Rally protests use of police
Mexican strikes get local support
Robert Rogers, Staff Writer
Article Launched:10/31/2006 12:00:00 AM PST

http://www.sbsun.com/ci_4578103

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SAN BERNARDINO - About a dozen local human-rights activists staged a midday protest at the Mexican Consulate, decrying the use of federal police to squelch demonstrations in Oaxaca and demanding the resignation of the local magistrate.
After a statement for news cameras in front of the consulate Monday, about a dozen protesters marched into the office of the Mexican government's chief representative here and hand-delivered a letter addressed to Mexico's President Vicente Fox.

The protest was called by the National Alliance for Human Rights coordinator and UC Riverside professor Armando Navarro, a frequent critic of the Fox administration. He said the federal response to demonstrations for higher wages for teachers "rapidly escalated the unrest" in Mexico.

"What happens in Mexico ... will ultimately impact us over here," Navarro said. "If there is to be a social revolution in Mexico, the hundreds of thousands crossing the (U.S.) border will become millions."

Oaxaca has been deeply divided by a five-month strike by teachers over wages. Fox authorized the deployment of riot police Sunday after gunfire in the city killed at least three.

Navarro and others, including Mexican congressman Pepe


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Jacques-Medina of the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party, and a local religious leader took turns railing against the Fox administration, the federal response to the protest and class stratification in Mexico.
The Rev. Pat Guillen, director of a local social services organization, invoked Abraham Lincoln and blasted Fox for "ordering the military to oppress the people" in Oaxaca and praised protesters there.

"The poor are no longer waiting hopelessly for the powerful to hear them," Guillen said.

Turnout on Monday was low - which Navarro attributed to the hasty mobilization - but energy was not. Protesters shouted into microphones in English and Spanish. Others held aloft signs streaked with red and depicting bloody clashes between police and protesters in the past. Most notably, they drew comparisons between the current situation and the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, an event deeply ingrained in Mexican consciousness in which hundreds of student protesters were slain in Mexico City.

One protester held a sign which said: "Oaxaca, manos limpias," or clean your hands, and pictured hands dripping with blood.

Bobby Vega, a social-services worker who has known Navarro for decades, said he came to protest because the federal response in Oaxaca speaks to issues he sees throughout Mexico and the U.S.

"Injustice anywhere, governments oppressing their people, is everyone's problem," Vega said. "Our administration basically supports the Fox administration, and we should be doing more to push them to treat their people better, not taking this hands-off approach to injustice. Ultimately, the problems there that we turn a blind eye to are going to come here."

Navarro and his cluster of protesters filed into the consulate's main office, delivered a note to Fox and aired their concerns for about 15 minutes to Carlos Giralt-Cabrales, the Mexican government's diplomatic representative to the Inland Empire.

After the protesters left, Giralt-Cabrales said the letter would go to Mexico City but defended the government's action in Oaxaca.

"The police did not use any kind of arms, pistols or guns, only defensive elements, like shields," he said. "The federal government only acted to restore order and security to the people of the city."

Later, Navarro said he was not convinced.

"They have a lot of weapons," Navarro said of federal police. "We categorically condemn the use of force in Oaxaca and call for negotiations to be reopened."