Johannes Wilm - a blog on social science, activism, politics, programming, etc.

Johannes Wilm

Author: johanneswilm

  • Oaxaca, how to fight a battle and loose…

    Update: All of those we had believed to be lost ended up being well and alive, living at the university. The three guys who had placed their stuff at my hostel had just been too scared to go back into town and Irma turned out to have moved to another part of the university.

    For some of the activists here, the only way of “winning” in Oaxaca is not by throwing out the governor, but by actually evicting the police from the Zocalo physically. And even if they do not have a majority in the APPO assembly, they still pursue that goal.
    This is how I experienced the battle here three days ago, that was “lost” (given the above criteria for winning) by the APPO.

    On the morning of Friday November 25th, I arrived back in Oaxaca from Mexico, DF. Although there had been a minor confrontation with some 5x demonstrators hurt here on Monday November 20th, generally everything looked like before I left this place on Sunday the 19th. I found a youth hostel close to the Santa Domingo church, with only a French crack addict living there besides me, and went down to the square in front of the church. There I met the 20 year old punk rocker and two of his friends, one of whom at least was a student. They had been on a free APPO bus from Mexico DF that night, and it wasn’t the first time: “I’ve been taking nine tours down here so far,” Abdul, a student of middle eastern cultural studies (but without family links to the Middle East), told me.

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  • There is no such thing as a puritanical revolution

    Update 2: After receiving further advice, I replaced the word “puritan” with “puritanical”. Thanks!

    Update: I received a mail pointing out that Catholicism and Puritanism do not have anything to do with one another. While that is true,and the comment made by Dehm might look odd especially to US American reader’s, it has to be understood in the context that there “Puritans” have no history in Germany and that catholics are generally seen as being more “hard core” Christians — “relative puritanical” you might say.

    I remember how a few years ago, when Diether Dehm, at that time running for reelection of vice leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), was speaking at the Solid summer camp and commented on the view many radicals have of how a socialist party should be – faultless right from the start: “There is this view, this puritanical view, among many on the left — and with that I don’t only mean among Catholics.” Everybody chuckled, and of course expected that this was nothing more of a excuse for him having been a member of the social democratic party before.

    The crowd cheering on AMLO at the Zócalo in Mexico city on November 20th
    The crowd cheering on AMLO at the Zócalo in Mexico city on November 20th

    Well, and the same thing applies to revolutions or movements. Although I was aware of it before, I really got to see it here in Mexico. If you look at a lot of the US radical press (various indymedia sites), you-ll mostly find a celebration of the events in Oaxaca (anything the protesters have been doing), while the actions by the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) on a national scale are renounced as being reformist. The fact that many of the current PRD tops are former members of the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), the party that ruled Mexico during the entire cold war, got an American socialist I met at the university to renounce it right to start with: “that tells you right there who the PRD is.” Another activist I met held that the EZLN (Zapatista) movement is anarchist, while the APPO (Oaxacan People’s Popular Assembly) has to be counted as socialist — because “they are a union.”

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  • Oaxaca — preparing for the battle

    While there have not been any ongoing street fights between protesters and police the last days and with the exception of some assaults at Burger King restaurants heavily condemned by the APPO as well as an attack on a protester close to the university Monday morning, the situation in Oaxaca has been all but resolved.

    A bus serving as a road block for the protesters.
    A bus serving as a road block for the protesters.

    While the federal police still sits in the Zócalo, the university is held by the students. No police can be seen anywhere else, so while the APPO does not take over radio stations and the like, it is clear that they are more in control of the situation than the police. And because both sides know that the protesters have won if only they keep at least part of the city until November 20th, when AMLO gains office as “legitimate president”, or even better December 1st, when Felipe Calderon takes office, to create hell for his period from the first day on by forcing him into responsibility for any action by military or federal police after that date.

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  • Oaxaca — city in unrest

    On the afternoon of November 4th, the the bus traffic to Oaxaca city was opened, at least for a while. After finishing my six weeks of Spanish studies in Huehuetenango, I was in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, and took the first bus here. At 6 in the the morning of the 5th, I have reached the Oaxaca bus station. My first impression is that the streets of Oaxaca are «clean». The Mexican federal police (PFP) hat removed most of the graffiti that had been covering most walls for the past months by painting over it – mostly with paint not matching the houses colors. In the morning the streets are empty as well; with the exception of a handful of tourists who obviously have not understood how serious the situation is.

    No-one is going to remove these guys from their Zocalo!
    No-one is going to remove these guys from their Zocalo!

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  • How to get election results right?

    For the last few years a strange phenomenon has been spreading in western capitalist societies: elections are either directly rigged (with some probability in Mexico, Peru and Ecuador 2006), election results are mysteriously close to the 50%-line (as in Oslo 2003 and USA 2000/2004) or the one side wins, but in some strange way the other side takes office (as in Schleswig-Holstein and Germany 2005). Almost all the time it’s the right-wing that strangely wins over the more or less radical left (although the Kissinger-fraction will probably claim that the same is the case in all those countries their various orange revolutions do not work out). In magnitude it seems that the rigging of elections is at least as accepted as it was in the Stalinist regimes, or even more so — that is given that there is not more than what we can simply by reading our western newspapers. It will be interesting to wade through the records of all this to see just how big it is once this system comes down.

    Oskar Lafontaine and Die Linke believe a general strike is the right strategy to translate a left election victory into left wing politics.
    Oskar Lafontaine and Die Linke believe a general strike is the right strategy to translate a left election victory into left wing politics.

    But what can one do in the mean time? Has saying goodbye to using violent means for the progressive side (either in the form of Maoist guerrilla fronts or Stalinist massive armies) meant that there one just has to accept any atrocity that the elite might throw at one? Of course one can make the public aware of just what has happened — as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did in the case of the USA 2004 elections.

    The two answers I have seen so far are close, although not the same: On one hand there is the AMLO of Mexico strategy of simply going ahead and taking a virtual office anyway — completely nonviolent but backed by so many people that it’s hard for the self-proclaimed winner to do get anything done. Whether this strategy will work will be seen after November 20th, when he “takes office.” The other strategy is to call for a general strike — as former leader of the social democrats Oskar Lafontaine and his party Die Linke in Germany has been doing recently and as I did myself in 2005 after the tricking in Schleswig-Holstein.

    Both strategies built on the principle of taking control over the country from the streets rather, but the difference is one’s size. While AMLO likely won the presidency of Mexico, was it in the cases of Schleswig-Holstein and Germany only the general left that actually won, with the larger parties (the SPD in both cases) deciding to form a government lead by a right wing party rather than to form a coalition with parties further to the left.

    Whether any of these strategies are successful remains to be seen, but already now it is clearly that it takes quite a lot more to take down the current system than what it took to take down the so-called socialism of the Stalinist bloc — demonstrations of sizes similar to those that brought down the GDR against cuts in social programs in the Schröder-years didn’t even dent the system. Other strategies and plans are therefore absolutely interesting.

  • Betwixt & Between 2006 published!

    So, you haven’t heard from me in a while. Well, the past three weeks I have been studying Spanish at the Xinabajul Spanish school in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Although Huehuetenango is really untouristy (and full of traffic), I really saw no point in describing experiences that probably are 100% alike of those all other language students in Guatemala have.

    B_and_B_2006

    Nevertheless, besides camping in Mexico city and studying Spanish here, I have also been helping to get the latest version of the Norwegian social anthropological yearly journal Betwixt and Between edited, written, layouted and printed. I don’t know if articles I have been editing are representative of the entire collection (220 pages in total), but at least as far as what I’ve seen, the articles tend to be of a more activist nature in that it’s not just all about describing things using the most advanced version of the Bourdieu-analysis-toolkit, but rather it is to actually try to point at some real problems/issues out there. (Un)fortunately, almost all the articles this year are written in Norwegian (one in Swedish) and few in English. While I understand the point of writing articles for those who do not know English (or any other language of size, however not in order to just keep Norwegian around as a museum type artifact), the problem is of course that writing an article in Norwegian severely hinders the spreading of the knowledge gathered specifically for the article.

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  • We won! Over and out from Mexico city…

    This will be my last update here from Mexico city as I will be going further south in about two hours. The camp is gone, and for now Mexico city once again looks like most capital cities.
    And the change has been rapid. Since the last posting we first had the Grito with the PRD mayor of Mexico (supported and accompanied by AMLO). Although the entire Zocalo was filled with people screaming “Presidente” and “Obrador” and “¡Viva la resistencia pacífica!” in good weather, while Fox’ alternative ceremony was drenched in rain, all the major TV stations seemed to have ignored the Mexico city Grito completely — instead they did report on such interesting places as Phoenix, Arizona and the celebrations there!

    The Grito ceremony requires a clock outside a balcony, so it was organized within a few hours when Fox' changes of plans became known
    The Grito ceremony requires a clock outside a balcony, so it was organized within a few hours when Fox’ changes of plans became known

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  • Fox chickens out

    Newest updates on the Grito: Fox has decided that he will not hold the Grito here and he has already skipped town to hold it a few hundred miles outside of Mexico city. The news has been well-received on the camp, and AMLO has announced that instead of him, Alejandro Encinas, PRD-member (and following AMLO to hold that post) will hold the Grito at the Zocalo. At the same time it was promised that we would remove our tents from the Zocalo, but it’s not quite as easy as that…

    The old Nayarit camp has been closed down.
    The old Nayarit camp has been closed down.

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  • Preparions for September 15/16th

    Because the western news really do not cover the situation in Mexico (city) very much, here is an update: AMLO revealed yesterday what the plans are going to be for September 15th/16th. At night on September 15th, there is the traditional Grito (a celebration of independence from Spain) in which the president has to do some flag actions and then a one point will shout “¡Viva La Mexico!” and the mass of people gathered around will be shouting back “¡Viva la Mexico!”

    "Tengo un Sueño..." --- For the past few days daily singing lessons have been preparing the AMLO supporters to sing the song of the movement.
    “Tengo un Sueño…” — For the past few days daily singing lessons have been preparing the AMLO supporters to sing the song of the movement.

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  • PRD communications centralized

    I had promised to give some news updates here as to what is happening at the AMLO camp in Mexico City. Unfortunately, the organizers have decided that from now on, all news have to go through the PRD office and no person at the camp is allowed to speak to any kind of media directly. At least one interview that I had planned can therefore not be conducted, at least not currently. In general though, I can say that at this time the camp is growing. It has been more than 40 days of camping now, and so a lot of people had to go home and several tents were only manned sparely during the time that I have been here. However today, the first buses with people attending the conference next weekend have arrived. In contrast to those who have been here up until now, these seem to be more traditional party activists. The last few days it has been my experience that many are actually here because they do not actually have any other home. Several of them have also asked me as to what chances there are for them to obtain political asylum somewhere in Scandinavia, once “all this is over,” because they fear repressions under president Calderon (PAN) and many “don’t like Anglos [people from USA, Canada, UK].” Another group that is present, although to a small degree, is people at student age, who have been able to take off for some time. I will be back with further updates, and I hope that the news ban will be lifted soon.