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Other entries in Oaxaca

70.000 protesters and us..

We were both looking forward to Oaxaca, as it was recommended by our guide book and by fellow travellers as a beautiful city. We arrived at the bus staion which is as usual outside of the city. We caught a local bus into the city centre and when we got out, we noticed tents everywhere and soon understood that there were thousands of people virtually living on the streets. We looked around for hotels - which wasn't easy with all these tents an people in the streets - and found one in one of the "besieged" streets.

The next morning, while having a coffee on the central square (which also was full of tents and people), we spoke to a local TV reporter who told us that all these people were teachers and their families  - an estimated total of 70000 people - protesting for 23 days now for a wage increase. He further told us that negotiations were in a dead end with the state gouvernor refusing to agree and the protester demanding his resignation...
It was unbelievable, all these people besiegeing the city for over three weeks now with women and children sleeping on cardboard on the hard streets...

We walked around the city, which is supposed to have a particularly beautiful colonial atmosphere, but we didn't see much of it due to many tents blocking the view... We therefore decided to leave early next morning to head to Tehuantepec, halfway to San Cristobal...or so we thought....

It was 5 o'clock in the morning, when Olga woke me up. There was lot of noise downstairs in the hotel and we heard a woman crying, coughing and throwing up. Olga had woken up about 10-15 minutes earlier and had heard loud banging on the streets and people shouting. What was going on...?

The woman was taken care of by the family who ran the hotel and we went back to bed without being able to sleep too much.... The noises on the street came and went but it was still impossible to figure out what was going on. As soon as daylight broke, a helicopter started to circle the city centre at very low altitude. We finally got out of our room but were told immediatey to return by the hotel owner.
The police had stormed the city and street battles between them and the demonstrators were in full rage...
After an hour or so, all the hotel guests gathered in the little courtyard - the hotel entrance door well barricaded - and we were given a simple breakfast and coffee. We were told that the police had attacked the protesters with clubs and tear gas (we found out that the woman we heard at 5 AM was actually hit by a teargas grenade...). It all was a bit like in a movie...

At around 11 AM, the owner checked the situation on the streets and we all went out together to get some water and food. The streets looked like a war zone. Most of the tents were destroyed or burned but the demonstrators were still there. It seemed that the police had lost this battle and taken retreat... We saw many young men armed with metal bars and wooden clubs, other people were sitting in the streets, injured with bloody bandages around their heads. Again it felt like being in a movie...

We were advised to get out of the city as quickly as possible as the police was surely to come back. As there were no buses leaving the city, we therefore caught a "collectivo" (small people carrier) with two other hotel guests (Lucas and Sabine from Switzerland) and headed to Zipolite on the pacific cost... Just out of the city !!!

In later appeared that we were right in doing so as the battle continued during the next night and day with more violent clashes between demonstrators and police... It was all in all quite an adventure, even though we hardly saw anything and I doubt that we were in any serious danger at any time. We are not sure how the situation is today but we hope that they will come to a peacefull agreement....

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