Mexico Week In Review: 05.08-05.14

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 05.08-05.14
=================================================================
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"
=================================================================

OTRA UPDATE: MARCOS GIVES INTERVIEW IN SUPPORT OF ATENCO DETAINED

Mexico's Zapatista guerrillas are no longer thinking in terms of
armed conflict, despite the state of "social indignation and rage" in
the country, the group's leader "Subcomandante Marcos" said in an
interview with the Televisa TV network, which he has criticized
vehemently in the past for its political influence and power. Marcos,
who has been visiting the capital since last week as part of a
nationwide tour, was interviewed on a Televisa news program, where he
predicted that leftist candidate Andrés López Obrador would win the
Jul. 2 presidential elections, although he clarified that he does not
support the candidate and does not see the former Mexico City mayor
as a true leftist. The interview, and another that he granted the
left-leaning newspaper La Jornada, were the first that he has given
since 2001.

He said the barely-armed Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN)
does not plan on boycotting the elections, and is not interested in
generating violence, as Senator Diego Fernández de Cevallos of the
conservative governing National Action Party (PAN) has alleged.
Wearing his trademark facemask and military-style outfit, Marcos
explained that his national tour is aimed at building a leftist
political and civil society alternative to the country's political
parties. "That is why we are carrying out 'the other campaign'," said
Marco. "We want to build for the people down below, because great
social tension and anger is building up."

"The other campaign" is a six-month tour that set out in January from
the indigenous EZLN's stronghold in the remote jungles of the
impoverished southern state of Chiapas. The idea is to forge
alliances with leftist groups that are not participating in the
elections but are interested in "changing the country from below,
with the participation of civil society." The tour is taking place
parallel to the election campaign, in which PAN candidate Felipe
Calderón has caught up to López Obrador of the leftwing Democratic
Revolution Party (PRD) in the polls, after months in which the latter
was in the lead. Roberto Madrazo, the candidate of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party - which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000 - is third
in the polls.

"I believe that Marcos has the moral authority to reappear on the
scene and express his positions, especially when there is a great
lack of representativity in today's politics," Francisco Farina, at
the Center for Labor Research and Consulting (CILAS), a
non-governmental Mexico-city based group that advises workers and
unions, told IPS. A similar opinion was expressed by Pedro Gelert
with the Mexican Solidarity with Cuba Movement. "There are many
people receptive to Marcos's radical message against neoliberalism,"
he remarked to IPS. The activist, who said he was speaking from a
personal standpoint because in his Movement "there are members who
see Marcos in a different light," said the EZLN leader is an honest
man who identifies with the best of social causes, and has a lot to
offer.

But not everyone is impressed by Marcos's reappearance in public. "I
don't like Marcos's decision to cast himself as the ultimate
conscience," writer Carlos Monsiváis told the magazine Poder y
Negocios. His fellow writer Guadalupe Loaeza wrote in a column for
the daily newspaper Reforma that the guerrilla leader is a vain man
driven by a desire for protagonism.

The Zapatista leader has drawn renewed attention since he announced
that he was changing the itinerary of his tour and would stay on in
Mexico City to lead protests demanding the release of some 200
demonstrators arrested last week after violent clashes between the
police and local residents of the town of San Salvador Atenco, 15 km
from the capital. Marcos warned that the protests would escalate if
the imprisoned demonstrators were not released.

In his interview with La Jornada, a newspaper that has given the EZLN
heavy coverage since it first burst on the scene in Chiapas in
January 1994, demanding democracy, justice and indigenous rights,
Marcos said,  "as a whole, the political class no longer represents
Mexican society." According to Marcos, "not even (Madrazo's) family
trusts him," and the election of the PRI candidate would imply "an
impossible return to the criminal past" and the "enthroning" of
organized crime. And a victory by the ruling PAN's Calderón, he said,
would lead to "fascism" - a decision to call the army out onto the
streets to crack down on protests. A triumph by López Obrador,
meanwhile, would bring about "a state functional to capitalism, while
establishing a new structure that would be authoritarian and would
not resolve the problems of those down below," added Marcos. For that
reason, "the other campaign", which is a peaceful initiative to reach
out to civil society groups, "is the only possibility to ensure that
change, which is inevitable, will not be violent," he argued.

Source: IPS: 05/09
====

ATENCO UPDATE I: DISPUTE MAY IMPACT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

It started as a dispute between eight flower vendors and local police
over where they could sell their goods. By the next day, it had
escalated into a massive raid by 3,000 state and federal police
officers that left one dead and 200 arrested. Now, a week later, the
events of May 4 in this farming town 15 miles northeast of Mexico
City are sending waves across this country's political system,
highlighting the tension Mexicans feel just weeks before they select
a new president on July 2.

Police say the raid was necessary to quell what had become a
dangerous situation when supporters of the flower vendors seized as
many as nine local officers and severely beat and slashed two with
machetes. But Mexico's Human Rights Commission has charged that the
police used excessive force, smashing windows and furniture and
hauling people from their beds. The commission, in a report issued
this week, said it had confirmed cases of police molesting and raping
women detainees and abusing children, the elderly and the disabled.

On Thursday (05/11), students brought the controversy to Mexico City,
blocking at least a dozen major streets and freeways and choking
traffic in and out of Mexico City to protest the continued detention
of those arrested here. Mexican officials said charges will be
dropped against 17 and that 144 will be released on bail to face
minor charges later. But 28 others will remain in custody to face
kidnapping charges. Everyone from presidential candidates to masked
Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos have weighed in on the subject. Marcos
has called the events here "a government act of terrorism." Felipe
Calderon, presidential candidate in the National Action Party, has
used the uprising to hint that his main rival, Andres Manuel Lopes
Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), would be a
president who would tolerate the actions of machete-wielding farmers.

Some analysts say that explains the police reaction. "The timing has
to be seen in the timing of presidential electoral campaign," said
Elliott Young, director of Latin American studies at Lewis & Clark
College in Oregon. "The government is using the fear of a guerrilla
movement like the Zapatistas to benefit the governing party. They're
using it to say Mexico is on the brink of chaos and needs the strong
hand of the state." Townspeople admit they are still shaken and in
fear of the authorities. Many interviewed by Knight Ridder refused to
give their names. Broken glass still litters the streets and children
seem shell-shocked. "The total story of Mexico is here," said an
elderly woman in the town square who refused to give her name out of
fear of the authorities. "They've broken our town. This was a
peaceful place with many great traditions ... This is how they're
doing away with Mexico."

For many, this town of 10,000 was already a flashpoint even before
last week's police raid. In 2002, a peasant revolt led by a rebel
group known as the Community Front in Defense of the Land stopped a
plan pushed by President Vicente Fox to build an international
airport on their farmland. The Community Front also organized the
defense of the flower vendors last week. After the farmers' 2002
victory, Community Front leader Ignacio del Valle took over the town
and ousted the municipal government, much in the manner of the 1994
Zapatista uprising Subcomandante Marcos led in Chiapas. In 2003, the
municipal government returned. But some locals accuse del Valle of
continuing to rule the town with tyranny and blackmail, promising
peace in exchange for salaries for him and his supporters. Residents
are divided over rebel leader del Valle and whether his Community
Front has helped or hurt their village. Some aren't sorry he's among
those jailed last week and charged with kidnapping. "He was asking
for it," said restaurant owner Eloisa Mendez Silva.

Others say del Valle has the support of as much as 80 percent of the
town. "He's a very good person. He was doing what the politicians
wouldn't do," said Jose Gomez, 42, a business owner. "He worked for
the schools, the farmers, for just causes." Gomez sees the police
raid as direct retaliation for their rejection of the airport. "They
came to collect the bill," Gomez said. "When we rejected the airport,
this town was erased from the map. We've received no resources" from
the government. A spokesman for Eduardo Media Mora, Fox's minister of
public security, wouldn't answer the charge directly. He referred all
questions to a transcript of Media Mora's news conference after the
raid, in which the subject wasn't addressed.

Large banners declaring "Basta!" (Enough!) hang in the town square.
Graffiti welcomes Marcos' Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Marcos has promised to stay in Mexico City until all the Atenco
prisoners are released. The Fox administration has promised to
investigate incidents of excessive force in the raid, and to
prosecute officers found to have violated the law.

But the legacy of Atenco is anyone's guess. "Police abuse is not well
looked on by Mexicans," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico
Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in
Washington, D.C., and who is in Mexico City for a conference on the
future of democracy here. "It remains to be seen who this impacts in
terms of public opinion. ... It's certainly the kind of incident that
two months before an election could have an impact on what happens."

Source: Knight Ridder: 05/11
====

ATENCO UPDATE II: WOMEN RAPED AND ASSAULTED BY POLICE

Mexico's human rights agency said it has filed complaints with
prosecutors after nearly two dozen women claimed they were raped or
sexually abused by police following a violent protest. The
allegations are the most serious to arise against police - frequently
accused of corruption and violence - during the administration of
President Vicente Fox, said Guillermo Ibarra, coordinator-general of
projects and communication for the Mexican National Human Rights
Commission.

He said seven women reported that they were raped and 16 others,
including three foreign nationals, said they were sexually abused by
police who detained them after violent clashes last week in the town
of San Salvador Atenco. Ibarra said his government panel has filed
criminal complaints with the attorney general's office in the central
state of Mexico, where local, state and federal police officers have
been accused by the women in the alleged abuses.

Emanuel Avila, spokesman for the Interior Department of Mexico State,
where the town is located, said that "none of the women in detention
who were purportedly sexually abused, none of them has filed a formal
complaint nor have they allowed medical examinations" to test for
evidence of rape. Mexico State Police Chief Wilfrido Robledo denied
the allegations in comments to local media, saying they were part of
a strategy by detainees' lawyers to make police look bad. He could
not be reached by The Associated Press for comment. Presidential
spokesman Ruben Aguilar said if police committed crimes authorities
must act "with the full force of the law."

The women who lodged the rape and abuse charges were among more than
200 people taken into custody last week in San Salvador Atenco. Two
of the women who claimed they were sexually abused, but not raped,
are Spaniards, while the third is from Chile, Ibarra said. All were
deported for allegedly violating the terms of their tourist visas.
"They insulted me, groped me, anything they wanted," the Chilean, who
identified herself as cinematography student Valentina Palma, was
quoted by the daily La Jornada newspaper as saying. Palma said she
and other detainees were forced to walk through a gauntlet of police
officers who kicked them as they passed. Ibarra said both the
commission and state police had appointed doctors to examine the
women who remained in Mexico, but that more than half of the alleged
victims so far have refused.

Sources: Associated Press: 05/09; La Jornada: 05/09
====

BORDER NEWS I: MINUTEMEN AIM TO BUILD ARIZ. BORDER FENCES

A civilian border-patrol group said that it plans to build two short
security fences on a ranch in southern Arizona, the busiest illegal
entry point on the U.S.-Mexico border. Chris Simcox, a leader in the
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said last month that the group would
break ground on the fence unless the White House deployed U.S. troops
to the border by May 25 and endorsed more secure fencing. "We are not
anticipating that the White House will make any effort in the next 2
1/2 weeks as far as putting troops on the border," Minuteman
spokeswoman Connie Hair said.

The group initially plans to erect two parallel 15-foot steel-mesh
fences, which will be from 50 to 150 feet long. An unpaved road will
run between the fences. Hair declined to reveal the location of the
fences out of concern the project could be a target for harassment or
retaliation. Todd Fraser, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in
Washington, said the agency has no position on such fencing. "If
private citizens want to construct something on their property ...
who is the Border Patrol to say they can't do it?" Fraser said. Plans
call for the fence to be constructed using an Israeli design.

On the south side facing Mexico, a 6-foot deep trench will keep
vehicles from crashing through the fencing. Behind that, coiled and
razor-edged barbed wire will be placed in front of a 15-foot steel
mesh fence angled outward at the top to make climbing more difficult.
The second fence will be built on the other side of the road. Video
cameras will be mounted between the fences and monitored from home
computers. Other Minuteman groups have also undertaken fencing
projects. About 200 Minuteman volunteers began building a 6-foot
barbed wire fence last month along a quarter-mile of rugged terrain
about 50 miles east of San Diego. It connected to an existing 12-foot
high government-built fence.

Source: Associated Press: 05/09
====

BORDER NEWS II: BUSH WEIGHS DEPLOYING GUARD TO US BORDER

Once again the Bush administration is turning to the military to help
solve a domestic problem. But instead of hurricane aid or
preparations to cope with avian flu, the Pentagon is being asked to
possibly provide thousands of National Guard troops to shore up the
U.S. border with Mexico, as part of President Bush's effort to gather
support for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. According
to senior administration officials, Bush is considering plans to use
federal funds to pay for National Guard troops deployed along the
southern border.

One defense official said military leaders believe the number of
troops required could range from 3,500 to perhaps 10,000, depending
on the final plan. Another administration official cautioned that the
10,000 figure was too high. The officials insisted on anonymity since
no decision has been announced. The president was expected to reveal
his plans in an address Monday (05/15) at 8 p.m. EDT. It will be the
first time he has used the Oval Office for a domestic policy speech -
a gesture intended to underscore the importance he places on the
divisive immigration issue. The key questions were exactly how many
National Guard troops might be deployed, for how long and at what
cost to federal taxpayers - as well as the problem of possible
disruption of upcoming deployments to Iraq and elsewhere overseas. As
discussions among the White House, the Pentagon and the states
continued on how the military could be used to secure the southern
border, defense officials said that states want the federal
government to pick up what will be a significant tab for the
increased security. Officials had no estimates on that cost.

Bush's speech Monday night is intended to build support for broad
immigration overhaul by taking substantive steps to secure the
border. His focus on the military echoes statements he made after
Hurricane Katrina, saying the military may need to play a stronger
role in disasters. He also later suggested he would consider using
the military to enforce a quarantine in the event of a bird flu
pandemic. "We need to beef up those (border) operations and the cost
will be substantial," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in an
interview. "People are just not going to accept comprehensive
immigration reform unless they are assured the government is going to
secure the border. People have lost confidence in the federal
government because they simply haven't addressed this in a dramatic
and effective way."

Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense,
asked officials earlier this week to offer options for the use of
military resources and troops - particularly the National Guard -
along the border with Mexico, according to defense officials familiar
with the discussions. Cornyn said state officials are also looking
for more unmanned aircraft, ground sensors, surveillance cameras and
military training to help with border patrols. Defense officials said
the National Guard may be used only until significant additions to
the existing civilian border patrols can be fully funded and
completed. Currently there are about 100 National Guard troops
involved in counter-drug operations, including some along the border,
said Guard Bureau spokesman Jack Harrison. He said there are also
between 10 to 15 Guard members - mostly engineers - helping border
patrol agents with vehicle and heavy equipment support.

The discussions this week underscored the importance of the border
and immigrations issues, yet were tentative enough to reflect worries
about drawing the nation's armed forces into a politically sensitive
domestic role. Currently, the military plays a very limited role
along the borders, but some active duty forces have been used in the
past to help battle drug traffickers. The National Guard is generally
under the control of the state governors, but Guard units can be
federalized by the president, such as those sent to the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Active duty military may not be used for law
enforcement unless the president authorizes it.

Source: Associated Press: 05/13
====

BORDER NEWS III: US NOTIFYING MEXICO OF CIVILIAN BORDER PATROL LOCATIONS

The U.S. Border Patrol is alerting the Mexican government to the
locations of civilian border patrol groups when the organizations
help detain suspected illegal immigrants or use violence against
them, according to a published report. U.S. Customs and Border
Protection spokesman Mario Martinez told the Inland Valley Daily
Bulletin of Ontario that the policy is meant to assure the Mexican
government that migrants' rights are being observed. The policy
pertains to groups including the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and
the Friends of the Border Patrol, a Chino-based nonprofit. "It's not
a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be," Martinez
said Monday. "This ... simply makes two basic statements - that we
will not allow any lawlessness of any type, and that if an alien is
encountered by a Minuteman or arrested by the Minuteman, then we will
allow that government to interview the person."

Minuteman members, however, said the Border Patrol's policy negates
the private group's effectiveness and could endanger their lives.
"Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were
all the time," said Chris Simcox, the organization's founder. "It's
unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence
to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where
corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of
criminal cartels." TJ Bonner, president of the Border Patrol agents'
union, said members have long complained that the Mexican government
has undue influence over U.S. enforcement policies. "That's not a
legitimate role for any foreign nation," Bonner said.

Source: Associated Press: 05/09

====
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: 05.08-05.14
--