This strikes me as completely disingenuous. The WaPo article actively makes mention of police activity only twice; once here:

“The last time I was in Oaxaca, I was frantically trying to improvise a gas mask. The city was a war zone: anti-government protesters packing spray paint, rocks and Molotov cocktails; police in riot gear tossing canisters of black tear gas into the crowd.”

and once here:

“Some 4,000 federal police descended, erecting barricades and military-style encampments.”

In both cases police action is explained as reaction to civil unrest, without ever attempting to explain the root of the unrest (or mentioning unprovoked attacks by police).

There are two other instances where the author mentions or alludes to police, in both cases indirectly:

“But marches in opposition to state Gov. Ulises Ruiz — who sent riot police to battle demonstrators — occur often, and residents say the underlying economic and political tensions remain.”

and:

“But in its effort to remove the ugly barricades and trash, the government also swept away a bit of Oaxaca’s soul.”

That last one doesn’t even say police, but lumps police in under “government.”

4 mentions, two indirect at best. That hardly qualifies as “detailed.”

I get it that Connolly never set out to write a gravel-in-the-guts type piece about the conflict in Oaxaca, but seriously. There’s a human responsibility to represent with care, and that care is completely lacking here.

I can certainly appreciate the strong emotions about Oaxaca and what happened there one year ago. The story I wrote for the Post Travel Section was intended to give past and potential visitors a sense of the city today. It was not an effort to re-litigate what happened in 2006 or, frankly, to delve into the deep political and socioeconomic problems there. That said, we did not ignore those realities. In fact, in several instances the article refers to those ongoing tensions.

I am sensitive to people who did not like the use of the word riots, but that is the word that accurately describes the situation at times during the conflict. The story also detailed the role by heavily-armed police.

If our measure of articles about Oaxaca indicate a need to review the Brad Will murder, why is it that no media outlet has examine the question of why he was in Mexico on a tourist visa?