The commanders of six small Mexican guerilla groups said in an interview published in the national daily La Jornada Dec. 15 that the message from the recent events in Oaxaca is that "any attempt to transform our society in a peaceful way is doomed to failure." But the commanders agreed that the "routes to social change [aren't] necessarily armed" and acknowledged the importance of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), the civil "Other Campaign" of the larger rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the electoral struggle that formed around center-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who officially lost the July 2 presidential election.

The six rebel groups—the Lucio Cabanas Barrientos Revolutionary Movement (MR-LCB), the Democratic Revolutionary Tendency-People's Army (TDR-EP), the May First Insurgent Organization (OI 1M), the Dec. 2 Execution Brigade (BA 2D), the Popular Brigades of Liberation (BPL) and the Magonista Revolutionary Popular Unity (UPRM)—took responsibility for bombs that exploded in at least three banks and offices in the early morning of Nov. 6. Some activists have charged that the action helped the government by providing a pretext for stepped-up repression; the commanders acknowledged that there were "valid criticisms" of the action. (Weekly News Update on the Americas, Dec. 17)

Fernel Galvez Rodriguez, president of Mexico's congressional Concord and Pacification Commission (COCOPA), first formed for the long-moribund dialogue with the EZLN, has proposed widening the body's mandate to establish dialogue with all the guerilla groups in the country, to assist in bringing peace to Oaxaca. The federal deputy with the left-opposition Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) said the nine senators and 16 deputies that make up the body had agreed the move was necessary. "We see that there are other issues equally urgent to ettend to that have to do with armed groups or movements," he said. (La Jornada, Dec. 18 via Chiapas95)

See our last posts on Mexico and the Oaxaca crisis, and the guerilla movement and the revolutionary convergence.