Mexico Week In Review: 07.30-08.05

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 07.30-08.05
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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 view newsletter archives, visit: 
http://lists.mutualaid.org/pipermail/mexico-week/

"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
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CHIAPAS: EPR ATTACK PRISON

In the early morning of July 28 people thought to be members of the 
rebel Revolutionary Popular Army (EPR) assaulted a site in Chiapa de 
Corzo, in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, where a federal 
prison is being built. No injuries were reported in the incident, 
during which an unknown number of attackers captured the three guards 
at the site and locked them in a guard booth. The attackers then shot 
up the site and painted slogans on the walls. Municipal police 
arrived when they heard the shooting; they found about 40 used 
cartridges on the scene. The action was apparently meant to dramatize 
the EPR's demand for the release of EPR leaders Alberto Cruz Sanchez 
and Edmundo Reyes Amaya, who were allegedly captured in the southern 
state of Oaxaca on May 24; the federal and the Oaxaca governments 
both deny that they are holding the two men. The incident follows 
attacks on Mexican gas pipelines on July 5 and 10 which the EPR 
reportedly carried out to demand the release of Cruz Sanchez and 
Reyes Amaya [see Update #907]. The slogans painted on the walls at 
Chiapa de Corzo were: "They were taken alive, we want them back 
alive," "EPR will win," "Long live the EPR" and "Freedom for 
political prisoners."

This was the second attack on a Mexican prison in two days. On the 
evening of July 26, about 20 men armed with AK-47 assault rifles 
attacked a prison in Juchitan de Zaragoza, Oaxaca. Authorities said 
one police agent was wounded. Official sources suggested that people 
involved in drug trafficking were attempting to free a prisoner. Some 
local people claimed that the attack was by an elite army unit, the 
Airborne Special Forces Group (GAFE), which they said was raiding a 
nearby residence and attacked the prison by mistake. Oaxaca state 
citizen protection secretary Sergio Segreste denied the army was 
involved, noting that the army doesn't use AK-47s. He also denied 
that the EPR carried out the assault.

Source: Weekly News Update- Nicaragua Solidarity Network Of Greater 
New York: 07/29
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BORDER NEWS: MORE DEATHS IN ARIZONA

Early on July 15, a man waved down agents from the Border Patrol's 
Tucson sector patrolling near Arizona highway 289 and told them his 
brother was sick and convulsing. Agents found the man nearby, 
unresponsive; they called paramedics, but the man was pronounced dead 
before he could be airlifted to a medical center. He was identified 
as Omar Lopez Mendiola of Iztapalapa, Mexico. Early on July 16, 
Border Patrol agents working on the Tohono O'odham Reservation found 
a dead woman lying on the side of the road. Identification on the 
body indicated she was an 18-year-old from the southern Mexican state 
of Guerrero. The body was to be transported to the Pima County 
Medical Examiner's Office.

On July 18, an agent with the Shadow Wolves, an elite group of Native 
American trackers who patrol Tohono O'odham Nation land for ICE, 
found a dead woman from the central Mexican state of Queretaro. She 
was found with four other border crossers who survived, including her 
10-year old son and a man who had placed a 911 call seeking help, 
prompting a Border Patrol search for the group. [ADS 7/19/07] The 
woman was identified as Maria Resendiz Perez. [ADS 7/20/07] Late on 
July 17 and early on July 18, border agents found the decomposed 
bodies of two presumed migrants at two different sites in the Tucson 
sector.

On July 19--the 37th straight day of 100-degree temperatures in the 
Tucson area--a 10-year-old Guatemalan boy found walking about a half 
mile north of the border told a Border Patrol agent that his mother 
had died. An agent of Borstar, the agency's search, trauma and rescue 
unit, backtracked and found the body of the boy's mother's on the 
Tohono O'odham Reservation.

On July 20, a Border Patrol agent patrolling Organ Pipe Cactus 
National Monument encountered the body of a Mexican man. The next 
morning, July 21, the owner of Atascosa Ranch, near Peck Canyon about 
13 miles north of the border, found the body of Jose Armando Martinez 
Miranda of Sinaloa, Mexico. Later the same day, an agent found 
skeletal remains south of Milepost 13 on Arivaca Road. On July 22, 
the Border Patrol found two decomposing bodies south of Why on 
Arizona 85.

The Border Patrol has recovered at least 24 bodies in the Tucson 
Sector in July, bringing its fiscal-year total to at least 140. The 
number of border deaths is higher, according to records kept by the 
Pima and Cochise counties' medical examiners. Combined, those 
agencies had handled 184 bodies of illegal border crossers from Oct. 
1 through July 23.

Source: Immigration News Briefs: 07/29
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HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS INVESTIGATE

Irene Khan, general secretary of the UK-based human rights 
organization Amnesty International (AI), is scheduled to visit Mexico 
July 30-Aug. 5 for what AI calls a "high-level working visit" to 
address its concerns about human rights violations in Mexico. The 
group's concerns include reports of sexual assaults on women 
prisoners by police agents during the repression of demonstrations in 
San Salvador Atenco, Mexico state in May 2006; the government's 
failure to solve the murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez, 
Chihuahua, over the last 15 years; and the repression of 
anti-globalization protesters in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in May 2004. 
Khan's visit is to include an interview with Mexican president Felipe 
Calderon Hinojosa and a July 31 trip to Oaxaca, where the state 
government is accused of repeated human rights abuses. On July 25 the 
Mexican daily La Jornada reported that Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive 
director of the Americas division of the US- based Human Rights 
Watch, had telephoned Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz to urge an 
"exhaustive and impartial investigation of the reports of the 
excessive use of force and arbitrary detentions by police agents" at 
a July 16 protest in Oaxaca city.

On July 20 the federal government signed an agreement to pay a total 
of 725,000 pesos (about $66,000) to surviving members of a family 
that was attacked by soldiers in Sinaloa de Leyva municipality, 
Sinaloa state, on the night of May 31-June 1. Five family members 
were killed--two young women and three children under eight--and 
three were wounded. Military sources say that 19 soldiers, including 
three officers, remain in custody in Mazatlan while the army 
continues a criminal investigation.

Source: Weekly News Update- Nicaragua Solidarity Network Of Greater 
New York: 07/29
====

SPECIAL REPORT:
ZAPATISTAS BRAINSTORM IN THE LACANDON

By John Ross

Ejido Morelia, Chiapas

In the annals of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), 
the 1996 "Intergalactica "was a high water mark of international 
solidarity. Formally dubbed a "Forum In Defense of Humanity and 
Against Neo-liberalism", the conclave drew 6,000 activists from five 
continents to the wilds of Chiapas' Lacandon jungle to brainstorm on 
the growing menace of the corporate globalization of the Planet Earth 
(the World Trade Organization had just been formulated the previous 
year). The event is often considered to have been the seedbed for 
historic demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle 1999 from which 
the anti-globalization movement blossomed. The gathering in a jungle 
clearing on a Zapatista ejido with the haunting name of La Realidad 
("The Reality") 11 years ago was nicknamed the "Intergalactica" 
because in his convocation the rebels' spokesperson Subcomandante 
Marcos invited all sentient life forms from other planets in the 
galaxy to participate in the event. "We don't know if they actually 
came to the first Intergalactica" Zapatista Lieutenant Colonel Moises 
mused recently, "at least they never identified themselves."

After more than a decade of anti-globalization struggles and World 
Social Forums, the Intergalactica has literally returned to earth. 
The scaled-down version of the event pitched as an "Encounter of the 
Peoples of the World with the Peoples of the Zapatista Communities" 
to defend indigenous territories throughout the Americas staged July 
20-28 at three rebel "caracoles" or public political/cultural centers 
in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, zeroed in on the land and 
those who work and live upon it. Whereas Intergalactica I attracted 
such literary luminaries as Eduardo Galeano and European 
intellectuals Yvon Lebot, Danielle Mitterand, and Alain Touraine 
(Nobelist Jose Saraamgo and Susan Sontag would soon follow), the 2007 
edition brought together representatives of poor farmers from 13 
mostly-southern countries to swap experiences with Zapatista base 
communities in the highlands, the canyons, and the jungle of Chiapas, 
and develop mechanisms for mutual self-defense against the ravages of 
neo-liberalism. The privatization of communal lands, the destruction 
of native crops, and the forced migration of millions of poor farmers 
constitutes a declaration of "the fourth world war again humanity", 
Marcos charged in welcoming 3000 activists and Zapatista bases to the 
caracol "Resistance and Rebellion Before The World" at Oventic in Los 
Altos of Chiapas.

Much as at last New Year when the EZLN celebrated its 13th year on 
public display, the interchanges at Oventic, on the Ejido Morelia 
(the Caracol "Whirlwind of Our Word") and La Realidad ("The Mother of 
the Sea of Our Dreams") featured presentations by civil Zapatismo (as 
opposed to the rebels' political-military structure) as local health 
and education promoters laid out the nuts and bolts of building 
autonomous communities. Other lay Zapatista leaders delineated the 
rebels' justice system and how land is distributed and cultivated in 
the autonomous zones. In response, farmers invited under the aegius 
of Via Campesina, an international grouping of millions of poor 
farmers with affiliates in over 70 nations, spoke to the struggle for 
land and justice in their own countries. Among the participants: 
Yudhmir Singh of India's Bartya Kissan Union who described Ghandian 
civil disobedience by poor farmers to resist neo-liberal agrarian 
policies foisted on those who work the land, and representatives of 
the Thai Assembly of the Poor who farm the jungle along the Cambodian 
border.

First world farmers were represented by George Naylor, outgoing 
director of the U.S. Family Farm Association, who told the Zapatistas 
of the resistance of small corn farmers in Iowa to the dissemination 
of genetically modified seed. Dong Uk Min of the Korean farmers 
union, invoked the memory of the campesino Lee Kwang Hai who 
committed suicide at the 2003 World Trade Organization assembly in 
Cancun. From further south, Soraya Soriana, a leader of Brazil's 
militant Movimento Sem Terras (MST) and speakers from Venezuela's 
Wayuu nation cautioned encounter-goers against the "neo-imperialist" 
policies of such left-wing leaders as Lula and Hugo Chavez. The 
Zapatistas share a similar distrust of Latin America's social 
democratic left. The colloquy between farmers in defense of 
indigenous lands unfolded against an appropriate backdrop of 
spiraling "milpas" (cornfields) and the deep green of surrounding 
hills at the height of Mexico's bountiful rainy season - uniformed 
militia men and women in their green and black uniforms seemed almost 
to organically blend into the abundant vegetation.

The encampments in the caracoles thrummed with conviviality. Nightly 
cultural presentations brought the campers together under the stars. 
Nuns chatted with ski-masked rebels and rangy Nordic punksters danced 
in the mud with pint-sized Mayan companeras while horses grazed 
placidly in nearby pastures. In contrast to the 1996 Intergalactica 
when Mexican immigration authorities sought to prevent foreign 
activists from attending the encounter under threat of deportation, 
access to the Zapatista zone was unrestricted.

In a world where five live shooting wars dominate front pages with 
daily doses of death and destruction, and in a country where an 
infuriated underclass's demands for justice are met by brutal 
government repression, the Zapatista caracoles for once seem to be 
pockets of peace.

It wasn't always that way. During the first days of the rebellion in 
January 1994, the Mexican military invaded the Ejido Morelia. They 
forced the men to lie flat on the basketball court, kicking and 
torturing them for hours under the jungle sun. Three of the 
community's leaders were taken away and never seen alive again. Their 
bones were found by hunters months later. No one has ever been 
prosecuted for the murders. In classic Zapatista fashion, these 
gristly events were depicted on a mural painted on the schoolhouse 
wall here while 13 years later, inside the school, Zapatista women 
told of how they organize their autonomy.

It has been eight years since the last armed confrontation between 
the Mexican government and the EZLN but the peace that seems to 
thrive in the Zapatista autonomous zone, is an uneasy one. Skirmishes 
over land taken in the 1994 rebellion between Zapatistas and other 
Mayan Indian campesinos (the rebels characterize them as 
"paramilitaries") are endemic and thousands of troops continue to 
occupy sprawling bases at strategic points in the EZLN geography.

A just-issued study by the San Cristobal-based Center for Political 
Analysis and Socio-Economic Investigation (CAPISE), "The Face of 
War", indicates that the nature of the occupation has changed in 
recent years with elite brigades now stationed in the conflict zone 
reporting directly to Mexico City rather than regional commands. As 
Mexico joins the U.S.-directed War on Terror, the border region with 
Guatemala where many key Zapatista autonomous municipalities are 
located, attract enhanced attention from security forces. Despite the 
"Santa Paz" (Sainted Peace) the "Mal Gobierno" (Bad Government) 
claims to reign in Chiapas, the EZLN remains an armed organization. 
Certainly, of its two weapons - "El Fuego" (The Fire) and "La 
Palabra" (The Word) - the latter now predominates. But the fire is 
not forgotten. "We will never give up our arms or remove our 
pasamontanas (ski masks) until our demands for justice are satisfied" 
Comandante David pledged to a packed auditorium to close the Oventic 
segment of Intergalactica II as the rain fell in sheets outside from 
the bountiful southern sky.

Note: Intergalactica II was only one of several upcoming 
international events to be programmed by the Zapatista Army of 
National Liberation and The Other Campaign in 2007. Indigenous 
peoples from throughout the Americas will gather next October at 
Vicam Sonora in the heart of Yaqui Indian Territory, and an 
all-woman's international gathering is being planned for next 
December in Chiapas.

John Ross is in Mexico City, plotting a new novella. If you have 
further information contact johnross at igc.org

Source: Counterpunch: 07/30

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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: 07.30-08.05
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