Police Retake Oaxaca Town Hall Occupied Since January 2005

Autonomous Municipality of San Blas Atempa, Center of Support for the Zapatista Other Campaign, Under Attack

By Hiram Moreno
La Jornada

March 2, 2006

SAN BLAS ATEMPA, OAXACA, MARCH 1: Approximately 200 police retook the town hall here this Wednesday, which had been occupied since January 1, 2005 by followers of Francisco Salud Bautista, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) candidate who lost the October, 2004 elections to Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Eliseo Reyes Vásquez. The situation in the town was one of tension, and as we went to press Francisco Salud supporters were pelting stones at the police, who remained in control of the building. Electoral authorities determined at the time that Reyes Vásquez won by 700 votes, but PRD members allege fraud in the form of vote buying, such as distributing household items and construction materials.

“San Blas faces economic backwardness and abandonment, and this police operation to take back the town hall is a provocation from the state government, which instead of trying to enter a dialog is doing it through confrontation,” said Salud Bautista, interviewed hours before his supporters began hostilities against the police. He added that the popular autonomous town council currently in power will continue, “because that is the will of the people.”

Read yesterday’s communiqué from the Popular Autonomous Town Council

Read the February 6 report “Ya Basta (“Enough Already”) in San Blas, Oaxaca”

Watch the video newsreel “Subcomandante Marcos Goes to Jail: A Visit to the Political Prisoners of San Blas, Oaxaca”

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