Mexican President Vicente Fox has sent in thousands of federal police to Oaxaca to crush the popular uprising there. We go to Oaxaca to speak with Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca. Esteva says, "The police can come and occupy with all their weapons and tanks. They can occupy one area, they can occupy one specific point, but they cannot control the city. They cannot take over our lives and our country." [includes rush transcript] We turn now to Oaxaca where Mexican President Vicente Fox has sent in thousands of federal police to crush the popular uprising.
Last night police stormed the city with armored vehicles, helicopters and water cannons. The police seized control of the city square.
Over the past four months, the residents of Oaxaca - sparked by a teachers strike - had turned the city into an autonomous zone. The police and official government had been kicked out - in its place the protesters formed the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca or APPO.
For months entire families have been camping outside to oversee barricades protecting the city. The protesters have been demanding the resignation of the state's governor Ulises Ruiz and the formation of a more representative government.
But in recent weeks the authorities have used increasingly violent tactics to crush the largely non-violent movement.
On Friday gunmen linked to the government shot dead the New York Indymedia journalist and activist Brad Will as well as a local teacher named Emilio Alonso Fabian and a demonstrator named Esteban Zurita. Two more protesters were shot dead on Sunday.
We talk more about Brad Will's life later in the show but first we go to Oaxaca to speak with Gustavo Esteva. He is the founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and author of many books including "Grassroots Post-modernism: Remaking the Soil of Culture." Gustavo is also a columnist for La Jornada.
Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and author of many books including "Grassroots Post-modernism: Remaking the Soil of Culture." Gustavo has also been a columnist for La Jornada.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: We’ll talk more about Brad Will’s life in the program. But first, we go to Oaxaca to speak to Gustavo Esteva. He is the founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and author of many books, including Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures. Gustavo is also a columnist for La Jornada. We welcome you to Democracy Now!
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Good morning. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you talk about the latest news right out of Oaxaca -- the storming of the city square by the federal police?
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Well, basically, we have at least three persons dead. We have also lots of injured, people disappeared, and many people in jail. And they are transporting them to the military zone, involving the army in this illegally. And we have reports that some of them are being tortured.
The police is occupying several points in the city. What was most impressive yesterday, it was an amazing self-restraint of thousands of people, due to the decision of not confronting the police and abandoning the area for the police to occupy it, but then, immediately after that, surrounding the police. And then you have, yes, the police is occupying these critical strategic points, but the people are surrounding them. They are not in control of the city; the people are still in control of the city, of our lives, not confronting, using nonviolence.
I don’t know for how long we will be able to control the rage of the people to have this self-restraint. Yesterday, you could see many adults controlling the rage of the young people that wanted to attack. These are people that have been humiliated, offended, attacked and oppressed, and they have a lot of anger. But still, they controlled their anger and decided to use nonviolence. But we don't know for how long we will be able to control the young people that are ready to confront the police and start more violence.
AMY GOODMAN: Gustavo, I want to play for you part of one of the last interviews that Brad Will conducted before his death. It was with a female protester in Oaxaca. We don’t know her name, but the footage was found on Brad’s last videotape.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: [translated] From the pickup you see over there, two men got out, gun in hand, and started shooting at us. From that pickup over there, they went there. Then they started attacking us. That’s why all the people came outside to defend us. This morning, one of our comrades was kidnapped. He was taken by three men, and he hasn’t been found yet. That’s why they burned that pickup.
These guys are the PRIstas, members of the PRI, from the municipality of Santa Maria Ixcotel, and are paid for by the PRI. They’re paid 300 pesos a day to come and beat us up.
As you can see, we’re not teachers here. We’re just people. We are people here, not teachers. We’re people, not teachers. We’re just people, the people fighting for our rights. We don't want to live like this anymore. We don't want to live in a constant state of repression, of blackmail, of murder and shabby deals. When Ulises leaves Oaxaca, at that moment we will have peace. If he does not leave, we are not going to leave Oaxaca.
AMY GOODMAN: Gustavo, can you respond to what this protester said?
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Yes. First, what they are doing, this woman is expressing exactly the very nature of our movement: it’s basically democracy now. And, of course, we can specify what kind of democracy we are looking for. Of course, we want a formal democracy. We want cleaner elections. We want legitimate representatives, not an illegitimate governor, as Ulises Ruiz, or an illegitimate president, as Felipe Calderon. But we want also participatory democracy -- that is, the involvement of the citizens in the decisions, including referendum and recall and all these tools for direct democracy. But we also want radical democracy, what we have in our municipalities, in our communities, when the people themselves, through assemblies, they can take decisions about their lives. We want democracy now.
And this is a peaceful, democratic uprising of the people, trying to follow all the lines of the paths of the law or the institutions, trying to respect the law and the institutions, trying to be nonviolent, and attacked by the police, attacked by these people. This woman was showing what we had in photos and videos, what blood was happening. The video of blood, the last video of blood is showing the killers. And the killers, we have the faces, we have the names, We have identified everyone. It is people of the police, people of respecting, following instructions of police. This is a governor launching guerrilla attacks against unarmed people. This is the kind of situation in which we are here.
AMY GOODMAN: Indymedia journalist Brad Will had been covering the situation in Oaxaca for four weeks. In his last dispatch from Oaxaca, he wrote about a demonstrator named Alejandro Garcia Hernandez, who was killed on the barricades. Brad wrote, quote, “one more death -- one more martyr in a dirty war -- one more time to cry and hurt -- one more time to know power and its ugly head -- one more bullet cracks the night.” Well, on Friday, Brad Will died at those same barricades. He had his video camera in his hand. His camera kept recording, even after he was shot.
[footage from Brad Will’s camera]
AMY GOODMAN: Brad Will died as he was being taken to the hospital. He was 36 years old. The Mexican daily, El Universal, has published photos of the alleged executioners. On Saturday, the mayor of Santa Lucia del Camino, Manuel Martinez Feria, said five men had been turned over to state authorities for possible involvement in the killing. He identified them as two members of the local city hall, two municipal police officers and the former justice of the peace of a nearby town.
Reporters Without Borders said it was deeply shocked over the killing of Brad Will. The organization called for Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz to be summoned before the new prosecutor's office dealing with attacks on press freedom. It also urged federal authorities to investigate Ortiz and the Oaxaca municipal police.
John Gibler, as well, joins us on the phone from Oaxaca, an independent journalist who knew Brad Will. John Gibler, can you talk about Brad?
JOHN GIBLER: I met Brad in Chiapas, when the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign began last January. We traveled together with a number of other people throughout a month, as we were filming -- or he was filming. I was mainly conducting interviews and writing for ZNet about the people, the everyday people who were coming out to join the Zapatistas’ movement there.
And then I saw him in the streets about a month ago here in Oaxaca for the first time since then, and we went off to get coffee and talked about what was going on. He said he had been trying to get here more or less since the state police came in the June 14th crackdown. It had taken him time to work up enough money to come down here and take time off work. And he was most interested in filming interviews with just the everyday people and the people that he thought their voices would slip through the cracks in international media coverage and not get out to the people that he was hoping would be paying attention to what was happening here in Oaxaca.
At first, he was saying he was really nervous. He didn’t want to walk around the barricades at night until he kind of got a feel for the town, which I thought was definitely very wise, and spent a couple of weeks just going out and hitting all the barricades, all the protest encampments, and conducting hours and hours of interviews with people. I saw him in several of the mobile brigades, where we joined the people who had commandeered city buses and go around to spray paint government offices. And he was definitely fearless, once he had gotten a feeling for the town, and just going wherever the action was. But he was also being smart. He was hanging out with all the national and the local press corps here who know the scene pretty well. But you can only be so smart when paramilitaries jump out of houses with machine guns.
AMY GOODMAN: Gustavo Esteva, you also knew Brad Will. You also, in addition to founding the University of the Land in Oaxaca, are a columnist for La Jornada, the Mexican newspaper.
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Yes, yes. He was coming to our office. We were collaborating with Indymedia. And he was fantastic. I liked the guy a lot. He had a peculiar genius for reporting, and he was, of course, very courageous. Yes, he was prudent, as was just mentioned, but he was very courageous. He had no limits on his activity with the people, and he shared this element of being unarmed and doing his things and being attacked by these people. Yes, he had a peculiar genius for reporting.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break, and when we come back we’ll continue this discussion and also the extended struggle, why the teachers originally went out on strike five months ago. We’re talking to Gustavo Esteva. He is a columnist for La Jornada. We’re also speaking with John Gibler. He is a U.S. journalist who is based in Oaxaca, like Brad Will, who was killed on Friday at one of the barricades, shot by men who have been identified and apparently have been taken into custody. The break today is Brad Will singing.
full show on Brad Will and Oaxaca
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