Arrest Details...

Sunday, December 3 was supposed to be a somewhat calm day for us. The police have control of Oaxaca right now. Many people in the movement are in hiding having left town or are laying low in safe houses. I was going home on the next day so decided I would pick a few things up that I wanted to bring back. Around 2:00 PM we decided to go get lunch at a pizza place about 8 or 9 blocks northwest of the Zocalo. It was just me and B and we put our order in and waited for E to meet us there. When E arrived she told us how on her way to meet us a man stopped her in the street, it was a student from the university who asked her how she was and said he had just come out of his safe house to get food for himself and the others. They didn’t speak long, but what this one student was doing was what most people in the movement were doing. While we were all sitting and eating together at the restaurant I noticed a half dozen police gathering and a few peering into the window. I said to B “The police are here, I think they are looking at us”. As soon as I finished my sentence a hand was on my shoulder in back lifting me out of my chair. Police appeared behind my 2 companions and lifted them up from their seats also. Some word were said in Spanish, I can’t really remember what but I put my hands up in the air as to not resist. We were forced outside the restaurant onto the street where we were put in the back of a pickup truck and forced to sit while police stood in the back around us. We immediately recognized that these police were not PFP but Oaxaca Municipal Police. The police made us write our name and age on a piece of paper (this would become a recurring theme the rest of the day). We asked questions of where we were being taken, what we were charged with but none of our questions were answered. We got on our cell phones and started calling anyone and everyone we could think of that could help us. The truck zoomed down streets and pulled into building that was open air once through the front gate. We were forced out of the pickup truck and officers grabbed us by the back of our pants with one hand and another hand on our shoulder and pushed us to where they wanted us to go. They took our names and ages at a small table and tried to take photographs at us. We resisted them taking our photograph saying that we wanted our consulate. The main officer in change laughed at us and said, “You are in Mexico not the United States”. We maintained our demand for the consulate and this only angered them more. We eventually decided that we would need to go along with this process and hope that people we had called could get us the support that we needed.

The next major battle was that the police wanted to separate the only woman in our group from us. After some argument we were forcefully taken separate directions. Me and B were taken to a room upstairs and E was kept downstairs. The room me and B were put in room that seemed to be an old gym that was partitioned off. There were windows facing out to the courtyard full of police and a little step to sit on. There was a TV mounted to the wall in one corner with a teargas canister next to it and a shelf on the opposite wall with 7 large trophies on it. We were kept there with 2-3 police in the room just guarding us. We made more phone calls to people telling them to get on the Indymedia IRC and let people know we are in here. Have them call the consulate and the embassy and human rights people. These would be the last phone calls that we would make from the police station.

The door to the room we were in opened and many people filed in. In the end there were 13 police officers in the room just for the two of us. An officer with a video camera came to us and wanted us to give our names and ages and a statement of why we were there (which we still had no idea why). When the main interrogator came in he backed the both of us back into a corner. He asked us why we were at the university. Who we talked to and asked us specific names of who we knew. This went on for an hour or two it is tough to say being that we had no way to tell the time. We kept telling them we were documentary filmmakers and that was our only reason and the only work we have done in Oaxaca. We also kept asking for the consulate and this really made the interrogator angry who said “You better respect me if you want me to respect you.” All of this was directed at B because my Spanish was just to poor and really seemed to frustrate the police more then anything. The main thing seemed to be is that the police had seen us all at the university and they were pissed about it.

The chief interrogator took our cell phones and my passport. B had forgotten his passport at the hotel. Another few people came in and spoke with us but not nearly as harsh as the chief interrogator. Eventually I was separated from B and brought down stairs by a guard holding the back of my pants pushing me along to the desk that originally took down my name and age. They made me empty my pockets and turn over all my possessions to be bagged. They also took my belt, shoelaces and hat. They made me take off my glasses and wanted to take them but after much pleading and begging I was allowed to keep them.

I was then put into a cell right next to the desk. The cell had two pipes on the floor that were exposed and were clearly what two toilets had been previously hooked up to and it all smelled of urine. The only good thing was that the cell had a window to the courtyard and I could see my friend E. I was very happy to see her and that she was okay. She got to stay on a bunch outside of my cell near the desk. She said that she was well and that a friend of ours was sending an attorney that would be here any minute!

After an hour of being in my cell a guard opened the door and once again grabbed the back of my pants and pushed me across the courtyard. While on my forced walk I saw B who also was being pushed over to the little desk that I had been at. I was taken to a small room with a man with a typewriter asked me questions. He was not very patient with my poor Spanish. Pointing at me yelling, “Cocaine!?” “Marijuana!?”. I replied, “No! No!, no cocaine no marijuana!”. He was simply asking me if I was a drug addict and other basic information. They then took my photo and grabbed me by the back of the pants pushed me back to my little cell. I saw E on the way back to my cell and she said that the lawyer was here and so was the consulate and that we would be going before a judge to hear our charges and penalty.

Eventually, I was brought out of the little cell again and pushed to a room where the judge was. There were about 7 or 8 guards standing outside watching since the room could only fit 3 people including the judge. We were all charged with molesting the public and obscenity. Basically the charges meant that “someone” had said someone fitting our description was running around pushing people and yelling bad things at people. We said that this was ridiculous and it was not possible but the judge gave us two choices, stay in jail or pay 300 pesos (roughly $30 US). There was very little choice even though the charges were bogus and both the consulate and attorney felt like we were getting out easy considering the extensive questioning about the university. E and I both paid and were able to leave but B did not have his passport so he had to remain until we could return with it. The consulate said he would remain with B until we returned with the passport. We eventually all got out and got all of our possessions except for our three cell phones. The police said that we could pick up our cell phones first thing in the morning.

We went back to the hotel and thought everything was over but around 7 PM while it was dark out two unmarked pickup trucks pulled up and we received a call from the front desk saying that the police were downstairs for us. I asked them to put the police on the phone and handed it to E who speaks Spanish fluently. The police said that we could have our cell phones back but we needed to come to the police station with them. E told them that it was to late out and that we would just come down to the station in the morning and thanked them. The trucks went away and we immediately called our attorney who said that we should meet him now and we would go to the station together. We met and I asked the attorney I he could ensure we would not be rearrested and he said he doubted it would happen but that the law in Oaxaca does whatever it wants these days and even he could be detained. So we went to the station and waited outside for the officers to come out to speak with us. The police insisted that the phones were locked up for the night and that we could not have them until the morning. Our attorney argued for quite some time even speaking with higher-ranking officers. The police also said that to their knowledge no officers had come by our hotel!

Our attorney left with us and took us though the plaza next to the police station to get us a cab back to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel we discussed all that had happened. We don’t know who the men in the unmarked trucks were but possibly it was PRI or paramilitary. Either way if we would have gotten into those trucks I have a feeling things would have turned out very badly. We barricaded the room door that night and had someone on watch all night in case anyone came back for us. The sun couldn’t come up fast enough that morning and I was off on a flight at noon.