Update: We managed to smuggle the punk rocker, who had been hiding at my youth hostel over night, on a second class bus to Mexico DF. There was just one police check point on the way, and they did not get suspicious when he said he was going to DF, while moaning and generally seeming disinterested in them.

As anyone who has been in any kind of confrontations of scale can witness, uncertainty and rumours tend to take over as sources of news, as newspapers are used mainly to distribute lies that are meant to support one or the other side. And although I have known that from various confrontations in Europe, it never reached the intensity it has here.
In the last this has only grown. The events of Saturday scared most foreigners away from the university, and the camp in front of Santa Domingo was permanently destroyed. Effectively that has meant that foreign news CAN NOT have any real source of news, and whatever you read in them MUST BE made up or copied from those Mexican papers who have a part in the conflict themselves (La Jornada probably being the best source nevertheless).
Three of us stayed until the end though, and because the others do not write, this should be the last (foreign) report from the university camp.

When Petra and I arrived at the university yesterday, only to discover that 16 year old Irma, the 20 year old Punk Rocker, Abdul and the others still were there, we decided to invite Irma out at night, just to get her away from everything for one night. At the time, those left were certain that the PFP would be attacking both the university and the Barricade of Death at Cinco Señores the following night, just as they had been the day before, when Petra and I were sent away because “the police is here right now.” The idea was that Fox wanted to end everything before he left office, and end it all by killing anyone left at the university.

Those left were therefore mostly those not being able to get out, and Irma told us that they were thinking about giving up the Barricade of Death in exchange for getting two prisoners freed. “They’re gonna take us out anyways,” she said, “so it’s better if we give it to them like that and get something for it.”

Back at my hostel, I met Tom, a US American activist who had been staying at the university for a week, but who had left when they told him that the police would attack “this night.” I took him along when Petra and I took a taxi for the university to pick up Irma that night. We arrived just before sun down, but the Barricade of Death was so empty and left that Petra did not quite recognize it and started accusing me of stopping the cab at a completely wrong place (she has been behaving as if we were married for about a week).

Irma was not there, but we walked around a bit, and got shocked when spotting the PFP cruising around on their pick up trucks with five machine gun armed people on the back (the type allegedly used to “grab people” of the streets) just one block from the entrance of the university. Finally we encountered Irma, riding on the back of a motor bike with two of her friends. We agreed to go to the university “just for five minutes,” as Petra ordered — we did not want to end up being locked in by the PFP. Of course we all had to talk to various people we had gotten to know; I talked to some of the ordinary students, who actually had classes just adjacent to the camp around the university and made sure to get some food as well as another free Pepsi as every time when I went there; Tom wanted to check on some home brewn beer that he had started and that would be finished in just a few days; while Petra talked to the one male activist she thought did not come across as machoist, who proposed to her to marry him and move to her country with her.

For anyone sitting in their arm chair in some wealthy part of Europe or the United States our behavior here must seem more than odd, as one would expect for us to focus on the immediate danger of a possible attack of the PFP or some PRI vigilantes shooting at us. However, when one has been in such situations for a while, it seems like ones adrenalin levels can not really rise much more, and such everyday questions seem to recover their usual level of importance.

After everything was checked and figured out, we finally walked to Cinco Señores, from where we took another taxi back to town, and for a few hours we tried to act as if we were regular tourists on a drinking spree — rather hard when you are around political actives. Jokes all ended up including some possible stunt we could do with the PFP that was just one block away from our bar, and discussions dealt with subjects such as whether “cities are evil” or whether technical progress so far has meant that the majority can live in cities. Petra and Tom being self declared anarchists, Irma being politicised heavily here in Oaxaca, and me having lost my bourgeoisie morals a long time ago, none of what we said would probably have made sense to any “regular tourist.”

At one point Petra got the idea that she could try to smuggle Irma with her on the bus to DF today. Of course she would pay for it, but even homeless in DF would be better than being arrested and tortured/killed in Oaxaca. Tom and me on the other hand decided to stay in Oaxaca until Thursday night, when Fox’s time as president runs out. The idea I have is that it will be a lot harder to kill foreigners and that it therefore will be a lot harder shooting at a group of people if you do not know if there are foreigners amongst them. At 23:59 on Thursday, a bus leaves for DF, and I would be able to take it in order to make it for the protests at Calderon’s inauguration ceremony on Friday, where also Petra and everyone else would show back up.

This morning I walked to the university before classes at my Spanish school here, and was shocked to see that the Barricade of Death was completely gone. At some corners people were still scrubbing the dirt of the street, but generally it had been transformed back into a traffic hub it had been before, as if nothing had ever happened. At the university then, there were about 15-20, mostly young people left. All were Mexican. The Barricade of Death had been taken out without any agreement, the rumor was, and another twenty activists had been arrested in the process.

I was asked if I could escort one girl out and help her leave the city, and I agreed buying the ticket of one person for DF. However much I might have disagreed with the decision to attack the police on the 25th against the majority of the APPO, these are my comrades and brothers and sisters, and I could not just leave them to the sharks. The girl found another group to leave with though, and instead the punk rocker asked for my services. But everyone else at the table where I was having breakfast agreed that he would have to change his looks before he would be able to leave the university without being recognized as a camp person. In general everyone was scarred to death that the police might attack them tonight. One elderly woman tried to explain to me that god would end up helping us, because “we’re fighting for a just cause” and another woman gave me a written account of how she and another woman had experienced the last days. “Maybe that will let people in your country understand what we’re fighting,” she explained.

I left for my classes, and came back two hours later, only to discover that the PFP now actually had moved all the way up to the entrance and had put up people across the street at the next street. I was scared, but pulled my camera out, acting as if I was just some journalist. “Watch out,” one screamed when I seemed to be to close to the entrance of the university. Although I have a hard time imagining that I might have appeared like someone supporting their objectives, it seemed as if they were accepting me as just that. Once inside the university I immediately showed the pictures I had taken to those inside; possibly giving them a chance to act strategically on the placement of the police.

Inside, Irma was still there, although Petra had come and left for Mexico. She had decided to go to “a house” for a few days with “the guys.” “But we still don’t know how to get out of here,” she said. A little while later she asked whether she “could borrow 150 pesos.” “Petra and Tom each gave me 200,” she said, and also I gave her a 200 peso bill. 200 peso against torture is not all that much.

The punk rocker had now been cleaned up and lost his eye piercing, and so we made it for the back entrance of the university. When reaching it, another group of PFP cars, that have started paroling everywhere came by, and the punk rocker ran back inside the university area. They all seemed to look at me and stopped their cars, and so I pulled out my camera just to keep the impression of being a journalist. Luckily it worked and they drove off. The punk rocker had insisted on taking a taxi, but as I managed to stop a bus right in front of the entrance, we just jumped in and off we went. The punk rocker is now at a secret location and should be back in his town within about 48-72h. Tom showed up at the youth hostel a bit later, as he had accompanied different groups out of the university. He had seen Irma and her group off, leaving to their “house,” and had then returned to help others. “It’s incredible, but nothing happened today. It’s a weird day, but not a bad day,” he concluded before showing me how to get to this Internet cafe.