I’m a university professor, a political scientist, who has been traveling and/or conducting research in Mexico for nearly twenty years. As a researcher, my interests are wide-ranging, and I have a few significant publications under my belt, but the reasons I keep returning to the same countries, the same cities and pueblos, are more personal than professional -- I have a love affair with Mexico. I’ve cultivated some life-long relationships with some fascinating people I met in some pretty weird places. I’m always looking for opportunities, especially funded opportunities, to return to Mexico. This past summer my college awarded me a small grant to further a little pet project of mine, researching how immigration has been affecting communities in Oaxaca State. I was especially interested in how immigration was affecting indigenous communities practicing a traditional system of customary law and local governance called usos y costumbres. I had put a significant amount of time and energy into planning my field research, which included observing the July 2 national elections in these indigenous communities.

However, my research plans were thwarted by an unexpected and still-ongoing event: a teachers’ strike, 70,000 strong across Oaxaca State. Thousands of teachers occupied Oaxaca City in early June, bringing the local economy to a standstill and resulting in sporadic violent clashes with state authorities. After a violent June 14 police crackdown, travel to Oaxaca was dangerous, so I took a wait-and-see approach while I observed the presidential campaigns in Mexico City, particularly the campaign of leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It was a remarkable experience and I love Mexico City, but I was determined to make progress on my research project and observe the elections in Oaxaca. So, in spite of warnings, roadblocks, and some other difficulties, I traveled to Oaxaca City.

I quickly realized it would be practically impossible (even potentially dangerous) for me to even attempt to pursue my original objectives. The teachers’ strike distorted everything, and it certainly affected the outcome of the July 2 elections in Oaxaca.

Elections in Mexico: Leading Up to a Political Crisis

The July 2006 elections proved to be one of the most hotly contested, costly, problematic, and important in Mexico’s political history. In fact, the president-elect was not even declared until the first week of September. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had come in second place with a margin of approximately one-half of a percentage point, believed the prevalence of irregularities and inconsistencies pointed to an organized fraud. His supporters took to the streets in some of the largest public demonstrations in Mexico City’s post-revolutionary history. Meanwhile, López Obrador challenged the election results by filing a series of formal complaints with the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación, Mexico’s electoral court. He and his supporters demanded a complete vote-by-vote recount. However, after considering the evidence, counting ten percent of the ballots, and deliberating the case, the court unanimously declared Felipe Calderón, of the center-right PAN party, president-elect.

The final margin of victory came down to a difference of just 220,000 votes, and neither of the two frontrunners won more than 36 percent of the electorate’s vote. López Obrador’s response to the court’s decision has been more sit-ins and demonstrations, a call to not recognize the incoming government as legitimate, and the creation of a “parallel government” with him as “president.” Needless to say, Felipe Calderón’s first few months, or more, in office will be challenging.

Although I couldn’t be in Oaxaca as soon as I would have liked, my time certainly was not wasted. I attended a huge rally to observe the celebration of what so many supporters and close observers thought was the inevitable victory of López Obrador. It was interesting to see how quickly city workers had beautified Mexico City’s famous Zócalo for the event. After all, the city government was, and remains, controlled by the leftist PRD, López Obrador’s party.

Most of the independent polls leading up to the close of the campaign indicated López Obrador would likely win by a significant margin. Of course, polls sponsored by each of the political parties always showed their candidates as doing much better than the independent polls. All the polls had very high “no-response”/”don’t know” rates, which meant there were many undecided voters and/or people who did not want to say who they supported. Of course, since I was in Mexico City during the campaign, most of the people with whom I spoke expressed passionate support for López Obrador, the former Mayor of Mexico City. However, more than a few people told me they thought the former ruling party, the PRI, would make a comeback after its embarrassing defeat in 2000.

In the weeks leading up to the elections, I voraciously read the national and local newspapers and informally interviewed as many Mexicans as possible, but I was struck by how hesitant so many people were to discuss the elections. It seemed as though some people harbored fears of possible reprisals if it were discovered they supported the “wrong” party. It was also striking to see how convinced so many López Obrador supporters were that he would win. It was an interesting time to be in Mexico, and the World Cup Soccer tournament compounded the experience.

In fact, many armchair observers and some serious analysts thought Mexico’s performance in the World Cup would affect the outcome of the elections. An early loss would indicate Mexico had not been heading down the correct path and the incumbent political party, the PAN, would suffer the consequences while the team’s potential victories would indicate just the opposite, generating a favorable opinion of the PAN. However, Mexico was defeated by Argentina (2-1) in a well-fought match in the fourth round, but had Mexico advanced to the semi-finals, the match would have been played the night before the elections. Who knows how the election outcome would have been affected had that happened?

Needless to say, Mexicans were more wrapped up in the World Cup than they were in the campaign. Voter interest was also affected by the poor quality of the candidates and the negative campaigning. Mexicans have become so disillusioned with politics and so inured to lies and corruption that many are now politically apathetic. Many also believe the political class to be self-serving, distant, and unresponsive to their needs and demands.

There were other factors and events conditioning attitudes about the upcoming elections. Poverty and unemployment had not been ameliorated during President Vicente Fox’s term, with approximately half of all Mexicans living below the poverty line and more than 25 percent of Mexicans living on less than two dollars a day (Human Development Report 2005). In fact, the World Bank described the poorest in Mexico as living sub-Saharan African poor, while thirteen U.S. dollar billionaires continued to increase their fortunes. Moreover, continuing high-level corruption and escalating drug-related violence created a pervasive climate of insecurity.

Fears of government repression and state violence also surfaced in the town of San Salvador Atenco in Mexico State due to a police crackdown on illegal street vendors. Indeed, as in many municipalities throughout Mexico, street vendors had become increasingly prevalent, largely because there are so many obstacles and costs associated with entering the formal economy. The vendors do what they view as necessary in order to survive, but they also tend to clog streets and sidewalks and they do sell pirated products and contraband. The crackdown in Atenco was brutal, and in the wake of the violence, human rights organizations documented illegal detentions, torture, and sexual assaults on women by the police. Of course, each of the three major political parties blamed the police brutality on the other two parties. They event weighed heavily on the minds of Mexicans, especially on those of the teachers in Oaxaca.

The Teachers’ Strike in Oaxaca: The Escalation of an Enduring Conflict

Teachers in Oaxaca are among the most poorly paid in all of Mexico, with some making as little as $150 dollars a month. Education in general is poorly funded. Many “schools” lack buildings, classrooms, desks, books, pencils, and even chalk. There is also a lack of bilingual and multilingual teachers in the most ethnically and linguistically complex state in Mexico. In Oaxaca, sixteen distinctly different ethnic groups speak approximately fifty of the sixty-two living indigenous languages in Mexico. While most teachers in Oaxaca live just at or just below the poverty line, government officials not only enjoy high salaries and generous pensions but also can feed from the trough of corruption.

Oaxaca State continues to be governed by what detractors believe to be some of the most self-serving and corrupt politicians in all of Mexico. The state government has been controlled by the PRI since the PRI’s founding in 1929, and its leaders come from the retrograde caudillo wing of the party. The current governor of Oaxaca State, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, is an autocrat who doles out favors to his cronies to ensure his rule. Put simply, politics in Oaxaca have been running decades behind the liberalizing reforms that have swept the rest of Mexico. Governor Ruiz became notorious for implementing big-money construction projects to provide golden opportunities for material self-aggrandizement, kick-backs, and pay-offs. He is rumored to have rigged the 2004 elections to put himself in office and to have appropriated millions of dollars now deposited in off-shore bank accounts.

Nearly every year, the teachers’ union in Oaxaca State organizes sit-ins, demonstrations, and/or strikes just before new contract negotiations begin. It’s a little boogie the teachers have been dancing with the state government for many decades. Sometimes the conflict escalates into isolated incidences of violence, but there was always negotiation, some compromise, and at least a temporary resolution. This year, the teachers began their strike demanding a modest salary increase and more education funding, and most people thought their demands were reasonable. But this was an election year, and the hard-nosed and corrupt Governor Ruiz was not willing to give in. He refused to negotiate or even listen to the teachers’ demands, which attracted more supporters to the strike and brought more teachers to Oaxaca City.

The strategy of the striking teachers was to make their demands and numbers known by staging marches, setting up roadblocks and barricades, and occupying the entire downtown area of Oaxaca City, including the central plaza and tourist zone. Oaxaca depends upon tourism, and the teachers thought shutting down the city and squeezing the economy would force Ruiz to relent. Hotel and restaurant owners and their employees, taxicab drivers, and shopkeepers catering to tourists were directly affected. Millions of tourist dollars were being lost and many locals who were sympathetic to the strike started to get frustrated, and many parents become upset because their children (more than one millions students) were missing so many classes.

So, on June 14 Ruiz called out the state and local police to forcibly remove the striking teachers from Oaxaca City. Early in the morning, just before dawn, hundreds of police officers, some dressed in riot gear, descended on the central plaza to disperse thousands of teachers. Tear-gas canisters were dropped from a helicopter circling overhead, both rubber and real bullets were fired, and the teachers’ encampments were ransacked. Several teachers and a few police officers were seriously injured. However, by the end of the day, the police, perhaps realizing they were violently repressing their children’s teachers and/or noticing the number of cameras and video recording devices, backed off. By the following day, the teachers retook the downtown area. But rumors started to fly that one child and as many as 22 teachers had been killed and many more were being tortured in clandestine jails cells. Independent investigators would later reveal that perhaps two people were killed.

Needless to say, tensions heightened and spread as the teachers’ resolve hardened and the strike became a political movement. Leaders and members of some of Mexico’s hard-line leftist organizations joined the cause, which evolved from reasonable teacher demands to cries for the resignation and criminal prosecution of Governor Ruiz. President Vicente Fox remained curiously distant from the conflict in Oaxaca, emphasizing that Mexico is a federal republic and that the matter should be resolved without his interference. Of course, the only candidate who came down on the side of the teachers was López Obrador, but he cancelled a previously planned campaign visit to the state so as not to appear as though he was fomenting violence. He said he didn’t want to send the wrong message.

In the days leading up to the July 2 elections, Oaxaca City was essentially controlled, virtually shut down, by the teachers. Tourists were being advised to avoid the city. Many busses were cancelled. However, I arrived just six days before the elections on a first-class bus with only four passengers, including myself. Luckily, I was able to find lodging just outside the teacher-controlled area, and the first thing I did was walk around the entire perimeter, talking to as many people as possible.

By the next day, I was able to gain access to the central plaza, which was curiously absent of people. Teachers focused their attention on all of the possible entry points to the downtown area, and I was warned that I might be escorted out of the area at any moment and not to take pictures without first asking permission. Makeshift shelters of blue tarps or cardboard had been set up in various locations and graffiti was to be found everywhere on the walls of the colonial buildings. However, not all businesses were closed. Hot-dog vendors catered to the teachers, and a few cafes and cantinas remained open, but there were very few customers. Fortunately, Bar Superior, an establishment I have frequented for a number of years was open. It was located just a few blocks inside the perimeter, which helped me gain legitimacy with teachers encamped just outside the door.

I spent the days and nights leading up to the elections talking with as many people as possible. Most of my established informants were caught up in the strike, but I was able to contact almost all of them. Speeches and press conferences were held every day as the international media arrived, and the movement started to gain a counterculture feel as there were poetry readings, art installations, and musical performances. Moreover, T-shirts emblazoned with political slogans and DVDs of the police repression were being sold in the streets. I began to realize that the movement had been hijacked by its more radical, leftist elements as the teachers’ began vocalizing increasingly more unrealistic demands. There was no way the entire state government of Oaxaca was going to step down and surrender itself to a tribunal of teachers for judgment, as some strikers were demanding.  The movement’s leaders even occupied the seat of city government and set up their own “administration.”  

Since this was an election year, the teachers called for a “punishment vote” against the PRI and the PAN, which meant they were calling for all Oaxacans to vote for López Obrador. “Neither a vote for the PAN nor for the PRI” was the slogan. The Instituto Federal Electoral, the independent commission overseeing elections in Mexico, listed Oaxaca as one of the “hot spots” for potential electoral violence. Tensions were running very high, and there were daily scuffles between teachers and suspected spies and infiltrators.

Oaxacans sympathetic to the teachers started to lose patience. One taxicab driver put it this way: “I’m barely getting by. There are no tourists. I’m a Oaxacan and they won’t let me pass through the downtown area. Who are they to tell me where I can and cannot go? Where are the authorities?” The strike was becoming counterproductive. After all, many people who had nothing to do with the teachers’ plight or the police repression were suffering economically because of the strike. What most galled the average shopkeeper, employee, or waiter was that the teachers continued to receive their pay, however meager, while they were striking. Not surprisingly, people expected the worst on election day, Sunday, July 2.

Saturday was a strange day. Surprisingly, the day before the elections most of the teachers rolled up their tarps and packed up their belongings and buggered out. They had to return to their assigned polling places to vote the following day. Special polling places for people in transit had been set up across Mexico, and several additional special polling places had been set up in Oaxaca City, but there was no way they could handle so many people. As the teachers left, the street vendors and the few tourists left in Oaxaca City as well as many locals flooded the central plaza. Oaxaca was able to take a short break from the strike and return to some semblance of normalcy, if only briefly. The atmosphere would have been even more festive (or perhaps even become violent) had Mexico’s electoral dry law not gone into effect just after midnight that morning. No alcohol was to be sold all day Saturday and Sunday. Most people walked through the city streets viewing the graffiti or they settled down to watch the World Cup match.

I anticipated some conflict on election day, and I had staked out a couple of polling places to observe. The polling places for local residents were not particularly crowded, and in most cases the vote proceeded without incident. The typical wait was less than an hour. However, the situation was much different at the special polling places. Some lines were as long as three city blocks, and in more than one special polling place there were not enough ballots. People who had waited in line for four hours or more would arrive at the front of the line only to be informed that the polling station was closing early or they had to wait for more ballots. It made for some high tensions, but I never witnessed anything more than shouting and some shoving, but there were news reports of fisticuff incidences.

The Insitituto Federal Electoral had dedicated a significant amount of resources and brain power into devising a quick count on the night of the elections. The director claimed that if the preliminary results fell within predetermined statistical parameters, a winner could be announced by midnight. However, it quickly became evident the election was too close to call. It looked like the PAN candidate, Felipe Calderón, had just barely edged out, by a razor-thin margin, the PRD candidate, López Obrador. All of the candidates had been advised to not claim victory until the final tally had been confirmed. Of course, López Obrador had the most difficult time following that advice. Significantly, the clear loser among the candidates of the three leading political parties was Roberto Madrazo of the PRI.

All sorts of rumors and conspiracy theories circulated to explain the July 2 outcome. Many of López Obrador’s supporters (and others) thought a pact been had negotiated between the Foxistas (the PAN) and the Salinasistas (the PRI), the cronies of former of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to prevent a PRD victory. Others thought the conservative political class and the wealthiest Mexicans, backed by the Bush administration, hijacked the election to make sure Mexico wouldn’t turn to the Left. Some thought a mysterious algorithm had been embedded in the computer program designed to count to the vote. The program would surreptitiously and undetectably pump up the vote for the PAN candidate, Felipe Calderón.

Indeed, there were some localized inconsistencies and inaccuracies in enough polling places for López Obrador to make a legitimate case. But there was no evidence of organized and widespread vote manipulation and fraud. The vast majority of official observers deemed the elections to be clean and transparent, and López Obrador’s defeat can more likely be explained by inaccurate polls that couldn’t nail down how the independents and others were going to vote. Moderate Mexicans probably grew weary of López Obrador’s leftist rhetoric, and many would-be PRD supporters were encouraged to not participate in the elections by Subcomandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatistas in Chiapas State.

Nonetheless, a solid majority of the vote in Oaxaca went to the PRD candidate. Of course, as López Obrador took his case to the electoral court, the teachers in Oaxaca rallied around him, and many teachers joined López Obrador’s “parallel government.” At the time of this writing, the teachers’ strike persists and Oaxaca continues to suffer. In fact, the biggest annual tourist event in the state, the Guelaguetza, was cancelled. This week-long event is a celebration of Oaxaca’s ethnic and cultural diversity. It draws people from around the world and generates millions of dollars in revenue. But not this year. Moreover, some analysts believe the situation in Oaxaca is reflective of the deep divisions and problems across all of Mexico. It could be a harbinger of things to come in other parts of the country.