It's exciting and reinvigorating to see the fight of union workers in Wisconsin, with teachers and their unions leading much of the struggle In Oaxaca, the local Section 22 of the Mexican Teachers Union was the initiator, the bedrock core on which the APPO (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca) of 2006-2007 was built. Today, almost four years after the brutal repression that preserved the power of the state's PRI power establishment, Section 22 keeps up the fight. In a report at libcom , we get descriptions of events that are entirely consistent with what we've seen on tv from Egypt and Tunisia. Apparently there's no interest in reporting on similar events taking place much closer to home in Oaxaca, where the struggle against a repressive regime continues:
Section 22 of the Teacher's Union and the broader Oaxcan social movement take to the streets to protest the arrival of fraudulent President Calderon. Federal Police open fire with live rounds and tear gas grenades, resulting in at least 14 people wounded and hospitalised.
Today, February 15, federal and state police, thugs dressed in civilian clothes, and snipers located on the roofs of various building in the historic center of Oaxaca provoked and repressed the peaceful teachers' and Oaxacan people’s protest against the presence of Felipe Calderón in Oaxaca.
On the afternoon of Monday, February 14, an enormous deployment of federal and local police bodies, together with the army, took the Zócalo and the adjacent streets of the historic center. At 11:30 in the morning today, February 15, a group of teachers belonging to Section 22 of the SNTE-CNTE carried out a peaceful protest in one of the intersections leading to the Zócalo when the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) attacked, leaving two teachers wounded, one of them the union’s press secretary - Meliton Santiago - and a compañero from the social movement who was shot in the head.
On the roof of the Casa Azul Hotel, located on Fiallo Street in the historic center, the repressive police chief Daniel Camarena - an inheritance of Gabino Cué from the murderer Ulises Ruiz - was seen in the company of individuals dressed in civilian clothes who were carrying large firearms, likely sniper rifles.
After two in the afternoon, tens of SUVs drove at high speed through the tourist pedestrian area towards the former Santo Domingo convent where 50 meters from the entrance there was a blockade consisting of 12 soldiers. These SUVs carried some of the committee members of the state and federal governments, who entered the patio of Santo Domingo surrounded by tens of federal police. At approximately 2:30pm at least 50 federal police were in the tourist walkway to reinforce the siege.
As of the time of writing this communiqué, 14 people have been confirmed wounded, two with wounds to the head, the result of shots fired from snipers located on the roofs near the Zócalo of Oaxaca, and one other individual wounded with a live round to the body, as well as two other people who have wounds as a result of being hit by tear gas canisters, all of whom have been hospitalized as a result of the wounds they received.