Strike that

“Just like we have the right to block traffic on this street, we have the right to our sexual freedom.”  So yelled the woman bearing the megaphone during a gay pride march I rode by last weekend.  There were about 50 marchers of all ages and sexual preferences.  They were parading down the middle of Porfirio Diaz street, one of the main boulevards and bus routes through the city, midday Saturday.  Quite a traffic jam built up behind them.

Front of the march.

Marchers.

I agree there is a right to sexual freedom, and I was thrilled to see such a diverse group of marchers publicly proclaiming it.  To do so here, where people (in discussion, at least) are not openly hostile to gays but nor is there widespread acceptance, takes guts.  But it seemed strange to compare the right to sexual freedom to the right to block traffic.  I never thought of the latter as a fundamental human right.

Well, it turns out that in Oaxaca many people do think there is a right to block traffic.  According to our American friend who lives here, blocking traffic in Mexico is a constitutionally-protected form of protest.  (She jokes that next time she gets a ticket for double parking she will tell the officer she is protesting the lack of parking places.)  The Mexicans I have asked do not agree that the constitution protects the right to block traffic, but they say it is a de facto right because no government official in his or her right mind would try to stop it.

What is the “it” I refer to?  In the case of the gay pride march, it was a march down the middle of the street that blocked traffic for an hour or so.  We have seen similar marches every few weeks, for causes ranging from students protesting a school’s uniform requirements to taxi drivers protesting the amount of new medallions being awarded to public retirees protesting the lack of benefits.  We even read about a march in April to protest all the marches.  Marchers carried blank posters and handed out blank “complaint forms.”  They blocked traffic the whole time.

Another form of protest that involves blocking streets is the planton, or occupation.  We have seen several groups from rural communities take over small streets in this capital city to demand something for their town, like a school or a medical post.  The most famous planton happens every May, when teachers from around the state abandon their schools to set up camp in the Zócalo, which is the city’s central square, and in the streets around it.  This year’s planton lasted about two weeks, which is fairly typical.  In 2006, however, when the state governor arrogantly tried to remove the teachers by force, the occupation lasted six months and resulted in several deaths, including the shooting death of a journalist from the United States.  Oaxaca received terrible publicity around the world, which continues to hurt its tourist industry today.

Most often, it seems, the protests here involve setting up actual blockades on main thoroughfares and highways. Protesters wielding signs and posters (but not weapons, as far as I can tell) stop four to eight buses and make everybody get off.  They tell the drivers to turn the buses sideways, so they block all lanes of traffic, then they let the drivers go too.  The protestors occupy the roadway for one to maybe four hours.  During the blockade, the police divert traffic so you rarely see what the protest is about.  Once diverted away from the blockade, you are on your own to find an alternate route.

The result is chaos, with cars and buses racing around neighborhoods trying to find a way through.  (Since Natalie and I often walk, we usually learn about blockades when we see crowded buses barreling along small, residential streets.)  The chaos is increased because most blockades happen during one or more of the four daily rush hours, which are morning (to work), before lunch (back home), after lunch (to work), and evening (back home).  Imagine if protestors blocked the intersection of Market and Van Ness streets in San Francisco, or Broadway and Telegraph streets in Oakland, from four to seven on a weekday evening.  Then imagine if it happened at least every two to three weeks, and at times, several times a week (and on a few occasions, several times a day at intersections throughout the city).  That is what the blockades are like here.

Natalie was standing on the corner when the buses suddenly unloaded their passengers and blocked the street for this blockade.  It happened on the last day of the teachers' planton.

What stands out about all three kinds of protest – the marches, the plantones, and the blockades – is that they appear to target the general population instead of the specific government office or business that is causing the grievance.  In this respect, the protests are different from most strikes in the United States.  Strikers at home might set up a picket line to deter people from patronizing a company (or temporary workers from filling their positions), or hold a rally outside a government building, but rarely do they disrupt entire sections of the city.  In contrast, the strategy here appears to be to interfere with all business as usual enough to force the government or other entity make concessions.  (Usually it is the government.)  Although not quite innocent bystanders – since most of the people affected by the protests are voting citizens who therefore can make a difference – the general population tends to get caught in the crossfire of whatever the dispute might be.

The question is whether this tactic works. I have postponed writing about the protests in hopes of finding a halfway decent answer to this question, but to no avail.  The media coverage of the protests is pathetic at best, and usually biased against the protestors, making it impossible to evaluate whether they got what they wanted.  This also means most people we talk to about the protests are uninformed.  They offer kneejerk reactions, like saying the teachers occupy the city because they are too lazy to teach, but little else.  (The “teachers protest because they are lazy” explanation always astounds me, since leaving home to camp out in the middle of a city several hours away during the beginning of the rainy season takes a lot more effort than showing up for class.) 

In many cases, even the protestors cannot articulate their demands. We spoke to several teachers during the planton, for instance, who said they wanted better school facilities in rural towns and an end to privatization of schools, but when we asked for specifics they did not know how far short the governor’s budget proposal fell or whether there were any actual proposals to privatize schools.  It almost seemed like the protest happened simply out of habit – a rite of spring for teachers in Oaxaca – although in the end the governor did make several concessions.

Yet the protests must accomplish something, or they would not keep happening. People I have said that to in Oaxaca usually disagree.  They say the protests have become part of the local culture, and that the unions and other activists simply use protests as the default negotiating technique, before trying any other kind of discourse.  But the protests bring a group’s message to people who might not otherwise take note – particularly in a city with a media that kowtows to whatever political party is in power.  Since top politicians usually send their kids to private schools, they might not think much about the situation in public schools unless forced to sit through a blockade or two. Nor will people in the city of Oaxaca give much thought to opening a health post in a town four hours away unless protestors from the town set up camp in the middle of the capital.  Further, it takes a lot of effort and resources to mobilize workers to take over the streets. I doubt the teachers’ union would have orchestrated the two-week planton if it could have gotten what it wanted without the effort.

Even if protestors do not gain specific concessions, the protests allow a group to flex its collective muscle.  A lot of people think that is why the teachers’ planton happened this year, when the teachers seemed relatively content in the weeks before the planton.  It would explain why the teachers we spoke to could not articulate what they were after.  The principal objective may have been to show the union’s strength, not to obtain specific concessions.  Indeed, a friend who works in the Oaxaca Mayor’s Office told me his colleagues consider the potential blockade ramifications of every decision they make.  Thus when all of Oaxaca's garbage trucks parked in the middle of the main southern access to the city to protest increased dumping fees, the city did not lower the fees, but officials will think twice before raising them again.  The blockade served as a show of strength, and as a threat of future action, not as a means to change what already occurred.

Unfortunately, the political discourse in Oaxaca seems to revolve around marches, plantones and blockades.  (And this is a Oaxacan phenomenon.  We are told that activists throughout Mexico look to Oaxaca for its expertise in staging protests.)  Mere public demonstrations – like those that happen in front of city halls and in state capitals throughout the United States – are not enough.  A group is not taken seriously until it takes to the streets and causes a traffic jam.  Whether this is the fault of the government for ignoring issues until the city is brought to its knees, or the protestors for shunning less disruptive forms of advocacy, the sad reality is that the protests, and the huge social and economic costs they entail, have become a routine part of life in Oaxaca.  It is not likely to change any time soon.

So, returning to the gay pride march, initially it struck me as odd to compare the right to sexual freedom to the right to block traffic.  But on further reflection, what the woman with the megaphone meant is that the gay community has a right to be seen and heard as much as any other group has that right.  In Oaxaca, for better or worse, the accepted way to be seen and heard is to march down the middle of the street, to camp out in the street, or to block the street with busses. When framed like that, although I hate to admit it, the right to block traffic is a right worth protecting.

I already have written too much for a single post, but if you have made it this far, I have one more thing to say.  I hope nothing I have written deters anyone from visiting Oaxaca.  As a tourist, the protests have little impact on what you see or do.  It is easy enough to arrange your schedule to miss the blockades, or to take taxis, whose drivers use their radios to avoid them.  Even during the teachers’ planton, when the newspapers reported that the teachers were rude and that the Zócalo was full of garbage, that was not our experience.  When we walked through the occupied square with my parents, the teachers were perfectly nice and the only garbage we saw was where it belonged.

Walking near the Zócalo during the teachers' planton.  The teachers camped in the tents on the right while tourists carried on business as usual on the left.

Nor are the protests violent.  The events of 2006 were an exception, but nothing like that has happened before or after in Oaxaca.  Nothing suggests it will happen again.  


We are off to the beach tomorrow for five or six days.  We are going to Puerto Escondido then to Puerto Angel, where the turtles come to lay there eggs.  We think we are a bit early to see the turtles on the beach, but supposedly we can rent a boat to take us to swim with turtles offshore.  We might not blog until we get back, but you never know.  –Harrison