Mexico Week In Review: 05.07-05.13

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 05.07-05.13
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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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ATENCO UPDATE: OUTRAGE OVER LEADERS SENTENCES

Human rights activists and leftist leaders reacted with outrage to
67-year prison sentences handed down to three leaders of an uprising
last year in a suburb of Mexico City. The men were sentenced after
being found guilty of kidnapping related to the disturbances that
swept through the rural community of San Salvador Atenco from
February to May 2006. The protests turned violent May 3, when a group
of flower vendors resisted a government order to remove them from a
local market. Five police officers, part of a large force sent to
restore order, were kidnapped by community members and released
unharmed after a few hours.

The three defendants were charged with the earlier kidnapping of a
state official. The official was held for two days in February 2006
as activists and residents pressed the government to meet demands
related to ongoing disputes over land and government resources. Judge
Blas Hernandez said there was sufficient evidence to prove that
defendants Ignacio del Valle, Hector Galindo and Felipe Alvarez
organized the kidnapping.

An official inquiry of the conflict in San Salvador Atenco found that
police in the state of Mexico had committed gross human rights abuses
in restoring order. The 207 protesters and others arrested included
26 women who were sexually abused, according to a report by Mexico's
National Human Rights Commission. Two protesters were killed. State
officials say some officers involved in the clashes received
administrative punishments. However, none was relieved of duty and no
criminal charges were brought against any officers. "Now we see that
those who defend their rights deserve jail, while those who truly
commit crimes deserve to be free," Trinidad Ramirez, the wife of Del
Valle, said in a telephone interview.

The most prominent defendant sentenced was Del Valle, a leader of a
community assembly in the town. Humberto Benitez, secretary-general
of the state of Mexico, rejected calls that the state government
grant Del Valle and the other leaders amnesty. "We live according to
a system of laws and institutions," Benitez told reporters in Toluca,
the capital of Mexico state. "We don't consider it excessive, we
consider it a correct sentence. And yes, I consider Ignacio del Valle
a delinquent, because a judge found him to be so."

In Mexico City, prominent writer Elena Poniatowska called the
sentences a crime and said she would help lead a public campaign to
"express our indignation."

Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos told a rally for the
defendants at a prison near Mexico City that the three men would not
have to complete their full sentences "because this system of justice
won't endure for 60 years longer." America del Valle evaded arrest on
charges similar to those presented against her father. Mexico state
officials said this month that she was living with Marcos and his
guerrillas in Chiapas.

Barbara Zamora, an attorney for Ignacio del Valle, said her client
was sentenced under new, strict anti-kidnapping laws that were
designed to fight the wave of kidnappings for ransom that have swept
through Mexico. She said the prosecution had never presented evidence
that Del Valle had sought a ransom. An additional 174 defendants
still face charges tied to the protests.

Source: Los Angeles Times: 05/08
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MEXICO CITY TO TEACH AZTEC TONGUE

Mexican authorities will teach an ancient Aztec language as a
required part of the curriculum in the capital, Mexico City. The
language, Nahuatl, is spoken by a tiny percentage of the 20 million
people who live in the city. The official language of the ancient
Aztec empire, Nahuatl thrived throughout Mexico until the Spanish
conquistadors of the 16th Century. Like many indigenous traditions,
it persisted through the centuries.

The language continued even despite attempts by the continent's
European colonizers to erase it from the cultural landscape. The
decision, five centuries later, by the local authorities in the
Mexican capital to make the teaching of Nahuatl compulsory is an
attempt - to some extent symbolic - to recapture Mexico City's
indigenous roots. The new law says teaching the language will become
a compulsory part of the curriculum in the capital's schools by the
start of the 2008 academic year. In the longer term, the authorities
hope that it will also be taught in universities, as a way of
increasing the number of Nahuatl speakers.

At the moment, it is estimated that the language of the once-mighty
Aztecs is spoken by less than 1% of the more than 20 million people
who inhabit the Mexican capital. However, although we may not know
it, many of us use words borrowed from Nahuatl, on a daily basis.
Words like avocado, chocolate, coyote, tomato, and even tequila, that
most potent of Mexican alcoholic beverages, are all based on the
Nahuatl language.

Source: BBC: 05/04
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POPE CLAIMS LAWMAKERS "EXCOMMUNICATED"

Pope Benedict XVI began his first trip to Latin America by laying
down church law on abortion, suggesting that he agrees with bishops
who said Catholic politicians in Mexico had excommunicated themselves
by legalizing abortion in that nation's capital. Benedict, who will
inaugurate an important regional bishops' conference during his trip,
also spoke strongly against abortion during his first speech in
Brazil. Speaking in Portuguese, he said he's certain that the bishops
will reinforce "the promotion of respect for life from the moment of
conception until natural death as an integral requirement of human
nature."

Catholic officials have been debating for some time whether
politicians who approve abortion legislation as well as doctors and
nurses who take part in abortions would subject themselves to
automatic excommunication under church law. The pope seemed to agree
with Mexico City's bishops who declared that the city's pro-abortion
lawmakers had excommunicated themselves. "It's nothing new, it's
normal, it wasn't arbitrary. It is what is foreseen by the church's
doctrine," Benedict told reporters aboard a plane to Brazil in his
first full-fledged news conference since becoming pontiff in 2005.
Benedict's spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, later said he
wasn't aware that the pope setting down a new policy.

In a statement approved by the pope, Lombardi said the pontiff did
not intend to formally excommunicate anyone - a separate and rare
process under church law. "Since excommunication hasn't been declared
by the Mexican bishops, the pope has no intention himself of
declaring it," said Lombardi, who was on board the plane. But
Lombardi said politicians who vote in favor of abortion should not
receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. "Legislative action in favor
of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist. ...
Politicians exclude themselves from Communion." Pressed further by
journalists if the lawmakers were excommunicated, Lombardi
reiterated: "No, they exclude themselves from Communion."

Excommunication is the severest penalty the Roman Catholic Church can
impose on its members. When someone is excommunicated "his status
before the church is that of a stranger," the New Advent Catholic
Encyclopedia says. In practical terms, that means the excommunicated
person is forbidden from receiving the sacraments and participating
in public worship. Church teaching says anyone who has an abortion is
automatically excommunicated. "Being a conspiring or necessary
accomplice" to an abortion also means excommunication under church
law.

The Mexican politicians who supported the measure shrugged off
Benedict's comments. "I'm Catholic and I'm going to continue being
Catholic even if the church excommunicates me," said leftist Mexico
City lawmaker Leticia Quezada. "My conscience is clean."

Source: Associated Press: 05/09
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MAY DAY PROTESTS

Mexican unionists used the traditional demonstrations on May 1,
International Workers' Day, to kick off a campaign against a new law
on public employees' social security and against proposals to change
the labor code. On Mar. 22 the Chamber of Deputies voted 313-146 with
two abstentions to approve changes to the Law of the State Workers'
Social Security and Services Institute (ISSSTE) which would raise
public employees' retirement age and set up individual pension plans
that could eventually be privatized. The bill was backed by the
ruling center-right National Action Party (PAN); the centrist
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) added its votes in a deal
worked out by Elba Esther Gordillo, former leader of the huge
National Education Workers Union

In Mexico City, thousands of workers marched to the central plaza,
the Zocalo, for a May Day rally sponsored by dozens of organizations,
including the National Workers Union (UNT), the Mexican Union Front
(FSM) and the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee
(CNTE), a dissident caucus in the SNTE. Speakers called for a
national strike to defeat government policies. "This isn't a holiday,
it's a day of national struggle," read one sign.

Several May Day marches in state capitals turned into confrontations
between militant teachers and SNTE officials. In Tlaxcala a march by
10,000 dissident teachers came to blows with a parallel march by SNTE
supporters; no injuries were reported. Dissidents tried to block SNTE
officials in Chihuahua, and the two sides had a shoving match in
Guerrero. In Oaxaca, the SNTE's dissident Section 22 marched with the
Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) to demand the
removal of PRI governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. In Aguascalientes insults
and catcalls from marchers--some wearing only their underwear--forced
PAN governor Luis Reynoso Femat to leave the reviewing stand; the
governors of Queretaro and Baja California, also from the PAN,
decided not to attend their state May Day marches.

On May 2 the CNTE carried out job actions to demand repeal of the
ISSSTE changes. In Mexico City, 500 secondary schools and hundreds of
elementary schools were closed completely, and the Autonomous
National University of Mexico (UNAM) was partly closed. There were
more than 20 demonstrations in the city, including actions at the
highway to Cuernavaca; protesters blocked the road intermittently,
and seized control of the toll booths, allowing cars to pass for free
from 11am to noon. [LJ 5/3/07] On May 6 the CNTE called for an
open-ended national strike in schools and in ISSSTE offices to start
on May 7.

Source: Weekly News Update- Nicaragua Solidarity Network Of Greater
New York: 05/06
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MARCOS INTERVIEW: THE ULTIMATE IMPORTANCE OF LA OTRA

(You pick out the gems. - ed.)

A bead of sweat is visible through the eyehole of his famous black
balaclava. Latin America's most celebrated living rebel must be
feeling the heat, but a glass of water would mean taking off the mask
and that is out of the question. He makes do with a puff on his pipe,
and a subject that is close to his heart. "My new book's coming out
in June," Subcomandante Marcos announces with relish during the first
interview he has given to a British paper in years. "There's no
politics in the text this time. Just sex. Pure pornography."

There has been a literary component to Marcos's revolutionary persona
ever since he led the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) out
of the jungle in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas on New Year's
Day 1994. It began with lyrical communiqués on Mayan Indian rights,
passed through a stage of barbed sarcasm and scatological put-downs,
and recently included a crime novel featuring a rebel detective.

Now even his erotic imagination has been harnessed to the Zapatista
cause as a fundraiser. "I'm sure it will sell if we put a lot of Xs
on the cover." Still, Marcos says that his next writing project will
be a work of political theory analyzing the forces he believes are
pushing Mexico towards social upheaval. From dispossessed indigenous
communities powerless to stop dams and agribusiness destroying their
lands, to street vendors evicted from the capital's streets to make
way for the retail magnates, he says the country's poor and exploited
are close to their limit.

The former orthodox Marxist-Leninist turned anti-globalization guru,
who is not himself indigenous, predicts that the subconscious power
of the year 2010 - the 200th anniversary of the war of independence
and the 100th of Mexico's revolution - will ignite a fuse laid by
American efforts to secure the bilateral border, leaving millions
unable to escape to jobs in the north. "Mexico will turn into a
pressure cooker," he says. "And, believe me, it will explode."

Marcos says that Mexico's politicians, the media, and even earnest
leftwing academics are oblivious to the radicalization he sees
bubbling just under the surface. He points out that they also had no
idea that the reputedly docile indigenous population in Chiapas was
on the point of armed revolt 13 years ago. Not that the Zapatista
rebellion fitted the traditional mould of macho Latin American armed
struggle, or Marcos ever looked or sounded like rebel leaders
elsewhere. Even the "sub" in his title - designed to imply
subordination to a council of indigenous commanders - subverted the
concept of military discipline employed in most other guerrilla
armies. "We left the jungle to die," Marcos recalls, remembering how
poorly armed his fighters were. "It sounds dramatic I know, but
that's the way it was."

The Zapatistas were beaten back by the Mexican army within days, but
not before triggering a wave of sympathy across the country and the
world that forced the government to call a ceasefire, as well as
agree to peace negotiations that would eventually crumble. In less
than two weeks the Chiapas Indians became an international cause
celebre and their mysterious mask-wearing, pipe-smoking, and
poetry-spouting leader emerged as the closest approximation yet to
the romance of the martyred Che Guevara. They have hardly done any
fighting since then.

Sitting in a sweltering back room of a Mexico City internet cafe,
Marcos admits that the message in those early years would sometimes
get lost in the fascination his persona inspired. He even confesses
to occasionally letting celebrity go to his head. "But there was
always the acerbic humor there to say 'tone it down, remember you are
a myth, you do not really exist'." It is certainly a durable myth,
which has survived despite the world's attention shifting to more
dramatic conflicts and the government's revelation that the man
behind the mask is a former philosophy lecturer called Rafael
Sebastian Guillen.

Still, the subcomandante does always seem to be looking over his
shoulder at himself, which is perhaps one explanation for his periods
of near total silence. The longest came in 2001, shortly after the
so-called Zapatour in which the Marcos bandwagon traveled the country
accompanied by hundreds of international sympathizers and a police
escort. Elections had just ended 71 years of one-party rule in Mexico
and the Zapatistas had decided to test the new democracy with the
demand for an indigenous bill of rights. When parliament ignored the
pressure, the rebels returned to the jungle and concentrated on
putting indigenous self-government into practice, with or without
constitutional sanction. Marcos disappeared from view, emerging four
years later with a new concern to build alliances beyond the
indigenous movement.

"This is the last battle of the Zapatistas," he says of the strategy,
which relies on the government deciding not to reactivate old arrest
warrants for fear of sparking more sympathy for Zapatista. "If we
don't win it we will face complete defeat." The subcomandante's
specific aim in his current low-key tour of the country is to
consolidate the broad and loose collection of marginal left groups
known as The Other Campaign. Marcos hopes this rather chaotic mix of
everybody from radical transvestites to Marxist trade unionists will
eventually play a leading role in channeling the discontent he is
sure will soon be raging into an unarmed civilian movement organized
around the principle of respect for difference. "We think that what
is going to happen here will have no 'ism' to describe it." His voice
becomes wistful. "It will be so new, beautiful and terrible that it
will make the world turn to look at this country in a completely
different way."

Such talk could be seen as contrary, perhaps, at a time when the left
has taken power in much of Latin America through the ballot box, but
Marcos is unimpressed by elections he views as primarily a mechanism
for ping-ponging power within the elite. So while he gives Evo
Morales in Bolivia a nod of approval for his links to a radical
indigenous movement, he describes Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as
"disconcerting", and brands Brazil's President Lula and Nicaragua's
Daniel Ortega as traitors.

Mexico's politicians on both left and right receive nothing but his
scorn. Is it easier to claim the moral high ground when your face is
hidden? Marcos acknowledges that the mask helps, although he stresses
it is also a burden. It can be itchy and uncomfortable, and it is so
intertwined with his revolutionary persona that to take it off in
public even for a few seconds would be the end of the subcomandante.
"The mask will come off when a subcomandante Marcos is no longer
necessary," he says. "I hope it's soon so that I can finally become a
fireman like I've always wanted. Firemen get the prettiest girls."

Source: The Guardian: 05/12

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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: 05.07-05.13
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