Speaking in front of Mexico City´s Benito Juárez monument where 21 APPO (Oaxaca People´s Assembly) members started a hunger strike on Oct. 16, López Obrador called for the removal of Gov. Ulises Ruiz, and an election to determine his successor.

López Obrador chided the Senate for issuing "pleas" for Ruiz´s resignation rather than exercising its power to oust him legally.

López Obrador said the Oaxaca crisis, which has by unofficial count claimed at least 15 lives since the state´s teachers went on strike on May 22, is a direct result of the governor´s authoritarian style.

"Ulises Ruiz surpassed his predecessors in cynicism and evil," López Obrador said. "He came to office through fraud, and subjected dissidents to systematic brutal repression. There have been forced disappearances, persecutions and murders."

López Obrador´s words echoed APPO´s oft-voiced accusations against Ruiz, whose ouster the coalition of activist groups has demanded throughout its occupation of downtown Oaxaca City.

The former Mexico City mayor shared a makeshift stage with a dozen or so politicians, union leaders and activists associated with the grassroots National Democratic Convention and the political coalition United Progressive Front (FAP).

The crowd of several thousand consisted of supporters of both López Obrador and APPO, marking the first joint rally of those two major opposition forces.

But Tuesday´s commingling was not without some tension. Many APPO members and supporters left before López Obrador spoke in order to begin a march down Reforma Ave. to the presidential residence of Los Pinos. López Obrador had asked to help lead the march, but was turned down by APPO leaders.

Much of the APPO membership is suspicious of party-affiliated politicians, and the FAP is the continuation of the electoral coalition that consisted of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), the Labor Party and the Convergence Party.

Though López Obrador himself was greeted warmly with cries of "president, president," an earlier speech by PRD co-founder and FAP leader Porfirio Muñoz Ledo was frequently interrupted. Several times a vocal segment of the crowd broke into a variation of a common rhyming chant that roughly translates as, "The people, united, will advance without parties."

López Obrador, on the other hand, saw party politics permeating the crisis, accusing the ruling National Action Party (PAN) of helping Ruiz stay in office in exchange for cooperation from the governor´s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the upcoming administration of Felipe Calderón.

"Oaxaca is paying with its blood for the deal the PRI and PAN mafiosos made so Calderón can be sworn in," he said.