Raoul Vaneigem

Considering that the habitants of Oaxaca have the right to live their lives as they wish, in the city and the region that belong to them.

Considering that they have been victims of a brutal aggression from the police, the military, and the death squads at the pay of a governor and a corrupt government, both which are not recognized by the people anymore.
Considering that the right to live of Oaxaca’s habitants is a legitimate right, and the illegitimacy is in the actions of the forces of occupation and repression.
Considering that the massive and pacific resistance of the people of Oaxaca vindicates their resolution of not yielding to the threats, the fear, and the oppression, and also proves their willingness to not counter the violence of the police and the paramilitary murderers with a violence that would justify the work of suffering and death accomplished by the enemies of life.
Considering that the struggle of the people of Oaxaca is the struggle of millions of beings who vindicate the right to live like humans and not like dogs in a world where all the forms of life are threatened by financial interests, the law of profit, the business mafias, the transformation into commodities of natural resources, the water, the earth, the flora and fauna, the woman, the child and the man, all enslaved, in their bodies and their conscience.
Considering that the global struggle executed in the name of life and against the totalitarian affairs of commodities is what can prevent the people of Oaxaca from yielding to the hopelessness that always serves faithfully power because it paralyzes thought, seizes our self-confidence, and blocks our ability to imagine and to create new solutions and new forms of struggle.
Considering that the international solidarity satisfies itself much of the time by emotional bullshit, by humanitarian speeches and empty declarations, where only the self-complacency of the orator is the object of satisfaction.
I desire that practical aid would be delivered to the popular assemblies of Oaxaca with the objective of transforming that that still isn’t a commune into one. The struggle in Oaxaca is situated in the line of continuity of the Paris Commune and the collectives of Andalusia, Catalonia, and Aragon — collectives created during the Spanish revolution of 1936–1938, in which the experience of self-management established the bases for a new society.
For that objective, I make a call to the creativity of everyone in order to address the questions that, without prejudging their pertinence or their relevance, should appear, with or without reason, in the constitution of a government of the people for the people — of a direct democracy in which individual vindications would be considered, examined from the angle of a possible harmonization and blessed with a collective recognition that would permit its satisfaction.
If it is possible and desirable that the parents of the victims of the repression and the occupation of the police make a demand against the government and the responsible instances of the murders and the violence, how guarantee such parents international support?
How to prevent the imprisonments, the action of paramilitaries, and the reconquering of the region by the bloody hands of the corrupts?
Beyond the indignation caused by the savagery of the state and the police, how should we aid the people of Oaxaca so that they materialize the aspiration that they relentlessly express: we do not want to be the victims of any violence?
How should we act so that no oppression should be exerted over the right to live of the individuals and the collectives attached to the defense of such universal right?
What support can be contributed by the international solidarity to the civil resistance of Oaxaca in such a way that this civil resistance could bring the legitimacy of governing themselves through direct democracy to the people?
And in a more longer term perspective:
And if they wish so, how can we aid the commune of Oaxaca in the organization of the supplying of food, and goods of individual and collective utility?
How can we help the popular assemblies so that they themselves, without the intervention of Power, accomplish the self-management of transportation, sanitary services, the industry of water, electricity, etc?
What international contribution can be made to the project of “alternative education” that, after the long teachers’ strike, has become feasible in Oaxaca?
Is there a scientific association that could facilitate the development of natural energy and non-pollutants in the region of Oaxaca? The objective would have two parts. One part is to prevent that this energy be implanted in an authoritarian fashion in the benefit of the State and the multinational conglomerates, like how it has happened in the Isthmus. The other part is to remember that the preoccupation of energy and the environment is nonsensical to us if it doesn’t has a relationship to self-management, because only self-managed industries would be able to be at the service of self-managed , autonomous communities. Self-managed natural, clean energy not only makes it possible for such energy to become independent of the technological and petroleum mafias, but also their renewable characteristics makes it possible — after paying for the costs of the investment — to make it gradually cost-free. A cost-free energy implies cost-free transportation, medical services, education, and, an absolute weapon against commodity tyranny, guaranteed human richness.
Each time a revolution has dismissed as their main objective to enrich the everyday life of everyone, it has armed the repression.

Notes: (La Jornada, 11 November 2006)
Translation by Amir Ouyed
(bored situationist teenager somewhere in northern Mexico)
November 21, 2006