Menaces and Alarms:

The Frente Común Gets Roughed Up

          As those of you who have been with us for some time know, we have always been staunch supporters of the Frente Común Contra el SIDA (the common front against AIDS).  For a while, until they got their own website, we acted as their web hosts and contributions funnel.  We still do support their work, which happens on at least two levels: education of the local folks as to the realities, dangers, and prevention of AIDS; and holding a mirror up to the "official" agencies, federal, state, and international, as a method of getting them to do the work they have agreed to do.  I can go on and on with statistics about how many condoms they've sold, lectures given, etc., but all that is available on their web site, which we urge you to visit.

          Whether in the streets of New York by uniformed police, or Oaxaca's state university by unidentified "porros" (non-students hired to go in and kick ass), against demonstrators, dissenters, or journalists, the goon squad is a standard response of tyrannical bosses aiming to bust up unions, secret governments suppressing dissent, or any one of a hundred different kinds of "troublemaker". Dictatorships and would-be dictatorships all honor similar terroristic methods for controlling their populations.  Hardly a country in the world that doesn't unleash the dogs (figuratively and/or literally".  We all "know" such things go on.  However, there's "knowing" and then there's "knowing".  When the knock comes on your very own door, your world changes forever.  Last month, they came knocking on the Frente's door.  They showed up at Condón Mania, the highly successful store that sells condoms at just enough over cost to stay in business.  They gave a little demonstration by smashing the windshield on one of the workers' car.  They gave everyone some advice about how to avoid these kinds of visits in the future.

          For years, the Frente has been holding the feet of COESIDA, the Oaxaca state arm of the "official" AIDS organization, to the fire.  As a result, there are now more folks being treated, and a broader spectrum of drugs available than there might otherwise have been.  Operating on the edge of destitution, with volunteer workers led by founder Bill Wolf, the Frente has always been a moral and professional embarrasment to their well-paid COESIDA brethren, but nobody thought their antics to be worth getting violent about.  Until recently.

          The occasion was an "official state function": an international AIDS conference to be held in Oaxaca city.  Our governor, Ulises Ruiz, had made it part of his patronage, investing his personal prestige, when the Frente sent a letter out to many influential and well-read newspapers and AIDS organizations, asking the participants to boycott the gathering, on the grounds that COESIDA had not fulfilled its obligations to the community and did not deserve the good publicity.  (SEE: "Open Letter...", 15-11-05)  That's when the thugs dropped by, with a clear message: no demonstrations, no attempts to attend the conference, no press conferences.  Sit down and shut up.  Or else.

          The conference took place without the Frente.  That was just sensible, under the circumstances.  The rest of the work goes on, a vocation that Bill Wolf rightly calls "saving lives".  Fortunately, Ulises does not find the daily guerrilla warfare in the trenches of the COESIDA bureaucracy to be personally embarrassing.  The Frente needs money, and volunteers, as much as they always have. 

          There is already one plea for support in this Newsletter, … and now here is another.  We're all inundated with requests for funds; I know we sure are.  Our community bleeds in so many places, and we can't plug all the holes, but here's another one that's worthy.

NOTE:  Visit our friends Stan Gotlieb and Diana Ricci at:  http://realoaxaca.com