citizenship and the imperial city patricia m. martin

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Citizenship and the Imperial City

Patricia M. MartinDepartement de geographie, Universite de Montreal, Montreal, Canada;

[email protected]

Historically speaking, Oaxaca may be considered, in the provocativephrase of Angel Rama (1996), a lettered city. The city was foundedin 1521 as part of the frenzied urbanization that characterized thefoundations of Spanish imperialism in the Americas. The contemporaryhistoric center of Oaxaca City was built in the now much admiredSpanish colonial grid-like fashion. This ubiquitous colonial landscape,Rama argued, functioned not only as a material center of administrativepower, but also as the embodied imposition of a potent symbolicorder. Throughout the Spanish American empire, cities functioned

as sites of Eurocentric transculturation (Rama 1996:13). Throughthe process of elite education and religious evangelism, Spanishimperialism produced an urban ideal that remained immanently hostile tosurrounding territories and hinterlands. The symbolic order or culturalmap, represented by the lettered city established an enduring racialized,cultural, and socio-economic hierarchy of value that continues towork through many Latin American societies. Within this map thewritten wordhence the lettered cityrepresented a certain kind ofeducation and a certain way of knowing, serving as a gate-keeper

to the power of the city. Even as the written word has had an ever-shifting institutional base (ecclesiastical; legal; literary; technical),this form of social communication both legitimized and producedcolonial forms of rule that continued well into the post-independenceera.

As literary critic Jean Franco argues in The Decline and Fall ofthe Lettered City (2002), the cultural maps that characterize con-temporary Latin American society have profoundly shifted. Excessiveurbanization, the massification of popular culture, the dirty war, modernauthoritarianisms, and contemporary neoliberal development, all haveexploded this peculiar colonial map of cultured production and power.In this regard, Oaxaca, a city best characterized by the ever-expandingpatchwork of informal and popular neighborhoods, is no exception.It could be argued, nonetheless, that the specter of the lettered city

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still hangs over Oaxaca. Reflecting this, the popular insurgency thatcharacterized 2006 was caught between the socio-cultural formations ofthe lettered city and its uncertain aftermath.

As individuals attached to the tourist sector will assert, Oaxaca lives

off her image. Indeed, contemporary tourism has reproduced with avengeance a nostalgic dream of the orders and cultures representedby the lettered city. Tourists in Oaxaca readily buy access to fabledcolonial buildings in the heart of the city. The Camino Real hotel islocated in the Santa Catarina Convent that was built in 1576, while justa few cobble-stoned blocks away, Santo-Domingo, one of the largesthistoric Dominican monasteries in Mexico, has been lavishly restoredas a regional museum and ethno-botanical garden. In the colonialromance of the city, furthermore, the wealthy buy continuous access

to a certain kind of indigenous cultural presencemost notably in foodcultures, artisan production, dance, and musicthereby staking out aclear cultural and social order that consistently gestures towards formsof colonial rule. Alongside this urban colonial dream, the continuedabsolute negation of, and outright hostility towards, the political, socio-economic, and cultural realities of the majority of Oaxacas peoplesendure.

In a myriad of ways, the popular movement that erupted in Oaxacain the summer of 2006 defied the symbolism and spaces of the letteredcity, suggesting that this colonial matrix still informs political cultures ofprotest. Demonstrating intimate knowledge of the contours of Oaxacascolonial urbanism, the movement progressivelyphysicallyoccupiedkey spaces within the heart of the city, gaining de facto control of thehistoric center and disrupting the social order of urban space. For a time,thezocalo became a site that served popular politics. That the state publicteachers union was the catalyst of the popular uprising, placing the issueof basic public education of Oaxacas rural and indigenous populations

at the heart of the city, marked a radical inversion of the symbolic (andlived) social order that the lettered city signified historically. And, afterthe police repression of 14 June, this popular occupation multiplied;indigenous groups, students, and popular organizations became centralpolitical protagonists demanding radical forms of political recognitionand inclusion.

The production of urban space works in complex tandem withthe production of social forms of communication, as Rama argues.Thus, just as the popular insurgency sought to invert the meaning

and contents of the physical city, the movement worked as welltowards the clandestine appropriation of the media in order tosubvert one of the ordering principles of society (Rama 1996:38). Thisclandestine appropriation began as early as 2005, when the teachersunion established an unauthorized radio station (Radio Planton) thatoperated from the union headquarters downtown. As the movement

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expanded in June and July 2006, the use of the radio was accompaniedby the production of graffiti, political art, and the appropriation ofvideo technology: remarkable stenciled images appeared on wallsof colonial buildings; and the teachers made life-size papier mache

puppets used during the mega-marchasand later displayed downtown.Throughout the summer of 2006, furthermore, street vendors in thezocalosold a DVD that pieced together video footage of key momentsin the popular movements evolution (the mega-marchas; the policeattack of 14 June; the popularguelaguetza). The same vendors projectedthe DVD on TV screens on a daily basis. As events continued tounfold, more footage would be added to the DVD so that an alwaysupdated recounting of the events, presenting images that becameindelibly etched in peoples minds, was available in the zocalo. As

is well known, the media became an ever-escalating site of conflictculminating with the intentional destruction of radio transmitters atthe top of el Cerro del Fortn; the destruction of Radio Universidad(with acid); and the death of Brad Will on 27 October by paramilitarygroups working at the behest of the governor (see Margarita Daltonscontribution).

Thus, the multifaceted production of alternative and clandestine formsof social communication sustained the popular movements physicaloccupation of the city. This entire configuration, which succeeded inchallenging the enduring structures of the lettered city, rested on threedeep ironies. These ironies demonstrate, in turn, the complexities ofOaxacan (and Mexican) politics in the contemporary era. The first greatirony is that the popular insurgency that characterized the Oaxacacommune (see Hernandez Navarro 2006) acted upon a certain idea ofthe city as polis, as a site through which citizenship could be constructedand enacted. As is well documented, the movement remained adamantlypacific in the face of repeated and multiple forms of state repression.

Decisions were made, furthermore, through marathon-length debates.And though there were clearly social movement leaders, the movementwas undoubtedly based in an expansive form of participatory politics.However, the de facto response to this demand for inclusion in thecity demonstrated, in turn, that the contemporary romance of thecolonial city is in fact propped by a political system willing to resortto extrajudicial killings, torture and brutish police repression. A recenthuman rights document produced by the International Civil Commissionfor the Observation of Human Rights argues that that at least 23 people

have died as a result of the conflict and there are strong indicationsthat people have been disappeared. The report also documents a largenumber of police detentions, characterized by a remarkable range ofillegal practices, as well as indiscriminate violence against thecivilian population of Oaxaca (ICCOHR 2007). Given the incredibleinaction of the federal government in the face of the conflict in

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Oaxaca, this violence was the only tangible political response to themovement.

The second great irony, of course, is that the political mobilizationand repression in Oaxaca has occurred within the context of official

democratization of Mexico. In Oaxaca, as in Mexico more broadly,the meaning of democracy is deeply contested. Throughout 2006 anincreasingly hard line pitted a very narrow enactment of electoraldemocracy, embodied in officially produced voting results, against en-actments of popular democracy, most meaningfully represented throughpopular mobilizations in public space. As a result, those institutions,individuals and interests that sought to fully legitimize the formerworked at the same time to de-legitimize and marginalize the latter.Thus, though ostensively a local affair, the national struggle over the

meaning of Mexican democracy went right through the heart ofthe Oaxacan conflict. Of course, the implications of the strugglearound the meaning and contents of democracy in Mexico is notsimply an issue of definition. As Greg Grandin (2006) has eloquentlyargued, they swim in the currents of (post) Cold War geopoliticsand serve as a referendum on the directives of the WashingtonConsensus.

The third great irony returns us to the city of Oaxaca and indicatesthat the shifting nature of political power in Mexico (with its amalgamof state violence and official democracy) is intertwined with thegeographical reconfiguration of power. When Ulisis Ruiz, the currentgovernor of Oaxaca, came to power in December 2004, one of the firstthings he did was to commence the geographical reorganization of thestate government (Galvez de Aguinaga 2006). He closed the historicgovernors palace that stands on the central square and converted itinto a museum of still undefined purpose. From that time forward, hehas ruled from a municipality that is located half an hour outside of

Oaxaca City. In a similar fashion, the local congress has been moved,as has the attorney generals office, all into municipalities that lie on theoutskirts of the metropolitan area of Oaxaca City. One of the majorrationales for this new geography of rule was to bring an end to apattern of public protest that had become ever more endemic in thehistoric center of the city. As many commentators have remarked,Ulisis has maintained rule, governing from hotels, airports, and thesuburbs. The emergence of a phantom government that has in factleft the city marks a definitive break with historical forms of rule

established through the lettered city, and signals the emergence of a newgeography of state power in Oaxaca. This move to abandon the city, tomarginalize thez ocalo, has clear echoes at the national level, and bodesan uncertain future for social mobilization and popular democracy inMexico.

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ReferencesFranco J (2002) The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City. Cambridge and London:

Harvard University Press

Galvez de Aguinaga F (2006) Ulisis, el mago que desaperecio los poderes.La Jornada

(online edition) 15 October. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/10/15/010a1pol.php

Accessed 28 January 2007Grandin G (2006) Calderons inauguration behind closed doors: Midnight in Mexico

Counterpunch (online edition). http://www.counterpunch.org/grandin12012006.html

Accessed 28 January 2007

Hernandez Navarro L (2006) La Comuna de Oaxaca.La Jornada(online edition) 25

July. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/07/25/021a1pol.php Accessed 27 January

2007.

ICCOHR (2007) Preliminary Conclusions and Recommendations Regarding

the Conflict in Oaxaca. http://cciodh.pangea.org/quinta/070120 inf conclusiones

recomendaciones cas.shtml Accessed 27 January 2007

Rama A (1996)The Lettered City. Durham and London: Duke University Press

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citizenship and the imperial city patricia m. martin

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