Monday

Over last month I watched movies instead of reading the news, under the assumption that situations that had not changed for months were unlikely to inconveniently do so just as I looked the other way. The long story of protest in Oaxaca continued to intensify soap operatically: remember the coalition of leftist unions flying their flag (reading APPO) over the city center, disallowing state police access to the capital, and demanding the ouster of the Oaxacan governor? Remember the long march to México City, after which several senators flew to Oaxaca to scout the situation and see what, if anything, could be done to fire the Governor? They said he might could be canned if evidence enough existed of Oaxaca’s government losing control of the state. This seemed to me very much like the senate giving the protestors carte blanche to prove themselves ungoverned; but soon enough the senators took it all back: Ruiz could not be constitutionally removed. This disrupted positive negotiations between the APPO and the fed: Oaxacans had been planning to allow federal police enforcement into the city center (anything but Ruiz's thugs, I guess), while teachers had been planning on returning to classrooms for the first time since May. Instead, the APPO found themselves re-entrenching. Now things are beginning to do whatever they do after they've been boiling for months: on October 27th a US journalist was killed while filming a shootout between protestors and undercover gunmen.* His death incited federal police to forcibly occupy downtown Oaxaca on Sunday.* Currently protestors are holed-up in the local university,* and yesterday there was a giant march that ended peacefully.* However, three bombs simultaneously detonated around México City early today* (two more were defused by anonymously-warned police), and leftists organizations sympathetic to the APPO are claiming responsibility.* [Cavin]