Angry White Kid

Repression, Impunity and Resistance in Oaxaca: One Year After the Copala Caravan Ambush

April 27, 2011 march marking one year since the paramilitary
attack on the humanitarian caravan en route to San Juan Copala.

By Scott Campbell

One year ago last Wednesday, on April 27, 2010, a humanitarian and solidarity caravan en route to the besieged Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala in the Triqui region of the Oaxacan Mixteca was ambushed by paramilitaries linked to the Oaxaca state government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.  Placing large boulders at a curve in the road minutes outside of San Juan Copala, paramilitaries from the organization Union for the Well-Being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) blockaded the path of the caravan.  As the vehicles were trying to turn around, gunmen came down from the hillsides, opening fire on the caravan with automatic weapons.  Two members of the caravan were killed, Bety Cariño, founder of the organization Community Support Center – Working Together (CACTUS), and Jyri Jaakkola, an international solidarity activist from Finland.  Several others were wounded as caravan members fled for their lives into the nearby hills.

The caravan was organized to support the people of San Juan Copala, who together with nine other communities in the region declared the creation of an autonomous municipality on January 1, 2007, just weeks after the brutal state and federal government repression of the social movement in Oaxaca, which under the aegis of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) had rendered the state ungovernable by the elite and their police forces for more than five months in 2006.

THE AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITY OF SAN JUAN COPALA

Organized as the Independent Movement of Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULTI), those who would go on to form the autonomous municipality also participated in the 2006 social movement.  Three of their members were assassinated by state forces on August 9, 2006, while on their way to support the mobilizations in the city of Oaxaca. That same month, MULTI led the APPO’s occupation of the municipal palace in Juxtlahuaca, the major population center and seat of local government in the Triqui region, and held it until December 26.

The declaration one week later of the autonomous municipality was met with immediate rejection by the state government, who condemned it as “illegal” and “infantile.”  Repression against the municipality was also quick in coming.  The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz utilized two paramilitary groups in an attempt to violently crush the autonomous project.  One was UBISORT, the group which ambushed the solidarity caravan.  UBISORT was created by the PRI state government in the mid-90s to counteract the extended influence of the Zapatista rebellion in the neighboring state of Chiapas.  The other was the MULT, the Movement of Triqui Unification and Struggle (not to be confused with MULTI).  Created in the 1980s, it was originally a left-wing organization which organized to unite and defend the territories and rights of the Triqui people.  Over the years, the MULT leadership developed close ties to the PRI government and the organization took on a more clientelist veneer.  In 2003, the MULT created the Popular Unity Party (PUP), which similarly has close links with the PRI.

Event marking three years since the assassination of Teresa
and Felícitas, in the zócalo of Oaxaca on April 7, 2011.

Heavily armed and well-trained members of UBISORT-PRI and MULT-PUP unleashed a wave a terror against the autonomous municipality.  For example, on January 19, 2007, a town meeting was fired upon by MULT.  On April 7, 2008, two Triqui radio broadcasters, Felícitas Martínez and Teresa Bautista, 21 and 24, were assassinated in an ambush.  Felícitas and Teresa had both helped found the autonomous municipality’s community radio station – The Voice that Breaks the Silence – with the assistance of Bety Cariño and CACTUS.  Broadcasting to tens of Triqui communities in their own language, the station had only been on the air since January 1, 2008.  Later that year, on November 1, San Juan Copala resident Héctor Antonio Ramírez Paz was assassinated.

Despite the repression, during this time the autonomous municipality worked to develop the area, acquiring computers, repairing and upgrading schools, government offices, roads, public spaces, medical clinics, childcare centers, etc.

The situation turned even more serious on November 29, 2009, when members of the Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), from San Salvador Atenco, attempted to enter San Juan Copala to advocate for the release of their 12 political prisoners and to express support for the autonomous municipality.  UBISORT blocked the caravan from entering the town, while at the same time MULT and UBISORT rained gunfire into the town, hitting four children and killing one, Elías Fernández de Jesús, age 9.

In January of 2010, UBISORT paramilitaries began a siege of the town of San Juan Copala, cutting water and electricity and prohibiting the entry of doctors and teachers.  For almost ten months, residents had no access to medical care and children had no access to education.  In order to survive, the women of the town had to sneak out through the forests in order to buy food or to collect wood to boil water in order to have potable water. Often the women were captured by the paramilitaries, kidnapped, their food stolen and destroyed and on several occasions the women were raped and/or murdered.

Bolivia doesn’t have policies to protect voluntarily isolated peoples

The “uncontacted” nomads of the Bolivian Amazon left without territory

Busi and Buca Yacu, the endogamous couple at the head
of the struggle for the return of their people's territory.

Bolivia doesn’t have policies to protect voluntarily isolated peoples

By Wilson García Mérida
March 17, 2011
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

(Sol de Pando).- The National Agrarian Reform Institute’s (INRA) Communal Renewal Law emphasizes its procedures regarding agricultural land and lacks a strategy (stipulated by the Plurinational Constitution) to reconstruct the original territories of indigenous nations on the path to extinction.  This “legal vacuum” has left the Pacahuara without their territory, an original people who have never asked anything of the Bolivian state; much less a simple parcel of land, save that it respect their ancestral territoriality, comprised of the forests of the Bolivian Amazon.
========.

There is no doubt that Law 3545 of Communal Renewal, approved by the government of Evo Morales in November 2006, has signaled an unprecedented revolutionary advance in the agrarian history of Bolivia; as since its enactment it revealed the colossal fraud with which the government of Sánchez de Lozada applied an INRA Law completely in favor of large landowners and ranchland and forest speculators, especially in eastern Bolivia.

Evo Morales’ Communal Renewal Law redefined important procedural aspects of INRA Law 1715, enacted under Sánchez de Lozada; and the first revolutionary results of that reform had large impacts precisely in the Pando Department: in just two years - by August 2008 - 100 percent of the public agricultural, grazing and forest lands of this Amazon territory were reorganized, facilitating the distribution of more than 2.3 million hectares to thousands of poor rural inhabitants and indigenous organized as a social movement.  Previous regimes had been unable to achieve even 20 percent reorganization in 30 years of neoliberal democracy.  Law 3545 stipulates that by the year 2013 all public lands in the nation, estimated at more than 106 million hectares, should be reorganized.

However, the successful revolutionary prospect that emerged with the passing of Law 3545, benefitting like never before the great mass of rural inhabitants of the country, sadly remains overshadowed by an obvious omission in the new procedures of the INRA as reformed by the current government, despite the fact that the new Constitution lays out specific policies regarding indigenous peoples on the path to extinction, following the guidelines of the United Nations.

In fact, Article 31 of the new Constitution stipulates with complete clarity the following:

I.- The individual and collective ways of life of indigenous nations and peoples at risk of extinction, in a state of voluntary isolation and uncontacted, will be protected and respected.

II.- Indigenous nations and peoples in isolation and uncontacted enjoy the right to remain in that state, and to the legal demarcating and consolidation of the territory which they occupy and inhabit.

This quite advanced constitutional precept does not, paradoxically, appear in the INRA Communal Renewal Law.

Omar Esparza and Fernando Urbano detained one day before anniversary of Copala caravan ambush

UPDATE: Omar and Fernando were released from detention at 8:42PM this evening.

Urgent Action in response to the detention of Omar Esparza and Fernando Urbano, one day before the tragic anniversary of Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola

April 26, 2011
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

To the media
To human rights defenders
To the indigenous people of Oaxaca, Mexico and the world
To the international and social organizations
To the national and international Other Campaign
To the rebel women and men from below

Today, April 26, in the early afternoon, compañeros Omar Esparza Zárate, member of the Zapatista Indigenous Agrarian Movement (MAIZ), and Fernando Urbano Morales, of the Community Support Center – Working Together (CACTUS), were detained by the Federal Police on the Mexico-Oaxaca highway, at the San José Miahuatlán tollbooth in Puebla, very close to the city of Tehuacán.

Far from being arbitrary, we know that this detention occurs in the context of violence, harassment and repression against human rights defenders and also “coincides” with the fact that tomorrow, April 27, marks one year since the unpunished murder of our compañera Bety Cariño, gunned down by paramilitaries’ bullets on the Humanitarian Caravan to the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala.  This makes clear the intentions of the Mexican state to intimidate and terrify those who for the past year have demanded justice for the founder of CACTUS and other social activists who have been jailed and murdered during this period of mobilization and social repression.

As compañeros of Fernando Urbano and Omar Esparza, we energetically declare our opposition to this detention and demand their immediate release.  No more political prisoners.  No more daily impunity.  No more intimidation of the organized people.

At the same time, we inform all the organizations, collectives, compañeros, friends and individuals who are in solidarity with our demand for justice for Bety and Jyri Jaakkola, that the activities and mobilizations planned for April 27 and 28 will go forward.  If they wanted to stop us from taking action on those days, they will not succeed.

We add to our demands the immediate release of our imprisoned compañeros, at the same time we hold the government of Oaxaca, the government of Puebla and the federal government responsible for any act of aggression or damage committed against our imprisoned compañeros, as well as any act of aggression against the compañer@s who in the coming days will stand in solidarity with the demand for justice for Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola

IMMEDIATELY RELEASE OMAR ESPARZA AND FERNANDO URBANO!

FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS IN MEXICO!

JUSTICE FOR BETY CARIÑO AND JYRI JAAKKOLA!

JUSTICE FOR ALL THE REPRESSED OR MURDERED SOCIAL ACTIVISTS IN MEXICO!

“…here there is not silence. Here, the shout, here, the dignified rage” (Bety Cariño).

COMMUNITY SUPPORT CENTER – WORKING TOGETHER

CACTUS

April 2011

Oaxacan Mixteca

Urgent Action: A group of armed men kill Javier Torres Cruz, rural environmentalist, also wounding his brother Felipe Torres, in Petatlán, Guerrero

Below the action alert are the email addresses of government officials and a sample letter to send to them.

 Urgent Action: A group of armed men kill Javier Torres Cruz, rural environmentalist, also wounding his brother Felipe Torres, in Petatlán, Guerrero

April 20, 2011
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

Organizations belonging to the Early Alert Network express our concern and ask for your urgent participation in response to the murder of Javier Torres Cruz, rural environmentalist, and the attack against Felipe Torres, in Petatlán, Guerrero

FACTS

On Monday, April 18, 2011, at 5:30pm, the rural environmentalist Javier Torres Cruz, 30 years of age, was murdered by a group of armed subjects while traveling through an area known as “Puerto de la Mosca,” close to the community of La Morena, where Javier lived with his family.

According to a report published by the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (ANAD) and the Collective Against Torture and Impunity (CCTI), relatives of Javier and other witnesses report that a group of armed subjects insidiously attacked Javier Torres Cruz, who was traveling in the company of his brother Felipe Torres, who was injured in the attack, while they were traveling through the abovementioned location.

BACKGROUND 

Ever since 2007, when Javier Torres Cruz decided to give a statement to the Federal District’s Attorney General’s Office in order to identify those responsible for the murder of human rights defender Digna Ochoa y Plácido, murdered in 2001, the military, as well as armed civilians, have carried out a series of attacks against him as a result of this declaration, his strong public condemnation against the atrocities and violations committed by the narco and strongman Rogaciano Alva Álvarez, and for his work as an environmentalist in the region, attacks which culminated yesterday in his death.

It’s important to note the ten days during which Javier Torres Cruz was disappeared, from December 1 – 10, 2008, time during which he was tortured and threatened with death by soldiers belonging to the Mexican Army’s 19^th Infantry Battalion who told Torres Cruz that “they acted on behalf of Rogaciano’s people,” a disappearance and torture which was never investigated by competent authorities.

Other events related to the threats against Javier occurred during 2009, when on at least six different occasions elements of the army entered the community of La Morena, attacking Javier’s relatives and threatening him with death.  All of these violations, as well as the incursions, were denounced in a timely manner, yet as of today the competent authorities have not resolved a single case.

On February 16, 2010, members of the Mexican Army burst into the vicinity of the community of La Morena, opening fire on the men and women working in the fields at the time, leaving Adolfo Torres Rosas murdered and Isaías Torres Rosas wounded (both cousins of Javier), arbitrarily and unjustly detaining Anselmo Torres Quiroz (Javier’s grandfather) and Húber Vega Correa (a family friend), these last two still remain unjustly imprisoned in the Acapulco prison for supposed drug offenses, which were fabricated by the soldiers during their incursion.

Remembering Tonee Mello

More than a week later the news still has not sunken in, and daily the urge to reject it is overwhelming: that my friend Tonee Mello is dead.  Tonee was murdered at his home in the outskirts of the city of Oaxaca during a robbery on Monday, April 11, 2011.  It is a senseless, vicious loss of life that leaves one with an innumerable amount of emotions and questions which can only be worked through and resolved with time, if at all.  While two individuals have been detained in relation to his murder, and the case will make its way through the court system here in Oaxaca, such facts hardly offers themselves as remedies to this tremendous loss.

Tonee was a singular individual, unlike anyone I have ever met.  I believe he was the most generous person I have had the privilege to know.  If Tonee could have held the world in his hands, he would have happily given it to you, even if it meant he himself was left with absolutely nothing. And even if he had nothing, he would make something of it to share with you as well.  He had a boundless, completely unselfish generosity the likes of which I have never seen. As in so many instances, words are insufficient.

Tonee was 63 years old, from San Francisco, who had lived for many years in Oaxaca.  A longtime anarchist, he was involved in many struggles in the U.S. and Mexico.   He co-founded the Fresno Needle Exchange in 1994 and was arrested when he and others went to the city council to get it legalized (something that finally occurred in 2008).  He fought to defend community radio stations in the U.S., such as KFCF and KPFA, and in Oaxaca worked to help indigenous communities establish their own community-controlled radio stations, in particular in the Mixe region.  On top of all that, Tonee was a gay rights activist, a gardener, a co-founder of the Oaxaca Study-Action Group, previously a board member of the Oaxaca Lending Library, and loved riding his motorcycle.

I first met Tonee in the summer of 2008 here in Oaxaca.  We bonded over our ideological affinity and San Francisco Bay Area connections.  He still followed events there and asked all about the recent FBI raid on the Long Haul infoshop in Berkeley.  Just hours after meeting us, he offered to lend my partner and me his motorcycle for the rest of our stay in Oaxaca.  A few days later, as my partner and others were putting together a rooftop garden in CASOTA, he drove us to his friend’s farm to get seeds and learn about her projects, and then to a dump outside of town to look for planters and other supplies.  His enthusiasm was boundless; his desire to share what he knew and what he had was inspiring and never presumptuous.  He acted not out of a desire for recognition, compensation or any self-interest, he simply truly enjoyed helping and extending solidarity to others and for him that was its own reward.

One of the last times I saw Tonee was when he brought us to his house that he had just purchased, the house where he would so senselessly be killed less than three years later.  It needed a lot of work, but you couldn’t help but smile and be inspired to listen to his vision for the space.  A big organic garden, areas for socializing and parties, spaces for friends to stay, whether in need or simply during a visit - a space as open and welcoming as its owner.  That’s how I will remember Tonee – a smile on his face and magnanimous, generous spirit in words, deeds, and visions, all of which lives on in those of us whose lives he has touched.  Thank you, Tonee.  I’ll miss you.

If you have a message or memory of Tonee you'd like to share, feel free to leave a comment here, but also please leave it on El Enemigo Común post about Tonee, which is collecting messages from around the world from those who lives Tonee has touched.

Repression in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Filiberto Vicente Aquino detained

April 12, 2011
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

April 14 update: Filiberto Vicente Aquino released in Oaxaca, mobilizations continue in order to gain his complete freedom.

Compañero Filiberto Vicente Aquino is part of a movement comprised of numerous towns in southeastern Mexico against the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and its charging of high rates for electricity.  Compañero Filiberto was violently detained in his community, Santa Maria Xadani, Juchitan, Oaxaca, by state police officers on April 12 and taken to the offices of the Federal Attorney General (PGR) in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca. 

He was brought before the Sixth District Court of Salina Cruz for the theft of electricity, which is a federal offense.

The Sixth District judge has imposed a fine of 28,000 pesos for the release of compañero Filiberto, but the compañeros and compañeras of the resistance movement against the CFE’s high rates are demanding that the federal authorities, and in particular Governor Gabino Cue, grant his immediate and unconditional release, but given the downsides, the bail money was deposited, and thanks to the mobilization of the popular movement and Section 22, after 12 hours of highway blockades and blockades of CFE offices, the freedom of FILIBERTO VICENTE AQUINO was obtained yesterday, April 13, at 10pm.

Now we are reminded that the policy exercised by the current government is to criminalize social protest and this framework can be seen in the dissolution of the SME, and in the Isthmus with the struggle to demand fair electricity rates, when wind farm companies displace these same peasants they make a fortune and avoid paying for their electricity, for example Bimbo and Coca Cola, making money at the expense of our resources, and as for us, as indigenous peoples, they persecute and jail us.

NOT ONE MORE PRISONER!

JAIL ULISES RUIZ!

NO MORE IMPUNITY!

FREE POLITICAL PRISONERS IN OAXACA, MEXICO, AND THE WORLD!!!

THE APPO LIVES, THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!

Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Freedom

Voces Oaxaqueñas Construyendo Autonomia y Libertad (VOCAL)

Oaxaca de Magón, city of the resistance, Thursday, April 14, 2011

April 13 update: Filiberto Vicente Aquino remains in detention in Oaxaca, mobilizations continue to achieve his release.

Today, Wednesday, April 13, compañeros and compañeras from the communities of Santa María Xadani and Álvaro Obregón de Juchitan, Oaxaca, as well as teachers from Section 22 in the region are blocking the highway in front of the offices of the Federal Electricity Commission in Juchitan to demand the release of compañero Filiberto Vicente Aquino, who was violently detained yesterday at 2:30pm, and to demand the live return of Carlos Rene Román Salazar, a teacher who was disappeared on March 14.

The Sixth District judge has imposed a fine of 28,000 pesos for the release of compañero Filiberto, but the compañeros and compañeras of the resistance movement against the CFE’s high rates are demanding that the federal authorities, and in particular Governor Gabino Cue, grant his immediate and unconditional release.

----------------------------------

Today at 2:30pm compañero Filiberto Vicente Aquino, who is part of a movement comprised of numerous towns in southeastern Mexico against the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and its charging of high rates for electricity, was violently detained.  Compañero Filiberto was violently detained in his community, Santa Maria Xadani, Juchitan, Oaxaca, by state police officers and taken to the offices of the Federal Attorney General (PGR) in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca.  He was brought before the Sixth District Court of Salina Cruz for the theft of electricity, which is a federal offense. 

It should be remembered that the resistance movement against the CFE’s high rates for electricity emerged in the southeast of the country given the CFE’s abusive charges for electricity service for the inhabitants of this region, which is the largest producer of electricity in Mexico.  In particular, the peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca joined this resistance as a result of the installation of wind farms in their territories - through deceptions and threats by Spanish transnational corporations who had the complete backing of the Ulisista tyranny and who now enjoy the complete backing of the Spaniard Gabino Cue.

In response to this repressive act, compañeros in the resistance movement against the high rates of electricity took over the highway which runs from the city of Tehuantepec to the city of Oaxaca to demand the immediate release of compañero Filiberto, however, instead of releasing him, the state police have maintained a presence in order to intimidate in a threatening manner the compañeros who at this moment continue resisting.

We hold the federal government of Felipe Calderon and the state government of Gabino Cue responsible for the detention of compañero Filiberto Vicente Aquino and for the repressive acts that the government may carry out against the compañeros who as of this moment continue resisting in front of the Tehuantepec jail in the takeover of the highway to demand Filiberto’s freedom.

We similarly denounce the increasingly evident democratic farce that Gabino Cue represents here in Oaxaca, who, in spite of having come into power as a result of Oaxaca’s repudiation of the PRI, continues to use the same repressive methods and the same deception of the peoples of Oaxaca so that the rich and foreign transnational corporations may continue benefitting at the expense of the lands and wealth of the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca.  Now it is even more serious, as unlike Ulises Ruiz, Gabino Cue has gained complete control over the local media, which keeps Oaxacans from being aware of the repression and violence which different social sectors are suffering at this moment, such as the recent disappearance of compañero and teacher Carlos Rene Roman Salazar, a member of the teachers union, Section 22, who was disappeared on March 14 and whose whereabouts are still unknown.

We issue an urgent call for all the conscious men and women of Mexico to protest using all means possible to demand the release of compañero Filiberto Vicente Aquino and against the atmosphere of a dirty war against social activists, which at this moment Oaxaca is again living through, from the federal government of Felipe Calderon and the state government of Gabino Cue. 

JAIL ULISES RUIZ!

NO MORE IMPUNITY!

THE APPO LIVES, THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!

 

Fraternally, 

Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Freedom

Voces Oaxaqueñas Construyendo Autonomia y Libertad