by Kristin Bricker
UPDATE 8/3/2010: Women from the autonomous municipality who live in San Juan Copala held a press conference today. They gave updates on the two women who were injured when UBISORT shot them during the police/paramilitary raid. Seventeen-year-old Selena Ramírez López was shot in the lung and is in critical condition. Her 15-year-old sister Adela is also in critical condition; the bullet that struck her damaged her intestines and imbedded itself in her backbone. Adela might not ever regain her ability to walk.
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| Triquis from San Juan Copala protest in front of government office, demand that paramilitaries leave their community. (photo: Francisco Olvera/La Jornada) |
The goal of the raid, according to the state government, was to remove the body of Anastasio Juárez Hernández from his home in San Juan Copala. Police did remove the dead man from his home and then left San Juan Copala. However, the paramilitaries, taking advantage of the police presence, took over San Juan Copala's town hall. The town hall is now occupied by thirty UBISORT paramilitaries armed with automatic assault rifles. "They have taken over control of the entire town," reports a source close to the autonomous authorities.
Meanwhile, the Mexican military has deployed soldiers to La Sabana, a nearby town that is controled by UBISORT. Thus far the soldiers have not entered San Juan Copala.
Two young indigenous Triqui women were wounded when the paramilitaries and police entered San Juan Copala. The women were part of a human blockade at the entrance to the town that attempted to impede the police and paramilitaries' access. The two women, ages 15 and 18, were "gravely wounded" when paramilitaries from UBISORT shot them as they entered San Juan Copala. The women were evacuated and are being treated at an undisclosed location.
Mysterious Murder
Autonomous authorities questioned the circumstances of the raid in a communique published on their website, http://autonomiaencopala.wordpress.com. In the communique, the autonomous municipality claims that Juárez Hernández was actually murdered in the city of Juxtlahuaca, implying that his body was later planted in San Juan Copala in order to justify the police raid.
Local press immediately parroted the government's claims that Juárez Hernández, who was UBISORT leader Rufino Juárez's brother and the government-recognized "municipal agent" of San Juan Copala, was murdered in his home in San Juan Copala. Juárez Hernández was not elected to the position of municipal agent; UBISORT appointed him to that position this past November.
Regardless of how or where Juárez Hernández died, the consequences of his murder are painfully apparent for San Juan Copala's residents. Their town is occupied by heavily armed paramilitaries who were escorted in by state police. To add insult to injury, the raid comes after seven months of a paramilitary blockade that the government has claimed it is incapable of breaking despite the autonomous municipality's claims that residents may starve to death if the blockade continues. The raid's irony wasn't lost on the Oaxaca-based Bartolomé Carrasco Briseño Human Rights Center, who wrote in a press release:
"It is inconsistent and paradoxical that when security measures were requested so that the 'Bety and Jiry' Humanitarian Caravan could enter [San Juan Copala] and leave food supplies, the State did not fulfill its responsibility and prevented the Caravan from fulfilling its mission. At that time, [the state] put together an impressive operation that was headed by the State Attorney General, the State Security Commissioner, and the President of the Oaxaca Human Rights Commission, which impeded the caravan's passage. They argued that conditions did not permit a safe entrance, and that not even the police could enter that territory. But in reality, they were just protecting the armed group named UBISORT.
"Now it is absurd that the authorities could put together an entire operation in order to carry out the initial investigation of the homicide, and that now they can enter [San Juan Copala] and on top of that repress the people, when before they did not listen, nor did they act, when faced with the demands of hundreds of residents of the autonomous municipality who requested food, the reinstallation of basic services, treatment for sick people, under the false argument that they were incapable of entering the zone and that they would not risk their people."The government's preferential treatment of the paramilitaries is unmistakable: in addition to deploying armed state police to guard the UBISORT's blockade when the humanitarian caravan attempted to enter San Juan Copala this past June, the government has failed to act when members of the autonomous municipality have come under attack, presumably by government-aligned paramilitaries. Just this past July 26, Maria Rosa Francisco disappeared when her home in San Juan Copala came under fire. All of her animals were killed in the attack, and she remains missing and is feared dead. The Bartolomé Carrasco Briseño Human Rights Center publicly denounced the attack and called on its supporters to contact the government and demand that put an end to the violence.
The Human Rights Center's pleas were met with indifference in the government. However, as soon as a paramilitary's cadaver appeared in San Juan Copala, the government acted.
The autonomous municipality reports that it desperately needs money to pay for the wounded women's medical treatment and to buy phone credit in order to communicate with the press and human rights organizations.
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1 comments:
great piece.
because Obama is currently arming the Mexican government, it would be interesting to ask the State Department for its response to these events in which the "government's preferential treatment of the paramilitaries is unmistakable"
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