Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Stay away from Oaxaca....
It is hard to believe that the federal government has allowed the Oaxaca conflict to go so far. There is no government, there are no laws. And even though their demands may be just, including the stepping down of the governor, the APPO and the Teachers Union have kidnapped the City. This is not a peaceful movement and they are willing to use violence, even extreme violence if necessary. I was interviewing Dane Schiller from the San Antonio Express who was at the Zocalo in Oaxaca, for my daily shows Imagen News. And as the interview on his cell phone was taking place a group of 40 men approached him started screaming at him, demanding to find out who he was talking to, what was he doing, and they definitely started to harass. This was a potentially violent situation, which Dane handled magnificently. He was able to de-escalate the situation and actually continued with the interview with me…But believe me, it was a dangerous situation for Dane. In fact as he was finishing the interview, he let the audience know that the APPO thugs were detaining another man. We later found out that this man is being “tried” by the protesters…. I guess it is all in a days work for anyone reporting on Mexico… You can listen to the interview with Dane Schiller if you download the October 2d show of IMAGEN News… at www.imagen.com.mx/news
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4 comments:
The Mexican government appears often to be afraid of its people. I prefer it the other way around, even though there are sigificant problems with that opposite approach too. Felipe Calderon is making some positive statements that he does not intend to be pushed around as Fox has been. I hope this is true. The wisdom of "the people" is highly overrated.
The Mexican government is not afraid of its people... what they are afraid of, however, is getting into a situation where things could turn into something much, MUCH worse.
The people organizing these protests could use any sort of police actions against them to their favor, making things much, much worse.
I'm not saying the Oaxaca teachers are right, but they do know what they're doing. They're inciting violence, knowing that if anything happens it'll work in their benefit and make the government look bad.
Ana Maria. Media has a lot to do with the problem. By wanting to help and by wanting to do the job of informing the people, the Media is continiously confronting the involved parties with questions, with comments, with possible future events, All this just adds
pure oxygen to the already lit fire.
Could the Media give the Mediators
a Little TRUCE so they can do their job? It would Help.
O.M.V. N. Laredo
There´s a side of all this that people don´t like to talk about. Its like the part of The Ugly American in which an Asiatic communist tells a former american friend that something is a good idea, but that his side is the wrong one to implement it. That man didn´t want his own people to be helped, not if the wrong side benefitted from it.
Many people don´t want the Oaxaca problem to be solved, not if For, or Calderón, or PAN get the credit for that solution. Just remember the SICARTSA case. That police operation failed because it confronted a paramilitary force. Critics have showered ridicule on that failure, NONE OF THEM SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN BOTHERED BY THE FACT THAT THERE WAS A PARAMILITARY FORCE OPERATING UNDER A CIVILIAN CLOAK.
The name of the game is defeating the political rival, not solving social problems or promoting social development. If the Fox Administration had intervened in Oaxaca at the start of the current crisis, you can be sure that it would have been criticised, scathingly, whatever it had done, by the same people who are denouncing now its inaction.
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