On one side, federal riot police formed a barricade with their shields. Behind them, riot tanks with mounted water and pepper spray cannons waited with their motors running. Facing them, women linked arms, holding white flowers, Mexican flags, and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe. “A woman’s fist, raised against power,” they shouted in unison, standing only a few feet from the police.
“I am not from any political party, only from the party of the oppressed,” said a women identi fying herself as Paz, a 48-year-old preschool teacher who stood in the line of women. “And when you have conviction, you won’t be scared by police batons.”
After five months of conflict, the much awaited face-off be tween federal police and protesters from the Oaxaca Peo ple’s Popular Assembly (APPO) occurred in Oaxaca City on Sun day. From 7 a.m. until midday, po lice stood their ground a few miles southeast of the town center, and so did the APPO.
Women approached the police to place white roses in their shields and riot armor. Entire families from surrounding neigh borhoods bolstered the protesters’ ranks. They shouted demands to the police that they not invade Oaxaca, but arrest Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
The protesters only moved back when a disturbed hornets nest sent swarms of angry stingers into the crowd, leading one protester to shout to the press, amidst laughter: “Look they are using biological weapons.”
Around 1:30 p.m., police began moving forward, firing their wa ter canons and marching while beating their riot shields with ba tons. Several police were seen carrying automatic rifles.
MARCHING TOGETHER
Protesters turned about and marched ahead of the police, re fusing to confront them with sticks and rocks, but offering in stead to guide them into town. Some threw rocks from the side of the road, but others ordered them not to provoke the police.
Some protesters turned back to the police and joked with them saying, “Walk a bit faster, we’re going to invite you to come eat Tlayudas,” a popular local dish similar to pizza.
The police advance lasted about two hours with no major confrontations, and little forward progress. Throughout the morn ing, APPO protesters had built hundreds of barricades large and small along the road leading into town. Most people shouted at the police from their roof tops, but a few families came out to applaud them as well.
At 2 p.m. riot police coming from the airport began to enter the town center, soon blocking two streets at the edge of the cen tral Zócalo. A crowd of several hundred protesters gathered there to stand down the police lines. One young man with a ban dana over his face approached the police with a lit Molotov cocktail, but an older man took it from his hand before he could throw it, and stamped out its flame.
Isidra, a 43-year-old high school teacher, came down from her house with her husband to support the barricades when the police arrived in the morning. She has family in Arizona, Chicago and Los Angeles who have all been trying to get her to leave Oaxaca to join them, she said.
“But then I see this, and I think, no way I am going to leave,” she said. “I have three children, and they are from here, that’s why I am not going.”
At 6 p.m., while most protesters and reporters were gathered in the Zócalo, federal police attempted to break through the barricade outside of Canal 9 television station, which has been occupied by the APPO since August 1. Violence broke out, with police attacking protesters, beating several peo ple. During the confrontation, 15-year-old Jorge Adolfo López was shot and killed.
