Day 5-6

P1000078.jpg
Originally uploaded by Jeff Rae.

I’ve gotten a bit behind in my bog entries so I’d like to sum up Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Tuesday we to the Santo Domingo in the morning to find that during the night someone torched all of the tarps and encampments the movement had set up. No one knew who actually did it but it seems that it was the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) or Governor Ulisis thugs (which is pretty much the same thing). The evidence of the torching was all around as there were huge burn spots on the ground and chucks of blue plastic from the tarps. Even though the encampment was burned people had already begun rebuilding. We met some of our new friends and talked for a while about what would be coming up the rest of the week. Our contacts told us that the rest of the week would be mostly people resting and preparing for Saturday when the people will retake the Zocalo from the PFP. We also heard a rumor that many of the PFP was pulling out of the Zocalo because they were needed to stop any trouble that may happen in Mexico City with the coming inauguration on December 1. We walked the 2 blocks from Santo Domingo to the Zocalo where all the fighting the day before had taken place. All was calm and once inside the Zocalo it was obvious that many of the PFP have left. With that said there are still several thousand PFP still occupying the Zocalo. We left the Zocalo to run some errands. The main thing was to find gas masks, which was surprisingly easy and cheap. By the time we finished our errands it was dark and we were back in the Zocalo. We watched the PFP for a while rotating shifts and moving equipment. It seems that the first day when we were in the Zocalo there were about 4,000 PFP and now it seems like there is about half as many if not less. While walking away one of the PFP brass walked behind us and asked us where we were from and what we were doing. We told him we were from the US and were documentarians (there was no use lying since we had gas masks in our bags). He seemed satisfied and was probably annoyed at our poor Spanish and let us go. We walked back through Santo Domingo and even though some of the encampment was rebuilt it was a ghost town. The people that had been sleeping there holding the encampment were no longer there.

Wednesday morning we had a meeting with some people we had met at Santo Domingo to go over video. I talked to several people from the movement about what would happen Saturday. I asked one companero if on Saturday the people would be victorious and he laughed and smiled and said, “I hope so”.

We went towards the Zocalo to grab a bite to eat and when we were done and started heading towards Santo Domingo and there was a march heading right for us! It’s amazing how things happen here. The march was of law students and their school is right next to the PFP roadblock at the Zocalo. They were all dressed very nicely and held copes of the Mexican Constitution in their hands. When the students came to the PFP roadblock the PFP put on their gas masks and readied. The students took a desk from inside the law school and stood on it giving speech after speech. “It is our public right to access the Zocalo”, “We paid for these tanks and armaments and you use them against the people, how dare you!” the students said. Professors from the law school also made speeches shaming the PFP about their sexual assaults of local women. Speakers were put on the balcony of the law school and more students made speeches. After 40 minutes of speeches the students ended their demonstration and returned to the school and went home. I only had my point and shoot with me since this was an unannounced march, and that’s what I have uploaded on my flickr account.

Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffrae/sets/

Siempre en la lucha!