Owners of gas stations, hotels, supermarkets and other businesses in Oaxaca City were launching a two-day strike to pressure the government into sending federal police against leftist protesters who have besieged the town for over three months.
Local business leaders said more than 2,000 establishments would close their doors for 48 hours at the end of business on Wednesday, an announcement that triggered panic buying by residents who waited in long lines to stock up on food, gasoline and other supplies.
Oaxaca has been gripped by a protest movement that began with a teachers strike and has evolved into a broader movement demanding the resignation of Oaxaca state Governor Ulises Ruiz. The protesters have set up barricades, burned buses and clashed with local police and movement opponents.
Aside from mediation by federal officials, Mexican President Vicente Fox's government has not intervened in Oaxaca.
no help
"President Vicente Fox has done nothing to help us," Fredy Alcantara, president of the Oaxaca hotel association, told reporters. "He doesn't support us and the situation is very delicate."
On Wednesday, Deputy Interior Secretary Arturo Chavez said the federal government was trying to solve the problem through negotiations, but that use of force was being considered as a "last resort."
The US Embassy in Mexico has warned US citizens traveling to Oaxaca and many have steered clear of the picturesque city, known for its colonial architecture and nearby pre-Hispanic ruins. Local business associations have estimated the protests have cost the city more than US$300 million in lost earnings.
The protesters, a mix of trade unionists, leftists, anarchists and students, accuse Ruiz of rigging his 2004 election and violently repressing dissent. The movement gained force in June, when police attacked a demonstration of striking teachers demanding a wage increase.
strike vote
On Wednesday, the Oaxaca teachers' union voted to continue their strike and support of the protests until Ruiz resigns.
Also on Wednesday, thousands of protesters in the city center reinforced barricades made of tires and corrugated iron and piled up dozens of Molotov cocktails, apparently anticipating some sort of police action.
The protesters have occupied government buildings and taken over radio and TV stations, using them to broadcast calls for rebellion.
Two people have been killed and dozens more injured in clashes between the protesters and police or armed gangs.
Ruiz has repeatedly called on the Fox administration to send in federal police to restore order.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
RSS