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Mexico
Mega March replies to police violence

Hundreds of thousands marched into Oaxaca, Friday 16 June, to support striking teachers whose encampment was brutally attacked by police on Wednesday. The march went to the Zocalo (central square), already retaken by the demonstrators on Thursday.

Led by section 22 of the SNTE teachers union, the march was supported by students from the university of Oaxaca, local health and university workers and numerous other union, popular and left wing organisations -including a contingent from the Frente en Defensa de la Tierra in San Salvador Atenco and other supporters of the EZLN’s ’Other Campaign’.

The principal demand of the demonstrators was the resignation of state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz of the right-wing Institutional Revolutionary Party, widely accused of corruption.

Oaxaca teachers greet release of their comradesOrganisers put the numbers marching at 300,000, the police said 70,000 and the governor’s office said 15,000. Last Wednesday’s attack on the Oaxaca is the latest in a series of brutal actions by paramilitary police against striking copper miners, residents of Atenco and communities in Isla Mujeres that are trying to prevent their island becoming a rubbish dump for the trash from Cancun. Two were killed in Atenco and two copper miners also died.

Mega march repudiates Ruiz Ortiz and paramiliary police violenceThese actions, directly organised by the national intelligence committee chaired by President Vicente Fox, are widely seen as trying to create a ’strategy of tension’ - a climate of fear aimed at discrediting the EZLN’s ’Other campaign’ and ensuring a right-wing victory in the July 2 presidential election. (Recent opinion polls put Felipe Calderon, candidate of Fox’s right-wing National Action Party (PAN) slightly behind Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate of the centre-left PRD.)

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