Update: After a phone conversation with my parents it became clear that I have to add a note somewhere on the site that I often anonynomize the names of people I talk about, especially if not all they are doing is completely legal. And therefore: No, Petra is not German, although the name might sound like it.

On the first of December, Mexico’s other president Felipe Calderon (FP) was inaugurated in a five minute ceremony after having slipped into a parliament through a hole in the wall. Previously, parliament had been occupied and blocked by members of the left wing coalition supporting Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) for three days, while members of Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN) also slept there in order to keep space free for FP and his ceremony. FP is the president who will actually be recognized by the Mexican military and the Mexican federal police (PFP) and, more importantly, the Pentagon.

While the federal delegates were at the ceremony in San Lazaro, AMLO spoke to a crowd of some 10,000s at the Zocalo in Mexico, Districto Federal (DF) in the early morning hours. Thereafter, he lead a march towards the national auditorium for a general assembly of opposition forces, which was dissolved by police forces a few hours later.
The inaguration of FP marks an end of a five months period of civil resistance since the elections on July 2nd, and at the same time 5.5 months of a lot more bloody resistance in Oaxaca since June 14th. All barricades there have been permanently removed, and the police has arrested a large amount of supporters of the Autonomous Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People (APPO) (250 November 27th-29th according to the police’s own numbers, some hundreds more according to the APPO, 90 thereof teachers). Therefore, FP will not have to get his hands too dirty, if he plays it wisely.

Petra and Tom, both rather perplexed by the rapid change of events, were in DF this day, just like most other western activists who had been in Oaxaca before. Petra summarized it all as: “it’s really really sad, everything is gone and everyone we knew is being tortured in prison now.” Tom was trying to get addresses of people hiding out in Oaxaca whom he could help get out by offering to accompany him. But when I left on the evening of December 2nd, he still had not been able to secure an address or name neither from some folks from the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) nor from the APPO camp in DF (that is being secured by DFs city police, due to the PRD holding the the government of DF).

However, this does not necessarily mean the end of the period of uncertainty, hope and civil resistance in Mexico. A lot is dependent upon how AMLO will try to get the laws his cabinet proposes passed into actual working laws, and whether other governors will commit similar atrocities as Ulises Ruiz of the Party of Institutionalized Revolution (PRI) committed when attacking the teacher’s union on July 14th. Any such act will almost certainly be taken as an excuse to start up an organization similar to the APPO, and create another hell hole for any sitting president.

The APPO camp in Mexico DF could neither confirm nor deny that my name was on the list of 100 foreigners who are on the list of people having been actively supporting the APPO and thereby violating the Mexican Constitution which states in article 29 that foreigners are not allowed to intermingle in Mexican politics. I therefore have decided not to try my luck and not go back to Oaxaca, at least not as long as the governor has not been exchanged.