Tourist haven Oaxaca suffers under rebellion

Protests, absence of police scare many visitors away.

By Jeremy Schwartz
MEXICO CITY BUREAU
Monday, September 25, 2006

OAXACA, Oaxaca — When night falls, protesters stretch barricades across the streets, hoping to seal off this colonial city from government invasion.

Depending on the location, the roadblocks take the form of heavy stones, thick strands of barbed wire, pieces of sheet metal or the burned-out hulls of school buses. At every barricade, fires char the cobblestone streets.

Four months ago, Oaxaca conjured up images of a magical city, a place whose history, culture and architecture lured legions of tourists and a generation of expatriates.

Today, Oaxaca, in Mexico's second-poorest state, has become a catchword for unrest and social frustration that many think could spread throughout Mexico, already inflamed by an election crisis.

Over the summer, a teachers' strike — an annual springtime event in Oaxaca state — blossomed into full-scale rebellion.

Teachers and their supporters have driven the governor and police from Oaxaca city, Oaxaca's capital, and now control this mountain metropolis of 400,000 residents, many of them poor indigenous migrants from the countryside.

Oaxaca's once-booming tourist trade, the city's undisputed economic engine, has been devastated: More than a dozen restaurants and hotels have closed and an estimated 1,000 jobs have been lost. Trade groups put economic losses at more than $40 million.

Protesters block streets, on guard against federal forces that they fear will be sent in to restore order.

Tourism officials say it will take months or years to dig out of the hole.

"It will take a long time to position Oaxaca once again as the tourist destination it was, safe and attractive," said Joaquin Morales Noyola, president of an umbrella group of business associations.

For teachers and their supporters, the social movement spawned by the strike is nothing less than a revolution against Mexico's authoritarian past.

Although Mexico ended 71 years of uninterrupted rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox, the PRI has held onto strongholds in the poorer south, including Oaxaca. Much of the anger is directed against PRI Gov. Ulises Ruiz, who protesters say represents the worst abuses of the old regime, including physical attacks on dissidents and the shuttering of opposition newspapers.

"He's a symbol of a government, of a system that the people don't want anymore," said Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, a leader of the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People, or APPO, an umbrella group of militants. "He's like the Berlin Wall. The people wanted to knock down the wall because it was a symbol."

Ruiz warned the striking teachers Saturday that they would be replaced and lose their pay unless they immediately returned to work.

He told reporters that the strike, which teachers began in May to demand higher wages, was harming the education of more than 1 million students.

"It is criminal that Oaxacan children not have classes," Ruiz said.

Official negotiations between the government and militants have gone nowhere, and with no solution on the horizon, tourism workers are entering a state of economic depression.

"It's a nightmare that doesn't end," said Luis Martinez, who has sold brightly colored woolen Oaxacan rugs on the city's main tourist drag for 20 years. "We're not even doing 5 percent of the sales we were doing."

Taxi driver Fernando Rivas says the lack of tourists has caused several of his fellow drivers to immigrate to the United States. Complicating the business woes is the growing insecurity caused by having no police in the city.

"It's very dangerous," said Rivas, a father of three who recently began ending his shift at 10 p.m., three hours earlier than normal. "You have to be alert."

Several taxi drivers have been robbed and assaulted in recent weeks. Cab drivers took matters into their own hands on at least one occasion, capturing a suspected robber and setting his hands on fire.

Such tales of vigilantism have proliferated in recent weeks as residents whisper of an influx of criminals from other parts of Mexico, drawn by the power vacuum.

The APPO has also paraded wayward bureaucrats from Ruiz's government in front of the crowds in Oaxaca's main plaza, or Zocalo, and splashed them with paint.

Yet what is perhaps most notable is not the vigilantism but the fact that there isn't more anarchy in a city without police forces. People still stop at red lights; stores aren't being looted; tourists leaving bank ATMs aren't being shaken down by robbers. A huge sign hanging over the street near Oaxaca's municipal market reads, "We are watching you! The merchants of this street are organized against the rats!"

Now that the police have abandoned the city, neighbors have taken to setting up their own barricades to protect their streets from criminals who would take advantage of the situation.

Caught in the middle, many businesses and churches hang white flags calling for peace.

Despite the anti-government graffiti splashed across many Oaxacan historic centers, the protest camps set up in Oaxaca's main plaza and the threat of violence, many tourists report feeling at ease in the city, at least during daylight.

"Oaxaca is operating on the honor system, and for the most part it's working all right ," said Ron Mader, a former Austin resident who moved to Oaxaca six years ago to run a travel Web site.

Tourists say that althoughOaxaca is certainly less attractive than it's been in the past, there are some bonuses to visiting in the midst of a rebellion — namely, lower prices and fewer tourists overrunning the interesting sites.

"The vibe doesn't seem bad," said Jeremy Foster, a 22-year-old college student from Montana visiting with his girlfriend. "I wanted to experience the atmosphere of the city as this was going on. The nature of the protests don't seem geared against the tourists."

The teachers' strike became a social movement in June when Ruiz sent police armed with tear gas canisters to dislodge striking teachers from the Zocalo. The incursion backfired as teachers and supporters fought back with rocks and sticks, eventually driving riot police from the square and retaking their positions.

In the aftermath, the teachers were joined by a cross-section of angry supporters: workers, farmers groups and more radical political associations.

Since then, protesters and government forces have battled over control of Oaxaca's media, principally its radio stations. At least two people have died in the political violence.

Fox and his outgoing administration have come under heavy criticism for not solving the problem, which entered its fourth month last week. The PRI and the Oaxacan legislature have urged Fox to send in federal troops to squash the rebellion while teachers and their supporters say they won't cede control of the city until Ruiz leaves office.

The Oaxaca question is particularly sticky for incoming president Felipe Calderon, who, like Ruiz in 2004, won an extremely close election over a leftist candidate amid allegations of fraud. Calderon, of the National Action Party, needs PRI support for his reform plans, so he is wary of alienating the party.

Teachers and their supporters say the temporary instability is necessary.

"We see what is happening as a historic change," Villavicencio said. "The fear that the people had before has been broken. The collective imagination has changed."

 

jschwartz@coxnews.com

Additional material from The Associated Press.