Day of the Kings in Oaxaca, Where URO Is King

Ulises Ruiz Ortiz Carries on with Disregard to the Law, Declaring No Public Assemblies in “Sensitive” Areas

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca

January 8, 2007

The Day of the Kings is the day which the Catholic calendar celebrates as the day on which the three kings, or wise men, brought gifts to Bethlehem for the new born child.

In Oaxaca it is the day when historically children receive their gifts: not from Santa Claus but from the wise kings who recognize that each child born is holy. This honorable tradition was celebrated by the APPO this year on behalf of the children of the assassinated, disappeared and incarcerated; on behalf of the poor who live in some of the 44 poorest communities in all of Mexico – all of them within the state of Oaxaca.

I must be one of the last who remembers the days when it was still possible to assume that an elected official, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, might feel shame. I remember the McCarthy hearings in 1954, and then attorney Joseph Welch, who demanded of him, “Sir, have you left no sense of decency?” Welch accused McCarthy of lying, making false accusations and spreading fear and intimidation regarding the mere hint that one might be a Communist – that is, opposed to the capitalist government of the USA.

Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, fraudulently elected governor, and self-regarded as king of Oaxaca, having survived the first clamor for justice by the people’s Popular Assembly movement which was crushed by federal and state police, has declared that no public assemblies will henceforth be permitted in sensitive (i.e. public spaces) areas such as the city’s zocalo or the large plaza of Oaxaca’s famous gilded church, Santo Domingo. Both spaces were temporarily occupied by the encampments of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, the APPO, until they were over-run and destroyed by government forces. URO’s order is unconstitutional, but the man has no shame.

Under orders from URO, about 500 police barricaded for two days the delivery of toys donated by sympathetic citizens for the children. On Thursday, Aristeo López Martínez, coordinator of Public Security, Roads and Municipal Transportation, informed the public that the installation of the APPO toy fair would not be allowed, and if they tried it, they would be thrown out. Citizens who approached to deliver their gifts were told to put them on the sidewalk, behind the barricade set up in front of the graphic arts museum. Not only were the those who came with gifts outraged, but also passerby’s and tourists.

The armed and helmeted troops, their shields at rest, stood sweating in the sun behind heavy metal barricades which held back the flood of toys and balloons heaped up on the pedestrian street of Alcalá on the north side of Santo Domingo. Nobody but the occasional tourist was permitted entry to the Santo Domingo area, guarded at all access points by troops.

On Saturday, January 6, prior to the festival, about 500 people, members of the Oaxaca Women’s Coordinating Committee, with the children of the political prisoners, headed a march from the Plaza de la Danza to the Plazuela del Carmen Alto, about eight blocks distant. Many carried balloons and placards demanding freedom for the prisoners.

Previously, around 11:00 AM, about 200 children whose parents are sympathizers of the APPO marched the same route. In front of their contingent, the kids carried a sign which read, “I want to see flowers and toys, and not armed police in the Zócalo of Oaxaca”.

The gift event, originally scheduled to be held on the large plaza of Santo Domingo was then staged on the small plaza of Carmen Alto, with many toys and people spilling over into the two parallel streets. The “plazuela” was outfitted with a sound system and piñatas filled with sweets and confetti. Women moved among the crowds handing out free slices of the sweet bread special to this fiesta, while the crowds jostled for a bit of shade.

The program, in addition to distributing the free gifts, included children who sang, declaimed verses and shouted “Ya Cayó” (He’s out!). I was enjoying a coffee nearby when Raul, the owner of the café, said to me, “That’s terrible! They should be learning in school, not on the streets!”

After five minutes of private thought he returned and told me he himself had learned most of what life is like on the streets of Mexico, DF, where he was raised. Then we talked about what it means to be rich and what it means to be poor. Raul told me URO’s government helicopter has been repainted, white with red and green stripes. Raul’s business has hung on by just a thread for the first six months of the uprising, while Raul works two jobs. He ventured the opinion that the painting of the helicopter was paid for out of his, and other citizens’, pockets.

I could hear the spokesperson on the platform at Carmen Alto announce the formation of the new autonomous municipality composed of twenty Triqui communities. The entertainment continued with songs and puppets. Families, for the greater part women with children, began to move away with their gifts, which included cars, bicycles, dolls, marbles and balls. The municipal and state police remained.

Sergio Hernández Santiago, attorney for the APPO, said a complaint would be lodged against URO for violating the federal court order for unimpeded movement around Santo Domingo and the rest of the city. A circle of police barricading the area around the church violates this order.

The APPO mistress of ceremonies announced the next mega-march, scheduled for January 10, 2007, to demand freedom for the political prisoners and the ouster of URO.

The march will go from the Plaza de la Danza to the atrium of Santo Domingo church. The APPO obtained permission, for both the Day of the Kings and the January 10 march, from the Church for these events, to use church property.

URO ignored the church’s agreement as well as the federal court order. No decency remains under this governor.

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