Mexico has four or five different kinds of cops. It’s beyond me where they come from, what organizations or authority they represent. All of their uniforms look army-like, but some moreso than others. I’ve seen kids who can’t be much older than sixteen hanging around checkpoints with automatic weapons. The guys in this picture actually look quite old, relatively. Rene, a local cultural anthropologist Corinne met while waiting for Maris at the airport, said he was never afraid for his safety in Oaxaco until, in the aftermath of last year’s riots, the military arrived from Mexico City. He doesn’t trust them, he said. I wouldn’t necessarily trust these guys either. That’s a lot of heavy artillery they’re carrying.

For more on the riots last year, Wikipedia has a timeline. The Washington City Paper just published, last month, a story about an American independant journalist who filmed his own murder during the riots.