Nothing is ever easy. Came up to pick up my car and found that my name wasn't on the title and registration had lapsed. Can't get doc appt till Feb. Won't bore you with the rest.

Am going to pick those glorious Elberta peaches for canning at my cousin's house in Waldport and then take off for Las Vegas...the Mexican border at Loredo TX...and then Queretaro to see my friend Patty Gutierrez...then Oaxaca.

Am reading alarming reports from Oaxaca. Who really knows what is going on...

If I don't show up in Oaxaca by the end of the month send out the Green Angels!

I am in Oregon for the next 10 plus days...running errands and picking up my car to drive back down to Oaxaca.

The night before I left Oaxaca a Mexican friend, who was educated many years ago at the University of Puebla, after a bit too much to drink, suspiciously frothed at the mouth about "foreign interference" by the leftist norteno press et al on the one hand and the mainstream U.S. press on the other hand that continues to botch reporting on the situation here and is making things more complicated...in his view anyway. He was especially irked by a group of Basques...why they come here? Who paid their way? This is an interesting perspective. He is also adamantly against the power of the church in Mexico. Finally, he says, there are some anti-church graffiti messages on the north side of the cathedral next to the Zocalo. He wonders how long it will take for the people to take on the church.

I washed some dishes for a friend here in Salem. Why didn't you put them in the dishwasher, she asked. Dishwasher??? After five years on the road, I didn't even think of it! At least I used hot water!

After finishing up her term teaching history at Rutgers University, my daughter-in-law will be arriving shortly to join my son in Beijing. She has never been out of the U.S. Will be great fun to sympathize with her cultural adjustment! Wonder how she will do with the hacking and spitting!

When the planton (encampments of strikers) feel they are being attacked, it will signal the campers to gather together to help. Fireworks will sound throughout the city. One bang means alert, two bangs mean they are being attacked. However the signals change each night.

One night when the police were attacking the antennas of TV Channel 9 I awoke
at 3:30 am with the ringing of 35 bells...and fireworks...then a loudspeaker in the zocalo. A signal I thought. Sure enough. We now know what happened.

A housewife who is raising four children alone while her husband is away working in the United States, talked as she walked towards her neighborhood church with stick in hand. “All of us here have been fucked over in one way or another by the government,” the mother explained. Another family, made up of parents and two daughters-one of whom was eight months pregnant but armed with a stick and a shopping bag filled with rocks, reiterated their commitment to defend their neighborhood. “We are poor. We are the people,” was the common sentiment. “We poor people have nothing to lose, the rich do.”

Arriving at the church, other people had the same idea. One youth climbed on the roof of the locked building and began to ring the bell to sound the alarm. The neighborhood was aroused as people gathered in the church yard to discuss what was happening. The latest news of police violence was discussed as well as the reasons for the blockade. One woman, the caretaker of the church building, exclaimed that ringing the church bell in such a manner was against church law. A neighbor cried out that the people paid for the church bell through donations and therefore it belongs to the people. The whole church belongs to the people and should be used in an emergency such as this, she said.

According to a local reporter, "whether it be radio stations, television channels or church bells, the movement that is forming in Oaxaca has been challenging on a concrete level the normal notions of private property and pointing towards a communal concept of social property that is so much a part of the fabric of Oaxacan society."

2006-08-26
International Herald Tribune

Por Tek Tung - The Body Snatchers
Fighting for a Gory Prize - A Race to the Death in Thailand

They are not rewarded with money, but Karma - as many volunteers believe the work is good for their soul

BANGKOK: -- Sidestepping stains of blood and car fluid on the road, Niroot Sampi crunched across broken windshield glass to survey the crumpled and steaming wrecks of two cars.

"It's not really that bad," Mr. Niroot said. "Nobody died."

That's how it goes in the world of Por Tek Tung, Thailand's premier group of professional body snatchers.

Careering around Bangkok in battered pickup trucks, the organization's minimally trained members serve as doctor and hearse for accident victims in a city that has almost no emergency services.

These are no dreamy-eyed do-gooders: Fistfights occasionally erupt when rival organizations try to tug bodies from the same road accident.

"You can't just have people die and be left on the streets," Mr. Niroot said. "People must retrieve bodies and treat them with due respect."

Financed by donations, Mr. Niroot's group and a dozen other teams take to the streets at dusk each evening to circle their designated section of the city. A great deal of time is also spent sitting at gas stations waiting for news of wrecks.

"Friday nights near the end of the month are busiest," Mr. Niroot said above the crackle of the car radio. "People get paid their salary and then drink and drive fast."

Mr. Niroot, who has donned the organization's distinctive jumpsuit uniform for four years, finds great satisfaction in a grim job that earns him 6,000 baht a month, about $135

Founded early in the last century by Chinese immigrants, Por Tek Tung began by providing free funeral services to the destitute. As Thailand developed and industrialized, however, the group's efforts turned to collecting the dead from car wrecks, airplane crashes, floods, suicides and murder scenes.

A gory gallery of death outside the organization's headquarters features photographs of mutilated, burned and dismembered bodies recovered and delivered to hospital morgues. The intention of the display, officials said, is to attract donations by showing the group's good works.

Many members of the organization are volunteers who believe the work can help them accumulate karma for physical protection in this life and improve their next incarnation.

Competition over bodies has occasionally proved intense enough for rival groups to resort to violence. The police once fired warning shots to stop 40 Por Tek Tung collectors armed with wooden clubs and hammers from fighting six collectors from a rival group.

Mr. Niroot took part in one of the most famous confrontations, in which half a dozen body snatchers were hospitalized after fighting over a motorcyclist's body.

"It is very ugly fighting over a body, but I would do it again," Mr. Niroot said, describing how he split open a rival's head with a piece of wood after knives and a gun had been drawn. "These other groups just take bodies to the morgue in order for fame; they do not have enough money or desire to register the body properly."

While many in Thailand suggest more worldly motivations for the fights over bodies, Por Tek Tung employees react with indignation at any suggestion of pillage. Thais often conserve a considerable portion of their wealth in thick gold necklaces, but few bodies arrive at morgues with jewelry of any kind.

"Things go missing by the time a body gets to the morgue, but this has nothing to do with Por Tek Tung employees," said Kurom Buaphoom, who has worked for five years at the organization. "We cannot always control the volunteers. I am sorry we get accused of this."

All employees are required to have a clean police record, but many find the toughest part of the job is overcoming a deep-rooted fear of ghosts.

"Most Thai people fear touching bodies because of ghosts," Mr. Niroot said. "I protect myself with my beliefs and a pendant."

To pass the time while waiting for an accident, Mr. Niroot recounts the bloodiest accidents of his career in horrific and unprintable detail. Death by motorcycle features prominently, as does the suicide of young people involving methamphetamines, an illegal drug Thais commonly called yaa baa, or crazy drug.

"I think I was saddest after one accident where four people were killed," Mr. Niroot said. "Two people died instantly and two others while we tried to pull them out of the car."

For all his enthusiasm about helping injured people, Mr. Niroot has the emergency medical training typical of Por Tek Tung employees: almost none. But even without medical equipment or training, doctors welcome the group in a city critically short of emergency vehicles and trained technicians.

"The body snatchers often have no medical knowledge," said Dr. Somchai Kanchanasut, director of the Rajavithi Hospital's emergency medical services center. "But they always arrive first in Bangkok, and we are trying to teach them how to transport people better."

Dr. Somchai's center is one of only two medical emergency transport centers in Bangkok. With just 35 advanced life support system ambulances serving Bangkok's 5.8 million people, there is only one ambulance for every 165,000 people. This compares with a level of one advanced life support vehicle for every 10,000 people in most developed countries.

A further hindrance to emergency vehicles, Bangkok's traffic gridlock, prompted the creation of an elite corps of motorcycle police trained to deliver babies in taxis.

"An ambulance sent out for someone with chest pains will arrive half an hour after they died of a heart attack," Dr. Somchai said. "Most life-threatening cases arrive at the hospital by taxi."

Reaching speeds of up to 130 kilometers (80 miles) an hour while weaving down crowded city streets and arriving first on the scene appear to be the highest priorities of Por Tek Tung. Responding to news of a drunken fight in a temple, several of the organization's souped-up white pickup trucks converge at high speed on Wat Uphai Ratnamrong.

While sirens blare, passengers in the back of the truck hold on as the vehicle swerves across intersections and up back alleys. Mr. Niroot loves the race and cannot recall any fatal accidents en route to an incident.

Despite the fast driving, the fight is over and blood is smeared across the temple's white marble floor. A body, stabbed 20 times in the chest, lies on the floor. As the dead man's adversary is taken into police custody, Por Tek Tung gets down to work.

The crowd is moved back, but newspaper photographers are allowed to record the crime scene even before police begin measuring, marking the floor and taking notes. With all details of the murder scene recorded, Por Tek Tung employees carefully wrap the body in a white cloth and place it in the back of a pickup truck for delivery to the police morgue.

"I feel pity from the suffering I see each day," Mr. Niroot said. "But I am proud of my job and like the work because I know it is good for society." Sidestepping stains of blood and car fluid on the road, Niroot Sampi crunched across broken windshield glass to survey the crumpled and steaming wrecks of two cars.

"It's not really that bad," Mr. Niroot said. "Nobody died."

That's how it goes in the world of Por Tek Tung, Thailand's premier group of professional body snatchers.

Careering around Bangkok in battered pickup trucks, the organization's minimally trained members serve as doctor and hearse for accident victims in a city that has almost no emergency services.

These are no dreamy-eyed do-gooders: Fistfights occasionally erupt when rival organizations try to tug bodies from the same road accident.

"You can't just have people die and be left on the streets," Mr. Niroot said. "People must retrieve bodies and treat them with due respect."

Financed by donations, Mr. Niroot's group and a dozen other teams take to the streets at dusk each evening to circle their designated section of the city. A great deal of time is also spent sitting at gas stations waiting for news of wrecks.

"Friday nights near the end of the month are busiest," Mr. Niroot said above the crackle of the car radio. "People get paid their salary and then drink and drive fast."

Mr. Niroot, who has donned the organization's distinctive jumpsuit uniform for four years, finds great satisfaction in a grim job that earns him 6,000 baht a month, about $135

Founded early in the last century by Chinese immigrants, Por Tek Tung began by providing free funeral services to the destitute. As Thailand developed and industrialized, however, the group's efforts turned to collecting the dead from car wrecks, airplane crashes, floods, suicides and murder scenes.

A gory gallery of death outside the organization's headquarters features photographs of mutilated, burned and dismembered bodies recovered and delivered to hospital morgues. The intention of the display, officials said, is to attract donations by showing the group's good works.

Many members of the organization are volunteers who believe the work can help them accumulate karma for physical protection in this life and improve their next incarnation.

Competition over bodies has occasionally proved intense enough for rival groups to resort to violence. The police once fired warning shots to stop 40 Por Tek Tung collectors armed with wooden clubs and hammers from fighting six collectors from a rival group.

Mr. Niroot took part in one of the most famous confrontations, in which half a dozen body snatchers were hospitalized after fighting over a motorcyclist's body.

"It is very ugly fighting over a body, but I would do it again," Mr. Niroot said, describing how he split open a rival's head with a piece of wood after knives and a gun had been drawn. "These other groups just take bodies to the morgue in order for fame; they do not have enough money or desire to register the body properly."

While many in Thailand suggest more worldly motivations for the fights over bodies, Por Tek Tung employees react with indignation at any suggestion of pillage. Thais often conserve a considerable portion of their wealth in thick gold necklaces, but few bodies arrive at morgues with jewelry of any kind.

"Things go missing by the time a body gets to the morgue, but this has nothing to do with Por Tek Tung employees," said Kurom Buaphoom, who has worked for five years at the organization. "We cannot always control the volunteers. I am sorry we get accused of this."

All employees are required to have a clean police record, but many find the toughest part of the job is overcoming a deep-rooted fear of ghosts.

"Most Thai people fear touching bodies because of ghosts," Mr. Niroot said. "I protect myself with my beliefs and a pendant."

To pass the time while waiting for an accident, Mr. Niroot recounts the bloodiest accidents of his career in horrific and unprintable detail. Death by motorcycle features prominently, as does the suicide of young people involving methamphetamines, an illegal drug Thais commonly called yaa baa, or crazy drug.

"I think I was saddest after one accident where four people were killed," Mr. Niroot said. "Two people died instantly and two others while we tried to pull them out of the car."

For all his enthusiasm about helping injured people, Mr. Niroot has the emergency medical training typical of Por Tek Tung employees: almost none. But even without medical equipment or training, doctors welcome the group in a city critically short of emergency vehicles and trained technicians.

"The body snatchers often have no medical knowledge," said Dr. Somchai Kanchanasut, director of the Rajavithi Hospital's emergency medical services center. "But they always arrive first in Bangkok, and we are trying to teach them how to transport people better."

Dr. Somchai's center is one of only two medical emergency transport centers in Bangkok. With just 35 advanced life support system ambulances serving Bangkok's 5.8 million people, there is only one ambulance for every 165,000 people. This compares with a level of one advanced life support vehicle for every 10,000 people in most developed countries.

A further hindrance to emergency vehicles, Bangkok's traffic gridlock, prompted the creation of an elite corps of motorcycle police trained to deliver babies in taxis.

"An ambulance sent out for someone with chest pains will arrive half an hour after they died of a heart attack," Dr. Somchai said. "Most life-threatening cases arrive at the hospital by taxi."

Reaching speeds of up to 130 kilometers (80 miles) an hour while weaving down crowded city streets and arriving first on the scene appear to be the highest priorities of Por Tek Tung. Responding to news of a drunken fight in a temple, several of the organization's souped-up white pickup trucks converge at high speed on Wat Uphai Ratnamrong.

While sirens blare, passengers in the back of the truck hold on as the vehicle swerves across intersections and up back alleys. Mr. Niroot loves the race and cannot recall any fatal accidents en route to an incident.

Despite the fast driving, the fight is over and blood is smeared across the temple's white marble floor. A body, stabbed 20 times in the chest, lies on the floor. As the dead man's adversary is taken into police custody, Por Tek Tung gets down to work.

The crowd is moved back, but newspaper photographers are allowed to record the crime scene even before police begin measuring, marking the floor and taking notes. With all details of the murder scene recorded, Por Tek Tung employees carefully wrap the body in a white cloth and place it in the back of a pickup truck for delivery to the police morgue.

"I feel pity from the suffering I see each day," Mr. Niroot said. "But I am proud of my job and like the work because I know it is good for society." Sidestepping stains of blood and car fluid on the road, Niroot Sampi crunched across broken windshield glass to survey the crumpled and steaming wrecks of two cars.

Protest leader Roberto García told The Associated Press on Thursday that demonstrators would accept an offer earlier this week from President Vicente Fox´s government to sit down at the negotiating table in Mexico City but only if state officials are not included. "We want a dialogue with the interior secretary and his officials and no one else," he said.

García said protesters still demand the resignation of Ruiz, whom they accuse of election rigging and using force to repress dissent. He added that negotiations would not take place before Friday.

Oaxaca state spokesman Miguel Concha read a statement to the news media Thursday afternoon saying officials were in favor of using "dialogue to resolve the conflict that the City of Oaxaca is living."

However, Concha, who stood in front of a banner that read "Dialogue," did not take questions or respond to the protesters´ insistence that state officials not be involved in negotiations.

Fox´s government has sent two sets of envoys to Oaxaca in recent months to negotiate a settlement, but the dialogues broke down.

August 24, 2006
Two days ago I made a return visit to Huayapam...with Francisco... Fortunately, the taxi driver was able to negotiate around a blocked road for the 20 minute drive to the small conservative village.

Francisco and I must have looked to the locals like we were from another planet...in a T-shirt, beads and straw hit from Mexico City, Francisco is traveled, well-educated...a kind of 60's well-read Mexican hippy...forsaking his middle class background to take to the road. He knows many of the little puebos around Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero and Chiapas and mostly hangs out with indigenous folks...and sells books to the teachers in villages at cut-rate. His goal is to make enough money to open a bookstore/internet/coffee shop in a little village near Palenque Chiapas. But urban Oaxacenos look at him furtively...wondering what this salt and pepper haired guy with a long "natural" ponytail is up to. Is he an infiltrator? Francisco had been invited to join a group of Mixe teachers in the last march and was a witness to the altercation in which the spouse of a teacher was shot and killed. Although I knew my host was supporting the teachers, I had wondered what kind of take my Oaxacan host would have on him...and me.

Francisco was surprised and excited to learn that our host went to the same university in Puebla as he did, although several years apart, and they knew many of the same people. Eager man-talk ensued with little translation. We bought two packages each of fresh roasted and ground organic coffee from our host. I will take mine back to Oregon as gifts on August 29 when I return to pick up my car.

After much more talk with mescal, beer and fresh-brewed coffee, Francisco and I got up to leave...but a man in the street told us the road back to Oaxaca City was blocked. Rumours abound. A few nights ago the spouse of a teacher was shot and killed during a march. Government paramilitary forces in 40 vehicles tried to take back some of the radio stations that were commandeered by the teachers after TV channel 9 was destroyed and everyone is nervous and tense.

We had to spend the night...leaving the next morning in a collective taxi.

A University of Kentucky professor received an email from a Oaxacan teacher who took his undergraduate classes in Oaxaca.

Teacher's Letter
Tuesday August 22, 2006
"I received your message and wanted to write that the situation within the teacher's union is really difficult. We are living a terrible repression under Ulises Ruiz Ortiz's government. Today at 12:30 a.m. a concerted attack was launched against the teachers who were guarding the radio stations. 40 pickups full of police leveled their guns at our companions and fired without regard for who might be wounded or killed. During the attack one teacher (male) was killed and another (woman) wounded.

"We are placing guards at each of our camps and in reality we are armed only with our conscience, reason and right. We ask anyone who can help us to please let others know about the situation we are living by any means at their disposal.

"The daily reality that we live through in Oaxaca should be told, despite the media curtain that makes it difficult for even other Oaxacans to know the truth.

"I would like it if [the university where I study] would raise its voice and let the world know about the situation, I would hope that their understanding of social problems would press them to help us, but it seems that the one-time leaders of social struggle have lost their voice."

TM: Are you safe? How are feelings among the teachers? How is your support among Oaxacans? (I email her for more details because of the terrible recent attacks, but also because as a mother and a teacher who works in the neighborhood where she lives, she was initially reticent to strike.)

Teacher: "In truth after last night we are afraid even though we don't say so. No one wants to be exposed but we are aware that we have to go forward until this is finished. The consensus without a doubt was that we go together to the end. We are all saddened by the attitude of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Our leaders wanted us to participate in the strike in a limited, representative fashion in order to keep us safe, but we voted to strike as a group, to keep together. At this time there are very few around us who remain quiet and indifferent and we are aware of this. I can assure you that most have consciousness and awareness of what is happening. With respect to our personal security no-one, absolutely no-one is safe in the camps, but after our consensus decision I can assure you that we will continue to the end."

Profesor's thoughts:
Please do what you can. Perhaps now that TV reporters are turning against Ulises things might improve. As is said in Oaxaca, he has appeared to sustain himself in a Mexico City 'media bubble' - aided by TV Azteca and TeleVisa (Univision) - where he has been treated as a serious player and opposing voices have not been heard. Perhaps this bubble is now leaking air, though the complex political situation in which the PAN will need PRI support to govern if Calderon is judged the victor continues, I think, to inflate Ulises. Tragically, I fear that Oaxaca has become a test case, a subject for governance experiments to see what calibrated combination of media, police, and payouts can produce a simulacra of governance.

Tad Mutersbaugh
Associate Professor
Department of Geography, 1457 POT
University of Kentucky

(Also: link to Radio Planton - back on the air - [http://www.oaxacalibre.org/libertad/ and http://strea! ming.com.mx:8006/] and view video clips from YouTube and TV Azteca after police shoot at reporters [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eDM-Jo7xnE and http://www.tvazteca.com/hechos/archivos2/2006/8/135745.shtml] that sadly calls to mind the 79 murder of ABC correspondent Bill StewartŠ)

Francisco just came to my apartment this morning Aug 22 for coffee...he said he heard in the Centro this morning, August 22, that the "church people" are upset that the teachers are using the church bells as a signal.

Relying on others for information, I received this email yesterday:
August 21, 2006
I guess you know by now that channel 9 won't be back on the air. After destroying the antenna they (govt thugs) wrecked the station itself-and the appo station radio -and they're going after the (radio) stations that appo took over just this morning. There might be a lot more buses burned by tonight.

The situation is so bad (even all the private schools are shut down now, so the elite families will feel that pain) that my personal opinion, for what little it's worth, is that the feds might finally get involved, with troops.

In 77 or 78, I forget which year, federal troops took over the whole state and sent the govenor packing--after gunning down quite a few studant radicals and their supporters. What's weird right now is the govt use of hooded para-militaries along with a few uniformed police, a dozen or so at a time in hit and run attacks. That's way scarey and strange. You'll be the last tourist in Oaxaca pretty soon, eh? I wonder if any news of this will ever make the tv, radio or newspapers in the US or Canada.

Be carefull today please...

Went to the zocalo at 7am...burned out car half a block from zocalo on
Bustamante. Wanted to go to immigration to get my visa...waited half an hour for bus on Pino Suarez...none came so I took a taxi to immigration. Edna at immigration said 5 buses were burned last night but I saw none. No one knows who did this...APPO, porros, govt thugs, or anarchists. Their land line was down for a few hours this morning. Buses and shopping carts are blocking all streets on all sides of Gigante Market but the store itself is open and the ATM is working. . Most other businesses are closed. People are grouped at various corners. On the way back the taxi didn't want to take me to the zocalo so I returned home to Fiallo St..

I live on Fiallo about 4 blocks from the zocalo... at 4am I woke up hearing what could have been semi-automatic gun-shots in the direction of the zocalo. Then I heard church bells...about 4-5 chimes. A short time later sirens and a man on a loud-speaker.. Ever since June 14 I wake easily.

After 5:30am I heard someone else on a loudspeaker. I'll wait until a little more light and then walk up to the zocalo. My familiar food stall at Benito Juarez Market has a TV...I'll see if channel 9 is on.