The Mexican federal government has announced some moves to de-escalate the situation in Oaxaca, including the "gradual" withdrawal of Federal Preventative Police from the state capital's central plaza, which they have occupied since Oct. 29. Some 140 arrested protesters who have been detained at a federal prison in distant Nayarit state are also to be transferred to facilities in Oaxaca, and some released. The state's Gov. Ulises Ruiz, for his part, announced the resignation of his governance secretary (and state leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party), Heliodoro Diaz Escarraga, who has been identified by the protest movement as the mastermind of the "death squads" which have claimed several lives in the conflicted state over the past six months. He will be replaced by Teofilo Manuel Garcia Corpus, former leader of the Agrarian Reform Commission in the state House of Deputies. However, no progress is reported on the central demand of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca: the resignation of Gov. Ruiz. (Proceso, Dec. 11 via Chiapas95)

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