By Soledad
We arrive in Oaxaca in early October. On our second day in the city, our friend takes us to a modest corner restaurant on our street to eat tamales. An old woman is making the food and her son helps her out. My friend chats with them about the last few days- fear of a military attack has spread over the city. Our neighbours are explaining the situation, about the barricades on our street and the occupied radio stations. The son is explaining which frequency we can now listen to hear the voice of the movement and the latest news, and his mother comments that it’s a shame almost all stations are lost, since communication is so essential.
I don’t understand half of the conversation and I’m still tired and confused after the trip, but what I hear impresses me. In Scandinavia, social movements are small and many times it´s easy to read someone´s politics from their "activist-look", but here the movement has reached all sectors of Oaxacan society- even the white-haired woman who makes tamales on the street corner is a militant supporter of the movement. Most of the neighbourhood, in fact, seems to support the movement- it´s a diverse, largely, working class neighbourhood, with teachers, workers, small family business owners, many Triqui Indians, artists, a handful of foreigners- shacks along side larger, well-maintained houses.
After a week in Oaxaca, we walk home late from the bar one night and see a fire on our street. It´s 1 in the morning. A woman with a big flashlight checks all cars that drive by. A barricade is constructed out of all kinds of things: bricks, wooden crates, a cardboard cut-out of a cactus that looks like it came from a highschool play, a plastic skull. Behind it, more people sit on the sidewalk. Most of them are women, armed with baseball bats or sticks. We sit down to talk to them, and after a while someone brings us coffee. The movement´s radio is playing in the background, playing songs about revolution and keeping up the spirits of the people at the barricades. After an hour or so, the women decide it´s time for us to go to bed, and, to make sure we get there safely, eight people armed with baseball bats escort us to our house.
We stop by the barricade on our way home a few more times. Our neighbours explain that they are there every night to protect the neighbourhood - from criminals, but also from police. Many neighbourhoods have put up banners and organized night watches to protect themselves against criminals. Many have taken to carrying whistles in order to alert the neighbors and neighbourhood watch in the case of an assault or other problems. The police haven’t been officially functioning in Oaxaca for months, but at night time, civilian police and other gunmen paid by Ulises Ruiz drive by the barricades to intimidate people, or sometimes attack them and shoot at them. So our neighbours are also on the street to prevent them from passing through.
“We are here all night long until 4 or 5am, and in the morning we go to work,” somebody explains, with laughter. The women laugh a lot, but the one who laughs most says they are so tired of the government that they are even ready to die. This contrast strikes me, it´s hard to really understand how big risks the people participating in the movement are taking.
At daytime, the Zócalo and surroundings feel like a noisy political festival, and if there’s not a march going on or speech being given, there is at least shouting from videos playing about demonstrations. At night time, when the city centre becomes silent and empty, it’s easier to understand how much the people who stay at the barricades are putting at stake. People are gathered around fires. There´s a threat in the air, but stronger than that, the good feeling of people talking, laughing and singing to pass the time and to stay awake.
On the 27th of October, something changes in the atmosphere. It’s Friday night, but the streets are empty. No sounds except for crickets and fireworks. I have gotten used to the fireworks by now, no matter how loud they are I don’t think they are gunshots anymore. But there’s been gunshots today, there’s been gunshots at fifteen barricades.
The man at our local grocery store, who is always joking, says that the night is going to be heavy. “There will be deaths”, he says. Suddenly, the risk of death has come closer. Before, it was something that happened seldom and randomly, now it is something people are sure will happen tonight.
There have been deaths already, and all the people we meet tell us that one of the ones killed was a foreign journalist. “Are you from the States?” they ask, “They killed someone from the States today”.
We are told to stay inside but instead go to a few barricades to bring food. On the way home, we stop to talk to our neighbours again. Rumours are circulating. A 14-year old girl explains to us that the army is coming tomorrow. One woman tells me she received a death threat, probably from a PRI-supporting neighbour. She’s afraid to leave the house but still comes to the barricade at night. Her mother and her daughter are waiting for her at home, fearing she might not return. She is exhausted. Talking to our neighbours we’ve seen a lot of strength and hope, but now we are also beginning to see how tired they are, how heavy the situation is. But the oldest of the women is called Esperanza, hope, and tells me that hope is always the last one to die.
The following night, the barricade isn´t there anymore. Guarding it would be too dangerous. During the following days, the federal police enters the city and takes over the Zócalo, and the streets are filled with people resisting. One morning, we meet the women of our street. They are cheerful, going to a march and asking if we´ll come with them. When it gets dark and we lock ourselves indoors, I wonder if any of our neighbours stayed in the centre to confront the police. Again I think about the risk of death coming closer. I´m not that scared for my own sake, but I´m starting to realize that the more I get to know people and care about them, the heavier everything is going to feel.
With the barricade gone, we hardly see our neighbours on the streets anymore. The city in general is quieter. We keep going to the same tamale-place, and our Spanish has improved enough to talk with the old lady and her son, mostly about politics. A few days after the PFP entered Oaxaca, Vicente Fox is talking on the news, thanking the PFP for restoring social peace in Oaxaca. “Pero que tipo de paz?!” asks the old woman. Another time she explains to us, with excitement, that she’d seen on the TV how people in Iraq shot down a helicopter with a Molotov cocktail. Her son is often standing by the window, so when I walk past the street we talk for a while –he asks how everything is going with our interviews, I ask if there’s any news. News isn’t as easy to get anymore, with Radio Universidad blocked by the same heavy metal song all the time.
We go away for a week, and when we come back we can’t get home because all the streets are blocked, PFP are everywhere and buildings are on fire. It’s the evening of the 25th of November, and the centre is still a battlefield. We get home the next morning, but our street doesn’t feel safe anymore. People are afraid to walk outside, especially after dark. Street patrols, with mostly civilian police, keep watch and arbitrarily detain people. We hear about infiltrators in the movement and people telling the police about their neighbours supporting the movement. Radio Ciudadana is giving out addresses of people who support the movement, and encouraging the listeners to harm them. We think one of the houses mentioned was ours.
One day I meet one of the women from the barricade outside her house. She’s still laughing. She says they´ve been worried, but busy. She´s happy to see me and i´m happy to see her as well, but afraid to say very much. A man I don’t know is standing with her, and you don’t know who you can trust anymore.
The next day we leave the city, without telling anyone.
