Blockade

This rather bad phone photo serves to illustrate the following story. My apologies for its quality.
Blockades by teachers in Oaxaca have been all over the news this past year in Mexico. We have heard countless stories of how groups of educators have shut down the roads, effectively shutting off access to many areas of the state causing unending hardship for the residents. Sounds bad, but didn't mean much to us living in relatively stable Zihuatanejo until our trip north today. 

We were cruising along Mex 200, about four hours into a six hour journey from Zihua to Manzanillo, when we came upon a large assemblage of vehicles along the edge of the highway. Soon these truck were protruding onto the road (causing us to weave in and around various vehicles) and eventually this big yellow one fully blocked the highway, bringing us to a halt with about a dozen others. 

It was a very helpless feeling to be stuck in the middle of nowhere (literally, the nearest town was still an hour up the road) and not being able to ascertain what exactly was going on. We didn't venture out of our air conditioned vehicle, but other travelers were up and down the road talking with the walkie talkie guys, who seemed to be the ones in charge. One woman in particular was insistent on getting past the yellow truck and finally persuaded the driver to pull back and allow her through. We jumped in line and stayed very, very close to the pickup shown here (the negotiator was in the car behind us) and got past this bottleneck only to be stopped once again a half mile up the road. 

The woman was out once again, we sat and watched. This negotiation took quite a bit longer. We got past one spot, only to be blocked by a police truck in our lane. Our convoy of vehicles was down to four, two pickups full of people, the woman's car, and us bringing up the rear. More talking, during which time a pregnant woman got into the car ahead of us making us think that is what the woman was using as justification for passing. We didn't have any pregnant women aboard, but I wasn't letting go of my tenuous place in line - I was practically touching the bumper of the woman's car. 

Forty-five minutes from our first stop, the police moved a bus that had pulled up behind them to the side of the road, backed their car to a spot in the road where we could weave by and thankfully be on our way. I stayed with the three vehicles for a couple dozen miles before they all turned off into a little beachside burg and we were forced to proceed on our own.

It was a very tense hour and we are very grateful to whoever the woman was who managed to get us through. Now we understand the pain endured, if only for a brief moment, by the residents of Oaxaca firsthand. Extremely happy to be writing this from the patio of my Puerto Vallarta hotel two days later.