Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 12:00 AM
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By Sam Enriquez and Reed Johnson
Los Angeles Times
OAXACA, Mexico — Federal riot police and soldiers toting shields and automatic weapons massed around this beleaguered colonial city Saturday in a bid to end a five-month standoff between striking teachers and supporters of state Gov. Ulises Ruiz, amid escalating violence that included the Friday shooting deaths of a U.S. journalist and two Mexican men.
But by Saturday evening, there were signs that both protesters and federal officials may be stepping back from a face-off that has caused at least nine deaths and paralyzed Oaxaca city, the state capital, since the strike began last May.
Hundreds of army troops and officers of the Federal Preventative Police began arriving here Saturday morning by plane and bus. They were dispatched by President Vicente Fox, who for months had resisted calls by Ruiz and Oaxacan businessmen for direct federal intervention to end the occupation of Oaxaca by the striking teachers and an umbrella protest group, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, known by its Spanish-language acronym APPO.
In recent days the group has barricaded city streets with tree trunks, sandbags and overturned buses and vans.
But APPO leader Flavio Sosa, when reached late Saturday night, indicated that while his group would continue to maintain its barricades, it would not fight back if the federal forces attempted to dismantle them.
"We won't resist, but tomorrow we'll march to show our disapproval for the presence" of the federal police and troops, he said.
"We are willing to attend the negotiating table," he added. About the same time Saturday night, Arturo Chavez Chavez, deputy secretary of state, said at a Mexico City news conference that the federal forces had been sent only to prevent more violence and were not "contemplating any type of action" today.
Protesters estimated that 2,000 to 4,000 police had arrived, but federal officials refused to confirm or deny those numbers.
Late Saturday afternoon, the federal government issued an ultimatum demanding APPO leaders "immediately hand over streets, plazas, public buildings and private property."
Fox's decision to send federal police came one week after the state's teachers tentatively agreed to return to their classrooms in exchange for a 30 percent raise over six years. On average, Oaxacan elementary school teachers earn about $600 a month.
The decision also was made just hours after the death of Bradley Roland Will, 36, a New York City political activist and journalist with Independent Media Center, or Indymedia, an Internet-based alternative news agency, who had been in the region for four weeks documenting the conflict.
Will was shot in the abdomen Friday afternoon while attempting to conduct interviews at a street barricade and died en route to a local hospital, according to witnesses and Indymedia's Web site. Some witnesses said that Will was shot by an undercover policeman.
A Oaxaca resident also was shot dead Friday, and the bullet-ridden body of a third man was discovered about two miles away, news reports said.