Oaxaca, Mexico: Mark's struggles with the Mexican media

In this post yesterday appeared the following attributed to Gustavo López, one of many "spokesman for APPO":

López says the PFP "may leave",

"Whenever they want, at whatever time they want, with the necessary conditions of security for their transfer, but only after establishing some preliminary measures such as an end to repression, an immediate end to persecution and an end to the harrassment of the Oaxacan people."

This was taken from a report appearing in Reforma. Today, Reforma modifies this just a bit. Firstly, Reforma says that López was talking about APPO leaving for Mexico City to negotiate with Interior, not the PFP leaving Oaxaca. Reforma has edited the quote from López like this:

"Whenever they (Interior) want, at whatever time they want, with the necessary conditions of security for their transfer (to DF), but only after establishing some preliminary measures such as an end to repression, an immediate end to persecution and an end to the harrassment of the Oaxacan people."

The strike is mine to show you the key missing word, "their" and the emphases are mine. That changes the meaning just a bit, no? I cannot even find the original version of Reforma's report from yesterday. I didn't link to it because none of my readers have a subscription to Reforma and the link would not have worked for you anyway, but I surely could use that link today. My bad.

I don't know which version to believe. Reforma offers no explanantion of the modified quote and wholly different meaning.

Reforma also reports that the rally yesterday at Juarez University, the one that was substituted for the big march and re-installation of the APPO camp at Santo Domingo, was only attended by 100 people. I hope this is true. But it could have been 10 or 1000, who knows. I should think that if APPO had been able to scrape up 1000 people, they would have come out of the university and headed for Santo Domingo. With 100, however, they decided to stay put.

Now comes this story from El Universal. This appeared last night and I didn't report it because I was incredulous. I remain incredulous this morning because it is not being trumpeted by any other news source that I can find.

El Universal quotes a Florentino López, who may or may not be one and the same Gustavo López, as saying that APPO does, indeed, have a meeting scheduled today, in Oaxaca, with a representative from Interior, Undersecretary Arturo Chávez Chávez. The newspaper says that the meeting is scheduled for "between 10 and 11 this morning at an as yet unannounced location." There is no mention of any security arrangements or guarantees which would seem to be important in light of the fact that there are outstanding arrest warrants against all of APPO's leaders and spokespersons, including both Gustavo and Florentino, even if they're the same guy.



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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, Reforma