The Rise and Fracture of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca

Ronald Waterbury
Queens C, CUNY

Below the surface of Oaxaca’s tourist attractions is a state that ranks at or near the bottom (along with Chiapas and Guerrero) in Mexico on indicators of socioeconomic conditions such as wealth, income, housing, health, literacy, alcoholism, family violence and schooling levels. Oaxaca is also ethnically the most heterogeneous of Mexican states, and its indigenous peasants comprise the poorest of the poor. The dismal shape of Oaxaca’s overall economy can be dramatized by a single macroeconomic figure: although the state has 3 percent of Mexico’s population, it generates only 1.5% of the nation’s GDP.

Perched on top of Oaxaca’s socio-cultural-economic pyramid is a small stratum of mostly criollo (people of predominantly European and Middle Eastern ancestry) and mestizo (mixed) families of business people, professionals and high-placed politicos, who are heavily intermarried and interinvested.

Street art honoring persons killed by pro-government forces. Photo courtesy of Ronald Waterbury

Between those two extremes is a precarious middle stratum comprised of the elite segment of the working class (unionized skilled workers, such as electrical workers, health workers, telephone workers), “intellectuals” (professors, artists), prospective professionals (university students) and school teachers. It is this middle stratum that provides the leadership—and much of the membership—of the hundreds of activist organizations that comprise the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).

The state of Oaxaca has been ruled for more than 70 years by one of the most ingenious and effective political machines ever devised: Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Since the entrance of the PRI into Oaxaca in the 1930s, social discontent has been omnipresent, usually beneath the surface but periodically rising up in various expressions of protest. On three occasions, protest actions much milder than the current ones deposed state governors in 1946, 1952 and 1977.

Rise of Civic Organizations

A major factor accounting for the greater breadth and depth of resistance in the current situation in Oaxaca has been the increased capacity for organized action. Over the last two decades, civil society has grown remarkably. There are now literally hundreds of NGOs and other organizations—nobody knows exactly how many—with varying ideologies and varying agendas, all trying to advance their views of a better life for Oaxaqueños. There are organizations devoted to community development, cooperative production, marketing, health, social services, education, human rights, women’s rights, indigenous rights and, of course, political action.

A Day of the Dead altar in memory of independent American journalist Bradley Will. Photo courtesy of Ronald Waterbury

Labor unions have been the most consistent and persistent of these organizations in taking to the streets. The largest labor union is Section 22 of the National Educational Workers’ Union (SNTE), with over 70,000 members state-wide. Furthermore, the political influence of schoolteachers ranges far beyond the union itself because individual teachers comprise a substantial proportion of the leaders and activists of other civil society organizations. Teachers are also disproportionately represented in municipal and village governments across the state, especially in indigenous and rural areas.

Section 22 and the APPO

Ostensibly Section 22 is just one more constituent organization within the APPO, but due to Section 22’s size and special interests there have been tensions between the two from the beginning. The APPO was originally formed in response to a call for support by Section 22. The teachers have provided the bulk of the “troops” in the streets and at the barricades and are disproportionately represented among APPO’s leadership.

However, once formed, the APPO has taken on a separate identity and pursues wider goals: to remove the governor, defeat the PRI, and bring about a fundamental transformation of Oaxaca’s political and economic system. The tensions between Section 22 and the rest of APPO were kept in check for several weeks following June 14 in the common struggle against the state PRI-government, a struggle that resulted in levels of violence, chaos and anarchy never witnessed before in the city of Oaxaca. Confrontations between APPO and PRI supporters occurred in many other parts of the state as well, but since Oaxaca City has always been the real and symbolic center of power, the greatest turmoil occurred there.

Political Struggle

The APPO’s immediate goal was to oust Governor Ruiz; the goal of the governor and the PRI was to cling to power. The two sides seemed to employ the same strategy in pursuit of their disparate goals—to make the city of Oaxaca ungovernable and to lay the blame on the other side. The APPO wanted to render the city (and as much of the state as possible) ungovernable so as to persuade the Fox administration to convince the governor to resign, or to provide proof of the “disappearance of powers” in the state, which is legal grounds for the removal of a governor by the Federal Senate. The governor, for his part, wanted the situation to become so untenable that the federal government would be compelled to do what state forces were unable to do: restore order and maintain the governor in power.

From June 14 until the federal government finally moved in on October 29, Oaxaca was indeed virtually ungovernable and ungoverned. The APPO sponsored “mega-marches”; set up a permanent protest encampment in the zócalo; shut down all but one radio station, which it converted into “Radio APPO”; periodically blocked roads into and out of the city; closed down all government offices and functions; and spray-painted nearly every surface, especially in the city center, with political slogans.

Participants in the sixth megamarch, November 5, protest the Ruiz administration and demand the retreat of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) that had taken the center of Oaxaca three days before. Photo courtesy of Jorge Hernández-Díaz

Beyond these attacks on property, however, the APPO preached and for the most part practiced non-violence. The PRI-government, on the other hand, felt no such compunction and employed agent provocateurs to commit vandalism and organized squads of thugs to cruise the streets at night in pickup trucks (often not even bothering to paint over the police insignias) to harass the APPO barricades, including shooting at them.

APPO Fractured

After the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) took absolute control of the entire city in November and December, it soon returned to a semblance of normalcy, except for the police’s own encampment in the zócalo. Two serious street skirmishes occurred in November (3 and 25) between protestors and the police, but the police’s overwhelming force has clearly won the war, so far at least (January 15). Furthermore, the police rounded up and jailed hundreds of APPO leaders and supporters (along with many innocent people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time), further weakening and intimidating the movement.

The APPO has been fractured from the inside and battered from the outside. From the inside it suffered from the inherent fragility that has doomed many attempts to construct popular front-type organizations: its composition of disparate organizations with different and even contradictory agendas. In this specific case, its creation by and dependency upon the huge teachers’ union meant that when the union went its own way, the APPO was severely undermined. From the outside, it was figuratively and literally clubbed by the PFP.

No reliable opinion poll has been taken, but one crude measure of public support is the turnouts at the various “megamarches” organized by the APPO. The megamarch on June 17, three days after the police attack, attracted as many as 300,000. Participation in a megamarch on January 11, which the APPO billed as proof that the struggle was still alive, was estimated by a very pro-APPO independent journalist at 4,000. So it seems the APPO has become just another one of the many groups that sponsor marches. For example, the newspaper Noticias reported on January 15, 2007, that the Union of Retirees and Pensioners planned a march for the following day to demand a pension increase. They expected 4,500 participants.

Ronald Waterbury taught for many years at Queens College, CUNY. He now lives most of the year in Oaxaca, where he has carried out research since 1964.