Whirlybirds: Update

UPDATE, 11:07 am: I see and hear the helo for the fourth time this morning. When it goes over our house all the windows rattle in their sills. Each time it circles twice and then goes away again for a little while, presumably to spy on another part of the city.

I could do this all day, furtively watch the sky from my front door like a character out of "Good Fellas", but really I've got to go to work.
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UPDATE, 10:15 am: Make that three passes.
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It's 9:19 am, and the police helicopter has overflown the city center twice. There are three armed men standing on the landing skids, surveying the streets.

Incidentally, November 25 is the one year anniversary of the federal army's forcible eviction of demonstrators from the city center.

Whirlybirds

Can anybody tell me why there's been a police helicopter circling central Oaxaca the past several days with armed gunmen standing strapped to the outside of it?

My three guesses all boil down to the same thing: increased military presence. Explanations might include narcotrafficking, which is government-speak for increased military presence; intimidation, surveillance, and apprehension of political opposition figures, which is repugnant yet a slightly less dissembling way of acknowledging an increased military presence; and increased military presence, for its own sake, plain and simple.

Comments?