Meanwhile South Of The Border: First Atenco, then Oaxaca – Chiapas, You’re Next (Scoop)

[althecat]

From: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0708/S00301.htm

First Atenco, then Oaxaca – Chiapas, You’re Next

Scoop Independent News
By Julie Webb-Pullman


Clouds over Chiapas
Click for big version

The ominous clouds looming lately over San Cristobal de las Casas, scene of the 1994 Zapatista uprising, are more than just a bad-weather warning - they portend the ratcheting up in Southern Mexico of even more rampant repression than that experienced in recent times in San Salvador Atenco, Oaxaca, and elsewhere.

While the international corporate media studiously maintains a silence bordering on autism, Mexican human rights abuses look set to surpass even those of their northern neighbour – who seemingly shares the increasing disquiet at their methods, and is building a BIG fence to keep them out of his backyard. After all, the US mostly does it to foreigners, and preferably in other countries, whereas these honchos have it in for their own citizens – and anyone else who sticks their nose in.

Take the four Spanish citizens snatched off the street in Oaxaca a couple of weeks of ago. Laia Serra (human rights lawyer), Ramón Sesén (professor), Nuria Morelló (anthropologist) and Ariadna Nieto (journalist) were walking with a Mexican friend in the historic centre of Oaxaca at 9.30pm on 5th August when they were surrounded by police, thrown up against a wall, then forced into a pick-up truck. They were taken to what appeared to them to be military or police quarters “...where people were dressed in blue and green uniforms. When they took us out of the truck they covered our heads and dragged us to a wall where we were forced to kneel down while they took away our back packs, fanny packs, documentation, and money.” After being robbed, they were variously photographed, interrogated, threatened, beaten, sexually assaulted, forced to do “humiliating acts” and terrorized – but they were not informed of what offences they were accused of or why they had been detained ie, they were subjected to what now appears to be standard Mexican police procedure – violent arbitrary detention. THEN they were taken to a police station, processed (but not permitted to make a phone call or contact their Consulate), and appeared before a judge who informed them that they had been caught without identification – she was completely uninterested in the fact that the police who took their bags had it all, and ordered their transfer to an immigration detention centre in Mexico City,
pending deportation. From there they managed to contact the Spanish Consulate, and were finally released on 13 August, when Mexican authorities admitted they were in the country legally, and there was no justification for their deportation. Of course it is pure coincidence that both Laia and Ramón were involved in the 5th International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights, which in February presented a damning report detailing human rights abuses in Oaxaca, and all four had attended the Zapatista International Encuentro in Chiapas the previous week...

The good thing about being a foreigner who is illegally detained, robbed, beaten, sexually assaulted, threatened, tortured and terrorised in Mexico is that afterwards you can jump on a plane and go home, pretty sure that your house will still be there when you arrive back. The option for indigenous Mexicans is somewhat more limited, as the people of Montes Azules in San Manuel municipality found out this week. About the only jumping they got to choose was from the helicopters that, like some fifth-rate video game, police used to round the community up like cattle then forced them aboard to transfer them to the municipal capital, while staff from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources destroyed their houses and pastures.

Keeping the home fires burning seems to be the order of the day, as I discovered 1-14 August while human rights observing in another San Manuel Zapatista Autonomous community, Emiliano Zapata. Local paramilitary group OPDICC are suspected of setting fire to neighbouring land two days after our arrival, but a well-timed torrential rainfall put it out within a few hours. A couple of days later they set another, which burnt overnight but was also rained out (see photo - brown areas are fire- burnt). Obviously unsatisfied with these efforts, and perhaps in honour of the meeting of the San Manuel Municipal Council attended by members from throughout the entire region, Saturday 11th saw an even bigger fire at the end of our valley, blocking the only road out for several hours.


The third fire was on the other side of the valley from the first two. The comunity, and all houses, clinic, school, etc are in the middle.


Areas of burnt-out hillside from the first two fire adjacent to Emiliano Zapata autonomous community, where I was human rights observing.

See Rest Of The Story…
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0708/S00301.htm

(NOTE TO MODS: Posted more than three paras with the permission of the publisher….)

*************

Julie Webb-Pullman is a expat Kiwi writing from Mexico.

ENDS

[EFerrari]

1. Thanks, Junior.

From the blown up mountain tops in Appalachia to Chiapas, you've done a great job for your cronies.

[onewholaughsatfools]

2. Julie as an expat

living in mexico since bush stole the WH I would hope as a guest of this fine country, you would get your facts correct. Yes there are issues that need to be addressed, Your statement has no facts or foundation, you say 4 citizens of whom are spanish, Mexicans see themselves as Mexicans and hate to be called Spanish. Maybe your writing needs to be clearer but I do not get your points, because of the confusion of your writings. Living well in Mexico...Blessings

[killbotfactory]

3. The four people who suffered this abuse were spanish citizens visiting Mexico legally

They also happened to be working on certain humanitarian missions investigating abuses in Oaxaca, and attended Zapatista events in Chiapas.

[John Q. Citizen]

7. I believe your reading of the article is poor. The author clearly wrote

that the 4 people detained and tortured were Spaniards attending human rights meetings in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas Mexico.

Also Nayarit is far from either Oaxaca or Chiapas, so I'm not sure how you would be able to evaluate the situation so far from where you are at.

By the way, the place you now live is spelled Nayarit not "Nayurit." You may want to change your profile to reflect the correct spelling of your new home, onewholaughsatfools.

[pingzing58]

4. Mexico still has no effective way of dealing with it's native populations.

They know only repression and out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Pity that a Catholic country so loved by JPII fails in it's moral obligation to it's native population. JPII loved the attention he received when he would visit but the oligarchy of Mexico backed by the U.S. government has no intention of helping its poor and disenfrachised. Because he never challenged such abuse JPII is complicit in the crimes against those who by dehumanizing and demonizing them they are marked for death - witness our hospitals turning away the poor and indigent populations from medical service in our own country. Los Angeles likes to take their indigent patients and give them a taxi ride to be abandoned in the downtown wearing nothing but a hospital gown right by the abandoned Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Weep - Blessed Mother - weep for your children.

[althecat]

6. Tis sad but I am not sure you can really blame JPII....

Choicepoint maybe. The CIA/DEA's narco-terror war on drugs(/drug smuggling) operation perhaps.

[pingzing58]

9. I'm just saying that I believe that it is incumbent on people with "power" to speak out

against such abuses as we have seen perpetrated on the indigenous poor of Mexico. JPII and BXVI have both stated that the Palestinians should have their own State and that Israeli atrocities against the defensless Palestinians should be condemned. The problem is that the struggle for land ownership and the survival of the indigenous communities in Oaxaca has been labeled "Marxist" or "communist." Not even JPII would try to save their lives having accepted that labeling. "And Rachel weeps for her children for they are no more." The religious leaders in Mexico dare not criticize the government in Mexico for fear of loseing the gains made in lifting government repression of all organized, income producing and land owning religions.

[althecat]

11. Not sure about the Pope but I expect the Church is already active in this area...

...isn't that what liberation theology is all about.

[althecat]

5. Three more recs for this would be nice.... I know Julie is worried about the situation

...and it was already very bad. Shedding some light on this even here at DU would be good.

[Peace Patriot]

8. Brad Will (U.S. citizen) was shot dead on the street in Oaxaca, by rightwing

paramilitaries with close ties to Gov. Ruiz, and caught his murderers on video as he died. He died merely for recording events in Oaxaca. And the OP makes it clear that human rights investigators are equally unwelcome, and in danger. Hundreds of people--union leaders, community organizers, teachers, elders of various kinds--have been kidnapped, raped, tortured, hunted down and jailed, disappeared and killed, in Oaxaca. They held a peaceful demonstration for six months, to protest Ruiz's violence, and then the protest was crushed by Pres. Calderon (of the stolen election). Now the rightwing paramilitaries--who are closely linked to drug cartels, on the one hand, and the corrupt state and federal government, on the other--are free to commit violence, to pick people off and cause other harm, with impunity, because the federal government is on their side. I'm sure some people here sometimes wonder what drives young people into the mountains in Latin America to become leftist guerrillas. That is hard and dangerous life--why would they choose it? And I imagine it's situations like this, when they feel all avenues of legitimate participation have been cut off to them, when they see their elders crushed, whose only "crime" was to peacefully protest the crimes committed against people in their community, when they see all power and wealth grabbed by the greedy, and the majority of people are left with nothing, not even bits of farm land to feed their families with, and when they see so much injustice, and have no hope of a remedy. The remarkable thing about the Oaxaca protest, and the Zapatista movement--as with the Bolivarian Revolution in South America--is the strong commitment to peacefulness, in the face of brutal suppression. In South America, the majority has finally made headway in the democratic system, and astonishing progress on social justice and Latin American self-determination has been made. The democracy movement is sweeping the continent. It will happen in Mexico, too, but I fear not before a lot of suffering has been inflicted, and more people have been harmed and killed.

[msedano]

10. can't recommend but recommend nonetheless.

didn't see this thread and got here too late. lastima. saw the posting by autorank and was able to rec that one.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1663934

unitedstates readers may want to explore the chiapas issue through literature. here are a couple i highly recommend to that end.

this one's by a unitedstatesian who travels down for butterflies and learns first hand what chiapas can be like for wingless mammals:
http://labloga.blogspot.com/2006/04/review-scorpions-tail-by-sylvia-torti.html

this one's written by mexico's paco ignacio taibo and comandante marcos, a detective story:
http://labloga.blogspot.com/2006/12/review-uncomfortable-dead-taibo-and.html

mvs