OAXACA, Mexico — In the months leading up this nation's presidential election, the contest was often described as one between two very different Mexicos: the prosperous and the poor.
On Sunday, both were fully on display in this deeply polarized city.
For the last several weeks, this picturesque regional capital known for its rich, indigenous culture has been the scene of a massive teachers' strike, a bitter showdown that has left scores injured, streets barricaded with metal sheets and the historic city center strewn with trash and rubble and covered in graffiti.
The confrontation pits thousands of aggrieved teachers and their supporters demanding better wages and working conditions against state Gov. Ulises Ruiz. During one melee last month, police beat demonstrators with truncheons, according to Mexico's national human rights commission.
As millions of their countrymen headed to the polls, some demonstrators discounted the election as a sham that underscored the inequities in Mexican society and said they would not vote. Meanwhile, hundreds of other Oaxacans flocked to polling stations to cast their ballots. At one precinct, the line of people waiting to vote wrapped around three-quarters of a city block.
En route to the polls, some stopped to discuss their votes and register their support or disapproval of the strike.
"It has affected us economically and given a bad image of Oaxaca," said businessman Serafin Barranca, 49. He said he had voted for conservative candidate Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party.
Maria Dolores Corres, 49, who drove to the polling station in a black Jeep Liberty with her mother and cousin, dismissed the claim of some strikers and their supporters that open class warfare was breaking out in Oaxaca.
"Those are lies," she said. "We're captives in our own city."
But Rosa Velasquez, 26, a lawyer who belongs to a civic organization that supports the teachers, says many poor Oaxacans don't believe their lives will improve no matter which of the three principal candidates is the next president.
"They know the same thing arrives again and again and again," she said. "All three will rob them."
Velasquez said she planned to vote to exercise what she called her "free expression." But she said that the demonstrations, which have drawn support from regional farmers, housewives, taxi drivers and other unions, were being driven by the extreme poverty in which many here live, and other fundamental social problems the election won't solve.
