“Urgent” bulletins flying over the internet warn of the governor’s plan to incite a violent showdown around Monday July 23, of the Guelaguetza, now being referred to as the “guerraguetza.”

The facts we observe on the ground:

• military or state police (dark blue uniforms) occupying Fortin are practicing military exercises.
• the zocalo is heavily occupied by PRI vendors, Noticias says 700 puestos.
• Noticias says outlying roads are all blocked with military checkpoints through which no-one “suspicious” can pass.
• The governor is bussing in people from the rural areas (paying them to attend the commercial Guelaguetza), and advising government employees to not bring their children.
• the APPO, the teachers, the civil society organizations and even Dr. Bertha Muños are sending messages warning of the government’s intention to provoke an excuse for military crackdown.
• the teachers assembly scheduled for Saturday afternoon has been cancelled to avoid further arbitrary arrests (I gather at least two “leaders” have been arrested and warrants are out).

—Signals of Provocation in Oaxaca, Nancy Davies, Narcosphere

FOR CONTEXT, it helps to have read this post I just made. Of course, one can pick the point of view they like, and it is true that being 913 miles from Oaxaca, and in the USA, and very much of the USA for my whole life, I will bring my own read into the events of which I learn. As we all do with all events. But from what I understand from paying attention for the last year or so is that there continues to be a showdown in Oaxaca that is really representative of a showdown (that should be) happening all over the world. This is one of the reasons I feel it is so important to keep an eye on Oaxaca. They engage this corrosive and entropic encroachment. So many of U.S. just talk about it. And expect elected leaders to take care of it. As if they are not of the same cloth that wove FeCal's throne.

The recent history of Mexico, that of the last five hundred years, is the story of permanent confrontation between those attempting to direct the country toward the path of Western civilization and those, rooted in Mesoamerican ways of life, who resist. The first plan arrived with the European invaders but was not abandoned with independence. ”

-Guillermo Banfil Batalla

I'm not going to qualify my ideas, doubts or assumptions here too much—that's not really what I'm known for, and it's not really who I am. I often shape my assessments like a fever-driven half dreaming sculptor working by the light of the moon; by many mediums and means, some empirical, many not. I value intuition, unlike the USA's ethos. I value the night sense, the dawn sense, the nerves' quiet hintings, the heart's heated runes, the wisdom of twilight apparition. I know what I know, that is to say. And I know my role is to say it as I see it.

State control and corruption have come for the people. All over the world. In Oaxaca continues the great "civilizing" that has destroyed so many indigenous peoples all over, the "civilizing" we are doing in Iraq, the "civilizing" that was done to the indigenous of North America, as well. The hands of greed and commerce and homogeneity and tourism and the coopting of tradition for commercialization and fixed elections and the oppression of truth and the Power of the People reach deeper into Oaxaca. And la gente want nothing to do with this "Being civilized," this Western disease that so many value so much.

'To civilize' is a key expression. In Mexico, civilizing has always meant de-Indianizing, imposing the ways of the West.”

- Guillermo Banfil Batalla

Perhaps African Americans looking to Africa's woes are the only other ones aside from (like-minded) Mexican Americans who can understand how much it pains me to watch Mexico—right under my eyes—being slowly picked and peeled and pulped and punished by the hands of "Free Trade," and el Presidente's shallow dreams of a glossy First World sheen that hides the decaying soul of Mexico's true beauty; to watch the selling off of ejidos, the desperation of so many campesinos, the corruption now crushing the people, the collusion between the crooked forces in the US and the crooked forces in Mexico. It is painful. And this is why the APPO and the Teachers Union Section 22, and the Zapatistas give me hope. They are not about ruling over others, or siphoning off resources for the elite, and they are not for empty rhetoric or bumper stickers or pulling levers in the name of idealism. They are for the people united, Los Pueblos Unidos, they are for la acción, they are the Power of the People. Here in the USA, that kind of true unity and resistance to corruption is all over but the shouting and the symbolism.

But in Mexico, it ain't over. And the shouting is the least of it.

Here is my hope for la gente, and for todo el mundo, now engaged in these epic battles.