MEXICO: Thousands of riot police backed by armoured trucks and helicopters massed on the outskirts of the Mexican city of Oaxaca yesterday as a popular protest that began over teachers' pay spiralled into a major confrontation.
Locals gathered in the path of the police, chanting angrily when they thought officers were about to advance. "If there is repression there will be a revolution," the workers, teachers and other protesters shouted at the officers, who were dressed head to foot in black body armour, with batons still resting on their shields.
Police in the line stared impassively ahead towards a large green sign over the road inviting tourists to enjoy the colonial and indigenous charms that have made Oaxaca particularly popular with European visitors.
Most tourists however, have been scared away from the picturesque centre, which has been occupied for months by a movement that began as a dispute over teachers' pay and conditions in May, but has since grown into a social revolt.
The protesters have occupied the city's central plaza, seized radio and television stations, and blocked major roads. To reach the movement's stronghold in the central square, police will have to get through dozens of barricades made from pieces of corrugated iron, burnt-out buses and lorries driven across the road.
The protesters' main demand is the removal of the governor of Oaxaca state, Ulises Ruiz, whose failed attempt to evict the teachers in June led to the radicalisation of the movement.
Organised into a loose coalition of unions, residents' associations, indigenous and student groups, the so-called Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (Appo) accuses Mr Ruiz of everything from electoral fraud to murder. Appo says the governor has set up paramilitary groups to attack its members. It claims that 14 people have died since the occupation began, with several killed at the barricades at night in drive-by shootings.
The tension rocketed on Friday when violence throughout the city left two protesters dead, along with an American journalist sympathetic to their cause who was shot in the chest twice as he filmed an attack by armed men on one of the barricades.
A national newspaper later identified the gunmen as police in civilian clothes, while another showed protesters shooting back.