A-Infos (en) Mexico, Oaxaca, Police Attack APPO’s Alternative Guelaguetza

June 16th, 2007 - Barucha Calamity Peller writes: Today in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, 
a confrontation between the APPO (Popular Assembly of The Peoples of Oaxaca) and 
security forces of the State of Oaxaca as well as Federal Preventive Police has 
left at least one movement participant dead as a result of police violence, at 
least 62 detained, and an unknown number of people disappeared. According to an 
APPO press statement released today, the police launched “a broad offense” 
against the people of Oaxaca who were celebrating their alternative and popular 
Guelaguetza (an annual Oaxacan cultural festival) in the Guelaguetza auditorium. 
The APPO announced two days previous that it would hold an alternative cultural 
festival in the main Guelaguetza auditorium, located in the Fortin Mountain 
outside of the city.

Federal Preventive Police and State police surrounded the perimeter of the 
Guelaguetza auditorium in order to prevent people from entering the festival. A 
caravan heading to the festival, tailed by 10,000 people, arrived to the 
auditorium, and in that moment the police attacked the crowd with tear gas, 
rocks, sticks, whatever they had in their hands, as well as with unidentified 
explosive projectiles. People retreated, and the police advanced, beating and 
arresting people. Three photographers were reported to have been beaten. 
Countless others were tossed into the back of police pick up trucks with serious 
injuries.

For the moment the state and the municipal police continue a citywide operation 
in the streets of Oaxaca City, detaining people in the open. The military are 
reported to have surrounded the city on the highways.

Several people are reported to be in grave conditions, and police apparently 
apprehended injured festival participants and APPO supporters while they were 
transported by the red cross to receive medical attention.

There are reports that the detained are suffering torture and constant beatings 
at the hands of the state and federal police.

Emeterio Merino Cruz Vazquez, the one confirmed fatality from police violence, 
was killed from impact from a unidentified explosive projectile fired by police, 
which split his intestines open.

The alternative Guelaguetza was planned by the APPO in response to the 
government co-optation of the cultural festival that reflects indigenous 
tradition through dance. The movement charges that the festival has been made 
into a spectacle for tourists for years, and that the “official” Guelaguetza is 
an economic excursion on the part of multinational corporations and Ulises Ruiz, 
the state Governor targeted by the Oaxaca popular uprising. Last year, in 
actions against the official Guelaguetza, members of the APPO uprising burned 
the Guelaguetza stage.
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