Are contemporary cultural producers in Oaxaca, Mexico able to use their media empowerment to provide positive comment and promote constructive ideas in reaction to the current extreme political events?
The latter chapters of my PhD research investigate the altruistic and community-oriented behaviour of Oaxacan artists with special reference to the current extreme and historical social and political conditions in Mexico that have caused the May 2006 teachers strike in Oaxaca to evolve in to a five-month violent, political struggle which in turn caused the Oaxacan art market to take a severe decrease in sales and outside interest whilst at the same time forcing a drastic increment in the need for the already-socially-active artistic community to take sides in, lead, articulate and even mediate the resulting events.
The rapidly-evolving media industry and media-awareness; increasing access to, and creation of, digital media; and a developing transparency in Mexico, promoted by the current president’s new ‘Transparency Law’ implemented in June 2003; factors have combined to create a real-time, multi-faceted investigative and media-combative arena that unearths, presents and discusses political parties’ ideologies, spending and actions that pits all against all (with, perhaps, a winner-takes-all prize structure) in an all-comers (all stakeholders) open.
In Oaxaca, public reaction began in the form of the annual teachers’ strike turning in to an almost-revolution which is still in progress and has seen the creation of a popular and very unofficial governing body, the APPO (‘the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca’) controlling the centre of the state capital and purposefully introducing a state of ‘non-governablilty’ across the city and state towards the destitution of the state governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, accused of political violence and wide-scale corruption. This week (Monday 16.10.2006) is supposed to see a violent end to this situation.
