Angry White Kid

From Occupy Oakland to Occupied Palestine

Check out the full article at the Occupied Oakland Tribune.

An abridged version of the following article appeared in the print edition (issue 3) of the Occupied Oakland Tribune.

by Scott Campbell

Sitting in solitary in Glenn Dyre jail after being arrested during the first raid on the Occupy Oakland camp at Oscar Grant Plaza, I had no idea what was playing out on the streets just blocks away. Not until getting out the following day did I see footage of the massive police violence that was unleashed on the evening of October 25.

As someone who has worked in solidarity with Palestinians for years, that footage reminded me of scenes that play out frequently in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Villages there whose land is being taken for the construction of Israel’s illegal separation wall hold weekly nonviolent protests against their continued dispossession. As happened on October 25 in Oakland, these peaceful rallies are met with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets from Israeli forces. Often live ammunition is deployed and since 2004, 22 Palestinians, almost half children, have been killed by Israeli forces while protesting against the usurpation of their lands and livelihoods.

 

A Discourse of Divisiveness: Al Giordano and Mexico’s Social Movements

The Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity participates in a ceremony
at Monte Albán in Oaxaca. (Photo from SDPNoticias / Lucía Vergara)

A Discourse of Divisiveness: Al Giordano and Mexico’s Social Movements

By Scott Campbell

On September 28, Al Giordano, founder and publisher of NarcoNews.com, published a lengthy article on the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity and its time in Oaxaca. Taking the political landscape of Oaxaca as a jumping off point, the main gist of Giordano’s piece was in pointing out the distinctions between the activities and rhetoric of the left and those of Javier Sicilia and the caravan. In the dichotomy he creates, Giordano comes down firmly on the side of Sicilia – one needs to read no further than the sub-headline where he distinguishes between the “annihilating language of the left” and the “language of humanity of drug war victims” to grasp the argument he is putting forward.

In Giordano’s view, “the left” is stuck in a no-longer relevant posture of confrontational and militant rhetoric and action which does not resonate with the everyday individual surviving in a country wrecked by neoliberalism and the violence of the state and drug cartels. He posits that Sicilia’s movement of Gandhian nonviolence with its post-partisan focus on common humanity – from the victims of the drug war all the way up to Felipe Calderón – creates a bond based not on ideology but shared loss, pain and grief, a bond which does resonate with the Mexican populous, and is something much more preferable to what the left has to offer.

A scorched earth attack on the left

Now, when you set up a contrast like that – between a side with humanity and a side that is annihilating – it makes tearing down one and raising up the other rather simple. In doesn’t hurt to throw in some unsubstantiated take downs, such as that those annihilators “gladly will jump on the caravan buses and accept free food from many of the poorest indigenous communities in the nation…but who seemed to be doing so with a grimace on their faces.” Or to imply that they are so out of touch they care more about politics than their own dead family members, as he does with Omar Esparza, whose wife Bety Cariño was assassinated by paramilitaries in 2010. At a caravan stop in Huajuapan, Giordano states Esparza, “said nothing about his late wife…choosing instead of offer a boilerplate political speech of the sort that gets made at so many other political meetings and protests.” He also inaccurately labels Esparza as a spokesperson for the anarchist-leaning group Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Freedom (VOCAL) when in fact he is a member of the Zapatista Indigenous Agrarian Movement (MAIZ). This error takes on more significance when Giordano notes that after speaking, Esparza invited someone from the Stalinist Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR) to speak and implied that the invitation involved “some kind of organizational log-rolling or concessions” on the part of the annihilating left, as VOCAL and the FPR do not get along, to put it mildly. However, since MAIZ and the FPR do frequently work together, the invitation is no surprise at all. When you create your own straw man, it’s easy to knock him down. Problem is, in the end it still is just a straw man of your own creation.

Palestine and Israel's tent cities

Playing around on Storify, I put together this, admittedly incomplete, overview of Israel's tent cities movement and its failure to discuss the biggest issue of all: Palestine.

 

U.S. to Israel: Go ahead and kill our citizens

In a few days time, ten ships with hundreds of civilians from 22 countries on board will be setting sail for the Gaza Strip. The Freedom Flotilla 2 - Stay Human will be challenging Israel's four year siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip, as well as its 44 year occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Unarmed and committed to nonviolence, members of the flotilla include members of parliament, writers, artists, clerics, activists and journalists. 

On May 31, 2010, Israeli forces violently boarded the ships comprising the first Freedom Flotilla while they were in international waters (a violation of international law).  On the Mavi Marmara, commandos killed nine individuals, including U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan, who the UN found was killed "execution-style," as were five other victims.  This time around, the Israeli military has announced its plan to deploy attack dogs and snipers against the flotilla and stated, “We will do anything we have to do to prevent a boat from breaking the blockade...If there is the same violence against our forces on board, there is a pretty good chance there will be injuries.”

One of the boats in this flotilla will be a U.S.-flagged vessel, "The Audacity of Hope." On board will be around forty U.S. citizens and ten members of the media.  The passengers include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein.  Twenty-five percent of the passengers are Jewish.

Given Israel's exceedingly violent response to the first flotilla, in flagrant violation of international law, one would expect the U.S. government to caution Israel against using force against U.S. citizens. Yes, we are all aware what super good friends Israel and the U.S. are, but when your friend says, "I'm ready to kill your people," you'd expect the U.S. to at least suggest Israel show a tiny bit of restraint. After all, it is the State Department's role to protect and assist U.S. citizens traveling abroad. Well, those running the show at State must have forgotten that part of the job description, as instead of cautioning Israel, in recent days the State Department has unleashed at all-out diplomatic offensive against its own citizens, essentially giving Israel the green light to kill them while washing their hands of any responsibility.  Consider the following:

Repression, Impunity and Resistance in Oaxaca: One Year After the Copala Caravan Ambush

April 27, 2011 march marking one year since the paramilitary
attack on the humanitarian caravan en route to San Juan Copala.

By Scott Campbell

One year ago last Wednesday, on April 27, 2010, a humanitarian and solidarity caravan en route to the besieged Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala in the Triqui region of the Oaxacan Mixteca was ambushed by paramilitaries linked to the Oaxaca state government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.  Placing large boulders at a curve in the road minutes outside of San Juan Copala, paramilitaries from the organization Union for the Well-Being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) blockaded the path of the caravan.  As the vehicles were trying to turn around, gunmen came down from the hillsides, opening fire on the caravan with automatic weapons.  Two members of the caravan were killed, Bety Cariño, founder of the organization Community Support Center – Working Together (CACTUS), and Jyri Jaakkola, an international solidarity activist from Finland.  Several others were wounded as caravan members fled for their lives into the nearby hills.

The caravan was organized to support the people of San Juan Copala, who together with nine other communities in the region declared the creation of an autonomous municipality on January 1, 2007, just weeks after the brutal state and federal government repression of the social movement in Oaxaca, which under the aegis of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) had rendered the state ungovernable by the elite and their police forces for more than five months in 2006.

THE AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITY OF SAN JUAN COPALA

Organized as the Independent Movement of Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULTI), those who would go on to form the autonomous municipality also participated in the 2006 social movement.  Three of their members were assassinated by state forces on August 9, 2006, while on their way to support the mobilizations in the city of Oaxaca. That same month, MULTI led the APPO’s occupation of the municipal palace in Juxtlahuaca, the major population center and seat of local government in the Triqui region, and held it until December 26.

The declaration one week later of the autonomous municipality was met with immediate rejection by the state government, who condemned it as “illegal” and “infantile.”  Repression against the municipality was also quick in coming.  The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz utilized two paramilitary groups in an attempt to violently crush the autonomous project.  One was UBISORT, the group which ambushed the solidarity caravan.  UBISORT was created by the PRI state government in the mid-90s to counteract the extended influence of the Zapatista rebellion in the neighboring state of Chiapas.  The other was the MULT, the Movement of Triqui Unification and Struggle (not to be confused with MULTI).  Created in the 1980s, it was originally a left-wing organization which organized to unite and defend the territories and rights of the Triqui people.  Over the years, the MULT leadership developed close ties to the PRI government and the organization took on a more clientelist veneer.  In 2003, the MULT created the Popular Unity Party (PUP), which similarly has close links with the PRI.

Event marking three years since the assassination of Teresa
and Felícitas, in the zócalo of Oaxaca on April 7, 2011.

Heavily armed and well-trained members of UBISORT-PRI and MULT-PUP unleashed a wave a terror against the autonomous municipality.  For example, on January 19, 2007, a town meeting was fired upon by MULT.  On April 7, 2008, two Triqui radio broadcasters, Felícitas Martínez and Teresa Bautista, 21 and 24, were assassinated in an ambush.  Felícitas and Teresa had both helped found the autonomous municipality’s community radio station – The Voice that Breaks the Silence – with the assistance of Bety Cariño and CACTUS.  Broadcasting to tens of Triqui communities in their own language, the station had only been on the air since January 1, 2008.  Later that year, on November 1, San Juan Copala resident Héctor Antonio Ramírez Paz was assassinated.

Despite the repression, during this time the autonomous municipality worked to develop the area, acquiring computers, repairing and upgrading schools, government offices, roads, public spaces, medical clinics, childcare centers, etc.

The situation turned even more serious on November 29, 2009, when members of the Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), from San Salvador Atenco, attempted to enter San Juan Copala to advocate for the release of their 12 political prisoners and to express support for the autonomous municipality.  UBISORT blocked the caravan from entering the town, while at the same time MULT and UBISORT rained gunfire into the town, hitting four children and killing one, Elías Fernández de Jesús, age 9.

In January of 2010, UBISORT paramilitaries began a siege of the town of San Juan Copala, cutting water and electricity and prohibiting the entry of doctors and teachers.  For almost ten months, residents had no access to medical care and children had no access to education.  In order to survive, the women of the town had to sneak out through the forests in order to buy food or to collect wood to boil water in order to have potable water. Often the women were captured by the paramilitaries, kidnapped, their food stolen and destroyed and on several occasions the women were raped and/or murdered.

Remembering Tonee Mello

More than a week later the news still has not sunken in, and daily the urge to reject it is overwhelming: that my friend Tonee Mello is dead.  Tonee was murdered at his home in the outskirts of the city of Oaxaca during a robbery on Monday, April 11, 2011.  It is a senseless, vicious loss of life that leaves one with an innumerable amount of emotions and questions which can only be worked through and resolved with time, if at all.  While two individuals have been detained in relation to his murder, and the case will make its way through the court system here in Oaxaca, such facts hardly offers themselves as remedies to this tremendous loss.

Tonee was a singular individual, unlike anyone I have ever met.  I believe he was the most generous person I have had the privilege to know.  If Tonee could have held the world in his hands, he would have happily given it to you, even if it meant he himself was left with absolutely nothing. And even if he had nothing, he would make something of it to share with you as well.  He had a boundless, completely unselfish generosity the likes of which I have never seen. As in so many instances, words are insufficient.

Tonee was 63 years old, from San Francisco, who had lived for many years in Oaxaca.  A longtime anarchist, he was involved in many struggles in the U.S. and Mexico.   He co-founded the Fresno Needle Exchange in 1994 and was arrested when he and others went to the city council to get it legalized (something that finally occurred in 2008).  He fought to defend community radio stations in the U.S., such as KFCF and KPFA, and in Oaxaca worked to help indigenous communities establish their own community-controlled radio stations, in particular in the Mixe region.  On top of all that, Tonee was a gay rights activist, a gardener, a co-founder of the Oaxaca Study-Action Group, previously a board member of the Oaxaca Lending Library, and loved riding his motorcycle.

I first met Tonee in the summer of 2008 here in Oaxaca.  We bonded over our ideological affinity and San Francisco Bay Area connections.  He still followed events there and asked all about the recent FBI raid on the Long Haul infoshop in Berkeley.  Just hours after meeting us, he offered to lend my partner and me his motorcycle for the rest of our stay in Oaxaca.  A few days later, as my partner and others were putting together a rooftop garden in CASOTA, he drove us to his friend’s farm to get seeds and learn about her projects, and then to a dump outside of town to look for planters and other supplies.  His enthusiasm was boundless; his desire to share what he knew and what he had was inspiring and never presumptuous.  He acted not out of a desire for recognition, compensation or any self-interest, he simply truly enjoyed helping and extending solidarity to others and for him that was its own reward.

One of the last times I saw Tonee was when he brought us to his house that he had just purchased, the house where he would so senselessly be killed less than three years later.  It needed a lot of work, but you couldn’t help but smile and be inspired to listen to his vision for the space.  A big organic garden, areas for socializing and parties, spaces for friends to stay, whether in need or simply during a visit - a space as open and welcoming as its owner.  That’s how I will remember Tonee – a smile on his face and magnanimous, generous spirit in words, deeds, and visions, all of which lives on in those of us whose lives he has touched.  Thank you, Tonee.  I’ll miss you.

If you have a message or memory of Tonee you'd like to share, feel free to leave a comment here, but also please leave it on El Enemigo Común post about Tonee, which is collecting messages from around the world from those who lives Tonee has touched.

Review of "Amexica: War Along the Borderline" by Ed Vulliamy

Picking up Amexica: War Along the Borderline by journalist Ed Vulliamy, I was initially excited, thinking here might be an accessible book by a veteran journalist capable of explaining to the English-speaking public just what is going on in Mexico and why.  Naïve, I know.  My suspicions were raised as early as the second paragraph when the author mistranslated the extremely common Spanish-language sign-off Atte: as Look out.  Atte: is actually an abbreviation of Atentamente, simply meaning Sincerely.  Get something that basic that wrong that early in the book, and I knew I was in for a ride - downhill.

In short, Amexica is part travelogue, part sympathetic recounting of the devastation of the militarization of the war on drugs, and part “look at what daring stuff this white guy did.”  Vulliamy gets some things right - pointing out the fact that the drug trade is just another form of transnational capitalism; examining the U.S. role in arming the cartels and laundering their money; describing the toll neoliberalism has taken on Mexico in terms of migration and maquiladoras; and putting names and faces on some the 35,000+ dead in Felipe Calderón’s disastrous so-called fight against organized crime.  The main problem is that all of this is carried out superficially and with a lack of historical context and political analysis, along with omissions and errors.  As such, if you want to know how things are right now in the borderlands, reading this book might be somewhat useful.  If you want to know why things are they way they are right now, this book will not help you.

In glossing over the past to get to the juicy, bloody present, Vulliamy does his readers a disservice.  There is no discussion of how the war on drugs as a concept emerged in the Nixon-era and developed as a strategy of population containment and oppression, a politically expedient and enormously profitable endeavor that since 2001 has coalesced well with the rhetoric of the war on terror and Bush and Obama’s war on migrants.  The end of 70 years of PRI rule in Mexico on the federal level, dismantling the pre-existing arrangements with the drug cartels just as they were getting more powerful due to the collapse of the Colombian cartels, goes nearly unexamined.  Similarly ignored is the role that Calderón’s legitimacy played in the launching of a military offensive inside of Mexico.  As he fraudulently arrived at the presidency, the drug war was a means of instilling his regime with legitimacy.  Scant attention is paid to the Mérida Initiative, the U.S.’s billion dollar military aid package to Mexico, nor to how the same police and military forces receiving the aid and executing the “drug war” are also involved in large scale human rights violations, massive corruption, and the severe repression of Mexico’s social movements - all with impunity.  Linking these factors to the current events that this book covers is essential for any understanding of the situation.

Adding to the contextual shortcomings of the book are the various errors and poor translations.  It’s stunning his editors either in the U.K. or U.S. did not hire a translator to verify his Spanish - or at least open a Spanish-English dictionary.  Some of the more humorous examples: He translates gabacho as someone from Europe and gringo as someone from the U.S. (Both mean someone from the U.S., Vulliamy would simply be a güero); and translating fresa - in reference to someone who dresses or acts bourgeois - literally as strawberry.  Regarding the facts, some examples of errors: The claim that Carlos Salinas privatized communally-held land in the 1980s. (He only arrived at the presidency in December of 1988, privatization did not begin until after the 1992 reform of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution in preparation for NAFTA.)  Vulliamy’s statement that the Arrellano Félix Organization intentionally killed Cardinal Posadas Ocampo in 1993 in order to target the Catholic Church.  (Initial investigations showed they confused Posadas’ convoy with that of a rival cartel leader. More recent investigations indicate the assassination was likely state-sponsored.)  Or also his writing that “the only investigation of its kind” into Los Zetas penetration into Monterrey was carried out by a Los Angeles Times reporter, ignoring those done by Mexican journalists or Kristin Bricker for Narco News.

In sum, Vulliamy’s book leaves much to be desired and that which is present should be cautiously digested.  Even if it took a bit longer to put out, a more thoroughly-considered and better edited version of this book would have made a much more useful contribution to this politically-manufactured crisis facing Mexico and increasingly the U.S.

Remembering John Ross - a true rebel journalist

As many of you may know, John Ross passed away on Monday, January 17 at the age of 73, from liver cancer. I won’t try to replicate the many kind obituaries which have appeared in the U.S. and Mexican media in recent days.  In fact, I didn’t know John well, but our encounters over the years, by chance or intentional, as well as his constant production of books, poetry and articles, leave me wanting to say something.

I first met John about eleven years ago, when he was doing a national tour and I organized his visit to Vassar College.  He hopped in my car at the train station in Poughkeepsie and some of his first words were, “Mind if I smoke?”  Assuming he meant a cigarette I said sure, and he promptly sparked a tiny joint.  After settling in at my place, he gave a talk to a packed audience, interspersing political discussion about the Zapatistas and neoliberalism with beat poetry read with the aid of his much-commented-upon monocle.  Later, he stayed up late with us 18 and 19-year-old kids, regaling us with stories of how Jack Kerouac chased him around a bar in Greenwich Village with a broken bottle (he had hooked up with Kerouac’s girlfriend) or his thoughts on the Saint Patrick’s Battalion (they weren’t political, it was all about Catholicism).

That encounter, along with running into him at various events over the years, such as a memorial for Rachel Corrie or a protest against the war on Iraq, as well as his books and columns from Mexico Bárbaro to Blindman’s Buff, made a lasting impression on me and nourished a deep respect for this singular individual.  John was a person who knew his values, knew what mattered and was willing to face the consequences of what may come in his fight to uphold them - be they spending time in jail as the first conscientious objector to the Vietnam War; being deported by Saddam Hussein while trying to serve as a human shield against the second U.S. invasion; losing a eye to a San Francisco police beating; or a permanently injured back as a result of a beating from Israeli settlers.  Lest we leave Mexico out, he was also beaten by the federal police after berating Octavio Paz in the Mexico City airport.

But it was not only physical coercion at the hands of state oppressors that John was willing to face.  While he was quick with a smile, a great conversationalist, and truly generous and genuine with his time and attention, he called things as he saw them and if that resulted in a shot across your bow, so be it.  Perhaps the most notable manifestation of this in recent years was his criticism of the Zapatistas, the Other Campaign, and Subcomandante Marcos.  John was one of the first, if not the first, journalists to bring the Zapatista struggle to the attention of English-speakers in the U.S. and elsewhere.  Solidarity was John’s mantra, and he saw it as his task to help bring the U.S. left’s attention to social movements south of the border.  He traversed thousands of miles and spilled hundreds of pages of ink doing just that with the Zapatistas.  But when he saw the Other Campaign go astray, in his eyes, of its intent and the values of the Zapatistas, he did not hesitate to voice his concerns.  He did what is still considered heretical on the left: criticize the EZLN.  This certainly cost him in terms of friendships, distribution and readership, but John had always struck out on his own course, why would he stop in 2006 at the age of 69?

The last time I saw John was in April of last year, where I put together another event in the Lower East Side, to discuss the situation in Oaxaca, the case of assassinated journalist Brad Will, and the Mérida Initiative.  John was technically on a U.S. tour to promote his latest, and ultimately last, book, El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City, but that evening he didn’t even discuss it, in fact only bringing two copies to sell.  At that point his liver cancer was in remission and he seemed as feisty and energetic as he was when I first met him, maybe even more so, as he noted he was pleasantly surprised to still be alive. 

As we all know, his cancer returned and ultimately took his life.  In one of his last emails to me, he apologized for not writing his annual article about the murder of Brad Will, stating, “i’m gravely ill with liver cancer and just putting together a coherent article is not such an easy job these days - but i'll work on one for publication next week perhaps on the day of the dead (if i’m still among the living).”  In fact, he did write that article and lived to fight a couple of months more, his dedication and fire never failing.

Though he would likely scoff at the tributes, the truth is there are few people like John, and those people should be celebrated and remembered.  Thank you for all that you have given us, shown us and inspired in us, John.  We will pick up the torch that you have passed to us.

Dozens of migrants attacked and kidnapped in Mexico

On December 16, a freight train left Arraiga, Chiapas, with 300 migrants from Central America riding on top of it. While passing through Oaxaca the train was stopped twice. First, around 100 people were detained at an immigration checkpoint. Twenty minutes later, those remaining on the train were attacked by a gang of armed men, presumably Zetas or Maras, two groups known for preying on migrants and robbing or kidnapping them. Kidnapped migrants are usually held for ransom or forced to become gunmen or drug mules. The Zetas are likely responsible for the massacre of 72 Central American migrants in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas on August 24 of this year.

During the attack, at least 40 migrants were kidnapped and have not been heard from since. Of the 300 people to depart from Chiapas, only 20 made it to Ixtepec, Oaxaca, a common layover stop where a Catholic-run migrant shelter is located. Below is a short video with testimonies from some of those who survived the events. I translated it and added the subtitles, so any errors in those departments are mine.

Along with insinuations that immigration was aware of the attack awaiting the migrants, the Mexican government has been extremely crass in its handling of the situation, at first outright denying what occurred and later acting only after concerted pressure from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.  An entire week passed before Mexico agreed to investigate the “supposed kidnappings.” Previously, Mexico’s Interior Ministry had informed El Salvador's Deputy Foreign Minister that El Salvador's “stance was unfounded, that [it] had no basis to claim that there was a kidnapping.”

While the Mexican government was sitting on its hands regarding the December 16 kidnapping - despite the fact that family members of those kidnapped reported receiving calls demanding ransoms of 10,000 dollars, as well as indications that the victims were being held near the site of the kidnapping - four more Central American migrants were kidnapped on December 21, and a fifth, from El Salvador, was killed during the attack.

According to Honduras’ Deputy Foreign Minister, Alden Rivera, 20,000 Central Americans have been kidnapped in Mexico on their way to the United States in the past twelve months.  Of those, half were from Honduras.  A staggering 30 out of every 100 Honduran migrants in Mexico are kidnapped.

As well, Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, the Catholic priest who runs the migrant shelter in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, has come under increasing threats and harassment as a result of his work assisting migrants and denouncing the disgraceful and dangerous treatment which undocumented Central American migrants face in Mexico.

These kidnappings, and the failure of the Mexican government to act - or even worse, the complicity of some government functionaries in these acts - are emblematic of the impunity that reigns in Mexico.  However, though not a focus of this summary, it is important to note that when examining the causes of Central American migration, as well as the rise and power of organizations such as the Zetas and the Maras, one’s gaze must firmly rest on the political and economic policies of the United States.  While it is certainly desirable and should be demanded that the Mexican government protect migrants crossing through its territory, upon making that journey these migrants then must again risk their lives to cross into the U.S., only to face massive discrimination and human and labor rights violations upon arrival.  The root causes are the neoliberal policies emanating out of Washington and foisted upon Central America and Mexico alike.

After Oaxaca's Popular Rebellion

An article I wrote regarding developments in Oaxaca since 2006 was published last month in Solidarity's Against the Current magazine. Below is an excerpt, here is the full article.

“THINK ABOUT IT,” a popular bumper sticker read, “6 more years would be 86.” On July 4, 2010, the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca held statewide elections. Despite open vote-buying and other fraud perpetrated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), it was not enough to ensure victory on this occasion, thereby ending 81 years of uninterrupted PRI rule in Oaxaca.

On December 1, 2010, the state will have the first non-PRI governor since the consolidation of the Mexican Revolution, which began 100 years earlier.

Few people, however, are under the impression that the triumph of Gabino Cué, the victorious candidate for governor, signifies a complete victory in and of itself. In the end, little more than 25% of eligible voters cast their ballots for him. Moreover, career politician though he is, even Cué will be hard pressed to manage the very unstable coalition that brought him into power, which consists of the leftist Workers’ Party (PT), the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), and the center-left parties of Convergencia and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

More than anything, the vote represented not support for Cué, but popular anger with the PRI, which translated itself into a punishment vote directed primarily against current governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, who during his six-year term has fostered a climate of severe corruption, impunity and violence, which most notably led to the uprising in 2006 that is the focus of this article.