Fri 03 Nov 00:57:37 2006
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Tourists back in troubled Oaxaca city

Related Articles Mexican police tighten grip

Nov 1, 2006

Tourists were back in the graceful center of the Mexican city of Oaxaca on Tuesday, mingling with riot police who last weekend drove out activists demanding the ouster of a reviled governor.

Most of the city remained under the control of protesters, but Oaxaca residents and American tourists sat on benches in the leafy central plaza, the heart of a five-month-long protest against state Governor Ulises Ruiz.

Police shed their body armor and bought souvenir indigenous art.

After two days of police clashes with activists around the square, a heavy truck carried away the shell of a burnt-out Volkswagen Beetle and officers gave a fresh coat of paint to buildings scrawled with political graffiti.

"The change is sudden," said 20-year-old Yesenia Hernandez, who sat on a sunny park bench with a friend, adding she had not visited the square for about two months.

Thousands of federal police poured into the city last weekend, broke up barricades and stormed a protest camp in the downtown square. At least one protester was killed. About a dozen people, mostly protesters, have been killed during the crisis.

Some foreign tourists, visiting the plaza for the first time since the police entered the city backed by armored trucks and water canons, were unimpressed with the change.

"It feels like a police state," said American tourist Rachelle Lewis, who arrived two weeks ago to study Spanish.

A US reporter was killed in the city on Friday, apparently by local police. The United States urged its citizens not to visit the town.

For months, protesters directed their movement against Ruiz from the plaza, crowding it with cooking fires, furniture and living spaces carved out in flower beds.

Accusing Ruiz and his government of corruption and of using thugs to crush dissent, they forced local and state police out of the city, took over government offices, sentenced people accused of theft and charged tolls on street corners.

Oaxaca City is best known for its architecture, indigenous crafts and cuisine as well as nearby archeological ruins, but it is surrounded by rural areas of crushing poverty.

The conflict, which began with a teachers strike in May, scarred the city center and scared away all but a few tourists.

On Tuesday, bulldozers shifted burnt-out buses and traffic began to flow freely on a few downtown streets but most of the city was in the control of protesters, who guarded street barricades made of tires and trucks.

The government has said little about how it plans to restore order to the rest of the city or how long it might keep thousands of federal police there.

Source: Reuters

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