Sunday, April 20, 2008
Mexico Monitor
Oaxacan protest leader Flavio Sosa freed from prison
FLAVIO SOSA immediately took to the street carrying some documents just after freed from prison where he served for 18 months behind bars. He is one of the top leaders in Oaxaca state's 2006 popular movement by a wide-ranging group called the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca or APPO, which aimed at throw out Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, who many opponents charge rigged his own election and is deeply corrupted and uses violence and torture against his political opponents.
After APPO and state and federal police clashed on several occasions in 2006, Sosa was jailed under charges of being the master mind behind violent robberies, damage to government building and kidnapping of police and government officials. State judges freed Sosa after state prosecutors failed to turn up evidence against Sosa.
Now free again, he is back in Oaxaca City and making plans to analyze the failures of the social uprising that aimed to toss out a powerful PRI governor. Many of the key players still support the movement to toss the PRI politician from office.
Analysts say certain states governments controlled by PRI governors have become increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian since the PRI lost the powerful presidency in the year 2000. Before 2000, the all-powerful Mexican president, who was also the head of the PRI political apparatus, could control and remove rogue governors at will.
That's no longer the case since the right-leaning National Action Party, or PAN, has held Mexico's presidency for two consecutive terms. Current President Felipe Calderon is a stalwart of the conservative PAN.
