FLAVIO SOSA immediately took to the street carrying some documents just after freed from prison where he served for 18 months behind bars. He is one of the top leaders in Oaxaca state's 2006 popular movement by a wide-ranging group called the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca or APPO, which aimed at throw out Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, who many opponents charge rigged his own election and is deeply corrupted and uses violence and torture against his political opponents. After APPO and state and federal police clashed on serveral occasions in 2006, Sosa was jailed under charges of being the master mind behind violent robberies, damage to government building and kidnapping of police and government officials. State judges freed Sosa after state prosecutors failed to turn up evidence against Sosa.
Now free again, he is back in Oaxaca City and making plans to analyze the failures of the social uprising that aimed to toss out a powerful PRI governor. Many of the key players still support the movement to toss the PRI politician from office. The PRI has controlled the Oaxaca state government for 79 consecutive years, at times using torture and election fraud to smash its political opposition.
Analysts say certain states governments controlled by PRI governors have become increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian since the PRI lost the powerful presidency in the year 2000. Before 2000, the all-powerful Mexican president, who was also the head of the PRI political apparatus, could control and remove rogue governors at will.
That's no longer the case since the right-leaning National Action Party, or PAN, has held Mexico's presidency for two consecutive terms. Current President Felipe Calderon is a stalwart of the conservative PAN.
1 comments:
To speak of Flavio as a "leader" of APPO is misleading. Flavio made himself available to the media as a spokesman, and consequently gained a lot of notoriety. But APPO was composed of many different sectors of Oaxacan society and many in APPO did not always agree with what Flavio was telling the media. The PRI and PAN found him a convenient scapegoat, however, and have been threatening others who support APPO that they will be treated the way he was. That said, I'm glad he, as well as David Venegas, is now free. I hope that he will use whatever influence he has to help rebuild the united front that APPO had become, and that the names of the other people still being held will become more visible to the progressive community.
Post a Comment