BootsnAll Travel Network



The Resistance Continues

David is being watched even still and they still haven’t set aside his sentence. I have given him keys to my apt and offered my apt as a safe house.  They are just harassing him. Had to sign in every Friday all this time so he couldn’t go anywhere. Can’t get on with his  career as an agronomist because he can’t get his diploma until the sentence is set aside.  He is a natural born leader. Very charismatic. In it purely for the poorest of people he comes from.

The lesson for me is watching the resistance against corruption and oppression.  I so wish we had similar dedicated leaders in the U.S.

Loxicha, in the 90’s, had had enough and formed a citizen militia to protect the villages from the police and narcos both.  20 years ago 150 citizens were rounded up and sent to prison about 2 hours from Oaxaca City.

The last of them was released a couple weeks ago in Matlatlan so David asked me to drive there and pick him up upon release. The games they play! We and the family were waiting in a little shack across from the prison. Waited until 4 in the afternoon. Finally we decided to check the van terminals where the prison usually takes released prisoners.  He was nowhere.

Then the wife, in my car, got a call from her husband!  Instead of taking him out in a covered truck as they usually do they took him out in a white prison car! We weren’t looking for a prison car!  They had given him $20 and took him to a terminal and he was already in Oaxaca City!!! Just messing with us!

But a magical thing happened on our way from the prison.  A deer streaked across the road in front of us!  David said it was a very symbolic thing and everyone squealed with excitement.

The resistance is still active of course and there are blockades every day all over the city against the education reform law.  Police killed 7 at the Noxchitlan blockade into the city a few months ago you might have read about.  Of course they are demanding an investigation.  And also to demand that the schools be inspected for earthquake damage! And the disappearance of the 43 student teachers! And a demand for an investigation into the rape of 14 women at Atenco that was ordered by the current president when he was governor job Mexico City. Might as well protest all of it.

And an investigation into the killing of 4 Trique women and a Finish human rights worker on a caravan that David was on from the city to the village that had been quarantined so that the women couldn’t get out for food and wood. The govt, has managed to split this community into 2 groups with one supporting the govt. Same old same old.

The “luxury” is that by resisting they have nothing to lose. Except their freedom but they freely risk it.  And the Zocalo (main plaza) is always still full of tents of striking teachers, Trique demonstrators, political speeches etc.  Yesterday they ousted the MULT Triques from the Zocalo but left the Caravan protesters.

In the meantime people enjoy life every day with their families, music, dancing, calendas etc.

A lot of the citizenry hate the teachers of course. They are “lazy” and don’t do anything. David took me to visit a teacher the other day on Revolution Day. She was sitting there on her day off checking the work of her 160 students.  David says the media doesn’t tell the truth and the people are brainwashed about the Educ Reform Law…which in reality is a Labor Reform Law.  One day I had 150 or so doctors and nurses marching by my apartment.

The taxis are PRI because their licenses depend on the PRI. So one day last week the taxis wreaked havoc on the city. Of course the media didn’t tell the truth of what was going on so everyone thought it was the teachers again. Tuesday the teachers are meeting in the Zocalo instead of their usual venue at the railroad station to talk about propaganda in the press.

Teachers are mad at the leadership and suspect selling out because the govt made promises about a settlement that the govt is reneging on and the leadership isn’t doing anything about it.

David wants to do a newsletter. A resistance friend of his has a printer in his house they used during 2006. I wish I had the nerve to take photos of some of these houses…hovels really..with 2-3 generations living in them.

David has been living with me for the last month with his friends streaming in and out. I really like his friends. A week ago his mother took sick and was hospitalized. So he stayed with me so he could visit her in the hospital a couple blocks away and navigate the bureaucracy. It took a week from the time they decided to operate until she finally had surgery.

I slip him a bit of $ now and then to keep his cell phone going…nothing really. He only works 2 days a week waiting tables and has been living with his mom.



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