Violence Continues in Oaxaca Today -- Mexican Federal Police Confront Radical Students (Translation)

El Universal ( Mexico City ) ^ | November 2, 2006 | Jorge Octavio Ochoa, Alejandro Torres & David Aponte ( translated by self )

[StJacques]

Reporting confrontation between PFP and students in Oaxaca

The cordon of federal agents fell back about 200 meters and they returned to the starting point, the terminus of University Avenue

Jorge Octavio Ochoa, Alejandro Torres & David Aponte/Correspondents
El Universal (Mexico City)
Oaxaca City, Oaxaca
Thursday 2 November 2006

11:20 a.m.   A confrontation between students of the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca (UABJO) and elements of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) is being reported.

The uniformed officers are being practically bombarded by a rain of stones, sticks, molotov cocktails, and fireworks, from the interior [of the University] to the last study house, as well as from University Avenue.

The confrontation is being reported at the high point of Ricardo L. Tamayo street, where the Plaza del Valle and Oaxaca shopping malls are found.

The uniformed officers withdrew before the rain of projectiles and fireworks devices that were thrown at them.

The students put up barricades with trucks, and everything from light posts which could be found knocked down up to shopping carts which were robbed from the shopping malls which are located facing the university.

The body of the PFP has begun throwing tear gas bombs.

A young person was injured as a result. The police cordon retreated approximately 200 meters before the furious attack of the young students, who continued throwing all types of objects.

The elements of the PFP had to return as far as their starting point where they could be found at the terminus of University Avenue.

[StJacques]

Today's violence does not seem to be nearly so threatening as what occurred on Sunday, but it is worth noting that the Benito Juarez Autonomous University has a radio station which APPO has continued to use to spread its propaganda. This radio station was seized by APPO after the PFP arrived last weekend.

It has been reported that four people were injured, including one police officer and four news photographers.

SCENES OF PFP-STUDENT CLASH TODAY IN OAXACA

Elements of the PFP confront students on the outskirts
of the Benito Juarez Autonomous University in Oaxaca

A young boy with a tube in his hands intends to confront the Federal Preventive Police.
Note the burning truck in the background

PFP evicting those found on the barricades at the entrance to the university

A group of APPO supporters launches a homemade firework at the PFP
on the grounds of the university

A PFP officer launches a tear gas grenade at protestors
near the entrance to the university

[StJacques]

A Mexican Left Watch ping for you all.

Anyone wishing to be added to the ping list may contact me via Freepmail or post within this thread.

[FormerACLUmember]

Hugo Chavez money pouring into every terrorist coffer South of the Rio Grande.

[StJacques]

According to that Oaxacan newspaper article I translated yesterday the Venezuelans on hand are manning the radio stations. That's what the PFP is really after here. They understand that they've got to "de-officialize" APPO.

[sdillard]

This is standard destabilization procedure that the Left has advocated and funded for decades.

It needs to stop - NOW. Otherwise, this nonsense will spread to other areas of southern Mexico. The "subcomandante Marcos" crap is still there, and they are already threatening to block all roads in Chiapas state. Marcos was also recently up north, agitating for the Cocopa and Seri Indians in Baja and Sonora.

We do not need a fractured neighbor to the south. What would we do with millions MORE illegals, all of them claiming "refugee" status?

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Inspired by the left? This is typical leftist work.

[Kenny Bunk]

One would think Katie Couric knows about this?

But then again I would hate to see her take any time away from Hollywood News, unless it's to bash Bush and tell us all how badly the Republicans are going to do..

[norton]

What would we do with millions MORE illegals, all of them claiming "refugee" status?"

Take it seriously at last?

I'd really like to find what the various percentages of (unpaid) 'teachers', 'poor people', and 'students', versus outside and paid local professionals, had been in these confrontations.

Not only are actual students usually dumb enough to buy into 'progressive' groups, but use of such innocent sounding identities is a boon to the bad guys.

[Alia]

The APPO stole the radio station; they didn't just pirate it. Yes, that radio station must be regotten.

[StJacques]

"Inspired by the left? This is typical leftist work."

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but in case there is any kind of misunderstanding here I invite you to get a good look at what I have to say about APPO -- specifically that I have exposed their Venezuelan connections -- in a thread I posted yesterday. Please pay close attention to my comments following the introduction of the thread and my post #2 where I present the translation of the Oaxacan newspaper article nailing Chavez's Venezuelan agents for having a large hand in APPO.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1730311/posts

I'll admit I didn't say much in this thread but I hope you do not believe that I view with any kind of favorable disposition whatsoever what the Left is doing in Mexico. I'm the one who keeps the "Mexican Left Watch" and "Latin American Left Watch" ping lists. I hate the Latin American Left, I've lived there and I know them for the brutal, condescending, insensitive, and malicious bastards they truly are.

[kidd]

Again, thanks for the translation.

I don't have anything to add to this particular issue, but I'd like to present a general observation. The translated version of the articles that you present seem to be very informative and are relatively free of the partisan qualifiers and adjectives that absoltely riddle the American press. In other words they seem to be actual news, not analysis.

Do the original articles seem well presented to you as well, or are you taking out anything that smacks of an agenda?

[armymarinemom]

Looks like Medea is looking to send money down there fast

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Dear XXXXXXXX,

Violence in Oaxaca has escalated.

On Thursday morning federal military police attempted to forcibly enter the University of Oaxaca Campus to shut down the University of Oaxaca Radio station, where protesters have been broadcasting for months. Federal forces used helicopters to launch tear gas bombs, and sent heavily armed troops with water cannon bearing tanks against ever growing crowds of determined protestors. By late afternoon, federal forces pulled back, reportedly at the orders of the Fox Administration.

[continued below]

TAKE ACTION NOW!

• End the Violence: Call on President Fox and the Federal government to order its troops to leave the city of Oaxaca
• Stay informed: Read on the ground updates from Global Exchange’s John Gibler.
• Listen to Oaxaca University radio: Listen as protesters continue to transmit from the Autonomous University campus.

Global Exchange continues to call on President Fox to order Federal troops to cease attacking protestors and to pull back from the city. Federal investigators should focus on bringing the government sponsored paramilitaries and death squads to justice, not attack protestors.

MORE LINKS (IN SPANISH)
Radio APPO transmitiendo en vivo
Mirror 1 de Radio APPO
Mirror 2 de Radio APPO
Mirror 3 de Radio APPO
Minuto a minuto en el CML

ARTICLE

Oaxaca in Crisis

Just as the teacher’s strike in Oaxaca appeared ready to end, paramilitary violence breaks out.

By John Gibler

Before the recent outbreak of paramilitary violence, indigenous teachers stood guard over the APPO barricades in Oaxaca City.

It appeared as if the conflict in Oaxaca would come to an anti-climactic end. After a week of heated internal debate, on Thursday, Oct. 26, the Oaxaca local Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers voted to end their five-month strike and return to classes the following Monday.

With the teachers committed to head back to their communities, the protesters’ camps in the town square and surrounding government buildings would have thinned dramatically. Many of the farmers and indigenous organizations that make up the Oaxaca People’s Popular Assembly (APPO) were discussing ways to continue their struggle without trying to hold the camps against an imminent police attack. Without the teachers, they said, they simply would not have enough people to guarantee their security.

One might have imagined that by Monday morning, Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz would be walking into the town center, guarded by state police while proclaiming victory.

But the APPO was still holding on, and many of the teachers who had voted to continue the strike were considering dissenting from the majority vote and remaining in the protest camps.

Then, on Friday, Oct. 27, plainclothes police officers and city counsel members from Santa Lucia, a suburb of Oaxaca City, stepped into the street and opened fire on protesters guarding their barricades. The protesters dove out of the way, but the reporter who was standing behind them, filming the confrontation, did not see the gunmen. A split second later, two bullets tore into the chest and abdomen of New York Indymedia journalist Brad Will. After filming more than a month of interviews with the rank-and-file of the teachers’ union and the APPO, Brad Will recorded his own assassination at the hands of paramilitary gunmen.

Throughout the day, more than 15 shootouts occurred in different parts of Oaxaca City and its surrounding suburbs. In most cases, plainclothes police and gangs linked to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) fired on unarmed protesters with handguns and assault rifles. In some cases, members of the APPO fired back with handguns, though they mostly defended themselves with rocks, bottle rockets and Molotov cocktails. By the end of the day, the paramilitaries had killed 3 people and wounded 23. No deaths or injuries were reported from the APPO’s defense.

Within hours of Brad Will’s death, President Vicente Fox ordered the Federal Preventive Police (PFP)—a militarized, anti-riot force—to move into Oaxaca. Throughout Saturday, Oct. 28, plane after plane landed at the Oaxaca City airport, dispatching the police, their trucks and anti-riot tanks. The long dreaded face off between the APPO and the federal police was at hand.

But on Sunday morning, the APPO called for protesters to maintain their barricades until the federal police approached, then to allow them to break through the barricade and march ahead of them until the next one, growing in numbers at every barricade and marching ahead of the police all the way to the town square.

Thousands of people took to the streets, reinforcing existing barricades and building hundreds more. On the federal highway leading into Oaxaca City, federal police formed a line with their riot shields, shutting off the highway. Behind the line, riots tanks pulled up, police readied their teargas launchers and machine guns, and helicopters flew overhead, occasionally landing and taking off again.

Hundreds of protesters from the APPO and surrounding neighborhoods gathered less than 15 feet from the police line. About 50 women moved forward to form the protesters’ frontline, holding flowers and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe out to the police. For hours the protesters shouted, chanted, pleaded and even joked with the police, invoking their conscience and calling out for them not to repress the people of Oaxaca.

When the tanks ignited their engines and the police began to ram batons against riot shields, signaling their first attempt to move forward, men and women pushed against the tanks’ bulldozer blades and threw their bodies down on the street. The police sounded their sirens and soon fired their water canons to push protesters back. After a short and tense attempt to impede the police advance, protesters turned around and began to march ahead of the police.

The police also advanced directly from the airport, arriving in the city center by early afternoon, and blocking two streets leading into the town square. Protesters gathered at the police lines chanting and calling out to the police. Some protesters attempted to throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police, but the crowd called for them not to provoke the police and incite a clash. Violence broke out at the barricade set up to protect the occupied public television station, Canal 9. Police beat several protesters, and killed two.

When night fell, the protesters left the town square and the barricades to the police.

On Monday, Oct. 30, the first day of federal presence in the historic center of Oaxaca City, the sun rose to trash and piles of human waste littered throughout the police-occupied zone. All businesses remained closed, and the morning air was fetid.

But outside of the city center, thousands of people again took to the streets to build and maintain barricades and to carry out three marches that converged just two blocks from the occupied town square before turning up to the famous Santo Domingo Cathedral, where the APPO called for a new protest camp.

The show of support in the streets on Monday took many by surprise; at least 10,000 people joined the marches, and more maintained barricades throughout the city. Many believed that the PFP would either beat and arrest the majority of protesters, or scare them off the streets. But the APPO’s strategy of continuing to mobilize while avoiding direct clashes with the PFP enabled the protesters to seriously challenge the PFP’s assumed control of the city.

As the marches were gathering numbers and making their way toward the city center, protesters received news that the Mexican Congress has passed a resolution calling for Governor Ulises Ruiz to “reconsider” resigning from office, leading them to erupt in shouts: “Ulises has fallen!” Hours later, the Senate approved, unanimously, the same resolution—the first time that elected officials from Ruiz’s own PRI party publicly expressed their lack of faith in the governor’s ability to remain in office. Ruiz however, remains undaunted; he responded by submitting a complaint to the Supreme Court, alleging that Congress had acted illegally by passing the resolution.

While the presence of the PFP blocking roads and walking about in riot armor with machine guns provides a ready image of the potential for the government to resort to a violent confrontation, the possibility for continued paramilitary attacks is equally alarming. The paramilitaries killed with total impunity for months in Oaxaca before their assassination of a foreign journalist led to the current PFP intervention.

Oaxaca is still in crisis; in fact, the crisis has only deepened. While the PFP block streets, wash spray paint from the walls of town square restaurants and raid the houses of known APPO activists, those responsible for organizing paramilitary death squads remain free, and the potential for further attacks looms.

John Gibler is a Global Exchange human rights fellow.

[StJacques]

"Do the original articles seem well presented to you as well, or are you taking out anything that smacks of an agenda?"

Before I comment on the translating process let me say this about the journalism. Newspaper journalists in Mexico do not make a lot of money as reporters, the good jobs are on the editorial staff and you usually only reach those after years in the trenches and through a "weeding out" process that is somewhat cruel, to be honest. Most reporters are paid "by the word" and that tends to lead to an insistence on the part of the editors that the stories be kept to a minimum, so as to avoid "padding" the bill for services rendered. So most of the stories are pretty direct.

On the translations, let me say that there are different "philosophies" of translating, by which I mean that there is as much an art to the process as there is science. A "literal" translation -- which I have not been doing -- keeps verb tenses intact and rarely uses idiomatic expressions in English when a corresponding phrase is used in the original language. A "figurative" translation -- which is what I've been doing -- adapts the exact language used, and especially verb tenses which are used differently between languages, to produce a translation that is "useful" or understandable as we would use language on our own, which means that idiomatic expressions are much more easily applied. But even this type of translation often produces a kind of "stilted" text, in which the stylistic aspects of writing between languages is not accounted for, but it strikes a middle ground in terms of accuracy of translated text, that's why I use it. And finally, there is a "stylistic" translation, which is really much better-suited for academia, in which verb tenses are set according to the "target" language ("target" as opposed to "original") to an even greater degree, idiomatic expressions are utilized even more fully, and the general objective is to produce a translation that meets stylistic criteria for reading more so than accuracy in translated text. These might all seem a little blurry to someone who has never translated -- and I've actually worked as one before -- but there are different ways to do it. And no, I try not to strip anything out. Remember that since the original texts are linked from the translations, my work is placed under a microscope, something which probably scares a lot of people who are capable of translating for the web away from doing so.

But just to give you an idea of how I'm doing from a third party who is informed, you might want to note that Venezuela Digital, which is the Spanish-language forum for Venezuela Today, just posted my translation of the Oaxacan newspaper A Diario article on the Venezuelan "engineering" of the APPO protest, which I put up yesterday:

http://venezuela-digital.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12145

So I think my work is standing up pretty well.

[StJacques]

Look at the 2nd-to-last paragraph of Gibler's post:

"While the presence of the PFP blocking roads and walking about in riot armor with machine guns provides a ready image of the potential for the government to resort to a violent confrontation, the possibility for continued paramilitary attacks is equally alarming. The paramilitaries killed with total impunity for months in Oaxaca before their assassination of a foreign journalist led to the current PFP intervention."

"Potential for the government to resort to a violent confrontation"? APPO has been throwing Molotov cocktails, rocks, homemade fireworks and rockets; stealing private property such as trucks, cars, furniture, and more from innocent bystanders and setting it afire in barricades; they've killed at least two dissidents in acts of outright murder; they've seized, closed, and destroyed the private businesses of local merchants who either opposed their program or were lax in supporting it; and they've run radio broadcasts threatening people who intend to oppose them 24 hours a day. The Mexican federal government on the other hand has sent in riot-control police -- does anyone want to argue there hasn't been a riot? -- who are not carrying or using firearms, and even though they've been attacked by APPO protestors in a very violent fashion, just scroll up and see, they have not killed anyone in a deliberate act of mortal consequence, the only two APPO sympathizers who died were from a rock hitting one man's chest, and the PFP do not throw rocks, and a tear-gas canister bouncing off another's head, tear gas is not meant to be lethal.

And on the "paramilitaries" . . .

Many of these have been local Oaxacan policemen trying to stop APPO from destroying private property, which the Appistas have done with wanton abandon. That was the case in Santa Lucia del Camino, where the Indymedia photographer was killed. But to read what Gibler has written we are left to believe it's entirely some evil group of men sitting around and plotting murder.

The American Left is nothing but lies, lies, and more lies.

[StJacques]

And by the way, because I meant to say so in my previous post but failed to do so ...

In no way do I associate Gibler's words or ideas with yours armymarinemom. I know you made that clear at the outset.

I just read my post and it almost looked as if I associated Gibler's take with your own. I hope you didn't think I intended that.

[armymarinemom]

No problem. The big problem is what they are telling people in the US in order for them to open up their wallets and contribute to the anarchy.

[StJacques]

"Anarchy" is exactly the word. I just saw the Univision Ultima Hora late evening news report of today's standoff at the university and they called it "chaos."

I've done some trolling of the really far-left web sites in this country to see what they are saying about Oaxaca and it is bothersome. They think they are witnessing the revolution they have always dreamed of having here in the U.S. taking off in Oaxaca. Their "hoped for" scenario is today Oaxaca, tomorrow the rest of the developing world, and the day after the U.S. It's breaking their hearts to see it all starting to unravel.

[armymarinemom]

I have gathered the same from left wing emails. They see this as a thing of glory. It's sad to see elitist money being used like this. These NGO's should be held accountable for meddling in governments.

[DaoPian]

Good translation is hard work and under-appreciated. The only thing harder is to become a trusted simultaneous interpreter.

The real difficulty here is the acquisition of truth our of all these perceptions of reality. By the time StJacques gets to it, the "meat" of the story is already done.

And I agree wholeheartedly about Gibler - he reads like a mouthpiece. It just goes to show you how desperate the old media is for content.

In spite of other reports and images, he writes:

"The disparities were enormous. At 10 a.m., several hundred fully equipped riot and special operations officers from the Federal Preventative Police (PFP) supported by armored riot tanks and military helicopters flying overhead stood face-to-face with a small crowd of university students and local residents with nothing in their hands."

Gibler's pen is pretty mighty, unfortunately exposure is the best thing we can do. Eventually, the papers will have to put him in the editorial section instead of news.

In regards to the support the "activists" are getting, financing an insurrection, sending "observers", helping to organize on the ground, disseminating propaganda, and actual participation in protest/political activities covers their actions. Wasn't there some professor in Florida called Sammy busted for this? Aren't the Iranians doing this in Iraq? Now we've got Subcommadante Marcos at the border. This whole thing is so screwed up. We are in election fever and besides talking about building a wall, there is hardly any concept of the threats we face from the South and within.

[piasa]

Speaking of that... the “journalist” killed among the Mexican anarchists was an Indymedia guy... Germany more recently shut down a German Antifa site hosted on Indymedia... and here of course we have Antifa trying to pull this “resistance” coup on Trump...