Mexico Week In Review: 12.31-01.05

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 12.31-01.05
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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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ZAPATISTAS HOST WOMEN'S ENCUENTRO - AMID ONGOING VIOLENCE

To celebrate the 14th anniversary of their New Years Day uprising,
Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) hosted a Women's
Encuentro ("encounter" or "meeting") at the jungle settlement of La
Garrucha, Chiapas state. Officially dubbed the "Encuentro of the
Indigenous Zapatista Women with the Women of the World," the meeting
brought together women from throughout Mexico and several other
countries around the globe. In a case of self-conscious role
reversal, men at the gathering were confined to cooking and cleaning,
while women did all the talking. Accounts and images are online at
Chiapas IMC.

Meanwhile, Hermann Bellinghausen reports for La Jornada Jan. 2 on
further attacks against Zapatista support bases by followers of the
ironically-named Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and
Campesino Rights (OPDDIC), which the EZLN charges is a paramilitary
group. On Dec. 29, Zapatista supporter Pablo Silvano Jiménez was shot
and wounded by an OPDDIC gunman apparently backed up by Chiapas state
police officers in the community of Betel Yochiv, near the settlement
of Agua Clara. On Dec. 27, Zapatista supporter Julio Hernández Gómez
was attacked with machetes by OPDDIC militants at Cascadas de Agua
Azul.

Source: http://www.ww4report.com: 01/05
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NAFTA NEWS I: "WITHOUT CORN THERE IS NO COUNTRY"

Mexican farmers organized scattered protests as the final trade
barriers on U.S. corn, beans, sugar and milk fell with the full
implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement on New
Year's Day. Corn and beans are staples of the Mexican diet and
subsistence crops for millions of farmers. Opponents of NAFTA said
the free entry of relatively cheap U.S. corn would devastate rural
Mexico and help spur more immigration. But the government of
President Felipe Calderon celebrated the end of the trade barriers,
whose gradual elimination began in 1994 when the treaty among the
U.S., Mexican and Canadian governments took effect. Agriculture
Secretary Alberto Cardenas said that 90% of the imports affected by
the final barriers already entered the country free of tariffs in
2006, and that the effect on local producers would be minimal.

Still, about 100 Mexican farmers partially blocked the border
crossing between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, carrying signs
that read "Without Corn There Is No Country." Protesters blocked
several of the traffic lanes entering Mexico for much of Tuesday and
part of Wednesday, according to news reports. Miguel Colunga
Martinez, leader of a local peasant group, told the El Paso newspaper
El Diario that protesters would "inspect" all trucks crossing the
border and stop any carrying farm goods. "Up to now, not a single
trailer has passed," he said.

Mexico's tortilla producer association said the final implementation
of the treaty would reduce the number of Mexican corn producers and
could lead to a 20% to 30% increase in the price of tortillas. It
gave no details. "We will not have the weapons to compete with the
growers of the United States and Canada, who will sell corn cheaper
than it's produced here," said Lorenzo Mejia Morales, president of
the National Union of Mills and Tortilla Producers.

Mexican agricultural officials say NAFTA benefits their country by
allowing Mexican farm products into the United States. "We have
become the principal supplier of fruits and vegetables into the
United States," Cardenas said in a news release, citing onions,
avocados, mangoes and watermelons as examples of successful Mexican
exports. At the same time, Mexican imports of U.S. corn have risen
from less than 1 million metric tons in 1993 to 9.9 million metric
tons in the 2006-07 marketing year that ended in July, according to
statistics from the U.S. Agriculture Department.

The majority of the imports are of yellow corn, which is used to feed
livestock and to make corn syrup. There are about 1.5 million corn
farmers in Mexico and most grow white corn, which is used to make
tortillas. NAFTA critics say Mexican farmers cannot compete with
their American counterparts because the government subsidies they
receive are paltry compared with those given to U.S. farmers.

Source: The Los Angeles Times: 01/03
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NAFTA NEWS II: WORKERS, CHURCH SLAM NAFTA

Mexican farmers and trade unions are protesting and carrying out
legal actions against the North American Free Trade Agreement, for
considering it a mortal blow against the national agricultural
sector, unable to compete with foreign subsidized products. Protests
in front of the US embassy in the Mexican capital, as well as others
in the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, Puebla, and Morelos are some of
such actions, the Dialogo Nacional (National Dialogue) organization
informed.

Moreover, the Catholic Church warned in official declarations the
elimination of taxes on subsidized imports of corn, bean, powder
milk, and sugar may well force a large number of Mexican farmers to
leave their lands. The National Aerodynamics Organization based in
Chihuahua state is preparing a caravan of tractors that will arrive
in the capital to protest the exemption of tariffs on grains, meat,
and milk, which will affect local producers. Farmers in at least five
states will also appear at the federal justice to demand protection
from the damages caused by NAFTA.

Source: Prensa Latina: 01/03
====

BORDER NEWS: MIGRANT DEATHS UP IN 2007

Documented deaths of migrants in southern Arizona’s so-called
"Corridor of Death" rose sharply in 2007.  Official statistics from
the US Border Patrol's Tucson Sector report 204 migrant deaths during
the 2007 fiscal year that ended on September 30 of last year. The
death toll represented a 21 percent increase from fiscal year 2006,
when 165 deaths were registered.

Sean King, Border Patrol spokesman, attributed the increase in
fatalities to the deployment of more Border Patrol agents in the
field. King said that with more officers in the field, more migrant
bodies which might have gone undetected in the past were recovered.
But Kat Rodriguez, an organizer for the Tucson-based Human Rights
Coalition, a non-governmental organization, blamed the additional
deaths on tighter US border security measures that encouraged
undocumented migrants to undertake risky journeys. "These deaths are
a direct consequence of the militarization of the US border,"
Rodriguez charged. "So many agents, so much technology is simply
forcing undocumented (migrants) to cross through more isolated and
dangerous places. We are currently seeing a change of the migration
flow towards the desert of New Mexico."

In 2007, the US federal government increased the manpower of the US
Border Patrol by 3,000 agents. Washington also expanded border walls
in the Yuma, Nogales and Douglas regions, and installed large towers
in the region. Based on reports from medical examiners in the
southern Arizona counties of Yuma, Pima and Cochise,  the Human
Rights Coalition  reports a higher death toll for the region  than
does the Border Patrol.  The immigrant rights group cited 237 deaths
for FY 2007, a number 32 higher than in FY 2006, when the coalition
documented 205 deaths. In addition to documented deaths,
disappearances are a growing problem, Rodriguez added. "It is
frustrating to receive the calls of so many people, who only know
that their family members crossed through the Arizona desert and then
never heard anything more of them," she said. According to the US
Border Patrol, 437 undocumented migrants died in the entire US-Mexico
border region during FY 2007.

Sources: Frontera NorteSur (FNS): 01/02; Frontera/SUN: 12/31
====

PRESIDENT'S COUSIN BRIEFLY ABDUCTED

A cousin of Mexican President Felipe Calderon was abducted at
gunpoint, beaten and held for several hours, Mexican media reported.
Mexican dailies Reforma and Milenio said armed men seized businessman
Alfonso Reyes in the western state of Michoacan Wednesday but dropped
him back home four hours later. It was not clear whether the
abduction was related to the president and his battle against
organized crime, and Calderon's office could not immediately confirm
the incident.

Abductions for extortion are common in Mexico, which has one of the
world's highest kidnapping rates. Most common are "express
kidnappings" where criminal gangs abduct victims for a few hours and
force them to withdraw cash from bank machines. Mexican news agency
Quadratin, which first reported the story, said Calderon's brother
had confirmed the abduction. It did not know whether a ransom was
paid or any cash extorted.

Reyes, a middle-aged businessman, was seized while driving with his
wife in the state capital of Morelia where he owns a foreign exchange
business. Milenio daily said the abduction was related to his work.
"They got him out of his van, handcuffed him, beat him and put him in
the kidnappers' vehicle. Later we found out from Felipe Calderon's
brother that they had freed his cousin," said Quadratin reporter
Jonathan Arredondo. A spokeswoman for Michoacan's state
attorney-general's office said they were not pursuing the case after
they called his home and Reyes answered the phone. Calderon's mother
and three siblings live in Michoacan, one of several states where
Calderon has deployed the army against feuding drug cartels whose
violent turf wars killed more than 2,350 people last year.

Source: Reuters: 01/03
====

SPECIAL REPORT:
WHAT HAVE THE ZAPATISTAS ACCOMPLISHED?
Immanuel Wallerstein

On January 1, 1994, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
(EZLN), commonly called the Zapatistas, led an insurrection in San
Cristobal de las Casas in the state of  Chiapas  in  Mexico.  Just
under fourteen years later, the EZLN convened an international
colloquium on December 13-17, 2007 in the same city on the theme
"Planet Earth: Antisystemic Movements"  -  a sort of stock-taking,
both global and local, of their objectives. I myself participated  in
this colloquium, as did many other activists and intellectuals. In
the course of the colloquium, Subcomandante Marcos gave a series of
six talks, which are available on the Internet. In a sense, what
everyone was asking, including Marcos, is what have the Zapatistas
accomplished and  what are the future prospects of antisystemic
movements - in Chiapas and in the  world?  The  answer  to this
question is not simple. Let us start the story on January 1, 1994.
That  day  was  chosen  for the beginning of the insurrection because
it was the day on which  the North American Free Trade Association
(NAFTA) came into effect. The slogan that day was  !Ya  basta!
("Enough  is enough"). The Zapatistas were saying from the outset
that their five-century-  long  protest  against  injustice  and
humiliation and demand for autonomy was linked  today  organically to
the worldwide struggle against neo-liberalism and imperialism of
which NAFTA was both a part and a symbol.

Chiapas, let us remember, is perhaps the poorest region of Mexico and
its population is composed overwhelmingly of so-called indigenous
peoples. The first Catholic bishop of Chiapas was Bartolomé de Las
Casas, the sixteenth-century Dominican priest who devoted his life to
defending vigorously (before the Church and the Spanish monarchy) the
rights of the Indians to equal  treatment.  From  the  days  of  Las
Casas until 1994, the Indians never saw that right acknowledged.  The
EZLN decided to try different methods. So were they more successful?
We should  look at the impact of the movement in three arenas: in
Mexico as a political arena; in the world-system as a whole; in the
realm of theorizing about antisystemic movements.

First,  Mexico:  Armed insurrection as a tactic was suspended after
about three months. It has never  been resumed. And it is clear that
it will not be unless the Mexican army or right-wing paramilitaries
massively attack autonomous Zapatista communities. On the other hand,
the truce agreement reached with the Mexican government - the
so-called San Andrés accords providing for the recognition of
autonomy for the indigenous communities - was never implemented by
the government. In  2001, the Zapatistas led a peaceful march across
Mexico to the capital, hoping thereby to force the Mexican Congress
to legislate the essential of the accords.  The march was spectacular
but  the  Mexican  Congress  failed to act. In 2005, the Zapatistas
launched "the other  campaign,"  an  effort  to  mobilize  an
alliance  of  Zapatistas with groups in other provinces  with  more
or less similar objectives - again spectacular but it did not change
the actual politics of the Mexican government.

In  2006, the Zapatistas pointedly refused to endorse the
left-of-center candidate for the presidency, Andrés Manuel López
Obrador, who was running in a tight election against the proclaimed
winner, the very conservative Felipe Calderon. This action was the
one that caused most controversy with Zapatista sympathizers in
Mexico and the rest of the world, many of whom felt  that  it cost
López Obrador the election. The Zapatista position derived from their
deep sense  that  electoral  politics  does  not  pay. The Zapatistas
have been critical of all the left-of-center presidents in Latin
America, from Lula in Brazil to Chávez in Venezuela, on the grounds
that  they  were all top-down movements which changed nothing
fundamental at the base for the oppressed majority. The only Latin
American government which the Zapatistas speak well of is that of
Cuba, because it is the only government they consider to be truly
anti-capitalist. On the other hand, within Mexico, the Zapatistas
have managed to establish de facto autonomous indigenous communities
which operate well, albeit they are besieged and constantly menaced
by the Mexican army. The political sophistication and determination
of these communities is impressive.  Will  this  however  last  in
the absence of serious political change in Mexico, especially  in
the light of increasing pressure on the rights of the Indians to
control their own land? This is the unresolved issue.

The picture on the world scene is somewhat different. There is no
question that the Zapatista insurrection of 1994 became a major
inspiration for antisystemic movements throughout the world.  It is
unquestionably a key turning-point in the process that led to the
demonstrations in  1999  at  Seattle  that  caused the failure of the
meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO),  a  failure  from
which  the  WTO  has  never recovered. If today the WTO finds itself
semi-moribund as a result of a North-South deadlock, the Zapatistas
can claim some credit. Seattle in turn led to the creation in 2001 of
the World Social Forum (WSF), which has become the principal
meeting-ground of the world's antisystemic movements. And if the
Zapatistas themselves  have  never  attended any WSF meeting because
technically they are an armed force, the Zapatistas have remained an
iconic movement within the WSF, a sort of inspirational force. The
Zapatistas from the beginning have said that their objectives and
concerns were worldwide - intergalactic in their jargon - and they
offered support to movements everywhere and asked actively for
support from movements everywhere. They have been very successful in
this. And if some  worldwide support has suffered fatigue of late,
the December 2007 colloquium was clearly an attempt to resuscitate
these alliances.

In many ways, however, the most important contribution of the
Zapatistas - and the most contested  - has been in the theoretical
realm. It was striking that in the six talks that Marcos gave in
December, the first devoted itself to the importance of theorizing in
the social sciences. What do the Zapatistas say about how to analyze
the world? First of all, they emphasize that the basic thing that is
wrong with the world today is that it is a capitalist world, and that
the basic thing to change is that, something they insist will require
a real struggle. Now the Zapatistas are surely not the first ones to
argue this. So what do they add to this? They are part of a post-1968
view that the traditional analyses of the Old Left were too narrow,
in that they seemed to emphasize only the problems and struggles of
the urban industrial proletariat. Marcos devoted one whole talk to
the struggles of women for their rights. He devoted another to the
crucial importance of control of the land by the world's rural
workers. And quite strikingly he placed several talks under the
rubric, "neither core nor periphery" - rejecting the idea of a
priority for one or the other, either in terms of power or of
intellectual analysis. The Zapatistas are proclaiming that the
struggle for rights of every oppressed group is equally important,
and the struggle must be fought on all fronts at the same time.

They  also  say  that  the  movements  themselves must be internally
democratic. The slogan is "mandar obedeciendo," which might be
translated "lead by obeying the voice and wishes of those whom one is
leading." This is easy to say and hard to do, but it is a cry against
the historic verticalism of left movements. This leads them to a
"horizontalism" in the relations between different movements.  Some
of their followers say that they are opposed to taking state power
ever.  While  they  are deeply skeptical of taking state power via
the "lesser evil," they are willing to make exceptions, as in the
case of Cuba.

Was the Zapatista insurrection a success? The only answer is in the
apocryphal story about the answer  that  Zhou En-lai is supposed to
have given to the question: "What do you think of the French
Revolution?" Answer: "It is too early to tell."

Source: Source: http://www.alterinfos.org/: 01/01

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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: 12.31-01.05
--