On June 14, 2006, the police in Oaxaca brutally attacked an annual teachers’ strike being held in the center of the capital city. Maybe they did not see the match as it fell in slow-motion into the tinderbox below, heat undulating off its flame, dark corners jumping into bright focus. Maybe they had never even noticed the groups of people busy in their waiting, building the strong bases for long-burning fires through years of painstaking political process. Maybe they stared in awe as these groups drew instantly near and exploded together in the oxygen vacuum of repression. Maybe they found it beautiful; it must have been completely terrifying.

So how do you respond to thirsty fire, licking at your heels and finding endless kindling in the underbrush of society? Do you let it burn out the forest floor and bring healthy new life into being from below? Or do you fight it with water cannons filled with pepper spray, skies filled with tear gas and helicopters, streets choked with barricades, bullets and batons? Do you try to beat it down, stomp it out, and trap it inside metal and concrete until it burns itself out?

Apparently those are the orders. The tactics the government has been using to destroy the widespread popular movement that burst into life in Oaxaca in the days following June 14th have been cruel, violent and illegal. They have included torture, threats, beatings, imprisonment, murder and disappearances. Many of the 365 organizations that form part of APPO, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, have been attacked and threatened. Since June, more than 350 people have been illegally detained. Most of those detained have been beaten and subsequently imprisoned. At least 20 people have been killed; many more have been “disappeared.”

In the brief time we spent in Oaxaca, many of the people directly affected by this violent repression took time to speak with us. Some were members of community and political organizations that form part of APPO; others merely got in the way of police on a determined path of destruction. Some had just recently emerged from serving illegal prison sentences; others were members of families struggling to survive after the loss or disappearance of a loved one.

Their words took the shape of horrifying experiences, deep indignation, anger and fear. They shed light on just how far the state has been willing to go to protect Governor Ulises Ruiz and its own power. And they wanted their words to reach as many people as possible, to radiate out the heat of their righteous indignation at this brutal repression and violence. But I find it impossible to write about the repression without also doing justice to the movement itself. Because their words also reflected life, hope and perseverance. They spoke of a future for Oaxaca and Mexico, one determined by the people themselves. They spoke of real alternatives and political, social and cultural growth. They spoke of the fire that keeps on burning from below.
So here are some of the stories we heard and a few of the moments we witnessed.

Some of them are brutal and horrifying, but true. Others are beautiful and inspiring, and also true. Take what you will, and pass it along…

The sheer quantity of testimonies that we received as a delegation was overwhelming. Hours slipped by day after day as we sat with the heavy weight of torture, violence, sadness and anger in the air. I want to pass on each and every moment gof injustice that we heard recounted like rosaries. I want people to see the beauty of the faces we saw, to hear the diversity of the voices we heard, to know the families whose stories enveloped us all. But I cannot tell each individual story here. Many people chose to have their interviews recorded on video and audio, engaging directly in public campaigns to expose the ongoing human rights abuses. Others were terrified at the idea of even the most basic details of their experiences being used, fearing the very real possibility of future retaliation.

The truth that they were all speaking was brutal, violent and deep. As they spoke, common threads began to emerge. From housewives to student activists, teachers to architects, we heard experiences that were heart-wrenching and singular, but also clearly part of a larger, collective horror. It was horrifying when accounts of torture became unsurprising in their details, but the patterns in treatment were significant. These were not random acts of violence perpetrated by out of control officers; their commonalities spoke to an official policy that endorses the use of torture, threats and illegal detentions. According to a recent report released by the National Commission on Human Rights (which may underestimate human rights violations and casualties because it is a government body), twenty people have been killed, 370 wounded and 349 imprisoned since June 2, 2006.

José Jimenez Colmenares lost his life during a march on August 10, 2006. His wife, Florina Jimenez Lucas, spoke with us about the events of that day. She is a teacher who has participated in the movement since the original teachers’ strike; her husband and three children supported her and began participating in the movement as well. As they were marching, she heard shots fired close by. Her husband was hit and died almost instantly. The first autopsy found that he had been shot from above with nine bullets from .22 and .38 caliber weapons, which are standard police-issue. The government has challenged the findings of that initial autopsy report and has not proceeded with a criminal investigation.

Although Florina Jimenez continues to participate in organizing and protesting, the toll on her family has been enormous. She told us that every time she leaves the house to go to a protest or join a barricade set up by communities to keep police out, her children fear she will disappear. She has been speaking publicly about her husband’s death since August but, she said, “Sometimes, I feel like I’m yelling and no one is listening.” She urged us not only to spread her story but also real information about what is happening in Oaxaca.

November 25, 2006 is a notorious day in Oaxaca. As the Seventh Megamarch neared the capital city’s central square, Federal Preventive Police officers attacked the crowd from above. A 19 year-old student who was participating in the protest with his family, remembers being shot at from rooftops with rubber bullets and tear gas. A friend participating in the march with him fainted, so he moved them both towards the only breathable air – near the police. He was then detained, beaten and thrown onto a truck with many other people. During the journey, the police stood on top of on them, kicked them, hit them and threatened them constantly. Eventually, they were taken to a military helicopter, fitted with plastic handcuffs that he said cut off his circulation, and flown to a prison a day’s journey away from Oaxaca, in the state of Nayarit. His mother was also arrested alongside him and transferred to the same prison. They both spent 21 days incarcerated and spoke with us the day after their release. He still had marks on his wrists from the plastic handcuffs and said he could not feel a part of his left hand. His mother spoke pleadingly on behalf of the rest of the prisoners still being held.

Gonzalo and his mother were among 141 prisoners detained on November 25 who landed at the prison in Tepic, Nayarit. While they were actively participating in the protest (which, as citizens, they are legally entitled to do), many others who were swept up in mass arrests were not. Porfirio Dominguez Muñozcano was on his way to print out plans for the building he was designing. He was beaten so badly that he lost consciousness for at least two hours, waking up only to find himself lying face down in the zócalo, the city’s central square. A 50 year-old woman who was leaving work when she was arrested and also taken to the zócalo recalled heaps of bodies lying strewn, bloodied and beaten, as she and they waited to be loaded into trucks and taken to prison. She told us that during the transfer to Nayarit, police officers threatening to leave them for dead in dumpsters along the way. Porfirio Dominguez never made it to Nayarit – when the rest of the prisoners who had been detained alongside him were taken, he was sent to receive medical treatment (at his own cost) and then returned to the prison in Tlacolula, Oaxaca. He is still recovering, and will likely suffer permanent damage to the left side of his face.

We also heard from eight men who were detained as they made their way from the rural communities of Tlaxiaco to the capital city to participate in the November 25th march. Their caravan of buses carrying nearly 600 people was pulled over by state highway police and stopped from reaching the city. The eight who were arrested were singled out for their credentials that linked them to organizations, schools or universities; one of them was working on finishing his doctorate thesis on the use of torture in Mexican security forces. They were taken out individually to nearby cornfields and severely beaten. One of the men detained told how officers held guns to their heads, cocked them, and gave them three seconds to run back towards the highway. Once there, they were rounded up, tortured, interrogated and sent to prison. The abuse along the way was constant and echoed the stories we had heard in Oaxaca City.

These testimonies speak to the thick, suffocating blanket of repression that the government and police forces have lowered over Oaxaca; the people who shared the testimonies with us also beautifully illustrated the resilience and power of this popular movement. While we saw fear everywhere we went, there was joy and celebration too. We spent one day and night in Tlaxiaco, a small city surrounded by indigenous communities that have experienced severe repression. After the compañeros from Tlaxiaco spent hours recounting the painful details of their detention, torture and imprisonment, they took the whole group of us home. Relocated to a campfire under a gaping night sky, at the house of one of the leaders of a local human rights organization, conversations began to wander and wind around song, drink and shared food. With firelight, laughter, music and conversations spinning deep into the night, the future of the movement seemed to glow in possibility. During the last few days I spent in Oaxaca, I saw much more of this dynamic, human side of the movement, where ideas and creativity were igniting sparks of positive possibility against all odds.

The Noche de Rábanos, or Night of the Radishes, is a long-standing tradition in Oaxaca. Held on the night before Christmas Eve, it is a cultural event where the main attraction is a radish art competition. The mainstream version – like many large cultural events in Oaxaca and throughout Mexico – has long been a government-sponsored, tourist-centered event appropriating and misconstruing traditional and indigenous customs. As they have done with various other cultural events over the past many months, APPO members decided to organize an alternative, popular Noche de Rábanos. They planned to hold it in the plaza in front of Santo Domingo, a prominent church in the city’s center. By 8am on December 23, every entrance to the plaza was blocked off with thick black metal police barricades, each manned by lines of armed police officers in full riot gear. When asked what had happened, they flatly replied that they were there to make sure the popular Noche de Rábanos did not happen. The absurdity of that fact did not seem to faze them.

But apparently, it didn’t deter the organizers either. They had spent the previous day marching in the streets with 10,000 others and they were prepared to spend this day finding ways to make the event a success. By sundown, the plaza just around the corner from the church was already teeming with people. All night long, intricate traditional dances and beautiful folk music blended with participatory, popular organizing and radical radish art. There were radishes in the form of helicopters with bodies being thrown out and cascading letters spelling out desaparecidos. There was another almost perfect radish portrait of Ulises Ruiz, complete with red horns sprouting out of the top of his head. One of the performers was a student organizer who had been kidnapped, tortured, threatened and robbed by plain-clothed municipal police officers earlier in the week. He sang his heart out, in public. Every inch of space was filled with laughter, smiles, artwork, color, music and people, present in their resistance.

The next morning, I met with a group of artists in the loft above a small tattoo shop near the zócalo. The tiny space was filled with photographs of the street art that had been plastered across the city for months. The power of popular art and media has been a constant thread in the popular movement in Oaxaca. With takeovers of radio and television stations, APPO demonstrated the power of putting the means of communication into the hands of the people. The ferocity of the government backlash against these efforts belied their understanding of how deep that power goes. Following a massive city campaign to literally whitewash the city and paint over all of the resistance art, the group of artists I met with was planning for a new phase in the development of the popular art movement. It was amazing to hear their stories and the excitement in their voices as they outlined their plans to continue using art as an arm of struggle in Oaxaca. In posters, stencils, murals and graffiti, they are speaking what they see around them – the people living in resistance throughout Oaxaca and the brutal, unrelenting force of repression bent on extinguishing their vision.

So…

I cannot stop thinking about Oaxaca. But I have to stop writing. Mostly, while we were in Oaxaca, really what we did was listen. Sometimes we talked, but mostly we just listened. And the people we met in Oaxaca spoke their truths – of violence and repression, but also of truly amazing resistance. We saw eyes deaden as they played back scenes of bodies heaped on top of each, humiliated and abused. We listened as fear crept back in behind memories of cocked rifles held to temples. But we also heard stories of the movement’s remarkable achievements and future histories of things yet to come. And we heard from many, many mouths the burning need to spread their stories as far and wide as possible. So in some tiny way hopefully that is what these reflections can do. Spread the word. Correr la voz. Take these voices coming out of Oaxaca and run with them. These voices are hurting, but they are powerful. And they are demanding to be heard.