Unrest and alternative goverment in mexico?

With 2.4 million mobilising in mexico city last sunday the biggest march in
its history and a 10km long permanent tent city established until ALL the
votes are recounted from the July 2 elections, mexico is becoming a very
interesting place. In one region, the movement seems to have take a
tentative step forward..... Oaxaca Initiates Alternative Government Popular
Assembly Reclaims Government Palace for the People

By Nancy Davies Commentary from Oaxaca

July 7, 2006

The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO, by its Spanish initials)
declared itself the governing body of Oaxaca on the morning of July 5.

During a student march of several thousand, the Popular Assembly convened
representatives of Oaxaca’s state regions and municipalities, unions,
non-governmental organizations, social organizations, cooperatives, and
parents. They met for several hours in the teachers’ building to decide the
next steps of this social movement. Meanwhile perhaps 2000 citizens milled
around outside in the zocalo.

Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz last year
converted the anchor of Oaxaca’s colonial zocalo, the block-long Government
Palace, to a museum. He moved government offices outside the city to
discourage protests in front of it. Today, as APPO symbolically re-opened it
for the people’s government, it sports some new art work to celebrate. (see
photo).

Directly in front of the Government Palace, a gauntlet formed through which
unwanted persons ­ press and PRI government workers­ were rudely expelled
from inside the edifice, while high shrills whistles and cries of *"Fuera!
Fuera!"* ("Out! Out!") pursued them.

Decisions made by the assembly include: a return to classes on Monday July
10, so that the schoolchildren will not lose their school year; putting the
encampment in the zocalo into the hands of the alternative government;
strengthening the fight to oust Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) as governor; and
boycotting the tourist Guelaguetza
celebration<http://oaxacalive.com/guelaguetza.htm> in favor of a free
celebration for the people.

The zocalo’s central gazebo, from which the decisions were announced, was
adorned with flags and banners. The teachers have strung plastic canopies
and tents, to protect themselves from sun and rain. In the heat most of the
public crowded under whatever protection they could find. When the speaker
on the bandstand announced the name of marching groups and assembly
representatives, the crowd responded to each name by shouting *"Viva!"*

Although some groaned at the news that classes will resume, Enrique Rueda
Pacheco, Secretary General of Section 22 of the National Union of Education
Workers (SNTE, in its Spanish initials) asserted in a separate press
conference that there is no crack in the solidarity of the struggle. Rueda
spoke of "recovering the power of the people for the people." The intention
of APPO is to install a General Assembly of Citizens as the foremost
authority of Oaxaca, preparing a plan of municipal, state and national
development, "with honesty and an ethics of service".

Rueda Pacheco stated that local efforts around the state will be essential
in maintaining the Oaxaca as ungovernable, as pressure on URO. It’s
generally agreed that URO’s attack on the sleeping teachers on June
14<http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/ar...> caused the public
to vote
against the PRI <http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/ar...> in the
local and presidential election on July 2. His ouster remains the unifying
focus of the struggle. The past three governors of Oaxaca (Carrasco, Murat,
Ruiz) have repeatedly violated the peoples’ civil rights with
unconstitutional actions, leaving smoldering anger in the general public.

That anger surfaced with a million activist participants as well as a vote
against the PRI.

At the moment, with the rebellion in the hands of the APPO, it becomes the
task of lawyers to figure out what legal recourses are available against URO,
as the social and non-governmental organizations struggle with their new
responsibilities.

The establishment of the Popular Government of the State of Oaxaca is an
attempt to revitalize and broaden the historic form of government familiar
to peoples in Oaxaca. This form of government is known as *usos y costumbres
* (literally, "practices and customs") and is recognized as a legitimate
form of local self-rule in the Oaxaca state constitution. Usos y costumbres
don’t acknowledge political parties; the system functions by consensus.
Presently, when a person is elected to the state legislative assembly, she
or he is then assumed to belong to one party or another.

The effort to keep out political parties in local government has led to
decades of conflict, in which the PRI has tried to establish local power
through bosses (*caciques*). Dependence on the government handouts was
encouraged, as were land conflicts. Usos y costumbres were damaged by the
power of money, and then by the fact that the population became more mobile.

As people poured into the more urban areas, the system of political parties
overwhelmed the system of *usos y costumbres* ­ new residents were not
brought into local civic ways of governing; to the contrary, in large cities
*usos y costumbres* vanished. This politicization broke important knots that
unite the members of a community, such as unpaid community service (*tequio*).
Nevertheless, statewide the greater part of public work in some 400-odd
small communities still is carried out by citizen *tequios*, which
accomplish a variety of tasks like building roads, repairing churches,
bringing in the harvest and sharing the expenses of weddings, baptisms or
deaths. The system of *usos y costumbres* has long been the basis for left
political thinking.

Most significantly, the authority of a general assembly composed of a town’s
residents is acknowledged where *usos y costumbres* are retained: municipal
authorities, farmers, the Council of Elders and all the citizens make the
decisions which affect communal life; the assembly is the law, the judges,
the executive and legislators all in one.

Political parties don’t convoke a general assembly of the population to make
decisions regarding municipal development. There is no monitor for the
spending of public monies. Political parties, a collection of private
powers, act on their own discretion, and make decisions that often strip the
towns’ natural resources to benefit private enterprises. Theft is common.
The population is largely left ignorant of what was done and where the money
went, while certain persons became inexplicably wealthy. That is the case in
the capital city of Oaxaca.

(As a side-benefit of the present struggle, residents of the city are
uniting to confront Mayor Jesus Angel Ortega Arias, who up until now as
Ulises’ puppet has been largely discounted as responsible for the damage and
neglect in the city. He was elected as a PRI candidate.)

The new Popular Assembly of Oaxaca aims at nothing less than expanding the
traditional idea of general assemblies of citizens to form a new state
government. Such assemblies, under *usos y costumbres*, oversee the
execution of their resolutions by their municipal authorities. That is to
say, "the executive branch" (the authorities) is charged with accomplishing
the tasks the assembly gives it. The municipal president, foremost among the
authorities, leads (as the Zapatistas’ phrase explains) by obeying.

For the population of Oaxaca, the idea of governing by consensus remains
part of the common cultural heritage. Therefore, as APPO was convoked, the
modest people who comprise 80% of Oaxaca’s population, recognized it
immediately. And they support it, despite the obvious difficulties of
convening authorities from around the state. Since these authorities receive
no pay, a trip to the capital city is not easy. But it’s happening.

APPO also includes representatives from other groups in addition to
municipal authorities ­ regional delegates, non-profit organizations,
unions, social groups, etc. ­ and the structure is still fluid.
Nevertheless, it has already made the difficult decision to release the
teachers for two weeks to finish the school year. The second difficult
decision is to maintain indefinitely the encampment in the zocalo, and to do
that, citizens must step forward without the teachers, until the teachers
return on July 22.

This is a big test for an infant movement now much larger than a teachers’
union, with demands far beyond the educational ones, a test taking place
within the context of national uncertainty.