Mexican Police Raid Fails To Calm Oaxaca

Violence threatened to return to the streets of Mexico's southern city of Oaxaca Monday, one day after federal police stormed the town and wrested control from striking teachers and leftists who seized the city center five months earlier.

Oaxaca's bitter conflict has spread beyond the burned wreckage left by months of protests and the police offensive, with Mexico's Congress now urging the state's governor to resign and leftist leaders calling for the nation to rally behind the movement.

Bands of youths roamed the cobblestone streets of the colonial city on Monday, tossing gasoline bombs, hijacking vehicles and vowing to fight on amid violence that has divided people here and across Mexico. Burned-out shells of vehicles dotted the streets.

The U.S. Embassy released a statement advising Americans against all travel to one of Mexico's top tourist destinations "due to this increase in violence."

The Mexican Congress passed a nonbinding resolution asking Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz to resign — the protesters' main demand — while Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos and former leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called for demonstrations in other Mexican cities to support the protesters.

The protests began in May as a teachers' strike but quickly spiraled into chaos as anarchists, students and Indian groups seized the central plaza and barricaded streets throughout the city to demand Ruiz's ouster.

President Vicente Fox, who had resisted repeated calls to send federal forces to Oaxaca, did so on Saturday setting off street battles.

Ruiz, who protesters accuse of rigging 2004 elections and oppressing dissent, has refused to step down and accused "radical groups" from Mexico City of fueling the street battles.

Protesters, meanwhile, peacefully occupied a new city plaza where they planned to set up their new base, about five blocks from Oaxaca's main square, which they were driven out of on Sunday in a raid by about 3,500 federal riot police.

Ruiz returned to offices he had been forced out of months ago by the protesters. But police control of the city remained only partial at best; new barricades sprung up on the road to his offices in a matter of hours after police had cleared the way.

Armored trucks with water cannons posted at the edges of the main plaza fired jets of water to extinguish blazes set by the protesters. Officers fired occasional rounds of tear gas in answer to the gasoline bombs and powerful fireworks that protesters launched at police lines.

Strike-weary residents saw their hopes for a return to normality dashed once again; schools in the city remained closed on Monday, despite a promise by teachers — whose strike for higher wages ignited the battle — to return to work. A scattering of businesses, including some stalls in the city's famous marketplace, reopened Monday, but there was little business.

Thousands of leftists and teachers marched through the city on Monday chanting, "Fight, fight, fight! Don't stop fighting!" before confronting police guarding the main plaza.

About 2,000 protesters regrouped in a plaza just a few blocks from the Zocalo, saying they would establish that as their main base until they could retake the main plaza.

Ignoring protesters who screamed "Sellout!" a group of about 20 residents and business owners waged earlier countermarches to thank federal police for clearing away the demonstrators, who had kept the city under siege since May, shutting down businesses and repelling the scores of national and international tourists who traditionally are drawn to the colonial city of 275,000.

"Let them stay," Edith Mendoza, a 40-year-old housewife, said of the police. "We were held hostage for five months."

Federal officials said the police would stay here as long as needed to restore order, but there did not appear to be enough of them to do the job.

Eight people have died in clashes since protesters took over the city in late May. Protesters claim that police and state forces — often in plainclothes — have shot at protesters, setting off the violence. Among those killed was U.S. activist-journalist Bradley Roland Will, 36, of New York. Protesters say local police shot him.