Wednesday

This is probably not the time for you to be a tourist in Oaxaca. After months of first one, then many, factions angrily blocking off the beating heart of this culturally and racially indigenous state, businesses struck back yesterday. Tired of killings, riots, steel barriers, checkpoints, burning tires, lawlessness, and a flag sporting APPO (initials for the "Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca")* flying over the capital, local business owners walked out yesterday,* closing down all that remained of commercial civilization there. Police and town hall buildings have stood empty for a month or more, but yesterday no grocery stores, banks, taxis, mechanics, restaurants, or etc. were open for business. Were you to have decided to finally flee Oaxaca yesterday, you would not have been able to because all of the bus stations were locked. All semblance of normality is shuttered in guarded houses behind neighborhood blockades. The government came into the game yesterday, starting talks to end unrest here. Federal emissaries to the APPO began to sit down with those who wish to unseat the governor and hash out a plan to settle things to the point that tourist dollars might eventually return to the city. Five hundred kilometers west of Oaxaca, the Pacific hurricane John,* strong category four, remains thirty-five K out to sea churning parallel to the coast as he moves north-northwest toward the tip of Baja California. This is a worst-case scenario, frankly: 140 mile per hour winds and ten-foot storm surges beat the hell out of the costal resorts of Mexico slowly, spun out of a hurricane that is not really weakening because it is not making landfall. Maybe it is a good idea to stay in Oaxaca after all. PS, now the L.A. Times is starting to speak my language. [Cavin]

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