Self-Organized and Dissident Street Market Resists State Repression and Precarity in Oaxaca

Self-organized and dissident street market in Oaxaca city resists state repression and precarity with mutual aid and solidarity.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused increased unemployment and social uncertainty. The economic crisis is worsening and is ravaging collectives and individuals. Several of us have managed to survive on a day-to-day basis in recent months by self-producing items we’ve put up for sale.

The businessmen and the state have not provided jobs, unemployment benefits or enabled community kitchens to seek out ways for vulnerable sectors to obtain at least some economic income to cover their daily expenses. The pandemic has been used as a justification by the police to persecute and repress those of us who don’t have the opportunity to shelter at home.

The self-organized and dissident street market is a space made up of feminist and disabled women, girls, boys, self-organized and sexually dissident peoples, who organize to confront the precarization in which we find ourselves. Taking the necessary health measures, since October 31st, we have cultivated self-organization, making products that we exchange and barter as a way in which to cover our basic necessities. We have set up the market on Saturdays, behind the House of Culture, in the center of Oaxaca city.

The Oaxacan state represses local producers, yet they have no problem with the massive concentrations of people in shopping malls and chain stores which pertain to tycoons that invade and plunder our territories.

The self-organized market and the spaces of buying and exchanging are necessary, not only to obtain a basic economic income, but also to maintain the community organization that we have developed as people and collectives.

We solicit the solidarity and organization of the people, spreading the word and/or buying articles and products in the self-organized and dissident street market. We are people that organize from below, maintaining mutual aid and a solidarity economy without any desire for political or economic gain. We occupy public space because we believe that the privatization of space only enriches businessmen and the political class. We do this in memory of those who preceded us in the feminist, autonomous and dissident struggles.

Space free of Macho violence.

Tianguis Autogestivo y Disidente (Self-organized and Dissident Street Market)