Oaxaca: Resistance Grows Amid Horrendous Repression

Federal police sniper taking aim at teachers at Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, on Fathers Day, June 19.
Eleven people were killed and over a hundred wounded. (Photo: EFE)

OAXACA, 22 JUNE – In Oaxaca there are now 10 people confirmed dead in the massacre on Sunday carried out by the federal police who opened fire on protesters on the highway between Oaxaca and Mexico City. Over 90 people were wounded, and scores arrested. The Oaxaca authorities ordered the local hospitals and clinics closed to the injured, and they were told only to treat the police.  

Yesterday the teachers union (Section 22 of the CNTE) sent a caravan of 10 vehicles up to the town of Nochixtlán with medical and food supplies for the injured, many of whom had been sheltered in local churches, after being refused admittance to hospitals.  Those on the caravan stayed to attend the funerals.

If the Mexican government believed that their death-squad killers would isolate and destroy the teachers union, it had opposite effect.  The resistance is growing.

Thousands of people from the local communities turned out to support the teachers on the barricades and the battles which  took place at four different towns along the main highway from Oaxaca to Mexico City.

Since the massacre, Oaxaca has been in shock. On Monday, thousands turned out for a march of defiance and rage.  Some of the murdered people were just kids, including an 18-year old who had come to deliver medical aid and supplies to the teaches' blockade. The universities reopened today; they closed down for two days in solidarity.  There have been mass marches of hospital workers and university students. 

Since the teachers strike began on May 15, the Mexican government has refused to negotiate with the teachers, instead dropping tear gas canisters from helicopters on strikers in Chiapas, arresting union leaders, firings thousands of teachers, and on Sunday mowing down demonstrators on the highway.  Today with Oaxaca now in the headlines nationally, the government has opened a "dialogue" session, still insisting they will not budge an inch on the Education Reform Law, brought in to criminalize and break the teachers' union.

Yesterday, the UN human rights people arrived to "investigate" what happened on Sunday.  They will need to dig through a mountain of government lies, such as the lie that the federales couldn't have done the killings since they were allegedly unarmed (a lie that dissolved as soon as the videotapes emerged). These bold face cover-ups for state murder are reminiscent of the lies that were told about the disappearance of the 43 rural teachers' college students from Ayotzinapa in September 2014.