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.
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