After the Teachers' Strike: Let's go to Oaxaca!
By Irma Sofia Navarro Viloria (English translation by Eduardo Barraza)
BARRIOZONA
January 18, 2007
Oaxaca City, Oaxaca.− Would you destroy or cause damage to something you love and is yours? Would you stain with
fluorescent phrases the most valuable and precious thing you have, something the entire world admires and is even a
cultural heritage for humanity?
The truth and the answer to these questions, which are captured in words and colors unfamiliar to the natural colors of
cathedrals, streets, walls, and colonial buildings, beg us to revive what happened in the beautiful streets of Oaxaca, and to
stop, as tourists, chastising the Oaxacan people with indifference. Oaxacans have contributed to the entire world with so
many valuable things yet so inexpensively; undoubtedly, the people who love Oaxaca wouldn’t have defaced their own
cathedrals with graffiti.
Who hasn’t purchased precious hand-made rebozos, wooden craftworks delicately carved by hand, or silver jewelry
designed by our indigenous people, and which enhances the beauty of any woman? Or who hasn’t be delighted with its
innumerable delicious dishes such as turnovers filled with yellow sauce, mole, tasajo or tlayudas*?
A blending of anger, indignation, and sadness is caused when observing –while comfortably sitting at a coffee shop in the
main plaza, or from the window of a car driving through, the most distant and impoverished remote small villages of
Oaxaca– the Oaxacan indigenous citizen arduously working with the hope to be able to sell some of his creations, and to
know that his only happiness is just to have something to eat. Then, who were those who caused damage and defaced
with graffiti the cathedrals and buildings? Was it the people that proudly live in Oaxaca, or was it people from somewhere
else, people who know that they will be paid, even if they don’t work?
This battle in someone else’s land, though, did not destroy the people’s heart and the core of their beings. Just a few
weeks later after the arrest of the APPO’s** leader, I sensed a more beautiful than ever Oaxaca, and its people smiling
more than ever, like a child waking up in his mother’s lap after a nightmare. That peace, like a morning’s breeze emerging
from the green quarry, I was able to capture and share it with more people.
Those written messages (see photo gallery), next to the poinsettias of the flowerbeds of the Zócalo Plaza, sometimes
expressing gratitude and peace and in some others indignation, are a sign of what happened, something the merchant or
the craftsperson never approved. “Arise, Oaxaca, I trust in God that you never be kidnapped again. An Oaxaca’s merchant;
JMS family” (a hand-written sign reads.) Also, the conversations I had with many merchants who described their
happiness to see so many tourists from Mexico and abroad, confirmed this fact to me.
Of everything that happened during the six-month conflict in Oaxaca, today it could be seen that only some streets
surrounding the Zócalo were being watched by Oaxaca ’s preventive police.
Let’s go to Oaxaca ! It is waiting for us with open arms!
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* Mole: sauce of cocoa and chiles
Tasajo: a folded tortilla in a bean sauce with a piece of steak sliced extremely thin
Tlayuda: large tortillas - sometimes 12 inches in diameter - strewn with beans, aciento, tomato, avocado, quesillo (a
string cheese found only in Oaxaca )
** APPO: Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca). Author refers to
incarcerated leader Flavio Sosa, arrested in México City on December 4, 2006, shortly after new Felipe Calderón became
president.
Irma Sofía Navarro Viloria © 2007
Copyright © 2007 Hispanic Institute of Social Issues
After the Storm - Following a socio-political conflict that lasted for six months, the Oaxacan people try
slowly to recover their peace in the midst of the marks left by the fires, the barricades, and the graffiti.
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