Student March, Climate & Oaxaca in Mexico

Through showers of rain, more than ten thousand students, workers, survivors and companeros marched October 2nd in the streets of Mexico City to commemorate the 38th anniversary of the Mexican goverment's 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco that killed hundreds of student protesters. Members of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) led the march with a banner saying: "To avoid future repressions, punish the genocides of yesterday and today." In solidarity with the pro-democracy uprising now in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and against the massive Mexican military assault against their movement that observers report may be imminent, chants and banners denouncing repression in Oaxaca resounded throughout the march. pictures | theater action (es) | report (es)

Also in Mexico, in the northeastern city of Monterrey on October 3rd and 4th, Energy and Environmental Ministers from the G8 industrialized countries and five "emerging" economies (Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Mexico) are meeting for the G8+5 Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change. Environmental activists against climate change are holding an alternative Climate Justice Dialogue and Convergence in Mexico City. The G8+5 meeting is focused on "market-based mechanisms" such as "carbon trading" that climate activists say enrich corporations without actually reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

The struggles against repression in Oaxaca and catastrophic global warming can be seen as linked by Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), a trans-continental "infrastructure development" project planned by the Mexican state that includes expansion of fossil fuels extraction, creation of new maquiladora industrial zones, and a super-highway slated to run through Oaxaca. Failure now by the people of Oaxaca to reclaim their social rights and political empowerment will be a victory for the capitalist, anti-democratic forces