By Brian Martin
Anarchist Studies Journal
Vol 18, No. 2
University of Wollongong, Australia
In
the south of Mexico lies the state of Oaxaca, poor, exploited and
seemingly unremarkable. Then, in 2006, state government forces brutally
attacked striking teachers.
This outraged the populace and
triggered an uprising that shows the capacity of communities for
self-organisation in the most difficult circumstances.
In Oaxaca, the government had long been both corrupt and repressive.
The
people’s uprising challenged both the corruption and the repression.
The initial response was defending the teachers; support for them
increased dramatically after they were attacked. This soon evolved into
challenges to government functions and setting up people’s alternatives.
Most local government officials were pawns of the corrupt state
governor. The people set up their own organisation, a people’s
assembly. The police neglected their normal duties; many of them joined
plain-clothed paramilitaries who threatened, beat and shot at people at
the barricades. So the people set up a de facto police force, to defend
protesters and deal with common criminals.
The book Teaching Rebellion
tells the story of the Oaxaca people’s movement in a highly engaging
and informative fashion. The bulk of the book is two dozen personal
stories told by participants.
The editors have done a wonderful
job in grouping and editing these stories so that each individual voice
is distinctive, yet the collective picture of events comes through very
clearly. The stories are grouped chronologically and thematically, with
perspectives from different sectors of the community successively
presented, for example artists, technicians, journalists and priests.
To
take an example, one of the perspectives presented in the book is that
of women, who had long been oppressed in Oaxaca. The popular
mobilisation empowered women to oppose both state government repression
and local patriarchy. On one occasion, women were called on to join a
march and bring along pots and pans for making noise. The women
spontaneously decided to take over the radio station,
which was a
propaganda tool of the government. For three weeks, they occupied the
station and learned how to do broadcasting. They were assisted by many
others – women and men – who provided food, child care and other needs.
The
story of the radio station occupation is told initially by Tonia, in a
simple and moving fashion. The editors give a one-paragraph
introduction, and then it is Tonia’s story. A few excerpts:
At
first I didn’t sympathise with the striking teachers. On the contrary, I
was annoyed with the sit-in in the center and felt like the teachers
just repeated the same thing every year. But everything changed after
the brutal repression that the government unleashed against them. It
made me put myself in their shoes … For a lot a people, the violence of
June 14th was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The
situation in Oaxaca is unbearable. Rural communities live in extreme
poverty … Yet Oaxaca is rich, full of natural resources. If it wasn’t
for all the money the governors are stealing, we’d be better off than
the countries in the North … What really impressed me was when they
started to announce the March of Pots and Pans of August 1st. ‘How is
this possible?’ I asked myself. I come from a village, and in a village,
a woman is worth nothing. In a village a man drinks milk, a woman
doesn’t. She doesn’t have that right. The man washes himself with soap.
The
woman doesn’t, because she is a woman … The August 1st march was
organized by a group of women who were participating in a sit-in at the
Finance Department … when I heard on Radio Universidad that they were
inviting women to a march, telling them to bring pots and pans and
whatever they could use to make noise, I was the first in line
(pp.131-133).
The text is supplemented by numerous photos of people and events. Appealing in both content and appearance, Teaching Rebellion is a model for presenting an indepth treatment of a people’s movement through the eyes of participants.
The
overall story is both inspiring and distressing: inspiring in showing
the people’s capacity to run their own communities without rulers and
distressing in the measures taken by rulers – including arrests,
frame-ups, beatings and shootings – to repress the movement. Repression
was the trigger for mobilisation but also the key force restraining it,
raising the question of how to promote self-rule without repression to
ignite outrage.
Given the importance of the struggle and the
need to take the message to wider audiences, I could not help reflecting
on the limitations of the traditional printed book for communication.
This sort of high-quality material needs to be available on the web as
well.
