Mexican police clear final barricade in Oaxaca, protesters turn over radio station

OAXACA, Mexico

Authorities removed the last significant barricade erected by leftist protesters as part of their six-month takeover of Oaxaca City on Wednesday, and activists — some of them weeping — returned a seized radio station to university officials.

The loss of Radio University — which had served as the movement's nerve center, alerting protesters to police movements — and the removal of a barricade made of hijacked, burned-out vehicles just outside the campus' walls, appeared to be a huge setback for the once-powerful protest movement.

For the first time in months, police appeared to control this entire colonial city in southern Mexico, popular among tourists for its picturesque, arch-ringed main square.

A group of about 20 protesters, some of whom wept while others shouted slogans, met with officials of the state's public university to turn the equipment and offices of Radio University back over to academic personnel.

Earlier in the day, about 200 government employees used bulldozers and dump trucks to cart off the burned-out husks of 22 buses and cars from an intersection where supporters of the leftist Oaxaca People's Assembly had piled them up to block traffic.

The barricade had been the scene of confrontations between demonstrators and police in the weeks after federal officers entered the city on Oct. 29 to retake the city's center.

Police control over other areas of the city was tenuous or spotty for much of November, but authorities clamped down after violent demonstrations last weekend that resulted in more than 150 arrests, 43 injuries and the burning of vehicles and buildings.

Protest leaders — including some of the amateur announcers who had used Radio University to issue calls for protests, identify the movement's enemies and broadcast political diatribes — were reportedly holed up at a church to avoid arrest.

The protests began in late May as a strike by teachers seeking higher pay, and quickly exploded into a broad movement. The teachers later accepted pay raises and returned to work, but their leftist allies continued to demand the resignation of Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of violence and corruption.

The protests paralyzed the city for six months and scared away tourism, the city's economic lifeblood. Following an attempt by Ruiz's government to dislodge them in June, strikers and protesters seized several private radio and television stations, but later abandoned all but Radio University.