Oaxaca, Mexico: APPO explains reasons for yesterday's battle; You're really not going to believe this.

APPO spokesman Florentino López Martínez, as yet un-disappeared,

"emphasized that the violence that occurred yesterday when APPO tried to surround the PFP was the product of an offensive against the federal forces as part of a defense of the members and sympathizers of APPO."

After laughter had died down a bit, López had everyone roaring with this one:

Appo used only legitimate force in their own defense using rocks, clubs, rockets, gasoline bombs and other objects they found along the way.

Well, I can always step just outside my door and find a grocery cart full of Molotov cocktails, stumble over ball bats and clubs and I have to be careful where I toss my cigar butts to avoid setting off the casual nail-filled rocket or bomb I find lying hither and yon.

López Martínez also vowed that APPO "would not take one step back" in its fight against Governor Ruiz Ortiz. Well, he's right about that. APPO did not take one step back yesterday, they ran back about 2 miles.

For his part, Flavio "Fat Man" Sosa, in a telephone interview because he's afraid to show his fat ass on the streets, insisted that his innocents were attacked by the PFP and that none of his people were involved in any way with any arson or destruction of property.

A reporter said in a radio interview today that he thinks he witnessed the incident that touched off the street war. He was watching a group of APPO thugs standing some 150 feet away from the PFP line at the green dumpster on Macedonio Alcalá taunting the officers. A masked punk pushing a stolen shopping cart filled with soft drink bottles - the reporter said he could not tell what they were filled with -- decided to show off to his comrades. He pushed the cart down the street right to the PFP line and then turned and continued pushing it all along the line.

The astonished PFP officers looked at one another, then two of them just reached out and snagged the punk as well as his shopping cart. They jerked him through their line and, poof! just like that he was gone. When the laughing mob saw their smart-ass comrade disappear right before their eyes, they went berserk and the fight was on.

Cool.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO