Monday

I learned two new things about the teacher's union that is currently holding the capital of Oaxaca state, disallowing access to the town by government and police. Apparently, this began as an annual protest that has happened every May in Oaxaca for the last twenty six years. Past protests were peaceful and the demonstrators went home after a week, with some mild concessions. This year's protest is heading into its third month of sporadic violence, with troops guarding the surrounding hills and the state government meeting in an out-of-town hotel. The other new thing I learned is that the Mexican teachers union is the largest union in Latin America, far larger than the several hundred-thousand-teacher sliver occupying the southern Mexican city, and widely believed to be the support bolster that edged Felipe Calderón into his current supposed presidential victory. Now, standing in the red corner: leftist candidate ALMO, weighing in at a million, give or take, is moving his supporters from weekly near-riots in the national Zócalo into camps down the main thoroughfare of the Federal District. His goal is to post people there, demonstrating and hunger-striking, until the election officials agree to recount his allegedly fraudulent presidential loss, or till the country he wants to run is strangled dead. The peso is beginning to react to the stock market tumble already, and traffic cannot navigate the capital city. If I was an irresponsibly breathless doomsayer, I might start uttering hysterical and unsupported theories here about the worst case scenario (phrases like, for instance, "civil war") of these clans setting their sights on each other. Then again between the three more moderate earthquakes off the Pacific coast, and the volcano and the narco war, maybe we all have better things to think about. [Cavin]