MECIXO: Violence erupts in Oaxaca after demonstrators clash with police

Tensions rose again in the Mexican tourist town in Oaxaca on Monday (November 20) when striking teachers and leftists clashed with police. The demonstrators attacked police with molotov cocktails and rocks and police responded by using tear gas, causing residents, tourists and street vendors to flee the area. The poor southern state of Oaxaca has been gripped for six months by the kind of violent political crisis that many in Washington and Wall Street thought had ended when Mexicans voted the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, out of the presidency six years ago. Outgoing President Vicente Fox's conservative government has been helpless to stop the conflict between the state governor Ulises Ruiz and leftists, striking teachers and indigenous groups who are seeking to force him from office. At least a dozen people have been killed in the Oaxaca violence, mostly protesters shot by shadowy gunmen believed by human rights groups to be off-duty police loyal to PRI Gov. Ulises Ruiz. Rival demonstrations along streets often barricaded by protesters are almost a daily occurrence in Oaxaca's pretty colonial capital, now daubed by graffiti against Ruiz. Oaxaca borders Chiapas, where in 1994 leftist Zapatista rebels burst from the jungles in a brief but bloody uprising.

ITN Source | November 21, 2006

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