Solidarity Without Borders News

No-Racism: Pressemitteilung: No Border Calais

Natacha Bouchart, Bürger_innen- meisterin von Calais, will dem No Border-Netzwerk verbieten, "Migrant_ innen" auf der Straße zu helfen. Doch weder No Border, noch die Hilfe oder die Straße gehören Frau Bouchart, welche bei den letzten Wahlen lediglich 23% der Stimmen ergattern konnte.
Read more [Delete the Border]

Mostlywater.org | Migration: Why We Should Welcome Boatful of Tamil Refugees

By Harsha Walia - August 14, 2010

Relying on sound-bites about organized crime and terrorism is the best way to close public debate about government actions. Instead of relying on sensationalism, let us ask: On what basis are the Tamil migrants being declared terrorists?...Even if we believe that women and children were forced onto this boat, how do we justify jailing them as a humane response?

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Triqui Women Prepare For Third Peace Caravan to Mexico City

Faced with Silence in Oaxaca, They Request That Paramilitaries Be Dismantled

by Gladis Torres Ruiz, CIMAC Noticias

Mexico City, August 9, 2010 (CIMAC).- Women in resistance from the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, announced that, faced with the constant danger of being beaten, murdered, or sexually abused, they are preparing the "Third Peace Caravan," which will depart from Huajuapan de León and end in Mexico City.

In a press conference, Hilda Sánchez Gutiérrez and Josefina Albino Ortiz, coordinators of the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, said that women from their community have been disappeared, beaten, raped, and murdered by men who belong to the Union for the Social Well-being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT). [1]

In San Juan Copala, the Triqui people have a long history of struggle for indigenous peoples' right to self-determination. However, a decades-long social conflict has caused internal division.

For months, San Juan Copala has been under siege by paramilitary groups who, according to autonomous authorities and social organizations, act with the Oaxacan government's complicity.

"That is why today we don't want to remain silent. We want to publicly denounce that as women we are most affected by this violent situation, by isolation and lack of basic services such as education and food supplies. We are the ones who remain in the community," said Sánchez Gutiérrez.

She said that in order to survive, the women must risk their lives walking along paths in order to get to other communities in order to buy some basic goods and "when we return [to San Juan Copala] we run the risk that they will rob us or rape us or kill us."

Women have lived with this grave violence for years in San Juan Copala. "We just want to live in peace and we want our rights as indigenous people to be respected--[rights such as] self-determination and and the right to live without violence," they added.

They mentioned that this past Friday they met with the United Nations Assistant High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kyung-wha Kang. They informed her of the constant human rights violations, said Sánchez Gutiérrez.

She said that the High Commissioner was very attentive and expressed to them that impunity is one of the factors that encourages crime and violence. She told them that the only thing that can guarantee that human rights are respected is justice, and she requested that they document their community's situation in order to more deeply understand the problem.

In the name of the women in resistance in her community, Sánchez Gutiérrez denounced that men from UBISORT have been responsible for all of the attacks on Triqui women, and that for that reason they hold them [UBISORT] responsible for anything that happens to them, because they [UBISORT] always reacts violently when people denounce them.

"Above all, it is because they don't consider women to be human beings. They humiliate us, they don't take our opinion into account, and we are the ones who pay for their thirst for vengeance and for the hatred that they feel towards women," said the young indigenous woman.

Recent Attacks

Accompanied by six indigenous women with their daughters and sons, Sánchez Gutiérrez recounted that this past May 15, two differently abled women were attacked, beaten, and dragged during a kidnapping attempt perpetrated by UBISORT leaders Rufino and Anastasio Juárez, who were drunk.[2]

That same day, 30 women who were returning to San Juan Copala after collecting their aid from the Opportunities Program [a government welfare program] had their supplies stolen. Nine women, two children, and a baby were detained for over twelve hours by members of the UBISORT group.

On May 20, Cleriberta Castro Aguilar was murdered along with her husband. On June 24, 8-year-old Miriam Martínez was wounded during a shooting perpetrated by the armed group. On June 26, the municipality was attacked and Marcelina de Jesús López and Celestina Cruz Ramírez were wounded, added Sánchez Gutiérrez.

Third Caravan

In support of the autonomous municipality, she said, on August 23 the "Third Peace Caravan" will leave from Huajuapan de León, Oaxaca, for Mexico City. It will be led by women and their daughters and sons.

She said that the Caravan plans to stop in the community where human rights defender Beatriz Alberta Cariño lived. Cariño was murdered this past April 27 during an armed attack on the International Human Rights Observation Caravan, which was headed to San Juan Copala.

The delivery of humanitarian aid to the town of San Juan Copala has been thwarted on two occasions, most recently on June 8, when [the second caravan] attempted to deliver over 30 tons of supplies that were left in a warehouse in Huajuapan de León.

Faced with that situation, the supplies had to be transported by residents in an "Operation Ant." To date, 70% of the aid has been carried into San Juan Copala on the backs of residents of the Triqui community.

Hilda Sánchez added that the caravan also plans to make a stop in San Salvador Atenco.

The goal is to demand that the federal government dismantle paramilitary groups and that peace return to the municipality, because the Oaxacan government has not listened to them. They will also visit government offices such as the Secretary of the Interior and the Federal Attorney General's Office.

Translated by Kristin Bricker.

Translator's Notes:


[1] The United Nations High Commission on Refugees classifies UBISORT, which was founded by the ruling political party in Oaxaca, as a paramilitary organization.
[2] Anastasio Juárez was murdered last week, leading to a joint raid on San Juan Copala carried out by UBISORT and Oaxacan state police. State police have since left the community, but the paramilitaries have taken over San Juan Copala's town hall and the military has deployed to the paramiltary-controlled town of La Sabana, located 5-10 minutes from San Juan Copala.

Al Gore Stirs Controversy, this Time In Mexico

Press Barred from US Politician’s Speech for Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto

By Fernando León and Erin Rosa
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
August 6, 2010

http://www.narconews.com/Issue66/article4172.html

Read more [Narco News]

Blockade and March in Oaxaca City Protests Increased Aggression Against San Juan Copala

by Scott Campbell

On Saturday, July 31, around 50 individuals from various collectives and organizations in the city of Oaxaca blockaded Calle Benito Juárez in front of the federal courthouse for two hours to protest the escalating aggression against the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala. Initial reports from the region indicated that 400 paramilitaries from the state-backed Union for the Well-Being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) have entered the autonomous municipality accompanied by 300 Oaxaca state police in an effort to crush the autonomous project underway in San Juan Copala, a municipality of 70 families who have been under siege by UBISORT and the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT) paramilitaries for seven months.

Protesters demanded an end to the siege, an end to state-backed paramilitary aggression, the immediate exit of paramilitary, police and military forces from San Juan Copala, implicated Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz as the one responsible for the violence, and expressed their support for the autonomous municipality. After two hours the blockade was lifted and a march made its way through town to the city’s central plaza.

Breaking: San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Under Paramilitary Control Following Police Raid

San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Under Paramilitary Control Following Police Raid

Police Raid Belies Government Excuses About Why It Refused to Break the Months-Long Paramilitary Blockade

by Kristin Bricker

UPDATE 8/3/2010: Women from the autonomous municipality who live in San Juan Copala held a press conference today.  They gave updates on the two women who were injured when UBISORT shot them during the police/paramilitary raid.  Seventeen-year-old Selena Ramírez López was shot in the lung and is in critical condition.  Her 15-year-old sister Adela is also in critical condition; the bullet that struck her damaged her intestines and imbedded itself in her backbone.  Adela might not ever regain her ability to walk.

Triquis from San Juan Copala protest in front of government
office, demand that paramilitaries leave their community.
(photo: Francisco Olvera/La Jornada) At approximately 12:15 pm on July 30, over one hundred Oaxaca state police raided the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala.  Approximately thirty heavily armed members of the Union for the Social Well-being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT, a paramilitary organization) accompanied the police on the raid.  Rufino Juárez, UBISORT's leader, reportedly participated in the raid.

The goal of the raid, according to the state government, was to remove the body of Anastasio Juárez Hernández from his home in San Juan Copala.  Police did remove the dead man from his home and then left San Juan Copala.  However, the paramilitaries, taking advantage of the police presence, took over San Juan Copala's town hall.  The town hall is now occupied by thirty UBISORT paramilitaries armed with automatic assault rifles.  "They have taken over control of the entire town," reports a source close to the autonomous authorities.

Meanwhile, the Mexican military has deployed soldiers to La Sabana, a nearby town that is controled by UBISORT.  Thus far the soldiers have not entered San Juan Copala.

Two young indigenous Triqui women were wounded when the paramilitaries and police entered San Juan Copala.  The women were part of a human blockade at the entrance to the town that attempted to impede the police and paramilitaries' access.  The two women, ages 15 and 18, were "gravely wounded" when paramilitaries from UBISORT shot them as they entered San Juan Copala.  The women were evacuated and are being treated at an undisclosed location.

Mysterious Murder

Autonomous authorities questioned the circumstances of the raid in a communique published on their website, http://autonomiaencopala.wordpress.com.  In the communique, the autonomous municipality claims that Juárez Hernández was actually murdered in the city of Juxtlahuaca, implying that his body was later planted in San Juan Copala in order to justify the police raid.

Local press immediately parroted the government's claims that Juárez Hernández, who was UBISORT leader Rufino Juárez's brother and the government-recognized "municipal agent" of San Juan Copala, was murdered in his home in San Juan Copala.  Juárez Hernández was not elected to the position of municipal agent; UBISORT appointed him to that position this past November.

The claim that Juárez Hernández was murdered in his home in San Juan Copala raises several questions about its veracity: How did Juarez Hernandez enter San Juan Copala, a town which his organization, UBISORT, has successfully blockaded with boulders, logs, and gunmen since January?  Why would Juárez Hernández enter San Juan Copala, a town whose remaining residents fully support the autonomous municipality?  UBISORT claims that the autonomous municipality is armed.   So why would Juárez Hernández enter a town whose only residents are bitter enemies whom his organization claims are armed?

It is true that police retrieved Juárez Hernández's body from his home in San Juan Copala.  San Juan Copala has historically been an important cultural, political, economic, and spiritual center for the lower Triqui region.  San Juan Copala has historically had very few permanent residents.  Leaders had homes in San Juan Copala, but they only lived there when they were serving the public.  When their service was over, they returned to their permanent homes in other communities.  Furthermore, most of San Juan Copala's residents (seasonal and permanent) have fled the area due to the violence and the paramilitary blockade.  As a result, many Triquis have homes in San Juan Copala that they rarely or never inhabit.  Such was Juárez Hernández's case.  While his body was recovered on his property, residents report that he did not live there at the time of the murder.

Due to frequent fire that comes from paramilitary sharp-shooters stationed in the hills that surround San Juan Copala, the town's streets are deserted.  No one leaves their homes unless absolutely necessary, and those who do leave frequently come under fire if the sharp-shooters spot them.  The siege makes it relatively easy for someone who his complicit with the sharp-shooters to plant a body without anyone noticing, because residents spend the majority of their lives hidden in their homes away from any windows.

Regardless of how or where Juárez Hernández died, the consequences of his murder are painfully apparent for San Juan Copala's residents.  Their town is occupied by heavily armed paramilitaries who were escorted in by state police. To add insult to injury, the raid comes after seven months of a paramilitary blockade that the government has claimed it is incapable of breaking despite the autonomous municipality's claims that residents may starve to death if the blockade continues. The raid's irony wasn't lost on the Oaxaca-based Bartolomé Carrasco Briseño Human Rights Center, who wrote in a press release:
"It is inconsistent and paradoxical that when security measures were requested so that the 'Bety and Jiry' Humanitarian Caravan could enter [San Juan Copala] and leave food supplies, the State did not fulfill its responsibility and prevented the Caravan from fulfilling its mission.  At that time, [the state] put together an impressive operation that was headed by the State Attorney General, the State Security Commissioner, and the President of the Oaxaca Human Rights Commission, which impeded the caravan's passage.  They argued that conditions did not permit a safe entrance, and that not even the police could enter that territory.  But in reality, they were just protecting the armed group named UBISORT.  "Now it is absurd that the authorities could put together an entire operation in order to carry out the initial investigation of the homicide, and that now they can enter [San Juan Copala] and on top of that repress the people, when before they did not listen, nor did they act, when faced with the demands of hundreds of residents of the autonomous municipality who requested food, the reinstallation of basic services, treatment for sick people, under the false argument that they were incapable of entering the zone and that they would not risk their people."The government's preferential treatment of the paramilitaries is unmistakable: in addition to deploying armed state police to guard the UBISORT's blockade when the humanitarian caravan attempted to enter San Juan Copala this past June, the government has failed to act when members of the autonomous municipality have come under attack, presumably by government-aligned paramilitaries.  Just this past July 26, Maria Rosa Francisco disappeared when her home in San Juan Copala came under fire.  All of her animals were killed in the attack, and she remains missing and is feared dead.  The Bartolomé Carrasco Briseño Human Rights Center publicly denounced the attack and called on its supporters to contact the government and demand that put an end to the violence.

The Human Rights Center's pleas were met with indifference in the government.  However, as soon as a paramilitary's cadaver appeared in San Juan Copala, the government acted.

The autonomous municipality reports that it desperately needs money to pay for the wounded women's medical treatment and to buy phone credit in order to communicate with the press and human rights organizations.

Stop the repression against the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala

Oaxaca de Magón, City of Resistance, July 30, 2010

To the peoples of Oaxaca
To the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca
To the people of Mexico
To the peoples of the world
To the general public

Today, July 30, 2010 at approximately 12:15, just after noon, a group of heavily armed UBISORT men accompanied by state police who were also heavily armed, went into San Juan Copala shooting into the air, striking the women comrades, and then violently occupying the Municipal Government Building.

As has been reported in a number of different news media, the acts of provocation against the autonomous municipality began on Monday, July 26, when UBISORT paramilitaries shot up the community space for two hours, wounding 35 year-old María Rosa Francisco, who has been disappeared since she went out for firewood that day. The paramilitaries shot everything that moved, including dozens of domestic animals.

These acts were a prelude to what happened yesterday, Thursday, July 29, when paramilitary leader Anastacio Juárez was killed. He was a UBISORT member and brother of PRI paramilitary leader Rufino Juárez, the main person responsible for the ambush of the peace caravan on April 27 of this year and the cowardly murders of Bety Cariño and Jyri Antero

The style of the killing of this paramilitary leader in an undetermined spot, whose body was “recovered” by state authorities precisely in San Juan Copala, is the same as that of the executions of Aristeo López and Alejandro Barrita, high level police commanders directly responsible for the repression against APPO comrades in 2006. His death only benefits the government. Those who could be direct links between the crimes against the people and Ulises Ruiz are eliminated and their deaths serve as a pretext for criminalizing the popular movement.

Today, the pretext for the entry of the Ubisort paramilitaries and the Oaxaca State Preventive Police into San Juan Copala was the recovery of the body of this dangerous paramiitary. At approximately 2:20 in the afternoon, the police left, but the UBISORT paramilitaries stayed in the Municipal Government Building. It is now in their hands. The entire police operation ordered by the state government served to leave the presidential offices under the control of paramilitary groups.

We affirm that the process of autonomy of the indigenous people in our state, despite the repression, continues to be the road towards constructing the peace and dignity that generates life alternatives for our peoples, communities, and neighborhoods.

The repression against the Triqui people outrages us and summons us to act against the attack on the people of San Juan Copala. In view of the above, on Saturday, July 31, we call for a

CONCENTRATION IN THE CITY OF OAXACA

outside the Federal Courtrooms at Llano at 10 o’clock in the morning.

We also extend this urgent call to all the men and women of Mexico and the world who are filled with grief and rage by these criminal acts to demonstrate outside Mexican embassies and consulates and show your solidarity in any way possible with the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, shouting out loud:

¡¡¡¡¡ UBISORT PARAMILITARIES OUT OF THE AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITY OF SAN JUAN COPALA!!!!

¡¡¡¡¡¡ NO TO THE MILITARIZATION OF THE TRIQUI REGION!!!!

¡¡¡¡¡ STOP THE REPRESSION AGAINST THE AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITY!!!

¡¡¡¡PUNISHMENT FOR THE MURDERERS OF BETY CARIÑO TRUJILLO AND JIRY JAKKOLA!!!!!!

¡¡¡¡¡¡RESPECT THE AUTONOMY OF SAN JUAN COPALA!!!!!!

Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Freedom
VOCAL

Mexico Relaunches La Parota Project with Illegal Expropriation Tactics

Following our last La Parota post on June 29, when Mexican media reported that the project was postponed until 2018, things were looking good for the indigenous and campesino peoples defending the Papagayo River from destruction and their own communities from dislocation. On September 13, 2009, the Mexican government indicated that the project had been canceled, not allocating any funding for it in the proposed 2010 budget. After a seven year struggle, in which more than six resisters had lost their lives, the dam looked dead in the water.

Less than eight months later, however, the government restarted its push to force through the dam. On April 5, Jorge Antonio Mijangos Borja, director of Mexico’s National Water Commission (CONAGUA) announced that “if necessary, the hydroelectric dam La Parota will be built to provide water and electricity to the port of Acapulco.” He also announced plans for five other dams, three on the coast and two in Tierra Caliente.

The very next day, the state of Guerrero’s “leftist” governor Zeferino Torreblanca said, “[La Parota] is a project we should not abandon.”

Because the dam is slated to be built on communally owned indigenous land (ejidos and bienes comunales), the government must convince local communities to invoke a clause (added to the Mexican Constitution as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA) approving the government’s expropriation of their land. Previously, the government secured this approval through fraudulent “popular assemblies” that were eventually tossed out by federal courts.

Returning to the same tactics, an unelected pro-dam member of the La Concepción ejido convened an assembly on April 18. Lack of quorum and resistance by the Council of Ejidos and Communities in Opposition to La Parota Dam (CECOP) successfully shut that meeting down. The meeting was rescheduled for April 25.

At this second meeting, according to CECOP spokesperson Rodolfo Chávez Galindo, dam proponents recruited taxi drivers and other Acapulco residents, who they paid to illegally vote in an election meant only for community members. As a consequence, the assembly approved the expropriation of land for an access path to the construction site.

CECOP has promised to get this illegal expropriation overturned, just as it has with the past four.

–

source: http://www.rootforce.org/

US Congress Approves More Funding for Plan Mexico

Afghan War Spending Bill Also Includes Another $175 Million For Mexican Drug War

By Fernando León and Erin Rosa
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
July 29, 2010

http://www.narconews.com/Issue66/article4170.html

Read more [Narco News]

Indybay: Mexico Bleeds: Free Media Against the Invisible Tyranny

Ké Huelga Radio writes: Mexico is bleeding. Along with the so-called "war against drug-dealers" we see the whole Mexican territory turn olive green. The militarization is part of the global war driven by the United States, which began with the 9-11 events and created new enemies: terrorism and drug trafficking. Attuned with the Lords of the north, the Mexican government has launched its own war creating a police-ruled state and criminalizing social protest.
Read more [Delete the Border]

Who Is Behind the 25,000 Deaths In Mexico?

Who is being killed, who is doing the killing and why are people being killed?

By Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy
The Nation
July 26, 2010

http://www.thenation.com/article/37916/who-behind-25000-deaths-mexico

Read more [Narco News]

Mostlywater.org | Migration: National Day of Action Against Immigration Minister Jason Kenney

Wednesday, July 21, 2010, Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories – The refugee rights and migrant justice organization No One Is Illegal is organizing a nation-wide day of protest in five cities against Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney...“Jason Kenney is routinely called the Minister of Censorship and Deportation because of his record as one of the most repressive immigration ministers in Canadian history.”

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Mostlywater.org | Migration: Deport Jason Kenney! [Video]

By rabble TV - July 22, 2010

Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, continues to set up new discriminatory hurdles for today's immigrants.

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El Enemigo Comun: Mexico Bleeds: Free media against the invisible tyranny

Mexico is bleeding. Along with the so-called “war against drug-dealers” we see the whole Mexican territory turn olive green. The militarization is part of the global war driven by the United States, which began with the 9-11 events and created new enemies: terrorism and drug trafficking.

read more

Mexico Bleeds: Free media against the invisible tyranny

Mexico is bleeding. Along with the so-called “war against drug-dealers” we see the whole Mexican territory turn olive green. The militarization is part of the global war driven by the United States, which began with the 9-11 events and created new enemies: terrorism and drug trafficking. Attuned with the Lords of the north, the Mexican government has launched its own war creating a police-ruled state and criminalizing social protest.

The militarization leads to social-control practices which have nothing to envy from those used by the dictatorships of the 70′s: from video cameras to torture chambers, via disappearances and massacres, the regime uses all its resources to establish new conditions for slavery. In addition to the barbarism of the beheaded, the “wrapped” (encobijados), those cooked in soup (“pozoleados”) and other expressions of savagery which the media use to feed the social fear, we find the technology of electronic espionage (phones and internet) as well as the offers for mercenary imports which “will accomplish” the extermination of the criminals. This is how fear and silence appear as the “magical recipes” (extracted from the manuals for psychological warfare) for habituating the media to censoring itself, managing to also desensitize the population towards state and paramilitary-driven violence against social movements.

It might sound exaggerated to talk about “new slavery”, but it is the wager of those in power: the big national and foreign businessmen, the US government and the Mexican promoters of neo- liberalism are determined to take down every obstacle which prevents them from increasing their profit and their control over the country. It’s all about taking over the natural wealth of the country and exploiting the Mexican workers even more. There are examples to spare. Let’s take a look at the extent of the landlord, boss and politician offensive against the whole population:

1. Militarization. Albeit there has never been a “Rule of Law” in Mexico, today we see the armed forces applying the “Rule of the Strongest” throughout the whole country. The army and it’s blue version, the federal police, are already the only pillar holding up the neoliberal project in Mexico. The sinking of key institutions such as the Powers of the Union and the education and public health systems, together with the intense economical crisis unleashed in 2008, have lead to the “heavy hand” as the one and only proposal from the politicians, irrespectively of their political inclinations eg. Felipe Calderón, Enrique Peña Nieto and Marcelo Ebrard. From Chihuahua to Chiapas, from the “News Divine” to San Juan Copala, the military boots occupy, pester, torture and kill the people living in the territories they are looking to control. The supposed “combat against drug trafficking” is the excuse for entering states like Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas and criminalizing social movements that try to defend their territories, by labeling them as “guerrilla cover-ups” and through this, justify the imposition of the “Law of the club”.

2. Extinction of social rights. As a byproduct of the unfinished 1910 revolution, Mexico has minimum limits to avoid the exploitation of workers and the giving away of the country to foreigners. These are the last obstacles that the present offense is trying to remove. It’s trying to stop us from speaking of the catastrophic situation of the national education, the electrical power service, the devastation of the Mexican farmlands or about the privatization of water and all the rights which are being destroyed after decades of fighting to establish them. No one forgets that the Zapatista uprising was the result of the counter reform to the 27th article of the Constitution. Today we are living through the privatization of the electrical energy system by the liquidation of the state owned companies and the brutal and illegal blow against the Mexican Union of Electricians (SME). Along with this, we see a growing transgenic threat endangering our native seeds. Education is suffering from budget asphyxiation represented by the drama of millions of youths who can’t find work nor available places in schools. Nothing better can be said about social security, since pensions have entered the game of financial speculation through the AFORES and both hospitals and clinics are being dismantled and have to endure the daily lack of medicines and other resources. To top it all, on April 2010, the right winged party, the PAN, proposed a counter reform to the Federal Labor Law which intends to destroy the basic rights of the workers such as the collective bargaining agreement, labor stability, length of the work day and even the basic right to receive payment for working.

3. Giving away of the country to big money owners. The ongoing war has one main objective: to have the great money owners exploit the abundant wealth of the country. Who is benefited by the Monsanto Law and the permits to grow genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Mexican land? The answer is no secret: Monsanto, Cargill, Syngenta, etc. Who gets profit from the extinction of “Luz y Fuerza”? Iberdrola, AES, Mitsubishi, etc. And we could go on the same way referring to the mining industry, wind energy, infrastructure, the financial sector, etc., where multinationals from all around the world are benefited from the open attitude of Felipe Calderon’s presidency to “attract investors”. A special mention must be given to the “national barons” lead by Carlos Slim, who have managed to take over an important “slice of the cake”. The fact that Slim is the richest man in the world shouldn’t obscure the millionaire deals of the Zambranos (owners of CEMEX), the Azcárragas (owners of Televisa), the Hernández (owners of Maseca) and tutti gli altri. While this bunch of thieves pays for their royal-style of life, 50 million Mexicans live in poverty and hundreds of thousands migrate north in search for a better life, only to find death in the hands of the border patrol (the migra), the desert or the migrant hunters.

4. Gringos to the rescue. Like never before, Felipe Calderon’s government has abandoned the country to the hands of the United States government and army. Mexico is becoming an American protectorate. The crucial decisions are tutored by our “generous” neighbors which freehandedly give away dollars and weapons, increasing their influence on the reality of the country. In 2010 only, the joint execution of military maneuvers, the visit of a military delegation lead by the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and the order to remove the army from Ciudad Juárez, issued by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, are three examples of who is in control of the country. The Mexican government has completely subdued itself to the demands of the gringos which can be synthesized in the “Mérida Initiative” and the recent intentions to implement a Mexican version of the “Colombia Plan”. The military aid (weapons, resources, training) will be complemented with the direct action of US soldiers and mercenaries in our country, enjoying of course, of full impunity.

Facing this scenario, the mass misinforming media play a key role. It’s never excessive to be reminded of the participation of the commercial media in numerous destabilizing campaigns in many parts of the world, for example “El Mercurio” in Chile working against Salvador Allende’s government, “The Daily Gleaner” in Jamaica against Michael Manley’s government, “La Prensa” in Nicaragua against the Sandinistas, the right winged media in Venezuela against Hugo Chávez’s government and the TV networks in Honduras against Manuel Zelaya’s government. The “coverage” of the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq deserve special mention since it demonstrates the propagandistic operation with which the great misinforming networks of the United States, especially Fox News, dedicated themselves to “create the enemy” which Baby Bush needed to justify sticking his finger in the Middle East. In the same manner, the “Inter-American Press Society (SIP)” and the “National Endowment for Democracy (NED)” are media-intervention instruments for the CIA in Latin America. These are all examples of the central role of the media in the social domination scheme that we presently suffer.

Mexico has worked as a first class laboratory to experiment with social control techniques through mass media. The modus operandi of these actors was formulated back in the days of Díaz Ordaz. In the National General Archive of Mexico, we can find an official government document of the 60′s which states: “Through the action of political propaganda we can conceive of a world dominated by an invisible tyranny which adopts the form of a democratic government”. These are nearly 50 year-old words which unfortunately haven’t lost their validity. Conditioning and manipulation are the old but effective recipes used by the commercial media to keep us still and quiet while the country falls apart. And this control apparatus isn’t limited to times of crisis, it functions over our daily life. Misinforming-mass media, model our lives through their messages: they dictate codes of behavior, they tell us what, when and how to do things, they establish hierarchies of the acceptable, of the “good” and the “bad”, they elevate or bring down personalities, etc. In the field of social action, commercial media behave like mercenary armies at the service of the best bidder and as efficient guardians of the established order. The “strategic thinking” of mass media is guided by techniques to manipulate the so called “public opinion”. It couldn’t be any other way when we know that behind the presumed “objectivity” of communicators, lie the threads of power weaved into solid nets. For example, we have the owner of Microsoft, Bill Gates as an important stockholder of Televisa while Carlos Slim is one of the owners of The New York Times.

In the past 20 years, politicians and media owners have established a strategic alliance for mutual benefit: the control of the population by the media, which allows thieves and murderers to govern the country, is rewarded with governmental decisions which preserve the Televisa-TV Azteca hegemony over the whole country. While mass media portray themselves as the stage for democracy and diversity, a look at the owners of the radio and TV companies shows how a small bunch of actors control the communication of homogeneous messages which underpin social control.

The operating concessions for public TV are split between Televisa and TV Azteca, which in 2008 controlled 401 concessions representing a little over 87% of the total. This produces millionaire deals. In 2008, Televisa reported income for over 39 thousand million pesos (39 billion pesos, which was 70% of the income from public television) while TV Azteca received more than 9 thousand million pesos (9 billion pesos). The situation in the radio industry is pretty similar: Grupo ACIR controls 160 radio stations in 26 Mexican cities and Grupo Radio Centro has more than 100 stations. These two groups report having 50% of Monster City’s (Mexico City) audience. What kind of diversity or objectivity can exist when the vast majority of radio and TV broadcasters are controlled by 4 companies? In these oligopoly conditions, communication turned into merchandise is malleable and sold to the best bidder.

Commercial media, particularly television, constitute the main “communication” link within the country. Historically, the Mexican State has focused on two things: leaving the communication spectrum in the hands of private businessmen and crushing any initiatives that spur from society in an attempt to break the media monopoly. Defying this monopoly is a crucial task to ensure the transformation of the country. This explains why free, associative, community media represent strategical players in social protest and action.

Recent history highlights the importance of free media. In 1994, the incipient networks built through the internet helped to stop the war against the EZLN (Zapatista Army for the National Liberation) and the indigenous communities in resistance. The spreading of the repressive actions in San Salvador Atenco and the tenacious resistance of the Oaxacan people in 2006 represented a qualitative leap for free media, which learned to open spaces for those who fight against capitalism and their governments. In May, when the commercial media was lynching the farmers from the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (Peoples Front in Defense of the Land) from San Salvador Atenco, the free media opened a space for condemning the torture and violations suffered by the people arrested and transmitted the summonings for solidarity actions to support those detained. Soon after, in the summer and fall of 2006, the free and taken over media, played a fundamental role in the resistance of the people of Oaxaca: Radio Plantón, the station from the democratic teacher’s union, Radio Universidad, which ended up being the last stronghold of the Oaxacan movement, the radio and TV stations taken over by the people, the work of free media like Indymedia Oaxaca and other such initiatives all allowed the people to efficiently fight off the lies of the mass media to the point where the resistance was only penetrated by the brutal intervention of the Preventive Federal Police (PFP).

In the present, when facing the decomposition of the regime and the militarization of the country, free media represent the only windows through which threads of reality can filter through the lies of governmental propaganda. When defying the media monopoly, free media strike at one of the pillars of social control in this country. This explains why they are harshly persecuted, particularly those who have a massive reach, such as radio stations.

It’s true that free radio stations have payed a high price both in blood and demolished efforts by the action of the authorities. The hardening of the regime can also be noticed in this area. According to the Media Laws (which lack any article concerning free or community radios), broadcasting without permission is punishable with a fine and the confiscation of the broadcasting equipment. For decades, this is how the government acted, however, since 2007-2008, the Calderon administration has changed its strategy by using an illegal resource, to accuse those who transmit without permission of “damage to the national goods”, a crime which is punished with 12 years in jail and a 50 thousand peso fine. At the moment, two comrades are subject to legal processes for being accused of this “original” crime: Rosa Cruz from the Purépecha community station Uekakua, which transmitted with 5 watts from Ocumicho, in Michoacán and Héctor Camero, member of Radio Tierra y Libertad from Monterrey, Nuevo León.

With its severity, the legal machinery plays a secondary part in front of the interference, the murders and the physical aggressions against those who build free or community radio stations. In Oaxaca, Chiapas and Mexico City, the use of a more potent signal from another frequency to create interference, has been widely used by local or Federal authorities to try and silence the free and community radios, for example:

Radio Insurgente, which broadcasts for the EZLN, was interfered in Chenalhó.

Radio Plantón and Radio Universidad in Oaxaca City were interfered during the 2006 movement. Presently, Radio Plantón has to jump around different frequencies to avoid being interfered.

In Guerrero, Radio ñomndaa has lost coverage due to the presence of a signal from Acapulco which prevents the “Words from the Water” from being heard in Ometepec, the closest city to Xochistlahuaca.

In Monster City, Regeneración Radio (105.3 FM) and La Voz de Villa (91.7 FM) have been blocked by a transmission of esoteric messages and music, since 2009.

On occasion, the interference takes the form of a counter insurgent act as what happened in Cancún in 2003 during the protests against the OMC meeting, when a warship which was docked in the port, blocked all the unoccupied frequencies to avoid their use by free radios.

The Ké Huelga Radio has faced 4 interference actions during its 11 years of existence. In 1999 and in 2000 during the student strike, with the noise from a siren and presently with two signals, one from an “anonymous” station which transmits esoteric messages and music and the other from Radio Josna, a station associated to the PRI from the State of Mexico, which transmits from Ciudad Neza. As of June, both interference signals have stopped. However, we don’t leave out the possibility of a repressive act from the State against the Ké Huelga or the return of the interference.

To interfere a radio signal which pursues no commercial interest, constitutes a clear negation to the universal right for freedom of speech.

The less frequent murders and physical aggressions, have also slammed the free media. Lets remember the painful murders of Felícitas Martínez and Teresa Bautista as examples. They were communicators for the Triqui people through the radio station “La Voz que Rompe el Silencio” and were brutally murdered in April 2008. The fellow communicators of Radio Nomdaa have also suffered from imprisonment (David Valtierra in 2007), dismantling attempts (2008) and beatings (Obed Valtierra in 2009).

Maintaining a free communication project hasn’t been easy in the face of the capitalist project which, through terror, military force and propagandistic lies intends to create a new paradise for the rich and their servants of the political caste. Our radio station, the Ké Huelga Radio, born in the heat of the 1999 student strike against the privatization of education, has as its main vocation, the opening of a space for mass communication for people and organizations which fight to transform their lives. For 11 years we have interacted with hundreds of protest and resistance experiences from Mexico and the World. Our continuance in the FM quadrant and in the internet has permitted many people to make use of the frequency and use it to communicate and amplify their thoughts and initiatives. This has been possible thanks to the appropriation of the necessary technologies for transmitting and the commitment of hundreds of people who have participated in the project during these 11 years.

Conceived as a space for communication and exchange the Ké Huelga has opened possibilities for dialog and encounter which question and defy two basic mechanisms of social control: miscommunication and media silence. At the “Ké”, we experiment with a type of communication where those of us who talk through the microphones are by no means specialists and we believe that the practice of communicating only makes sense if those who listen break the passivity and share their words. This is clear in the case of social movements which find in our radio the means to communicate their demands and initiatives. In a more daily basis, the “Ké” allows different cultural, social, political and even individual expressions with “no time in the air”, to have channels for mutual discovery and recognition. Where the commercial media finds “audience”, we see comrades.

The “Ké Huelga” radio station is also a place where we learn to fight, to appropriate the knowledge that capitalism reserves only for its misinformation media and, above all, where we learn to establish contact with others that like us, try to change this world which is quickly disintegrating while threatening to reduce us to mere spectators of our own death.

Despite the advances that we’ve achieved, we presently find ourselves in a delicate situation; we are in the middle of a growing criminalization scheme against social movements and free medias. The defense and broadening of free spaces from those in power is everyone’s responsibility. We invite you to participate in the defense of the Ké Huelga by having a program, contributing with the promotion of the project, collaborating with economical support by donating equipment or in any other way you find convenient.

Monster City, May 2010

Ké Huelga Radio
libre, social y contra el poder
http://kehuelga.org/diario
kehuelga@kehuelga.org

Bank Account: Banamex – number 40484 – office 4395
CLABE – Interbank Code = 002180439500404844
Swift code: BNMXMXMM
Translation: Dra-San ( mil gracias! )

Arizona’s SB 1070 Threatens to Collapse US Immigration System

Law Enforcers Also Argue Anti-Immigrant Law is Threat to Public Safety and National Security

By Bill Conroy
Via the Narcosphere
July 10, 2010

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2010/07/arizona-s-sb-1070-threatens-collapse-us-immigration-system

Read more [Narco News]

San Salvador Atenco, Mexico: Victory Celebration

x carolina

––When did you find out you were getting out of prison, don Ignacio?

––We’ve always known we’d get out, from the very first moment.

––Was that due to your trust in the people to free you?

––It had more to do with our rage. A rage we’ve stored up inside us. Maybe at first we felt fear. Anguish, along with troubles, uncertainty, rage, impotence. All that transcends pain. It overcomes suffering. We were never sorry, never repentant. This kind of anger knows no human limits. It builds up inside you and, in a way, helps you avoid physical pain… The rage I’m talking about is recent and has also been with us during years, during centuries, of latent suffering… On the question of whether or not we were going to get out, we knew we would because the struggle was not going to let up. It may have fallen back a little bit out of fear, anxiety. But even though we were separated, with people on the run or in jail, we all thought the same way. We had one thing in mind to begin with. Not to give up. Because our pain was overcome by our rage, our unrest, and the confirmation of what we, as people from the bottom of the heap, have always known.”

So begins the interview with Ignacio del Valle by some of us from the free and independent media on Sunday, July 4, in San Salvador Atenco, during the celebration of the liberation of 12 prisoners that the Mexican State planned to torture to death in its extermination camps, with infamous sentences of 112 years, 67 years, 32 years. There’s music, lots of music. Dancing, lots of dancing. Food, lots of food. Pulque, lots of pulque. Smiles, lots of smiles. Hugs, lots of hugs. Thanks, lots of thanks to everybody who played a part in the victory ––to the women of Atenco who’ve offered us coffee, breakfast, lunch, and supper at every march, rally and event held during the last four years; to Atenco’s old guard, especially to con Francisco Alarcón, who speaks nahuatl and blasts off the old cannon at all the parties and rallies; to the Committee for Freedom and Justice for Atenco; to the social and human rights organizations; to international solidarity.

––Don Ignacio, we’ve had very few triumphs in our movements, but two of these have taken place right here in Atenco. How was this possible?

––People understood perfectly, and this was very clear in everyone’s mind this second time around, that we would not give up or give in. We had been through the same kind of repression before, nine years ago. It was clear that if we stood our ground, we would win. It’s true, of course, that a lot of people fell back, protecting their families, but even so, they were steadfast and participated in many ways.

“América del Valle, we want you in the streets!” This chant rings out over and over during the celebration. It’s a top priority now. América del Valle, whose request for political asylum in Venezuela put the international spotlight on all the injustices in the Atenco case at a critical moment, is still pursued by the State.

Trinidad Ramírez expresses thanks to everyone with her characteristic grace and generosity: “The triumph is yours.” She reads a statement prepared by the Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Lands (FPDT), which affirms that the struggle continues with autonomous projects for defending the land and with actions in solidarity with other groups in struggle, including the electrical workers of SME, miners, political prisoners, Zapatista indigenous peoples in Chiapas, the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, and all the organizations fighting against the plunder of their lands. The statement says: “…To the cry of ‘The land is not for sale; we love it, we’ll defend it!”, our struggle in these lands began in 2001 when Vicente Fox wanted to build his airport. It wasn’t a simple matter to defeat the project because first we had to overcome the idea that there was no use struggling against the government because nobody can win; even so, we did it. We won. We in the FPDT know that history is not fatalistic; it’s something we build. And if we won once, we might be able to do it again… There’ s somebody who’s still not here. América del Valle. We’re going to bring her home. We’ll keep right on struggling until she’s back here with us…”

In the interview, Ignacio del Valle stated: “We’re sure she’ll be able to come back, and not because we think someone will let her do it out of goodwill. No. We’re not asking for an act of goodwill. We´re saying: Do what you’re supposed to do NOW. Why? Because the people demand it. And, in one way or another, the struggle continues. And America herself is resisting and will keep on resisting. But it’s not a passive resistance. It’s an active resistance. Because wherever she is, maybe she’s saying, in her silence, that the struggle must continue. It goes without saying that we don’t have to ask the government for any favors. Freedom is not the consequence of a favor or of an act of goodwill. It’s an obligation, and it’s imperative that the system set her free”.

Another pursued person is back in town and is present at the victory party. Adán Espinoza still faces a minor charge, but is joining in the struggle once more. He insists on the importance of getting organized and of everyone coming together in unity in order to move forward.

Several of the prisoners just released from Molino de Flores are also present at the celebration, including Inés Rodolfo Cuellar, who tells us that, when some of the regular prisoners found out about the release order, they said: “The ‘Atencos’ are leaving. Who’s going to stand up for us now?” And when they walked out the gate, the regular prisoners were there shouting, “ Zapata lives! The struggle continues!” With the release of these prisoners, the Other Encampment outside the Molino de Flores prison was finally lifted, putting an end to a four-year-long act of solidarity by successive groups of comrades from the Other Campaign.

Felipe Álvarez climbed up on the stage and talked about what it takes to get through imprisonment: “Compañeros, I ask this of you. Day in and day out, do what you must to become more conscious, because it’s only with consciousness that we can go ahead, it’s only with consciousness that we can withstand repression, it’s only with consciousness that it’s possible to get through imprisonment. There are all kinds of bastards ––police and guards–– there inside who are always repressing you psychologically and physically. And if you don’t have consciousness, compañeros, you won’t be able to get through what goes on where we were. People that can’t stand it, hang themselves. A lot of Mexican people don’t know about this. They don’t know that in La Palma, in Altiplano, there are people who hang themselves. Sometimes the treatment is so bad when they come into the prison that when they’re taken to the holding cells, they die within just a few minutes. Then the damn cops run around saying, “You went too far this time, dude. That guy is done for.” And people don’t know about the deaths in La Palma because all that doesn’t exist. Human rights don’t exist in La Palma. What exists in La Palma is extermination. Day by day they try to finish you off psychologically and physically, compañeros. I’d like to mention a few specifics about the treatment you get in La Palma. They give you five minutes to eat, compañero. They give you five minutes to shower, compañero. Sometimes with boiling water. If you object and ask why, they say, “You’re an animal, you dumb ass. You’re a criminal. So you just have to take it like an animal and scald yourself with hot water.” I was bedridden, compañeros, two times for fifteen days each time, with serum and with one foot tied to the bedpost. They chained me with a padlock and chain. That’s the way I ate. That’s the way I slept. I’m not telling you this to scare you because then you won’t be back to participate. I’m telling you this so you’ll become more conscious and so we all know what we’re getting into.”

“No forgiving. No forgetting. The killers must be punished!” Impunity still reigns in the Atenco case and demands for justice are heard all day.

––Don Ignacio, what kinds of actions do you think we should take against the prisons. Demand better conditions? Tear the prisons down? Stop prison construction?

––Certainly. Prison construction, as a project, only deals with effects, not causes. The causes are elsewhere. It’s true there’s a crime wave, and most of the people jailed are young men and boys between 18 and 25 years old….But in the communities there are no opportunities for work, study, or job training. So how are they going to cover their most basic proletarian needs for food and a job? I would ask, what difference would it make if five schools were built for every prison? But we’re not concerned with quantity. We want quality education. These issues can’t be seen as separate from an equal distribution of the wealth. If there’s no equal distribution, or at least equitable or fair distribution in keeping with the real needs arising in each community, whether that be a region, a state, or a country, there will certainly be no justice. And the system is not going to resolve this situation. The people on the bottom have to resolve it by initiating a national project. From the bottom up. The people on top will only manipulate it. The problem is not that they’re building more prisons. The problem is that in comparison with education, there’s a huge abyss. And the solution is not building more schools either. It lies in a total change of the system. And to achieve this, we have to get organized. The form this will take will depend on the reality of each region, each season, each place. Right now in our region, Mexico, the dependence we’re experiencing is very similar to that of other regions. We’re facing a huge monster. It’s the international economy. We’re living in a country with a tremendous amount of poverty and, above all, widespread social decomposition, in which the wealth is in very few hands and the vast majority of people are poor. The problem is not to attack poverty. We have to attack wealth. We have to change everything.

––Don Ignacio, what can be said to the Mexican people in general who aren’t organized but who are feeling the effects of the blows dealt by the capitalist system?

–– I don’t think we have to give the first lesson. That lesson has already been given to us by the movements in resistance. We don’t have to repeat the course. We have to be taking the next steps forward, but beforehand, and I want to make this perfectly clear because it’s key, we shouldn’t confuse a small-scale organization with a people or confuse an organization representing the interests of a particular group with a community. Above and beyond being an organization, regardless of its colors, or whether it’s in the center or on the edge or in between, the aim of any organization, above and beyond that of a particular group, is to be a people. And when we understand this situation, we’ll be able to respect each group’s desire to participate in a particular way in times of peace, but in times of war, we have to unite as a people, because before being an organization, whatever its title may be, we’re a people. And that is the most beautiful banner we can take up.

––What is the role of indigenous and original peoples in this process?

––They’re basic. As long as we’re not proposing a change that comes from our roots ––in this case we are indigenous peoples, even though we’re wearing makeup and are penetrated by a foreign culture, but we’re the children and grandchildren of indigenous people; we can’t say that in the next generation we won’t be indigenous people anymore–– the system is the only beneficiary of this loss of identity…”

From the stage, with a sense of humor and reprimands aimed at common pretexts for doing nothing, don Nacho insists that everyone must participate and unite, but for real: “Compañeros, we must stand together. Our skin might get wrinkled, but not our consciousness. Brothers and sisters of my soul, thank you. Thank you for your solidarity…We have to unite. The only damn problem is these positions where we always think we’re right. It’s true, many people are right. They know how to tell if somebody’s doing something well, but if they don’t show up, what the fuck. Things stay the same…. Maybe other people don’t know how to do all this, but they do show up. They may be doing it all wrong, but they’re with you… We’re going to stand by our brothers and sisters at the mines. We’ll make statements, but we’ll also take action. We’re going to join with them, for real. Some say, “We were with you, Nacho. We were at your festival.” Thank you so much. And why in the fuck do I want you at my festival? I want you to be here when the shit comes down….No compas, let’s start joining together.”

Felipe Álvarez leaves us with these words:

“You don’t know how proud and happy it makes me feel to come out and find that you’re still here, to find that you weren’t afraid to end up where we did. That means that the consciousness I was talking about does exist. And that nourishes us, compañeros, and makes us stronger. And we’re going to Chiapas. We’re going anywhere we must, to stand up for our brothers and sisters and show our solidarity with them. Atenco will be there. Let the government take note. Let the damn system take note. Atenco will be there. We need many sons and daughters of Atenco, many sons and daughters of Chiapas, many sons and daughters of Guerrero. We must be everywhere, right? Together, we’re going to make the change that we want to make ––all of us who have been fucked over, all of us who have been repressed. We’re going to make the change. We’re going to run this damn system out of the halls of government. Not with votes, not playing at elections just to get a bone to suck on like those guys over there. We’re not going down that road. Our road is different, isn’t it? Even though there’s lots of mud and shit all around us, we’re not going to get dirty. Because when we’re conscious, we won’t be stained by all that dirt, compañeros. Even though we walk right over it, we won’t get dirty. So I want to thank you again and apologize because they’re waiting for me inside, but I’m back compañeros. I’m here with you again, ok? Thank you. I love you. I love you, brothers and sisters. You’re in my heart. Atenco lives! The struggle goes on! Zapata lives on! The struggle goes on and on! YES? NO? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, NO!”

Tensions and Violence Rise in Oaxaca As Elections Near

This is part of a longer article about San Juan Copala that won't be published before Oaxaca's state elections on July 4.  I'm making this excerpt available here, because after this Sunday's elections, everything will change.

by Kristin Bricker

UPDATED JULY 5 to clarify UBISORT murder.

Violence in Oaxaca is increasing as state elections draw near. Nearly all of the opposition parties have formed an alliance against the ruling Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) and are backing one gubernatorial candidate, Gabino Cué.  The PRI has ruled Oaxaca with an iron fist for the past eighty years.

While violence and elections always seem to go hand-in-hand in Oaxaca, the close race seems to be raising tensions to a boiling point. Section 22 of the teachers union, which lead the nonviolent uprising that nearly unseated Ruiz in 2006, remains on strike pending resolution of their contract negotiations with the state. Section 22 hasn't been on strike this long since 2006, when Ruiz attacked sleeping teachers and children in their protest encampment without warning, sparking the uprising. With Oaxaca's most important cultural and tourist event of the year, the Guelaguetza, following on the heels of the election, the state government has a lot of motivation to get the teachers off the streets...one way or another. On June 30 in Santo Domingo de Morelos, unidentified gunmen murdered the mayor and another high-ranking official. Both men were Section 22 teachers and members of the opposition Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

Tensions are rising in the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala as well, as the government debates whether or not it will send ballot boxes into the besieged area. Likewise, the autonomous municipality, which was formed with the goal of banishing political parties from the indigenous Triqui region, is debating whether or not it will allow the government to place the ballot boxes in the municipality. The Triquis who founded and support the autonomous municipality blame political parties for creating divisions within their communities. These divisions have lead to a situation in which much of the violence in the region is the result of Triquis killing other Triquis.

San Juan Copala declared itself autonomous following the 2006 nonviolent uprising that nearly drove out Oaxaca’s governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.  Founders of the autonomous municipality played an important role in the uprising as advisors to the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), which coordinated the protests.  The paramilitary organization Union for the Social Well-being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT), which was formed by the PRI in 1994 to keep the Zapatista uprising in the neighboring state of Chiapas from spilling over into Oaxaca.

In Copala, violent attacks appear to becoming more frequent as the elections draw near. Last week, snipers shot an eight-year-old girl and two women in San Juan Copala in two separate attacks. All three survived the shootings. On July 1, unidentified gunmen executed UBISORT leader* Severiano Flores.


* The Oaxacan media, which is very pro-government, claimed that Flores was an UBISORT leader.  That same media, without providing a shred of proof, claimed that MULTI, the Triqui organization that is pushing for autonomy in the region, carried out the execution.  Sources close to the autonomous municipality tell me that Flores wasn't an UBISORT leader.  A member, yes, but a leader, no.  He was murdered in a dispute that is unrelated to the fight over Triqui autonomy, and the UBISORT is only now claiming that he is a leader in order to blame the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala.  Who knows who is telling the truth, but that's the other side of the story.

Mexico 2010: Enter the Detonators

An Unknown Group Called "Los Detonadores" Sends a Video Response to the "Iniciativa México" Consortium's TV Ad, and the Parody Has Gone Viral in Just a Few Hours

By Al Giordano
The Field
July 2, 2010

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/4014/mexico-2010-enter-detonators

Read more [Narco News]

Working Class Under the Gun: Mexico’s Other War

A shorter version of this article appears in the current issue of Left Turn magazine, which is on newsstands now, or can be purchased online.

by Kristin Bricker 

Anyone who saw the police strapping on protective gear on October 10, 2009, probably thought they were preparing to battle organized crime.  That night, six thousand militarized federal police deployed to Mexico City and four surrounding states. But they weren’t there to take down a drug cartel. Their orders were to bust the Mexican Electrical Workers Union, the SME.

Without warning, the police stormed government-owned power plants and substations and ordered all of the workers out at gunpoint.  No pink slip, just the barrel of a gun—and instantly 44,000 workers found themselves jobless.  Another 16,000 retirees saw their pensions disappear overnight.  In one hour, President Felipe Calderon fired every member of the SME, one of the nation’s oldest and most powerful unions.

The move sent chills down the spine of every union worker in the country. Guadalupe Cervantes from the San Luis Potosi Independent Union of State Government Workers asked, “If the government can do something like this to the SME, what will it do to the rest of the unions?”

Calderon told the press that the government would provide the electrical workers with “assistance and training to find other jobs.”  The President conveniently forgot that Mexico is currently experiencing what is arguably the worst employment crisis in the nation’s history.  Laid-off electricians will have to get in line behind the millions of people who are already unemployed or severely underemployed.

Rising Prices

As if the lack of gainful employment weren’t enough, prices of basic necessities have skyrocketed during Calderon’s term.  Since Calderon took office on December 1, 2006, the price of the canasta básica (the government’s official measure of the cost of feeding a family of five for one day) has risen 93%.

Experts blame food prices’ sharp increase on two factors: food scarcity and rising gasoline prices.

The federal government owns Mexico’s petroleum industry, as decreed by the constitution.  Calderon has repeatedly increased the price of gas throughout his term in order to make up for budget shortfalls caused by the global economic crisis and the drug war.  Higher gas prices mean that the cost of transportation and petroleum-based chemical fertilizers also increase, which translate into higher food prices.

Food prices are also rising because successive Mexican presidents have led Mexico down a path of neo-liberal globalization.  Government policies are intentionally converting Mexico’s traditional peasant agriculture, which produces food for auto-consumption and domestic consumption, into industrial agriculture that produces for the global market.  Monoculture is replacing the milpas, a peasant farming method in which several crops are mixed together in a single field. Following Hurricanes Stan and Wilma, for example, the Chiapas government offered economic incentives to peasants who converted their destroyed milpas into African palm plantations. 

Some peasants have stopped working in agriculture altogether.  Former President Carlos Salinas’ reform of the Mexican Constitution’s Article 27 made it legal to sell ejidos (communal peasant land) and use them as collateral for loans.  Prior to the reform, ejidos belonged to the community and could only be inherited.  The reform of Article 27 was a prerequisite for Mexico’s entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 

NAFTA dealt a double blow to Mexico’s peasant farmers.  It flooded Mexico with subsidized corn and other agricultural products from the United States, which destroyed the domestic market.  Farmers, faced with cheap, imported, genetically modified competition, struggled to make ends meet.  When they could no longer compete, they lost their land through sales and foreclosures, both made possible by the reform of Article 27. 

The result is that Mexican farmland is no longer producing enough food for domestic consumption.  It produces eucalyptus for wood pulp, African palm and soy for biofuels, and grain for livestock—all destined for the international market.  In turn, Mexico is now dependent on imported food, regardless of what it might cost.

Thanks in large part to NAFTA, Mexico now sends approximately 80% of its exports to the United States.  Exports constitute approximately 30% of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP).  When the US economy crashed and its effects rippled across the globe, demand for Mexico’s exports dropped, causing its GDP to plunge 6.5% in 2009. 

With the economy shrinking and the country in the middle of an expensive war, Calderon had to come up with money for the federal budget somehow.  In 2009, while many federal social and development experienced budget cuts, drug war spending increased.  In 2010, with the country experiencing a full-blown economic crisis, Calderon increased drug war funding yet again.  This year he expects to add 12,347 drug warriors to the military, Federal Police, and intelligence agencies.  He funded these new positions by laying off 10,000 civilian government workers.

In addition to massive layoffs, Calderon funded his 2010 budget by raising taxes.  The new higher tax covers a range of goods and services, including all imported goods.  The higher rate taxes prices that were already inflated due to years of neo-liberal economic restructuring.

Government Neglect

Valle de Chalco is a working class town located along a major highway just outside of Mexico City.  Many residents either commute to work in Mexico City or make a living in the informal economy, working in the local flea market or in workshops located in their homes.

The town was already feeling the effects of the economic crisis: the rising cost of living, stagnant wages, and layoffs mean that customers have less money to spend.  But then things got much worse.

This past February, the Mexico City metropolitan area experienced unseasonable rains during what is generally the dry season.  It rained for a week, swelling local streams.

Valle de Chalco is located next to the La Compania canal, which used to be a river.  As the government authorized and funded new housing projects upstream, the amount of runoff, raw sewage, and industrial waste that was dumped into the river steadily increased.  About twenty years ago, in order to accommodate rising water levels, the government began to pile sandbags and dirt along the riverbanks, turning the polluted river into a makeshift black water canal. 

“Any time you drive down that highway [next to the canal] you see a bulldozer putting more and more dirt around the canal,” says Chalco resident Aurura Garcia Ruiz.

The canal, despite its haphazard construction, is equipped with floodgates and sump pumps—both of which require electricity in order to function.

Blackouts

The SME had a team of electricians that worked around the clock to repair potentially dangerous electrical outages, such as those that effect sump pumps and floodgates.  When Calderon shut down the government-owned company where they worked, Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC), he promised the public that 8,000 people could do the work that 44,000 SME members used to do.

Calderon turned LyFC’s grid and infrastructure over to the other government-owned electric company, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).  The union that represents CFE workers is a charro union—political parties control its leaders, and the union is pro-government and docile.

When the CFE took control of LyFC’s infrastructure, it subcontracted 200 workers to maintain the grid. The majority of those workers sleep in cots in a 10-meter by 20-meter tent that is reminiscent of an emergency storm shelter.  The 200 workers share six cold-water showers and twelve latrines.  



The SME's Secretary of the Interior, Humberto Montes de Oca, says the subcontractors are untrained and working under dangerous conditions.  He says that many of them have been injured or killed on the job: he cited one man who was reportedly electrocuted and another who fell from a tower. "This is how the government wants to see all of us workers,” he said. “With miserable paychecks, in a tragic situation, without benefits, without a collective contract, and without a union."

Even with the help of 200 cheap, expendable subcontractors, it appears as though—contrary to what Calderon claims—8,000 CFE workers can’t maintain the grid that 44,000 SME members had maintained for over 100 years.  Frequent and prolonged power outages have plagued the former LyFC grid ever since Calderon’s middle-of-the-night shotgun layoffs last October.

Unnatural Disaster

On February 3 and 4 during heavy unseasonable rains, the SME documented service interruptions that amounted to a “perfect storm” over the southern Mexico City metropolitan area.  Four electrical substations that serve that area experienced “disturbances,” knocking out the power to southern Mexico City’s drain system, flood gates, and two sump pumps, one of which served the La Compania canal in Valle de Chalco. 

The floodwaters began to rise in southern Mexico City as the rain filled the streets and rivers.  With the sump pumps and floodgates inoperable, the water filled La Compania canal, pushing against its makeshift walls until they burst on February 5.

When the canal wall burst in front of Valle de Chalco, raw sewage and industrial runoff flooded the highway, killing five motorists. 

“We blocked the street with sandbags,” recounts Luisa Lopez Santos. “We saw that the water reached a certain point and stopped rising, so we figured, 'Well, that's as high as it'll get, just like ten years ago.'” 

However, when Valle de Chalco flooded ten years ago, the drainage system and sump pumps were operational. 

“To our surprise,” says Lopez Santos, “the water started coming up out of the drains, the foundations of the houses, in the gardens...water started gushing out from everywhere.”

The SME documented electrical failures in the area throughout the week, which caused the floodwaters to retreat much slower than normal.  Valle de Chalco was under raw sewage for thirteen days.  In some areas, the dirty water filled houses’ entire first floors.

Chalco residents went at least 15 days without work.  Many of those who commuted to Mexico City for work lost their jobs for failure to show. “People couldn't get to work,” says Garcia Ruiz.  “The street was full of water and cars and buses."

Those who work in Chalco saw their livelihoods washed away along with their homes.  Everyone is finding it difficult to pick up the pieces. 

“We sell in the flea market, and our sales have dropped a lot,” says Lopez Santos.  “People who before bought a half kilo of peppers are now buying a quarter kilo because they don't have work.”

Flood survivors criticize the government’s response to the flood.  The government gave MX$20,000 ($1,640 USD) to each family affected by the flood, regardless of the damage sustained to their homes or how many people are in each family.  Residents who lost their home-based businesses received no extra aid.  Rather than disinfecting homes and helping families remove their belongings that had been soaking in raw sewage for over two weeks, teams of government workers merely pushed the “mud” out of houses with brooms and gave every family a bucket of paint and a bottle of bleach. 

A government aid worker who spoke to Left Turn on condition of anonymity says that many families aren’t receiving the little aid they are entitled to: “A lot of property owners are taking advantage to collect the aid that is owed to their renters.”

Furthermore, the aid worker says, “We have to determine the number of families in a building by the number of kitchens.”  Many poor Mexican families rent one room for their entire family and share a kitchen with other renters.  This means that five poor families who rent rooms in a building with a shared kitchen split $20,000 in aid. 

The $20,000 the government gave flood victims came in the form of vouchers that they could only use in select chain stores, making it impossible to shop around for the best price or buy used.  This means that flood victims can’t stretch the $20,000 vouchers as far as they could stretch cash. “There's a lot of people who, when they got their vouchers and figured out that they could only use them to buy a few things, decided to wash their beds,” says Garcia Ruiz.

Chalco residents are feeling the consequences of sleeping on dirty beds in dirty houses.  They have skin infections, respiratory infections, eye infections, sore throats, allergies, infected lesions: all the result of living in and breathing the filth and dust that the raw sewage left in their homes and neighborhoods. But the government’s medical teams came and left immediately following the flood, and they don’t plan to return.  The government also never sent psychologists to help residents through shock and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Coordinadora Valle de Chalco, a local coalition that is part of the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign, has stepped up to fill the gap left by the government’s criminal neglect. Through community work, they are proving that organized people can meet their own needs better than the government can. 

On February 5, when the floodwaters first began to rise, the Coordinadora mobilized to help residents move their belongings to the second floor of their homes.   They helped neighbors pile sandbags in the streets in an attempt to stop the floodwaters’ advance. 

“We initially provided human labor for the most part,” explains Coordinadora member Rafael Garfias. “Later, donations of food and money began to arrive from the Other Campaign in Mexico City and Mexico State, so we started to distribute that as well. We started to videotape and take photos so that people on the outside would know what was happening here.  Two days after the flooding, the government began to say that everything was under control, that people were fine, that no one should worry.  So we began to issue communiqués about the military and police presence.  There were no aid workers.  They sent the military.  The Navy.  The police… this was their first response.”

When the floodwaters retreated, the Coordinadora organized an autonomous needs assessment to determine its response to the disaster.  This set them apart from the political parties and factions who wanted to capitalize on the disaster.  “Right now we’re not interesting in shutting down highways or occupying the town hall,” argues Garfias.  “The Other Campaign’s slogan, ‘From below and to the left,’ is not empty rhetoric.  It means that if the government doesn’t care about us, we have an urgent task at hand.  We need to help our people get through the shock, be there with them.  If they decide to shut down a road, we’ll be there with them.  But we asked, ‘What do you want?  What do you need? How can we help?’ And they told us, ‘We need medical attention.  We need for the kids to get past their trauma.’”

So, instead of a protest, the Coordinadora organized a fair in the church.  Church ladies distributed donated food and clothing while doctors from the Other Campaign provided free exams and medicine.  A hairdresser donated her labor and cut kids’ hair while musicians sang.  Psychologists from the Other Campaign will visit the community soon. 

“The path is clear: from below and to the left,” says Garfias.  “What’s important now is the community work that will give us the strength to begin bigger projects and keep organizing."

Looking Back to Move Ahead

by Simón Sedillo

I was asked to write a piece about people of color organizing to attend the 2009 SOA Watch vigil and about our plans for 2010. I believe everything happens for a reason.

I am writing this from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.

I find it serendipitous simply because when we talk about people of color organizing, I think it is always important to remind ourselves about painful pasts, in order to remove any blinders we are wearing in the present. Haskell University was originally a U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs Native American “Boarding School.” Secretary of War John C. Calhoun set up the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824, which became the War Department’s main agency for dealing with Native Americans until 1849 when it was transferred to the Department of the Interior.

The Boarding School program was developed by a U.S. Army Captain by the name of Richard Henry Pratt In 1879. At the time, the Army was concluding that assimilation into white settler society by most Native Americans was impossible, because they simply would not “give up their traditions and ways of life.” So Richard Pratt developed a strategy he called “kill the Indian, save the man.” The idea was probably stolen from the various Christian boarding school programs developed during the Spanish occupation of the Americas. The main idea behind Pratt’s program was that Native families would be forced to send their children to live in these so-called “boarding schools.”

The ugly truth is that all over the United States, Native children were kidnapped by U.S. soldiers, loaded into freight train box cars and sent to concentration camps all over the country. Haskell still has the old “rail trail” distinctly marked at the edge of campus. As you can very well imagine, the boys were trained to be soldiers and the girls were trained to be domestic servants. On a national average eight out of ten girls and at least half the boys were sexually assaulted. Overwhelming evidence shows that less than half the children who originally attended Haskell as a boarding school, survived their experience at all.

Less than 30 miles away from Haskell, the U.S. Army base Fort Leavenworth serves as another continuous reminder of deep dark history, an official history of human devaluation through criminalization. Fort Leavenworth was the epicenter of U.S. Army expansion into native lands in the west. These institutions prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the U.S. government engaged in genocidal practices, and justified these practices by officially criminalizing the act of being indigenous.

The history of the U.S. government criminalizing poor young people begins here. Today inner city and impoverished youth throughout this country are experiencing a new incarnation of the same systematic human devaluation. Black, brown, yellow, immigrant, poor, and yes many Native American communities alive and well in the U.S. today have little access to basic needs and services. This implies a lack of access to the planes, boats, and trucks that fill their communities with weapons and drugs.

The strategy has been broadened to the criminalization of poverty, of youth, and of any form of dissent. The only difference is that instead of forcibly sending young people to “boarding schools” today, the official strategy is to criminalize them, and send them to prison.

The United States of America incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world. The U.S. disproportionately incarcerates people of color from poor communities. Everyday this country has more and more private prisons, prisons run for profit. How do you justify a system that incarcerates its citizens in order to make a profit? Today this updated version of the same strategy to criminalize and “change” young people of color has continued to reap violence in our communities.

This is the story of why we think it is important for young people of color from around the world to have an active role in shutting down the SOA and Fort Leavenworth and Fort Huachuca. From the perspective of young people of color on the front lines of a war against them, this list of places, institutions and industries that contribute to the criminalization and devaluation of their communities is endless.

This last November you may have noticed a lot more black and brown young people with crooked baseball caps, sagging pants and a whole lot of attitude. If you were paying attention, you may have seen some of the creative ways in which we are carrying a message that contributes to shutting down the SOA. Sometimes the TV and newspapers do a good job of making people that act and dress like us look like nothing more than a bunch of criminals. But we know that folks at SOA Watch know who the real criminals are. You will see more and more young people of color at the gates of Fort Benning, until we all shut down the SOA. Hopefully we won’t see each other there for too much longer, and we can start seeing each other on every other front where injustices are taking place.

Let us not forget our history, while keeping a squeegee clean third eye on the present. Young people of color have been and continue to be criminalized not because they are evil or born bad, but because they have always been beautiful, powerful, creative, and relentless when it comes to resisting oppression and meeting us on the front lines of these movements that we share. When you see us, even if we seem loud, or even abrasive, just smile because we all know that we can’t win this fight without one another.

Letter from America del Valle, seeking political asylum in Venezuelan Embassy

To the people of Mexico:
To the peoples at the edge of the water, Atenco:
To my mother, father and brothers:
To all the organizations and people struggling for freedom and justice in our country:

Four years have gone by since that vicious attack by the federal and state governments against our honorable, rebellious people in San Salvador Atenco. Since those savage beatings of men, women and children; the search and destroy of our homes; the murders of Alexis Benhumea and Javier Cortés; the imprisonment of more than 200 comrades; the humiliation and rape of dozens of our women comrades on the way to prison; the deportation from the country of our Chilean, German and Spanish friends who witnessed and suffered the repression. All this at the hands of state, federal and municipal police. All ordered, directed and personally supervised from a spot just a few feet away by State of Mexico governor Enrique Peña Nieto. All this set in motion by the President of the country to make us pay for the affront of having stopped him from grabbing our lands to close the biggest business deal of his regime: the inauguration of a new airport with a deluxe commercial corridor extending for several miles.

related: No Confidence that Mexico’s Supreme Court Will Do Justice in Atenco Case

During these four years, we’ve had to struggle and resist in highly adverse conditions, but even so, we’ve been able to free most of the prisoners. Most of the pursued people have been able to come home, and most important of all, the Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) is alive and struggling tirelessly for the freedom of the remaining prisoners, always on the alert to stop the plunder of our lands.

Today we’re just a few days away from the legal resolution of our prisoners’ struggle for freedom. We’ve played the last legal card we have (a petition for a protective writ), and the decision is in the hands of the highest judicial body we can turn to in Mexico: the federal Supreme Court.

I hope I’m wrong, but all indications are that in the next few days, the judges will make a State decision, leaving some of the Atenco political prisoners in jail. They’ll let a few go and reduce the sentences of others, but the reality is that injustice will prevail. A decision involving speculation of both the PAN and PRI parties, of both Calderón and Peña Nieto, the father and creator of all this carnage. Since there’s a State decision involved (just as there is in the SME case), it’s highly unlikely that the Court won’t abide by it. Only very few judges are willing to disobey an order handed down from the realms of power, whether for fear, personal benefit, pressure, or hidden interests. We only have to look at a few of their recent decisions:

The Court has let a state governor go free and unpunished after taped conversations were released on a national news chain proving his protection of a network of big business pedophiles denounced by Lydia Cacho; the “precious guv” wasn’t the least bit bothered by the Court.

More than 20 people were killed in the repression against the APPO in 2006, and photos of Governor Ulises Ruiz’s hired killers firing on the people of Oaxaca appeared on the front page of several national newspapers, but when the Court reviewed the case, it didn’t put any of the assassins behind bars, much less take any action against the Governor.

But it did free the paramilitaries responsible for the Acteal massacre, including two men who had confessed to the murders.

In the case of the ABC Nursery, the Court upheld the traditional impunity of functionaries who enrich themselves by cheapening the quality of services offered, even in the face of the cry for justice springing from grief over the death of 49 children.

The Court already discussed the Atenco case and came up with a legal aberration, saying that yes, there were human rights violations, but that no one is responsible for them.

In our country there is no justice. It’s clear to me that the Court cannot uphold the indefensible aberration of “aggravated kidnapping”; a clear stand on this issue would revoke the shameful sentences of up to 112 years in prison for our prisoners. But the Court has orders to look for a “legal” maneuver to prevent the release of some of our comrades. All indications are that this will determine the final decision, despite the honorable intention of very few judges to put an end to this deep injustice once and for all (our acknowledgement to them for this). What’s this all about? Handing down a spectacular, exemplary punishment to people who are symbols of social struggle. It’s a way of warning all those who decide to struggle of what will happen to them if they follow through with their intentions. The decision-makers know the situation is unstable. . They’re afraid. They’re trying to discourage people from making any decision to rebel. They’re trying to terrify them. That’s why I think this is a State decision. The political class must make good on its threats, and for now, what better candidates than the rebellious, unbowed, incorruptible campesinos of the FPDT. But we don’t accept this. We want justice, not more tricks from law merchants. We’re not going to resign ourselves to this. We’re going to keep on fighting, because in a country like ours where the doors of justice are closed, the only alternative left to us is to struggle and get organized to stop all this impunity.

I’m now in the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico, seeking asylum after four years of unceasing political persecution against me, of not being able to be out on the streets, of not being able to see my loved ones, of not being able to go home to my house or to my town. Four years of intimidation but also of unbending resistance. There are several arrest warrants out for me. All of the protective orders I’ve requested have been denied by the judiciary. For me, there are no options left, especially now when the Supreme Court is at the point of committing another brutal injustice.

The charges against me are the same as those against my dad. And in the face of the State decision to keep him locked up, I find myself driven to make this decision to seek political asylum, to continue the struggle from outside the country, more vigorously and in better conditions. I’ve been able to avoid imprisonment for four years, and it goes without saying that if they haven’t been able to capture me, they’re certainly not going to make me turn myself in for crimes I didn’t commit.

It’s to the people of Venezuela and their president that I’m turning for help because I’ve witnessed their strong spirit of solidarity towards other peoples suffering injustices. Some examples of this are the programs offered by the Venezuelan people providing doctors, teachers, cheap oil, and eye surgery to hundreds of thousands of poor people in our America, combating yankee imperialism and predatory capitalism with strength and dignity.

I’m leaving, but I’m not giving up. And from where I am, I want to thank all the humble, honest people who have kept me safe during these years. The only thing I have to repay them with is my struggle and my vital force.

There’s one thing I want my people, the people of Atenco, to know ––the people I love so much and admire for their courage, the people I’ve shared so many projects with, which I hope to be able to come back and carry out along with other comrades. I want my father and mother and my whole family to know this, too, and all my brothers and sisters in struggle in the far corners of my homeland, Mexico: If I keep on struggling it’s because of all of you, and even though tomorrow may be far away, you can count me in the ranks of all of you who resist and struggle for a better country, for a Mexico without political despotism, without the corruption, exploitation, and looting that we’ve suffered for years and that we’re no longer willing to tolerate.

And I want you to always bear this in mind. We will win! Now, more than ever, is the time to unite, to fight together against our common enemy. Miners of Cananea, of Pasta de Conchos, opponents of La Parota, people of Copala, workers of SME, teachers of the CNTE, university students, parents of the children of the ABC nursery, parents of men and women killed in Ciudad Juárez, families of thousands of innocent people killed in this so-called “anti-drug war,” poor and working people without job benefits or decent wages, over-exploited and humiliated ––I speak to you with the greatest respect. We have to stand together. We have to do away with all this plunder and repression once and for all, whether by Felipe Calderón or by the one who wants to take his place, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Let the State hear this, loud and clear. They couldn’t crush Atenco, and they won’t crush me. I’m in struggle and always will be, resisting, because the viciousness and cruelty of those on top will never be able to wither the rebelliousness that’s been sown and watered for years in the lands of our nation. Not all their judges or their lying media or their jails or their persecution will ever stop us on the road to justice and freedom! Whatever our battle trenches may be, we’ll be fighting with our heads held high and our fists raised.

Neither the Venezuelan Embassy, nor President Chávez, nor the millions of Venezuelan people have anything at all to do with the statement I’m making. They have their own struggle, which I admire and feel is mine, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with my decision to come into the Embassy and ask for asylum. This decision has been mine alone.

I’m not willing to stay hidden, hounded, and hobbled any longer. This has been the case for four years, and there’s no sign of any change in the situation. My only alternative for regaining my freedom at this time is to seek asylum from a government of the people that is truly democratic, a people that has stood in solidarity with its brothers and sisters in other lands. I want my freedom to keep on struggling, to keep on studying, to keep on living. That’s why I’ve decided to ask the people of Venezuela and its President, Commander Hugo Chávez, to accept me in their territory until I recover my right to keep struggling in my own country.

May the whole world turn its gaze to what’s happening in Mexico. May it carefully observe what will take place in the next few days: the highest court of justice in our country will show that it is incapable of standing up to a State decision, even when this is the most harrowing, barefaced injustice imaginable.

Tuesday, June 29th is a day of international actions demanding freedom and justice for Atenco. Show your support at your local US Embassy or Consulate or other appropriate spot.

International: MIGUA – Pídele al Presidente Barack Obama el TPS para Guatemala

MIGUA: Movimiento de Inmigrantes Guatemaltecos en los Estados Unidos COMUNICADO DE PRENSA 9 de junio de 2010 Para difusión inmediata Contactos: Edgar Ayala ayaladesign@sbcglobal.net (510) 332-4187; Oakland, CA Carlos Gómez cargoand25@sbcglobal.net (773) 610-3053; Chicago IL Claudia Carias julialapo@yahoo.com (646) 220-2460; New York http://www.miguainfo.blogspot.com La tormenta Tropical Agatha golpeó a Centro América el 29 de Mayo [...]
Read more [La Nueva Raza]

EL PASO: Border Patrol Agent Shoots 14-Year-Old Boy At Bridge

www.huffingtonpost.comEL PASO, Texas — A U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 14-year-old boy after a confrontation at an international bridge near downtown El Paso, Mexican authorities said Tuesday. Agents detaining suspected illegal immigrants Monday came under assault from rock throwers across the border in Mexico, FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons said. The FBI is [...]
Read more [La Nueva Raza]

New Caravans heading to the Gaza strip and Oaxaca, Mexico

by Ahni, Intercontinental Cry

Despite the armed attacks on two separate aid caravans on April 27th and May 31st, the international community is determined to bring desperately needed supplies to Palestinians in Gaza city and a Triqui village, on the other side of the world, in Oaxaca, Mexico.

On April 27, the international community was stunned to learn that a paramilitary group known as UBISORT had attacked a peaceful humanitarian aid caravan en route to the indigenous Triqui village of San Juan Copala in Oaxaca.

The government of Oaxaca has since blamed the attack, which resulted in the deaths of two human rights observers, on the actual organizers of the caravan. An absurd claim to say the least.

The caravan was attempting to cross an illegal blockade that UBSIORT (an organization founded by members of Oaxaca’s ruling party, the Institutional Revolution Party, or PRI) has imposed on the the Triqui village since January 2010. The blockade has made it impossible for the villagers to leave or gain access to food, water or other basic necessities.

Since April 27, there have been two additional attacks on the Triqui village. On May 14, UBISORT kidnapped six women and five children who had made it past the blockade to the UBISORT controlled community of La Sabana, “where they were told that they would be executed if they tried to return to Copala with food and medicine”, notes a press release from Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Freedom (VOCAL). Fortunately, the group of women and children have since been released.

The second attack occurred 6 days later, on May 20. UBISORT shot and killed Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez, leader of the Indigenous Autonomous Municipality, and his wife Cleriberta Castro.

Despite the clear and immediate danger in Oaxaca, a new caravan has been organized for the Triqui People.

Named “Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola” in honour of the two human rights observers who died on April 27, the caravan was officially announced on May 13.

The caravan, with its accompaniment of about 300 people, is already on its way to San Copala and it is expected to arrive sometime today, June 8.

With “Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola” travelling in Oaxaca, Mexico, the international community continues to cry out over the Israel government’s shameful attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla on May 31.

In total, nine activists were killed and nearly 700 were arrested after Israeli troops raided the convoy of six ships dubbed “the Freedom Flotilla”. The flotilla was carrying roughly 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza.

Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza since 2007, when Hamas took control of the Palestinian territory from the rival Palestinian group Fatah. The military blockade has stranded more than 1.4 million Palestinian men, women and children to utter poverty.

It’s a form of “collective punishment,” says Amnesty International. “Rather than targeting armed groups, the blockade mainly hits the most vulnerable, such as children (who make up more than half of the population in Gaza), the elderly, the sick and the Gaza Strip’s large refugee population.” The region is plagued by mass shortages and military attacks.

The Freedom Flotilla, with its 700 unarmed civilians from 40 different countries, was going to pass through the military blockade when it was headed off by Israeli forces.

According to the Flotilla’s organizers, the troops opened fire as soon they stormed the convoy. The government, on the other hand, claims that activists on the flagship attacked them first.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have condemned the brutal military assault; and they, along with scores of human rights groups, the United Nations and several governments are demanding a full and impartial investigation. Others are also calling for a Boycott and for Sanctions against the state of Israel.

Sadly, another Gaza-bound aid ship was seized by Israeli forces 3 days ago, on June 5. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), which dispatched the aid ship dubbed “Rachel Corrie”, has released a statement condemning the “hijacking,” stating, “For the second time in less then a week, Israeli forces stormed and hijacked an unarmed aid ship, kidnapping its passengers and forcing the ship toward Ashdod Port in southern Israel. It is not yet known whether any of the Rachel Corrie’s passengers sustained injuries during the attack, but they are believed to be unharmed.”

The Free Gaza Movement has since announced that they will be sending a second flotilla in place of the Rachel Corrie; but it’s not expected to set out for another couple months.

–

source: http://intercontinentalcry.org