Last Updated on April 7, 2025
From George Salzman
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/
Oaxaca, Wednesday 14 February 2007
Friends,
Oaxaca, the Great Mexican Social Volcano Rumbles is an introduction to Nancy Davies’ reports and commentaries from ‘ground zero’. It begins:
The great Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl, … on 19 September 1985 … brought unprecedented devastation to Mexico City. A massive self-mobilization of ordinary citizens responded spontaneously to rescue as many as possible of those trapped alive in the wreckage. Many speak of that event, which shook the heart of Mexico, as the beginning of an enormous surge in Mexican civil society. It is that civil society, triggered by the uprising in Oaxaca, that is now making the Mexican state tremble, . . . The article is posted at
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2007-01-31.htm
This unprecedented social struggle has caught the imagination of millions of people in Mexico and beyond. It emerged from a culture profoundly different from the dominant culture of Western Anti-Civilization. Because of unfamiliarity with its cultural roots, and the concerted effort by corporate media, almost without exception, to misrepresent events, many observers abroad have thought the popular movement here has failed, and that Oaxaca has returned to its so-called normal state. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nancy Davies’ book, for which this essay is to be the Introduction, will soon be published by Narco News Books. The announcement, and information for advance orders, is at
http://www.narconews.com/Issue44/article2520.html
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