A Night on the Barricades
first published in World Vision Report on Aug. 9, 2007
In the summer of 2007, the city of Oaxaca was insurrection. A striking teachers union, joined by hundreds of disaffected NGOs, indigenous groups and other protestors ruled the streets, with barricades of burnt out vehicles at every street corner. The state government was in hiding -- "how did you find us?" said an astonished ministerial assistant when I turned up at the door of a hotel that served for temporary cabinet meetins -- and every night shots rang out. This is the story of one night on a barricade, when a convoy of state police came out of the darkness, intent on breaking the protest once and for all.
I'm a journalist, producer, instructional designer and developer. I've reported from a minefield and a dugout canoe, taught radio journalism, robotics, and anthropology in board rooms, lecture halls and mud huts, led award-winning media projects, and mentored dozens of journalists in Canada and Latin America. I run a small media production company specialized in education and the environment called Studio Canek.
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