A-Infos (en) US, Boston Anti-Authoritarian-Movement BAAM Newsletter #28 - The Oaxacan Rebellion by Jake Carman

Oaxaca has a long tradition of resistance going back to the arrival of the Spanish. Strong 
anti-authoritarian currents exist, and it was Oaxaca that produced the first prominent 
anarchist protagonist of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, Ricardo Flores Magón. On June 14, 
2006, 3,000 police attacked the teachers’ yearly strike and encampment in the main city 
plaza (Zócalo) of Oaxaca City, the state capital. This encampment was different from those 
of the past 25 years, as it called for a raise in the minimum wage for everyone in 
Mexico’s poorest state. ---- When the police attacked, the people of Oaxaca came to the 
teachers’ defense. Poor workers and Indigenous people flooded the streets of Oaxaca City, 
driving the police out and building barricades to keep them out. Then they went further. 
They ran out the politicians, occupied government buildings,
radio and television stations, and created the
Popular Assemblies of the People of Oaxaca
(APPO), demanding the ouster of Governor
Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) of the conserva-
tive Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
APPO assemblies sprung up all across the
state. URO responded by raising paramilitar-
ies from those he could convince to take up
arms against the rebellion. Comprising any-
one from cops to city councilmen, workers,
and even judges, right-wing paramilitaries at-
tacked the barricades by night with machine
guns from pickup trucks. They sabotaged ra-
dio stations and abducted revolutionaries. In
the face of violent repression, the people came
out in mega-marches of up to 800,000. When
paramilitaries evicted a women’s group from
the State television station, people responded
that night by taking over every commercial
radio station. When vigilantes killed a rebel
in an attack on occupied “Radio La Ley,”
the people expanded their barricades into the
thousands. They held the city for five months,
fending off helicopters with the sun’s glare
off of mirrors and fireworks shot from PVC
pipes.
For the most part, the confrontational
actions of the Oaxacan revolutionaries stood
in contrast to the developing central leader-
ship of APPO, which included more than just
anarchist and Indigenous Magónista groups.
Leftists of all brands, the PRD (the Party of
the Democratic Revolution, Mexico’s main-
stream liberal party), and even Stalinists used
the revolt to push their agendas and to build
political careers. APPO leadership insisted on
only non-violent resistance and on October
29th, two days after paramilitaries killed four
Oaxacans and an anarchist journalist from
New York, Oaxacans painted their hands
white and filled the streets to peacefully halt
the procession of thousands of Federal Pre-
ventative Police (PFP). Police carried auto-
matic weapons, wore riot gear, and came with
tanks that tore through barricades. By the end
of the night, the PFP had dislodged the APPO
encampment from the Zócalo. Due largely
to the leadership’s cowardice, there was
little violent resistance. At one point, rebels
popped all 4 tires and smashed windows of
a bus carrying the PFP, forcing a retreat, but
APPO leadership denounced this and other
confrontational actions.
On November 2nd, thousands of rebels
successfully defended APPO’s main radio
station, Radio Universidad, winning an hours-
long running battle at the barricades, forcing
the PFP to retreat. But one by one, barricades
and radio stations fell. On November 25th,
APPO called for a mega march to dislodge the
PFP from the Zócalo. Police and paramilitar-
ies fired on the march, effectively ending the
revolt. 26 died, dozens were detained, and many
more went missing. Years of brutal repression
ensued, and APPO crumbled over its former
leaders’ electioneering, though the struggle
continues in local neighborhood assemblies.
The failure of the Oaxacan revolt is the
fault of the leadership, who injected cowardly
pacifism and veiled authoritarianism into the
spontaneous horizontal movement. By failing
to realize the value of liberated territory—the
entire City of Oaxaca—in a revolutionary
struggle and not throwing all resources into
its defense, they effectively surrendered the
location of the developing revolution. Addi-
tionally, while people occupied the media and
dislodged the government and police, they
did not, for the most part, occupy their work-
places. Though many Oaxacans were and are
unemployed, and the predominant local econ-
omy is that of tourism and service, most indus-
tries were left under the control of the capital-
ists and out of the hands of the revolution.
_________________________________________
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