Organized Chaos in Oaxaca
tacho | 01.04.2007 23:34 | Oaxaca Uprising | Repression | Social Struggles | Zapatista
By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
March 28, 2007
The PFP Evicts Farmers to Construct Wind Park on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
March 28, 2007
Ninety-eight wind generators already operate with a supposed capacity of 83.3 megawatts. In the second stage the transnational company, Iberdrola, has invested $100 million. The World Bank has recently loaned $20 million for the development of La Venta III, which confirms that regardless of who’s protesting, the project will go ahead.
On March 3 three-hundred-and-sixty men from the Federal Preventative Police, traveling in vehicles with dark windows and carrying high power weapons, evicted the communal land owners from the neighborhood Tres de Abril located within the polygon of Venta II, because they were an “obstacle to the project.” Many believe that the outcry against the wind generators has more to do with the offensively low rental and a voice for the people whose land has been “rented” for thirty years. The rental was reportedly carried out by agents who ignored the community assembly process and were in turn allegedly paid off handsomely by the government and/or Iberdrola.
It has been pointed out that not as much farming goes on as did in the past, but the acquisition process itself is a criminal offense taking place on indigenous lands. It is also reported that damage to migrating birds has been ignored. In any case, in my opinion what we are seeing is a last ditch defense against the neoliberalization of the Isthmus. Apparently, Felipe Calderon also called on Harvard University to come and help “develop” Oaxaca (see note by George Salzman).
This should be juxtaposed with the content of the agreements ratified by the State Extraordinary Assembly of the APPO this month, and reported on March 23. The bulk of the APPO meeting was dedicated to establishing the rules for APPO participation – or, as it turns out, non-participation – in the electoral process. At the same time, the accords reinforce national unity, which includes the National Dialogue ( El Dialago Nacional), The Other Campaign, and the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Mexico, “to stop neoliberal policies, the Ultra-Right, and Fascism.”
A friend who attended the assembly told me he feels that profound internal stress is being placed on the APPO by the militant hard left: communists, Trotskyites, and those who want power for themselves and/or the APPO. He reported that the assembly met for literally twenty-four hours non-stop, to resolve disagreements such as whether to run APPO candidates for political office. So I read the declaration of the accords in that light (posted on OSAG in Spanish), to see if I sense a hard-left tone. I do, but… the “but” is the reiteration of several APPO positions, such as “decision-making should be in a collective way, the people should construct the democracy of the people through the assemblies, which have to implement them.” This means the assemblies have to implement the decisions. I don’t feel as easy about that as I would if it said the people have to implement them, which indeed they do. The assemblies are not an abstract. I confess my antennas are up for trouble. My informant says that it will take all the APPO efforts to restrain the hard left from taking control of them.
Nevertheless, I’m not as pessimistic as this friend of mine because the widespread chaos is many-headed and all but unmanageable by a small group, even if that group is the Federal Police. If a few APPO participants have sold out to the government as some claim, or assume a hard top-down-line, they are few in numbers. The majority of Oaxaqueños continue the pattern that surrounded the APPO since the first few months of existence: do your own thing. They agree on the desired goals: Ulises out, down with corruption, down with neoliberalism. Those struggles are visible every day.
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see the video "the windmill of capitalism";

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