OAXACA CITY - The Oaxaca People´s Assembly (APPO) does not hire professional media consultants or issue well-crafted press releases to get their message out.

Instead, the protesters have walked through the unlocked doors of radio stations across the city and simply informed the workers that the APPO would be taking over.

"It is absolutely necessary in this movement to have our own media and not to depend on the commercial press," says Carmen, a 40 year-old preschool teacher and APPO radio announcer, from inside the barricaded office of Radio Ley, the only working radio station still under APPO control.

The radio has played a pivotal role in the APPO´s ability to organize its members, especially in response to attacks on their protest camps. As a result, the protesters´ radio stations have been the targets of multiple attacks from police, machine gun wielding paramilitaries, and even paid internal saboteurs.

But critics claim that political organizations such as the Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR) have taken over the control of the occupied radio stations, and used them to spread their organization´s views and even incite listeners to clash with opponents.

"They are teachers so you think they are going to put on cultural programs," said Mari, a travel agent who has lived in Oaxaca 14 years, "but no, they don´t even play much music, it is pure revolution."

REPRESSION BACKFIRES

During the first minutes of the raid on June 14, when Ulises Ruiz sent state riot police at dawn to break up the protest camp of striking teachers, the police sought out and destroyed the transmission equipment of the teachers´ pirate radio station, Radio Plantón, beating and detaining four teachers who were guarding the station. The station is still off the air, but has begun internet broadcasting.

The following day, June 15, a group of students took over the local university´s seldom listened-to radio station and began to air messages calling for Ruiz´s resignation and announcing upcoming protest marches.

In the following weeks, the APPO used Radio Universidad to criticize state and national media, claiming that mainstream media didn´t tell the truth about the violence on June 14. The radio´s criticism helped create a tense atmosphere for journalists where APPO protesters with clubs chased off television cameramen and constantly demanded that reporters identify themselves.

On July 22, the first attack against the radio came. Carmen was on the air when she heard machine gun fire hitting the walls of the station. Only a few women, some with their children, were on duty. They all hit the floor.

"I asked for help," Carmen says, "and was able to say that we were being attacked before the signal went dead."

The shooting lasted about 15 minutes before several thousand people began to arrive at the station, chasing off the police cars and paramilitary pick-up trucks. No one was injured, and volunteers quickly repaired the damage to the station´s antenna.

TV BROADCAST

Two weeks later, on Aug. 8, the signal went dead again. This time Carmen and several volunteer technicians went into the control room to find fumes rising from the transmitter.

Two young students had been paid about US$250 to throw sulfuric acid on the radio equipment. Carmen broadcasted for a few hours more before the acid worked its way through the transmitter and Radio Universidad went off the air.

But by that time, several hundred women from the APPO had taken over the state-run television and radio stations known as CORTV.

During an Aug. 1 march of over 3,000 women banging on pots and pans to protest against Ulises Ruiz, the women-ramped up by the high energy of their noisy march-decided to continue beyond the central plaza out to CORTV. Once there, they requested permission to tell their version of what happened during the June 14 raid on live television.

The station director denied their request, but the women, undeterred, walked past her and occupied the station. Only a few hours later they were able to broadcast live, on statewide television.

Then, on Aug. 21, over 60 gunmen attacked and destroyed CORTV´s transmitter, causing the protesters on guard to flee the scene. By noon the next day, thousands of APPO protesters had spontaneously organized and taken over 12 of the 13 commercial radio stations in Oaxaca City.

The next day the APPO released 10 of the stations and maintained control of two, Radio Oro and Radio Ley. Gunmen in a caravan of about 40 cars and pick-ups, including police vehicles, returned that night, shooting at photographers and into the crowd of protesters outside Radio Ley, killing one person.

DENUNCIATIONS

José Manuel Villarreal, a spokesperson for the Oaxaca Communicators Association, a press advocacy organization grouping together 27 radio stations and newspapers, denounced the APPO´s occupation of radio stations.

"We are the owners of the media, so of course we cannot agree with these violent take-overs," he said. "They allege that we have not given them space in the media. We think that they do not want space so much as they want to control the media for their propagandistic purposes."

"They have used the radio in completely condemnable ways to provoke confrontations between the people of Oaxaca and to call for the lynching of those who oppose them," he said, referring to radio announcers´ calls that protesters invade a hotel where the journalist Ricardo Rocha was interviewing state politicians.

Villarreal emphasized that one must be careful to distinguish between what he called the legitimate social demands underlying much of the conflict and the manipulations of "political mercenaries" on the left who have jumped into the APPO and led the radio occupations.

And while APPO protesters have apologized for past rough treatment of journalists, they insist that the media is dead set against them and unabashedly defend their radio occupations.

"It was a natural reaction that came about immediately from the people to take possession of all the radio stations to have a way of organizing ourselves, to disseminate the APPO´s messages," said Carmen of the Aug. 22 occupations, "but also it was an act of repudiation against the official journalism, the pro-government press that has always attacked the social movements here in Oaxaca."