Shop owners in the Mexican resort city of Oaxaca shuttered their businesses and demonstrators built up street barricades Saturday after President Vicente Fox ordered federal police to intervene in a tense stand-off between the state authorities and striking teachers and their supporters.
Fox, who leaves office Dec. 1, had refused repeated requests to use force in Oaxaca even as the southern city slid into chaos. But gun battles Friday that killed a U.S. journalist and at least two Mexicans apparently exhausted his patience.
Protesters aid an injured cameraman who was shot and later died when clashes erupted between unidentified gunmen and protesters demanding the resignation of Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, on Friday.
(Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press)
In unrest that began with a teacher strike for higher pay, leftists have blocked streets for months demanding the ouster of Oaxaca state Gov. Ulises Ruiz. They claim the state government has sent gunmen and thugs to provoke them.
After Fox announced he was ordering in federal police, protesters fortified their positions by piling up sandbags and parking large trucks and buses across roads leading into the centre of Oaxaca.
Men also were seen removing broadcast equipment from one of the local radio stations seized by protesters months ago. A second station held by leftists remained on the air, urging Oaxaca's people to prevent federal police from entering the city.
Few people ventured from their homes. Across the heart of the city, nearly all shops and restaurants closed early. Street vendors packed up their wares and disappeared.
"We're afraid," Juan Lopez said as he pulled metal shutters down over the glass storefront of a sporting goods shop a half block from Oaxaca's leafy central plaza surrounded by arcaded colonial-era buildings. "We're afraid there is going to be more shooting."
Friday's shooting began when unknown gunmen tried to remove a street blockade in a rough neighbourhood. Journalist Bradley Roland Will, 36, of New York, was hit in the abdomen and died later in hospital.
Oaxaca resident Esteban Zurrita was shot dead and the bullet-ridden body of another man, Emilio Alonso Fabian, was discovered about three kilometres away.
Will worked for Indymedia.org, an independent web-based media organization.
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