Demonstrators clash with police in Oaxaca´s center

OAXACA CITY - Federal police and protesters clashed in central Oaxaca City on Monday, leaving three injured and dozens more affected by tear gas.

The Oaxaca People's Assembly (APPO), which has led a protest movement against state Gov. Ulises Ruiz for five months, staged an afternoon march through the city to commemorate Revolution Day. When the column reached a barricade set up by Federal Preventative Police (PFP), four masked men began to throw rocks at the officers, who responded by firing tear gas into the crowd.

Members of the APPO retreated and began tearing down corrugated sheet metal from a nearby construction site, with which they started building a new barricade to impede the police from following. Some protesters began to gather rocks and shoot bottle rockets through plastic tubes at the police, who responded with tear gas and firing marbles from sling-shots.

Many tourists and passers by were caught in the initial volley of tear gas.

CAMERAMAN INJURED

Three people were wounded by the tear gas grenades, including an Associate Press cameraman who was hit in the leg while filming the initial clash.

At about 3 p.m. police began to advance toward the newly constructed barricade.

After a heated discussion among APPO members, Zapotec indigenous leader Marcelino Coache approached the PFP lines alone to try to negotiate a peaceful solution to the standoff. After a tense conversation during which the APPO continued to fire bottle rockets and the police tear gas, Coache convinced both sides to pull back.

By that time the PFP reached the protesters' new barricade and had started to tear it down.

At the nearby Santo Domingo plaza, where the movement has set up camp in recent weeks, APPO leaders called protesters together and ordered that all retreat and prepare for an offensive on another day. They said the men who instigated the violence were not APPO members.

"The APPO did not decide to launch an offensive today," said Adolfo López, a local leader, to about 200 people. "The four people who started all this by throwing rocks ran away when we tried to speak with them. They were agitators. The APPO gives the order to retreat and prepare the offensive for November 25."

UNCERTAINTY

It is unclear what the movement has planned for that date. While APPO leaders have recently vowed a civil resistance campaign against the state government, other members of the movement have called for an attempt to dislodge federal police from the city's central Zócalo.

"This was not an agreement of the APPO," said César Mateos, another of the movement's leaders, referring to the clash with the police. "This is the result of agitators looking to destabilize the peaceful advances of the movement."