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September 14, 2003
WTO entry 5: heading out
so i have to apologize for slacking off on these entries, it became harder to get time on the computers here at indymedia, and i was busy cruising around. i could pick up where i left off, but in reality all that happened was on thursday evening the youthful mexicans and internationals had a cacerolazo, which meant banging pots and pans and drums and buckets and dancing around. meanwhile there were prolly 50 riot cops nearby, cause someone broke out the windows of a pizza hut and a local foto shop. some blamed police provocateurs, but i think it was some of us.
friday we sat around, everyone sharpening weapons, getting ready for the battle to come the next day. i slept a hot and sweaty night in my tent, one leg hanging out the door, drenched and head aching from the loud music at my side.
yesterday, saturday, broke with drumming and shouts of ¨get up, get up,¨ as the manifestantes readied their weapons. i met up with deidra pike from the reno news and review, and she accompanied aaron and i to the march. there were all the different groups represented, including the maoists, sporting bright red tshirts with pictures of mao on the back, all of them very serious looking, which was kinda curious since we never saw them once we got to the actual fence.
the evening before aaron had the wise idea to make forearm guards of cardboard and styrofoam. there were no shortage of youths eager to have one of the 20 escudos, translated as shields, attached to their arm with ducktape. aaron even had time to draw skulls on the cardboard, which seemed to make the kids even happier.
the march down the fence took a really long time. many stopped on the way where the previous demonstration had taken place to make speeches, which might have been nice to hear but it split up the groups and killed some of the energy. aaron, deidra and i walked around, fairly amazed at the arsenals being toted, including a huge dead tree dragged from the nearby jungle and placed atop a shopping cart as a battering ram.
the korean contingent had managed to find long thick ropes, which they tied to the fence, which was probably 10 feet high, and 3 layers deep, making it at least as wide,barbed wire and chains held it together. aaron and i jumped into the crowd of people helping to pull it down, and when finally the word came to pull, we pulled with all of our might and it began to bend and come apart.
after what must have been 2 hours of tying, pulling and retying, finally the fence came down. the riot police were waiting on the other side, row after row of them, tense but patient.
then came the anticlimax. when it looks as if the crowd was to pour through and a street battle of pretty scary proportions would erupt, the korean contingent got someone on a microfone and pleaded with everyone to sit down and have a moment of silent and a burning of an image icon of the WTO. it took the wind entirely out of our sails, all the energy bled off and people started to trickle back towards the center of town, to the tent cities. aaron said ¨these liberals have no spine, let´s go eat some beans and rice,¨so we headed back as well, disappointed but at the same time happy that no one was hurt or killed.
for me, after hearing how little press our protest got in the mainstream media, i must say that i am still glad i came down for this, to see and be a part of it, and am heartened at reading that the WTO seems to be crumbling from the inside, what with the Group of 21 causing blockage of agricultural decisions that would in the end be very harmful to farmers the world over.
here´s indymedia´s report on the protest.
now aaron and i barrel out of this town, which i still believe has little of any soul. we are heading for tulum, for beaches and swimming and mayan ruins, then maybe towards chiapas.
oh yeah, the tattoos i mentioned the other other day that we saw on that guy´s arm included:
che guevara
emiliano zapata
felix the cat
and last but not least
gene simmons from kiss, in full make up and tongue reaching down towards his elbow. fucking fantastic.
adios.
Posted by bendan at September 14, 2003 09:10 AM
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