Mexico Week In Review: 06.12-06.18

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 06.12-06.18
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Published since 1994, 'Mexico Week In Review' is a service of the
Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS).  CIS is a Washington, D.C.
based activist group committed to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas.  CIS is actively supporting the struggles
of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico while simultaneously combating
related structures of oppression within our own communities.

To request free searches of our news archive or to contact us
directly, write: cisdc at zzapp.org

"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
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TEACHERS KILLED IN OAXACA POLICE ATTACK, SAYS UNION
GOVERNMENT'S STRATEGY OF OPPRESSION LEADING UP TO ELECTIONS

Several people were killed, according to local union leaders, when
thousands of state and federal police attacked the encampment of
striking schoolteachers in the central square of the Mexican city
Oaxaca on 14 June. The attack was a desperate move by Oaxaca state
Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortmz to crush the more than 50,000 striking
schoolteachers, who have been leading a massive movement calling for
Ruiz Ortmz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to resign.
But it also fits in with what increasingly looks like a 'strategy of
tension' stoked up by Mexican President Vicente Fox ahead of the July
2 presidential election. This strategy has involved the violent
attack on San Salvador Atenco, and similar attacks on striking copper
miners and citizens of the Isla Mujeres, protesting against the
establishment on their island of a rubbish dump for the garbage from
nearby tourist resort Cancun.

Several thousand police attacked the teachers' encampment at 4.40am
firing tear gas and brutally beating strikers. According to the
teachers' union SNTE police carried away several bodies of people
shot dead, which has led to the confusion about the number of
fatalities, with the Red Cross at one point reporting 11 dead, while
the national teachers' union now puts the figure at three or four.
While the police wrecked the encampment and set part of it on fire,
there is no guarantee they can hold the central square against a
massive and popular movement.

The five-week old strike is much more than a dispute over teachers'
pay. The Oaxaca Section XXII of the National Education Workers' Union
(SNTE) has attracted massive support for its demands, which equal pay
throughout a state which is divided into three salary zones based on
the supposed cost of living. The teachers are also demanding an
increase for students receiving grants, which now amount to 450 pesos
per month. That's $40 U.S. dollars. They're demanding decent schools,
classroom supplies, and government funding for uniforms which are out
of reach of so many poor families that the children stay at home. The
SNTE has skillfully contrasted the lack of resources for education in
Oaxaca with the evident corruption of the PRI state government. Ruiz
Ortmz has spent millions of pesos on unnecessary building works in
the central city area, widely seen as a scam to siphon money to his
business cronies. Moreover, strikers allege that some 900,000 pesos
have disappeared into PRI funds. More than 800 local communities
representing Oaxaca's many ethnicities have supported the SNTE
struggle, linking it to their own demands, repudiating violence,
assassination, the holding of political prisoners, repression of the
press and the heavy hand of political bosses. Teachers in Mexico, who
are generally very badly paid but highly popular in their local
communities, have long been a center of militancy and the social
movements.

Following the violence on 4 May during the police attack on Atenco,
the subsequent violence and rapes committed against prisoners
following the Atenco raid, the repression of the Isla Mujeres
protests and the attacks on the striking miners, there is no doubt a
generalized pattern of repression, a 'strategy of tension', is
emerging. Two things probably determine this - the July 2nd
presidential election and the 'Other Campaign', propelled by the
Zapatistas (EZLN).

The candidate of Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN), Felipe
Calderon, is running neck and neck with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,
candidate of the left-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
A 15 June opinion poll result showed that Lopez Obrador has regained
the lead, and has about 35% compared with Calderon's 32%. Mexico's
business elite and the political right are waging a hugely alarmist
campaign against the politically very moderate PRD, alleging the
country is becoming 'ungovernable' and a PRD government would worsen
this. TV images of running fights between protestors and police
obviously contribute to the atmosphere of fear that Fox and the PAN
(but also the PRI) are trying to generate.

At the same time, many militant social movements and political
groupings have participated - more or less critically - in the EZLN's
'Other Campaign' which aims to create a broader alliance of social
movements on an all-Mexico level. The attack on Atenco was clearly
designed to coincide with the visit of Subcomandante Marcos as part
of the Other Campaign tour, and was constructed around a giant
provocation - preventing flower sellers setting up stalls on a piece
of land owned by Wal-Mart - which was clearly planned in advance.
Marcos and the EZLN are the other part of the climate of fear that
the right wing media is trying to generate.

Source: International Viewpoint: 06/16
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BORDER NEWS: TOWNS FEAR US CRACKDOWN

Patricia Lopez's journey toward a better life in the United States
ended with a nighttime robbery, a twisted knee and a Border Patrol
escort to the frontier - where she was dumped at dawn without a peso
in her pocket, 1,575 miles from home. She's far from alone: Nearly 1
million people, many of them penniless, were turned back across the
border last year, and analysts fear that tougher new US border
enforcement will inundate border towns with the desperate and the
destitute.

Migrant shelter directors are scrambling for funds and considering
hiring more staff to keep their doors open 24 hours a day in
anticipation of a record number of migrants being repatriated.
"Everyone is getting ready because we're worried there is going to be
a mass deportation of people," said Francisco Loureiro, who runs a
migrant shelter in Nogales that houses up to 120 people a night.
"We're worried there's going to be too many people to tend to, and we
just don't have the room for more."

Most migrants try to bring a little money to the border, but they are
vulnerable to bandits who prey on illegal crossers and can find most
of their funds drained by the fees of people smugglers. After Lopez
crossed into the Arizona desert, robbers stripped her male companions
down to their underwear in the night and stole her money as well -
about $130. Lopez, 35, gave up trying to make it to Indianapolis
after twisting her knee. She hobbled to a highway and waited for the
Border Patrol, which left her at the Nogales border crossing. "I
figured if it was going this bad, something else was going to
happen," said Lopez, who was staying at Laureiro's shelter. "Now I
just want to go home." But a bus ticket back to Acapulco - and her
two children - would cost about $105 - three week's work at Mexico's
minimum wage. Lopez said agents of a Mexican government migrant aid
force, Grupo Beta, offered to pay about a quarter of that and she was
going to ask for the rest from local churches. If that failed, the
single mom would find a temporary job.

The first of 6,000 US National Guard troops are being deployed to the
border this month for support work that will help the Border Patrol
concentrate on catching illegal migrants. Border experts say that
will mean thousands more being detained and dropped at the border.
"As agents are freed up and deployed back to the line and the
National Guard troops support our operations ... all this will add up
to an increase in apprehensions," Border Patrol spokesman Todd Fraser
said in Washington D.C. So far, the troops appear to be discouraging
crossings. The Border Patrol says detentions have dropped since the
National Guard arrived in early June.

But most expect crossings to rise as smugglers find new routes around
the increased security. "Repatriations are going to accelerate and
the border zone is going to be hit the hardest with this, because the
cities are going to be receiving people in search of resources and
these towns don't have them," said Jorge Santibanez, director of the
Tijuana-based Colegio de La Frontera Norte, a border research center.
"The government should be helping these migrant organizations and
putting the infrastructure in place now," he said. Border experts say
more than 75 percent of migrants who are returned to the border try
crossing again. Others scrounge for a bus fare home. A few wind up
living off the streets.

Blanca Villasenor, who runs a shelter in the border city of Mexicali,
said that when the US concentrated agents in hotspots in Texas and
California in 1994, Mexicali was flooded with repatriated migrants.
Thousands slept in the city's streets and parks. "Maybe it wasn't a
mass deportation per se, but there were really a lot of migrants
returned - some 30,000 a month - and that was just in Mexicali,"
Villasenor said. "They arrive without money. A third of those who are
deported are dropped off in the night at 1 or 2 a.m. They are
completely unprotected and are often abused by police or others."
It's been a thorny issue for both governments.

In 2004, US officials tried a Lateral Repatriation Program meant to
break migrants ties with their smugglers, whose fees often include
several attempts to cross. Each day, 300 migrants caught in Arizona
were dropped off in Mexican towns on the Texas border. The program,
however, outraged Texans who said it brought more illegal immigrants
into their state. The Mexican government complained migrants were
stranded in unfamiliar areas. Last year, US officials budgeted $14.2
million for a pilot program that flew as many as 33,900 Mexican
migrants to Mexico's heartland rather than leaving them at the border.

Source: The Associated Press: 06/16
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AMLO MOVES AHEAD IN OPINION POLL

Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador inched two points ahead
of his conservative rival in a Reforma newspaper opinion poll. The
survey gave Lopez Obrador 37 percent of support among probable
voters, up from 35 percent in a poll by the daily in late May.
Conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon fell to 35
percent support in the new poll from 39 percent on May 24. The two
top contenders had been running neck-and-neck for the July 2 vote.
But Lopez Obrador has appeared to gain ground since a nationally
televised debate last week.

On Tuesday he opened a three-point lead over conservative rival
Felipe Calderon in two new polls by the Milenio newspaper and
Mitofsky polling group. Roberto Madrazo, of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, was third in Wednesday's Reforma poll with 23
percent of support, up a percentage point from the newspaper's last
poll. Reforma interviewed 2,100 registered voters over three days
following the debate. The survey had a margin of error of 2.3
percentage points. Although Calderon was widely seen as performing
strongly in the debate, campaigning since then has focused on
allegations by Lopez Obrador that Calderon's businessman
brother-in-law evaded paying taxes and received large government
contracts while the conservative was energy minister. Calderon has
repeatedly denied any misconduct, but the scandal is tarnishing his
image as the candidate with "clean hands" in a country beset by
public corruption. President Vicente Fox's six-year term ends in
December and he is forbidden by the constitution from seeking
reelection.

Source: Reuters: 06/14
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CHIAPAS: POLITICAL VIOLENCE GROWS

A new conflict between the Zapatista support bases and campesino
organizations is growing Las Canadas of the Lacandon Selva.

In the community of El Carrizal, municipality of Ocosingo, a
confrontation between indigenous Zapatistas and followers of the
Emiliano Zapata Campesino Organization-Casa del Pueblo (OCEZ-CdP),
accused of having relations with the Popular Revolutionary Army
(EPR), has reached the point of residents being threatened with
firearms and having their crops destroyed.

The Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba)
announced a petition by the Zapatistas of the zone to bring the
situation to public attention. According to Frayba, Zapatista
supporters of El Carrizal arrived at their offices to denounce
aggressions by members of OCEZ-Casa del Pueblo, who, in turn, accused
EZLN sympathizers of paramilitary activities. "The researchers of
this Center can verify the destruction of cornfields and attacks on
the cattle of the Zapatista bases. According to the information
obtained June 5, four members of the OCEZ-CdP, with 16- and
410-caliber weapons in hand and firing in the air, threatened
Zapatista bases and damaged their crops," denounced the Frayba. The
statement said the Zapatistas have suffered aggressions from
followers of OCEZ-CdP since 1997, when the houses of residents who do
not follow the organization were burned.

The Zapatistas explained to the Frayba activists that on various
occasions they had sought dialogue with the OCEZ followers in El
Carrizal; including "on three occasions the Good Government Junta of
Caracol de Morelia has invited the representative of the
organization, Ramiro Santiz Lopez, to arrive at an agreement to avoid
more aggressions, but he didn't respond to any of the invitations.
The last was in February of the present year, and the aggressions
persist." The Zapatistas of El Carrizal told Frayba that the OCEZ-CdP
has publicly accused members of the Zapatista base of being
paramilitaries, "signifying that they are completely out of touch
with reality..." Frayba is greatly concerned by the aggressions
between campesino organizations in the context of pre-electoral
tensions. It has issued a call to the leaders of OCEZ-CdP to
intervene with the members of their organization in El Carrizal, to
put an end to the aggressions and find channels of dialogue to arrive
at a means of coexistence between members of different organizations
in the community.

Source: http://ww4report.com: 06/15
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MARCOS: "ANOTHER LATIN AMERICA IS POSSIBLE"

Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos told the Spanish TV show
"El Loco de la Colina" in a special broadcast Mexico City that it is
"possible to build another Latin America" based in popular movements
and new political actors emerging in the region, especially "those
lead by indigenous peoples, as is the case in Bolivia and Ecuador."
"Governments come and go, the peoples remain," Marcos said, while
saying it was still possible to have "just, democratic governments
that promote freedom," and then build "a new relationship with
Europe, the United States or Asia." He criticized Mexico's politics
as "a monologue of many voices" and the country's politicians as
"comedians whose time is up."

He also distinguished between the violence of "those elements that
surge from below," which recurs because "we don't find other paths...
indigenous peoples do not find a place for our word and our face." He
said it was necessary to differentiate "the violence produced by
desperation from that realized from above by those seeking to
conquer." He said the Zapatista movement is trying to build a new
relationship with civil society. "Our proposal is to build a single
island, so it will not be necessary to have two watches." (Marcos
wears two watches. - ed.)

He also assumed responsibility for EZLN mistakes which resulted in
"death, not only of some compañeros in the uprising of 1994, but of
some children who followed us in the 10 years of the uprising, as
well as some other errors of the movement." He also commented again
on the Baque conflict in Spain, saying the recent ceasefire with the
separatist group ETA, a model for a solution "not with force or with
arms, but with arguments, is a hope for us because we also come from
a broken dialogue." While he acknowledged the possibility that the
authorities could arrest him any minute, he denied being afraid of
being assassinated.

Source: http://ww4report.com: 06/18

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The above articles were originally published and copyrighted by the
listed sources. These articles are offered for educational purposes
which CIS maintains is  'fair use' of copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

end: Mexico Week In Review: 06.12-06.18
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