by Anonymous
(Chronicle of announced bullshit)
The true APPO…
The one that won’t be allowed to enter the Psuedo -Conference.
Because the true APPO doesn’t meet behind closed doors and deny access to the people.
Because the true APPO doesn’t hand out bags of food like some did in the Pseudo-Converence.
Because the true APPO is in the street, the barrio, the kitchen; it’s unemployed, looking for work.
Because the true APPO is at the intersections dressed up like clowns.
Because the true APPO wears huaraches and knows how to work in the countryside, it works in the field and eats tortillas.
Because the true APPO spends its time studying and working, not being “student leaders”.
Because the true APPO is against negotiations and candidacies.
Because the true APPO accuses VOCAL of legitimizing this bullshit.
Because the true APPO doesn’t pay for busin in campesinos like the FPR did.
Because the true APPO is not a negotiations facade that legitimized…
In the framework of a finely structured design to “win” the greatest number of council members, they had to control the structure of what’s left (or rather what the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca has been reduced to), to use letterheads to push the electoral line, with well-known PRI party government practices that they deplore in their speeches but with which they establish themselves behind the people’s back.
Three days were considered adequate for discussing the huge differences between the groups that are trying to guide the APPO’s along its path. The FPR along with the Oaxaca Commune shrewdly created countless acronyms and letterheads that they registered as Delegates to try to position themselves in the new structure called “COMO,” the same old distractive tactic of clumsy controversies created ex profeso to distract the true discussion, always attentive to the orders of the “leaders.”
The opposite current, the one called CODEP was of no great help in healing the body composed of thousands in 2006, with ridiculous (really ridiculous) interventions recalling what wasn’t done and what was badly done by their opponents, without mentioning that they also fell down on their political work (even when it’s said that they were pure). Their two activists, Ulises and Soledad, spoke 50 times in three days, thereby robbing the “passive delegates,” which they call ex-profeso, of their chance to participate.
From the very beginning, they avoided the true motives of this heavily manipulated event with an obvious tactic of wearing people down, holding “conferences” with the sacred cows that were exhausting for the participants, preventing the discussion from starting early in the day when we were all fresh.
When it came time to designate the participants in the debate table, they sent around a message on their cell phones: “We’re going to back Nazario Cuevas.” And he’s the one who ended up as Vice President, at the side of the incompetent and self-appointed Section XXII leader, Azael Santiago Chepi.
Meanwhile the so-called “black block,” young punks armed with valor and slogans, pounded on the wooden doors in their usual style, shouting out their accusations of “traitor” against David Venegas Reyes, known as “el Alebrije,” for legitimizing a spurious event with his presence, prompting most of the organizations including VOCAL to adopt that famous phrase of one of the country’s worst presidents, “I neither see them nor hear them.”
More than 4 hours were wasted on superficial discussions over whether decisions would be made by a show of hands or by consensus, without ever reaching an agreement. The debate table, bureaucratized to the extent that it resembled the assemblies of the teachers union, proposed one round of speakers after another. Even when there was no longer any interest in keeping on with the debate, they insisted on another round
The apparently manipulated debate leaders intentionally extended discussions, trying to wear out the participants, who were prevented from leaving the assembly. In effect, they were held captives at the Conference to guarantee and legitimize the accords through their obligatory presence. Nobody could leave even though there was no empathy or agreement with what was going on.
The workshops were full of reproaches against negotiations carried on by council members with the very one they say they don’t recognize (URO). The manipulation of acronyms came to a head when a delegate criticized the practice, pointing out that no group arguing under that name represented the people. In a startling display of cynicism, everyone applauded him, but nobody heard him.
It was the last straw when one workshop participant denounced the fact that the supplies donated by the teachers for the Conference had been packaged up (at that very moment) and passed out to the delegates. The woman making the denunciation was very concrete and asked Flavio Sosa to explain this action. A brief answer came from the person in charge of food (who, incidentally, spent more time sitting around than working). She said that she and others had worked hard, explaining all they had gone through, and then left. The issue of the handouts was unresolved and nobody brought it up again.
The division of the participants into segments only elicited a weak, lukewarm protest from David Vengas Reyes, who limited himself to expressing his disagreement when the decision was made without everyone’s agreement to divide those present into segments, placing plastic cords between delegates and invited guests for the rest of the event and establishing that the guests would only have the right to speak, whereas the delegates would have the right to speak and vote.
Amazingly enough, when one of the guests, Francisco Salvador Pérez (ex magistrate of the Court of Common Pleas, who was suspended because of his sympathy, and we could say militancy in the APPO) rose to speak as an invited guest. He was silenced for not being a delegate by activists of the same currents who resorted to physical force. Paradoxically, the person who sacrificed his career for having defended the APPO was hit and shoved around to stop him from speaking by those who consider themselves the owners of the acronym.
In a sea of incongruities, in which the provisions of the Call to the Conference were violated, the contradictions were denounced with paper in hand when it was convenient to the interests of a particular group, and the same inconsistencies could be observed hour after hour.
We cannot remain silence in the face of such aberrations, and we’re sure that they were evident in all the discussions lasting until the following day and that the participants will end up settling for a seat. In this document we denounce this conduct and declare that we do not agree with the privatization of the APPO and will not accept it.
The new council members will have the liberty of deciding without the interference of the FPR, the Oaxaca Commune, or CODEP. Aren’t they the very ones who fraudulently inflated the number of delegates, who are nothing more than their own people?
In spite of the conciliatory speech of Santiago Chepí, insisting that restructuring is underway, what should be recognized is that the political currents and their respective interests are suffocating the popular movement.
ALL THE CURRENTS ARE BEATING THE HELL OUT OF THE APPO.
FREE THE APPO.
FREE THE APPO.
FREE THE APPO.
FREE THE APPO.
PRESENT THE DISAPPEARED PEOPLE.
Let’s not be surprized when the true people wield their instruments of liberation and these pseudo leaders are brought before public scrutiny, because we remember everything.
February 2009.
