nuestra Señora de la Merced, men and women alike brandishing sticks, pipes and baseball bats. The parted politely to let me through.
A riot shield abandoned when the police were forced out of the city center by rioting teachers.
An army of teachers and sympathizers, including local teenagers, gather in front of the Our Lady of Mercy church.
Back at home I watch from the roof the coming and goings on my the street: men with homemade weapons striding determinedly toward the zócalo, while in the opposite direction women drag sleeping bags, water jugs out of harms way. My landlord’s sister Reina does brisk business out of her convenience store. Food and money are passed through the bars she’s closed over the front door as residents stock up on necessities.
12:45PM Gunshots? My neighbor thinks they’re just firecrackers and I’m inclined to agree. Another neighbor (who I never would have thought capable of such a remark) says the police are just stupid Indians who kill people indiscriminately).
3PM: According to the news the police failed to remove the teachers from the zócalo, where an uneasy calm now reigns. The Social Security Hospital confirms 50 people suffering from gas inhalation, and 8 wounded, including a police office. There are no reports deaths and no mention of children involved. The governor, speaking to reporters by telephone, cautions us not to believe all the rumors. He denies that violence was used against the teachers, despite the newsreels to the contrary. Who am I supposed to believe, the condescending calm of the governor’s voice, or the breathless Union activists in the streets?
7:30: As the sun starts to set a small group of teachers march down our street, shouting “Zapata viva, la lucha sigue,” “Zapata lives, the struggle goes on.” Where are they going? On the TV, they are saying that the governor gave the go ahead for the police strike because of the teachers’ threats to take over the airport indefinitely. Although they briefly occupied the airport two weeks ago they, they retired pacifically after a number of hours.
Teachers march down Guerrero Street.
10:30 PM: The helicopters are circling and circling.
(top) Hard at work making Tlayudas, the World's Largest Tortillas.
