Mexico: Indigenous Oaxacan Political Prisoners Caught in the Drug War Prison Boom

by Kristin Bricker and Santiago Navarro, Upside Down World  

After spending nearly 17 years in the same prison cell just outside of Oaxaca City, seven indigenous Loxicha political prisoners were transferred this month—twice. The transfers, which enraged and frightened their families and supporters, were part of a nationwide shuffle of existing prisoners to fill beds at newly opened facilities that were financed by Mexican and United States drug war money.

The prisoners, Agustín Luna Valencia, Eleuterio Hernández Garcia, Fortino Enriquez Hernández, Justino Hernández José, Abraham Garcia Ramirez, Zacarias Pascual Garcia López, and Alvaro Sebastián Ramirez, are Zapotec indigenous men from Oaxaca’s Loxicha region, one of Oaxaca’s poorest and most marginalized regions.

The seven Loxichas are accused of participating in the August 29, 1996, Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) uprising in la Crucecita, Oaxaca, in which 11 government agents were killed. The indigenous men say they were tortured into signing hundreds of pages of blank paper that were later filled in with confessions. The Loxichas were convicted of murder (of the federal agents), terrorism, and conspiracy, and they were sentenced to up to 31 years in prison.

This past June 7, the Loxicha prisoners were transferred to the new private medium security federal prison Cefereso #13 in Miahuatlan, Oaxaca, located three hours from the Ixcotel state prison where they spent the past sixteen years. The publicly financed, privately managed prison opened this past March. It is Oaxaca’s first federal prison and Mexico’s first private prison.

In response to increasing prison overpopulation throughout the country, the federal government has promised to transfer federal prisoners out of the state prisons where they are currently incarcerated and into new federal prisons. As part of this reshuffling, the seven Loxichas—all held on federal charges—were transferred to the Miahuatlan prison along with 186 other federal prisoners from state prisons around the country. When prison officials didn’t notify the prisoners’ families about the transfer, this led to fears that the Loxicha political prisoners had been disappeared.

When the Loxichas’ families located them in Miahuatlan’s new private prison, they attempted to visit them there in order to assure that the prisoners were not abused during the transfer. The families were shocked to discover that the prison prohibits face-to-face visits. The prisoners are only allowed 30-minute visits via closed-circuit television. “My father thought that I was calling him from somewhere else,” recounted Erica Sebastián, Alvaro Sebastián Ramirez’s daughter, following a televised visit. “He told me that all of the other prisoners were surprised because we were the first people to visit that prison. That’s how we know that was due to political pressure that we were allowed to see them.”

Contrary to the government’s claims that its new “modern” private prison would “offer clinic services, education, and recreation areas to the prisoners,” as well as “job training” and “dignified facilities,” Erica found her father and the other Loxichas living in “degrading and inhumane” conditions. “They went a whole week without any toilet paper,” complained Erica. “They had to bathe themselves in front of female guards.”

In a press release, the families denounced that the prisoners had gone “13 days without seeing the sun, without leaving their cells, without being able to change their clothes, drinking [dirty] tap water, eating small rations of only beans and a piece of bread, suffering from chronic illnesses and not having access to neither medicine nor medical attention.” The families also discovered that Federal Police abused the inmates during the transfer. “[Federal Police] violently removed them from cell #22 in the Ixcotel prison, they stole their money and valuables, [and] they left them outside exposed to the elements for several hours with their hands tied behind their backs and in uncomfortable positions.”

On June 21, the same day the families held a press conference to denounce the inhumane conditions at the Miahuatlan prison, the government transferred the prisoners yet again—this time, to a maximum security federal prison in Tabasco, which is located over 12 hours from their families in Oaxaca. “The government is mocking us,” commented Erica after learning of the new transfer. “It wants to wear us down.”

During a three-hour face-to-face visit in the Tabasco prison on June 26, Alvaro told his daughter that the conditions there were better than in Miahuatlan’s private prison. “They’re thankful to be out of that place,” reported Erica after leaving the prison. “They aren’t thinking of [the transfer] as retaliation. They think of it as a victory that they were transferred out of Cefereso #13, because whoever gets sent to that prison goes crazy.”
Nonetheless, the families are upset that their loved ones were sent so far away because the trip is prohibitively expensive. The relatives had to beg for donations to cover travel costs for their first visit, and they borrowed a vehicle from the Oaxacan teachers union to get to the prison in Huimanguillo, Tabasco.

The Tabasco and Miahuatlan prisons are two of 12 new federal prisons that are financed in part by funds from the United States government’s Merida Initiative drug war aid package. Under the rubric of “prison reform,” the Merida Initiative aims to increase federal prisons’ capacity from 6,400 to 20,000 prisoners by funding new prisons, training prison guards in the United States, and establishing a corrections academy and canine training facilities in Mexico.

The construction of new prisons has been a priority due to concerns that Mexico’s overburdened, corrupt prison system could not handle the influx of new prisoners that officials hoped the drug war would create. The 12 new prisons constitute a veritable boom for Mexico’s budding industry, bringing the total number of federal prisons up to 25.

Legal Recourses Exhausted

The seven Loxicha prisoners deny that they belonged to the EPR and participated in the uprising. Furthermore, Erica argues that the government’s charges against her father are contradictory and unlawful: “The State accuses my father of participating in a rebellion, but he was judged as a common criminal.”

Erica points out that Article 137 of Mexico’s Federal Penal Code states, “When the crimes of homicide, robbery, kidnapping, looting, and other crimes are committed during a rebellion, the rules of combat apply. The rebels will not be responsible for the homicides nor injuries occasioned by the acts of a combatant…” If the Loxichas were tried and convicted as rebels—as the government claims they are—instead of common criminals, they would have been sentenced to 1-20 years for rebellion instead of thirty years for homicide and terrorism. In other words, they could have possibly already served their sentences instead of living in federal prison alongside some of the drug war’s most ruthless convicts.

The Loxicha prisoners have exhausted their legal options within the Mexican court system. On May 6, 2013, Alvaro Sebastián filed a complaint with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in the hopes that the Inter-American Human Rights Court will hear his case. Because the Mexican government is legally required to abide by all Inter-American Human Rights Court verdicts, a favorable verdict is his only remaining legal recourse.

However, Sebastián and his supporters, known as the Voice of the Zapotec Xiches Collective, are not idly waiting for the Inter-American Commission to review his case. They believe political pressure from civil society will ultimately free Sebastián and the other Loxicha prisoners.

Sebastián has followed in the footsteps of other high-profile indigenous political prisoners and publicly declared his support for the Zapatistas. During his tour of Mexico in 2006, the Zapatistas’ Subcomandante Marcos appealed to supporters to create a national campaign for the liberation of the country’s political prisoners. Since then, dozens of indigenous political prisoners and their supporters, particularly in the Zapatistas’ home state of Chiapas, have united under the Zapatista banner to agitate for their freedom.

The strategy gives political prisoners access to the Zapatistas’ supporters around the world. The resulting political pressure has forced the government to release dozens of imprisoned Zapatista supporters, including Gloria Arenas and her husband Jacobo Silva Nogales, both former commanders of the Guerrero-based Revolutionary Army of the Insurgente People (ERPI).

Constructing a community police in the town of Álvaro Obregón, Oaxaca

Strengthening the Struggle to Defend Territory on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec 

Published on February 11, 2013 in Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Juchitán

by Daniel Arellano Chávez, Proyecto Ambulante
translation by El Enemigo Común

March in Álvaro Obregón. February 10, 2013

Today, February 10, 2013 is certainly a watershed in the struggle for the defense of the land and territory on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. After the successful resistance against the repression ordered by Oaxaca state governor Gabino Cué to shield Mareña Renovables, the peoples of the Isthmus are at a decisive moment in their struggle to defend their territory. The Assembly held today and the sizeable march in Álvaro Obregón has provided the ideal setting for announcing townspeople’s decisions, expelling false political leaders and their political parties, and beginning the construction of a Community Police.
At the old General Charis military quarters, the scene of the historic resistance of February 2, men and women from San Dionisio del Mar, San Mateo del Mar, Xadani, Emiliano Zapata, San Blas Atempa, Unión Hidalgo, and Juchitán, among other communities, came together in the morning to ratify their total rejection of the wind projects in the region and demand the immediate expulsion of Mareña Renovables from the territories of the Isthmus.

The Assembly and march come on the heels of the desperate, venomous statements made by Gabino Cué Monteagudo last February 6, when he said: “They’re just tiny groups of people who spend their time drinking, attacking the police, and holding up social projects that the company is committed to implementing for the benefit of the community.”

The decisive actions taken by community people are a clear demonstration of the resistance against the advance of transnationals in regional towns.

The Community Assembly of Álvaro Obregón states: “In the full exercise of our right to self-determination and autonomy as Binnizá indigenous people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and in view of the violations of our territorial rights by the state government and corporations, we have resolved that as of tomorrow we will begin to organize the first detachment of our Binni Guia’pa’ Guidxi’ (community police) in defense of the land and territory; it will be made up of people from our communities.” During the march, this decision was underscored with signs, banners and chants demanding the exit of all repressive forces, making it clear that no kind of state or federal police is welcome and that access to the Mexican Army and Navy will be blocked.

Upcoming resistance actions are proposed for February 13 in San Dionisio del Mar, and a call is being sent out for national and international solidarity and for the participation of indigenous peoples of the region and the country to cover the Humanitarian Caravan and Solidarity Cavalcade with Guidxi’ro Resistance that will be held on Sunday February 17, setting out from different points to then converge in Álvaro Obregón. Plans also call for shoring up the collection of provisions and supplies at Radio Totopo in Juchitán, and the Universidad de la Tierra in Colonia Reforma, City of Oaxaca.

Heading up today’s march was a large group of boys and girls, followed by dozens of women, then hundreds of men, women, young people, elders, Zapotecs and Ikjots, chanting with all their might: “Zapata lives! The struggle continues!”, “Mareña Renovables out now!”, and a message that could presage the future of the governor of Oaxaca, “Gabino Cué, out now!”

So this is the way resistance is being strengthened from within. Now it’s time for the peoples of Oaxaca, the country and the world to show their heartfelt support for the righteous people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Source in Spanish: Proyecto Ambulante

Spanish language video:

MANIFIESTO DE LA ASAMBLEA COMUNITARIA DE GUI’XHI’ RO ÁLVARO OBREGÓN

Inside Mexico’s Peace Movement

by Kristin Bricker, The Indypendent

Photo by Santiago Navarro F.

On Sept. 10, thousands of people marched through the besieged resort town of Acapulco to greet the Caravan for Peace with Dignity and Justice led by Javier Sicilia, a poet who ignited a nationwide movement against drug war violence this spring after his son was murdered.

In recent years, Acapulco has endured a plague of violence — beheadings, massacres of tourists, kidnapping of schoolchildren and demands from criminal gangs that teachers pay 50 percent of their salaries as protection money. In the vast majority of the cases, no one has been charged with these crimes.

Armed with signs and T-shirts that said “No more violence,” “Stop kidnappings and crime,” and “No more militarization, we want education,” locals faced down their fear of being identified by halcones or cartel spies, and marched for peace.

“They asked me if I was afraid to participate,” said Yuridia Betancourt, whose son Christian Obeth was kidnapped on March 19. “I’m panicked. But I’m more afraid to stay at home with my arms crossed.”

However, moments after the peace march swept by Zaragoza Street, several blocks from the central plaza where the marchers rallied, unidentified gunmen shot and killed Antelmo Petatan Vasquez in his taxi in broad daylight, a fate shared by a growing number of cabbies who are often suspected of working as informants for the cartels or are forced to pay them “quotas” in exchange for the right to work. Petatan Vasquez was one of eight people murdered that day in Acapulco; three were killed during the march.

Petatan Vasquez’s killing marked another in the more than 40,000 deaths that have occurred in Mexico since conservative President Felipe Calderón escalated the government’s war on drug cartels in January 2007. It also underscored the challenges faced by Sicilia and the antiwar movement as it ventured into southern Mexico for the first time, hoping to build on earlier momentum.

Breaking the Fear

Rural and mountainous, southern Mexico is more impoverished and has a much greater percentage of indigenous peoples than the northern part of the country. And while southern Mexico generally has less violent crime than northern states, organized crime and government security forces are victimizing certain sectors of the population at alarming rates.

Located several hundred miles southwest of Mexico City, the state of Guerrero bore the brunt of a government counter-insurgency campaign against leftist guerrillas from the 1960s to 1980s. The Guerra Sucia (or, “Dirty War”) carried out by the army and its paramilitary allies officially ended almost three decades ago. Nowadays, Guerrero residents are suffering some of the worst abuses of the drug war, as, the military remained in Guerrero and a climate of government corruption has assured that crimes committed against locals are almost never punished.

“The Dirty War never ended in Guerrero,” argues Rosario Cabañas, the niece of Guerrero school teacher and guerrilla leader Lucio Cabañas who was killed in 1974. “Unfortunately, thanks to [the Dirty War], peace and justice were lost. For 40 years, there has been impunity and injustice.”

Calderón’s militarized response disrupted drug trafficking routes and the cartels began to battle for control of Guerrero, which includes the coastal enclave of Acapulco. Residents found themselves caught in the middle. Unsurprisingly, the conflation of political and criminal violence gave birth in Guerrero to Mexico’s first narco-paramilitary organization, the “Liberator of the People Army” led by local political boss Rogaciano Alba.

Sharing Stories

Composed of 15 buses carrying more than 700 activists, journalists and family members of victims, the caravan rolled through 19 towns and cities in seven states over 10 days in mid-September. At every stop, caravaneros and locals marched for peace. The marches always ended in rallies where drug war victims from the north shared the stage with local victims to tell the world about how they have suffered in the so-called “war on organized crime.” At each stop, Sicilia’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity collected complaints about violence and human rights abuses, just as they had done in the north.

Mexico’s drug cartels were significantly strengthened in the early 1990s as junior partners to their counterparts in Colombia who were finding it increasingly difficult to ship cocaine to the United States through the Caribbean. In recent years, thanks in large part to the Colombian cartels’ decreased control over shipping routes, the Mexican cartels have become fully diversified organized crime syndicates and have expanded into new areas such as kidnapping, extortion, prostitution and human trafficking.

Approximately 40 Central American migrants traveled with the Peace Caravan, calling attention to how the cartels frequently prey on immigrants.

Mexico’s harsh U.S.-backed immigration laws force the hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants who enter Mexico each year to travel clandestinely, which puts them at great risk of being kidnapped by organized crime, caravan participants explained. When migrants are detained by authorities, they are sometimes handed over to criminal groups for a bribe.

During the caravan, the Central American migrants described how the gangs take people like themselves to safe houses where they are forced to call their families or friends in the United States and hold the telephone in their hands while the criminals torture them into begging their families for ransom money: “I saw them cut off a 14-year-old boy’s finger while his father was listening on the phone,” said one Salvadoran immigrant who says that he, too, was tortured.

Female immigrants are sometimes forced into prostitution or made to perform in pornographic movies. German Guillermo Ramirez Garduaza of the “Santa Faustina Kowalska” migrant shelter in Veracruz estimates that 80 percent of female Central American migrants are raped in Mexico.

Danira Meléndez, a Honduran migrant, recalled how her coyote (paid guide) demanded that she have sex with him. “He told me, ‘Here, I’m just one man. But I work with the Zetas, and if I turn you over to them, it’ll be 15 or 20 men raping you,’” Meléndez recounted. “We know that female migrants are easy sexual merchandise for organized crime.”

A Militant Tradition

Before the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity emerged, drug war victims were terrified, isolated and silent. On the two caravans, victims learned public speaking skills and how to organize protests and press conferences and hold more effective meetings with public officials. Now that the caravans are over, the victims will return to their communities, most of which now have local antiwar committees. Whereas before drug war victims were shunned, now they are in a position to become community leaders.

Citing lower turnouts at Peace Caravan events in the south, the Mexican media have portrayed the antiwar movement as losing support. However, this does not take into account the fact that the south has experienced less drug war violence than the north and in places that have been hard hit — like Guerrero and Veracruz — thousands of people turned out to protest the war. Moreover, the south has a long tradition of militant grassroots organizing (see sidebar) and resistance to military occupation that most of the north lacks. Whereas most northern drug war victims are just beginning to organize and define their politics, southern drug war victims are joining experienced organizations and hitting the ground running.

If southern organizations continue to collaborate with Sicilia’s national movement, they will likely provide a counterweight to Sicilia’s strong focus on engagement with authorities, which has included meeting with leaders of all three branches of a government that is widely seen as being complicit in the drug trade it claims to be fighting.

“We still don’t understand why they dedicate so much energy and effort to dialogue with a political class that long ago lost all will to govern and is nothing more than a gang of criminals,” the Zapatistas’ Subcomandante Marcos recently wrote, reflecting the sentiment of many groups in the south.

Mexico holds presidential and congressional elections next year. It remains to be seen how the budding anti-war movement will affect the electoral process. Ultimately, the country’s future depends on whether Mexico’s civil society can be mobilized to cleanse the state of a culture of corruption and impunity that exists at all levels of government.

Kristin Bricker is a Mexico-based freelance journalist covering militarization, social movements and the drug war in Latin America. She blogs at mywordismyweapon.blogspot.com.

On the Mexico-Guatemala Border, Migrants Demand End to the Violence

By Kristin Bricker, Americas Program

The caravan of drug war victims led by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia arrived at the Mexico-Guatemala border in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, on Sept. 14, where they asked for forgiveness from the migrants who risk their lives to cross Mexico to reach the United States.

Simultaneous marches from the Mexican and Guatemalan sides of the border met on the international bridge that connects the two countries.  The Guatemalan marchers greeted Sicilia and the marchers from Mexico with cries of “Long Live Mexico! Long Live Guatemala!”

Standing on the imaginary line that divides the two countries, Sicilia said, “We came to ask our Central American brothers and sisters to forgive us for having not spoken up before, for not having the consciousness and the strength necessary to prevent the kidnapping and murder that has affected thousands of migrants and Mexican citizens and has torn apart their families.”

When the Caravan for Peace set out from Mexico City on Sept. 9, some thirty Central American migrants accompanied it south towards the border.  Just before dawn on Sept. 14, about ten more migrants from a migrant shelter in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, joined the trek south. In Ciudad Hidalgo, the migrants told of how both organized crime and Mexican authorities abuse them as they cross the country precariously perched on the top of cargo trains.

One young Salvadoran migrant said organized crime members kidnapped him last December in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. The kidnappers called his family in El Salvador to demand ransom money.  His family couldn’t come up with the money, so, on Christmas Eve, the kidnappers called his family so that they could hear him being tortured.

The kidnappers beat him has he held the phone in his hands; they told him that they would kill him if he didn’t cry and beg his family for the money.  He refused to cry, so they beat him harder.  The young man was also forced to witness the torture of other migrants who were being held in the same house.  He saw them cut off a 14-year-old’s finger as the boy’s father listened on the telephone, and he was present when the kidnappers raped a woman in front of the rest of the kidnapped migrants.

“I saw with my own eyes that the police came to the place where we were [being held hostage],” he said. “The police are the most corrupt ones here.”  Four migrants managed to escape and went for help, which is how the young Salvadoran lived to tell his story even though his family couldn’t pay his ransom.

“[Mexican] authorities have robbed me; they’ve beaten me in my travels,” recalled a middle-aged Salvadoran migrant.  “Four months ago, I was violently robbed by [Chiapas] State Police as I crossed the border right here.”  His misfortune didn’t end there.  “My wife was kidnapped in Mexico State. She’s still kidnapped, and because we’re migrants in this country, the authorities don’t want to listen to us.  It’s really difficult to get the authorities to listen to us when we want to report a crime.”

Honduran migrant Daniela Melendez, mother of five, recounted how her coyote, the man she paid to help her cross Mexico and enter the United States, tried to rape her as she traveled through Chiapas.  In an attempt to pressure her to have sex with him, he told her, “Here, I’m just one man.  But I work with the Zetas, and if I turn you over to them, it’ll be fifteen or twenty men raping you.”  Melendez managed to reach the migrant shelter in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, run by Father Alejandro Solalinde. “Father Solalinde’s team in the shelter rescued me,” she recounts.

Melendez was spared, but too many undocumented migrant women aren’t.  Drug trafficking organizations—particularly the Zetas—have branched out into the sex trafficking industry.  The problem is becoming so severe that Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center  said, “When you talk to women, they consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate.” Germán Guillermo Ramírez Garduaza of the “Santa Faustina Kowalska” migrant shelter in Veracruz estimates that 80% of female Central American migrants are rapedas they transit Mexico.

As Mexicos’ drug war rages and more and more migrants fall victim to the cartels that have taken over the migrant routes, many Central Americans are still willing to risk traveling through Mexico to reach the United States because they feel as though they have no other choice.

Unemployment or underemployment are the reasons most Central American migrants give for why they decided to travel to the United States.  Two young Guatemalans staying in Father Solalinde’s shelter in Ixtepec, for example, are from sharecropper families who don’t make enough money to survive.  Even though they finished high school, the boys haven’t been able to find work.  So the boys, who are neighbors, made their first attempt to reach the United States.  They want to make enough money to help their families get ahead, and then they plan to return to Guatemala.

Twenty-one-year-old Francisco Rivera* first migrated to the United States from his native Honduras when he was twelve years old.  A gang was threatening to harm his family if he didn’t join, and his older brother’s job sewing American Eagle clothing in Honduras’ “free trade zone” wasn’t enough to pay his family’s bills.  After several attempts, he managed to reach the United States, but was deported back to Honduras.

In 2008, his father, the leader of an organization that helped landless peasants occupy government land to obtain deeds, was assassinated.  Rivera’s family believes a mayor who lost land to his father’s organization ordered the execution.  Days after the Honduran coup occurred in 2009, Rivera was nearly shot as a coup supporter opened fire on his neighborhood.  As more and more bodies were dumped in his neighborhood in the weeks following the coup, Rivera’s mother told him, “I’d rather you be far away than dead,” so Rivera migrated again.  This time, he sought political asylum in the United States.  After spending a year in jail in general population as he fought for asylum, his petition was denied and he was deported.  Rivera is now on his way back to the United States.

In crafting its immigration policy, the Mexican government is taking a cue from the United States.  Whereas migrants cross Guatemala fairly easily and inexpensively by bus, Mexico’s strict immigration enforcement means migrants must take extra precautions.  “You can cross Guatemala in a bus, and if the authorities catch you they might make you pay a bribe of 100 quetzales (about $12 dollars),” says Rivera. “In Mexico they have so many immigration checkpoints along the highways.  And if they catch you at one checkpoint, they’ll make you pay a $500 peso ($38 dollar) bribe, but then they’ll radio ahead to the next checkpoint to advise them that you’re coming so that they make you pay the bribe at that checkpoint, too.  When you get to the last checkpoint they’ll detain and deport you even though you already paid all those bribes.”

Mexico’s immigration checkpoints mean that many migrants prefer to brave the elements while perched on top of cargo trains.  Some fall off and are maimed or killed by the train, and others are pushed off by organized crime members looking to extort money from the migrants. Still, every day thousands of migrants ride Mexico’s rails.

Rivera calls Mexico’s immigration policies hypocritical: “Mexico demands respect from the United States for Mexican citizens, but they treat us so terribly, and they accept money from the United States through the Merida Initiative.”  The Merida Initiative, an aid package designed to support Mexico’s war on drugs, provides funds to expand immigration databases and monitoring, and equip and train border personnel. It includes support to implement biometric tracking of immigrants and build up security measures on both Mexican borders.

But some studies show that U.S. and Mexico’s tough immigration policies are actually driving migrants into the hands of organized crime.  According to a 2003 brief by the American Immigration Law Foundation:

“A July 2002 study by the Public Policy Institute of California concluded that there is no ‘statistically significant relationship between the build-up and the probability of migration. Economic opportunities in the United States and Mexico have a stronger effect on migration than does the number of agents at the border.’ The study found that ‘the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has increased’ since the strategy was first implemented, due in part to the fact that ‘migrants who successfully cross the border stay longer in the United States than they did in the past.’ The study also notes that the more dangerous border crossings have led to the ‘increased use of hired guides, or coyotes,’ which ‘may have expanded the very profitable human smuggling industry.’”

Migrants Targetted

Increasingly dangerous conditions for migrants in Mexico have led them to support the nascent Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which seeks to end violence and impunity in Mexico. While the migrants aren’t the only drug-war victims in the Movement, they are the only ones who have consistently been attacked while participating in Movement-related caravans.

When Sicilia called for a four-day march from Cuernavaca, Morelos, to Mexico City this past May, Central American migrants organized a trek from southern Mexico to meet the march in Mexico City.  The plan was to walk along the railroad tracks that lead to Mexico City.  The migrants never made it to the march in Mexico City because on May 6 in the state of Veracruz, gunmen attempted to kidnap women from the group.  The presence of media that was covering the migrants’ march apparently scared away the gunmen, but they told the terrified migrants that they would return.  The migrants called Mexican authorities for help, but for hours no law enforcement agency showed up to protect them.  The migrants were left stranded by the tracks for the rest of the day, terrified that their attackers would return.

In June, migrants organized a second protest, this time a five-day caravan that would travel on top of the trains from Ixtepec, Oaxaca, to Veracruz. On June 24, gunmen armed with assault rifles stopped the train and kidnapped 40 to 60 of the 250 migrants who were onboard.  Those migrants are still missing.

Migrants organized yet another caravan, the “Step by Step Toward Peace” Caravan from July 25-August 2, to protest violence against migrants.  This time, they travelled with family members of Central American migrants who went missing in Mexico.  After the second caravan, one of the participants, 19-year-old Guatemalan migrant Julio Fernando Cardona was detained by municipal police in Tultitlán, Mexico State, according to witnesses.  Later that day, Cardona’s body was found dumped along the railroad tracks in Tultitlán.  He had been stoned to death.  Cardona’s participation in the second caravan led to an unusually high amount of media attention to his case.  Under pressure, the government investigated the police that witnesses identified, and it found blood in the bed of the officers’ pickup truck, according to a source close to the case.

The brazen violence against migrants participating in the protest caravans has underlined the need for Mexico to make immediate changes to how it treats immigrants. Migrants and human rights defenders demand that Mexican authorities investigate crimes against migrants and punish the perpetrators. Migrants are also demanding that Mexico allow them to legally pass through the country on their way to the United States by cancelling the requirement that Central Americans hold visas in Mexico. North American and European travellers, for example, are automatically given tourist cards when they arrive at any Mexican port-of-entry, making the visa application process unnecessary for them.  The migrants say that if they were permitted to legally travel through Mexico, they would stop using the dangerous trains and would start using buses to cross the country.

The migrants on the peace caravan say that despite their fear that their participation in the protests will make them targets, the caravans are working.  They note that due to pressure from the caravans, the Mexican government has awarded 300 visas to migrants so that they can safely travel through Mexico. Moreover, two Central American mothers who participated in the “Step by Step Toward Peace” Caravan found their missing sons alive and well in Mexico, thanks to the caravan. Also, the police officers who allegedly killed Julio Fernando Cardona have been arrested, although it remains to be seen if they will do time for the brutal murder.

Many Central American migrants say they are glad to march side-by-side with Mexicans against the drug war, because migrants have to endure the same violence that terrorizes Mexicans on a daily basis.

“We’re here to support Mexico,” says Angie, a 21-year-old migrant who participated in the second caravan and is on the Caravan for Peace with Sicilia now.  “There are a lot of people from other countries who migrate through Mexico every day, and we know about the kidnappings and the extortion all too well.”

* This name has been changed.

Kristin Bricker is a reporter in Mexico. She is a contributor to the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org and is currently covering the 10-day Caravan of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity for the Americas Updater.

Mexico’s Federal Police Open Fire on Protesters, Throwing Merida Initiative Accountability Into Question

by Kristin Bricker, Upside Down World

Doctors remove a bullet from journalist Gilardo Mota
Figueroa’s leg.

Mexican Federal Police allegedly shot radio journalist Gilardo Mota Figueroa as he covered a protest last Tuesday against President Felipe Calderón’s visit to Oaxaca City. Mota Figueroa told Crónica de Oaxaca that during clashes with Oaxaca’s teachers union, a Federal Police officer opened fire on the crowd from a distance of about six meters (or about twenty feet). One of the bullets struck Mota Figueroa in the leg. Another 2-4 bullets were embedded in an armored SUV that authorities had left parked on the street.

During the protest, Federal Police also fired teargas canistersdirectly at demonstrators at point-blank range, severely injuring at least two people. According to the teachers union, middle school teacher Raymundo Servando Santiago Sánchez was hospitalized with a bruised lung after a teargas canister struck him in the chest. Another canister—this one allegedly fired by state police—struck protester Marcelino Coache in the face fracturing his skull and causing brain trauma. Additionally, two reporters filed charges with the State Attorney General’s Office for physical injuries and damage to their equipment from teargas canisters that struck them during the protest.

Several bullets hit this armored vehicle’s window
when police opened fire on demonstrators.

In order to be considered a “less-than-lethal weapon,” teargas canisters must be fired into the air or onto the ground. Teargas canisters manufactured by Combined Tactical Systems Inc., which produces the teargas launchers used by Federal Police on Tuesday, carry a warning label that states: “Danger: Do not fire directly at person(s). Severe injury or death may result.”

The Federal Police are fully aware that a direct hit from a teargas canister can be lethal. In 2006, during a joint operation between state and federal police in San Salvador Atenco, a teargas canister killed 23-year-old protester Alexis Benhumea when it struck him in the head. As a result of the police’s “illegitimate use” of their weapons during the Atenco operation, the Mexican government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) recommended that the Federal Preventative Police (PFP, which later became the Federal Police) and state police undergo training in “proper use” of their weapons. The head of the PFP rejected the CNDH’s recommendation, and five years later the Federal Police are still shooting teargas canisters at protesters’ heads.

Federal Police fire teargas canisters directly at demonstrators, which can cause serious injury or death. Maureen Meyers of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) argues that the police’s violent response to Tuesday’s protests “underscores the lack of any real accountability mechanisms within the Federal Police.” She notes that the Federal Police currently rank third in the number of human rights complaints filed against government agencies, with 595 complaints filed with the CNDH against the Federal Police in 2010. “There’s been more and more accounts of abuses committed by the Federal Police,” Meyers says. On October 29, 2010, Federal Police shot a young protester in the stomach with live ammunition as he painted graffiti during the 11th “Walk Against Death” in Ciudad Juarez. More Merida Initiative Funding Police shot this protester with an unidentified projectile. He remains hospitalized with a fractured skull The day before Federal Police opened fire on protesters and the press in Oaxaca, United States President Barack Obama unveiled his 2012 budget request. The budget includes $291.5 million for Merida Initiative programs in Mexico. Mexico’s Ministry of Public Security (SSP in its Spanish abbreviation) is in charge of the Federal Police, and it is one of the biggest recipients of Merida Initiative funding. Through the Merida Initiative, the Federal Police receive equipment, training (from US and Colombian police, as well as private contractors), and even Black Hawk helicopters. While Obama’s 2012 budget request reduces Mexico’s Merida funding by about $250 million from the previous year, it increased International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) funding by $500,000. INCLE funding is what funds most—if not all—aid to the Federal Police. Some Merida Initiative funds are designed to reduce corruption within the Federal Police. That aid, notes Meyers, “focuses more on centros de control de confianza [police recruiting and vetting centers] and polygraph tests. That obviously doesn’t attend to this widespread pattern of abuse.” Marcelino Coache is recovering from a fractured skull and brain trauma after police shot him the head with a teargas canister. Meyer notes that there are three accountability mechanisms that would, in theory, assure that Merida Initiative assistance doesn’t fall into the hands of human rights abusers like Federal Police officers who open fire on unarmed demonstrators. The first is the Leahy Amendment, which prohibits any US foreign assistance from funding “any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit has committed gross violations of human rights” and hasn’t punished the offender(s). The US Embassy tracks individual human rights abusers in a database, but Meyers points out that the strength of the database depends on the amount of information the US Embassy enters into it. Kent Patterson from the Americas Program has criticized the United States’ enforcement of the Leahy Amendment: “Mexico, like Colombia, sidesteps the question by selecting for training only individuals from tainted units instead of having entire units trained.” The other two accountability mechanisms that apply to US drug war assistance to Mexico are attached to the Merida Initiative itself. A mere fifteen percent of Merida Initative assistance is conditioned upon Mexico improving accountability and transparency in the Federal Police and military. Additionally, in order to receive the conditioned funds, Mexico must demonstrate that it is investigating and trying soldiers and Federal Police who are credibly accused of human rights violations. “The latter is where we really haven’t seen any cases that we’re aware of where Federal Police who have been implicated in abuses have been effectively investigated and sanctioned,” says Meyers. Despite the rampant impunity for security forces’ human rights abuses, Merida’s human rights conditions have not significantly affected the flow of drug war aid to Mexico. The US Congress has symbolically withheld some of the funds, but thus far the human rights conditions haven't delayed Merida Initiative money for much longer than standard bureaucratic red tape has held up the other 85% of unconditioned funds.

Autonomous Supporters Describe Their Last Days in San Juan Copala

by Zósimo Camacho, Contralínea

October 1, 2010

After almost ten months under siege, San Juan Copala fell.  The paramilitaries kicked up the siege this past September 7, and over the following days they occupied the political and ceremonial center of the Triqui culture.  Nothing, no one, stopped them from smashing down doors, tearing down walls, burning homes, and ransacking houses.  Terror took hold for the last thirty families that resisted, and they fled through the hills, carrying the elderly, hurrying up children, falling into gullies.  Many escaped with bullet wounds.  They haven't been treated by doctors.  Under fire for 303 days, now displaced, always invisible, the Triquis that demand autonomy blame MULT [the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle] and UBISORT [the Union for the Social Well-being of the Triqui Region].  They accuse Amado Ortiz and Antonio Cruz [1] of leading the assault.

Yosoyuxi, Copala.  Barefoot, Altagracia Fernández de Jesús hides between her father's legs.  At four years old, she barely speaks.  Her mother, Francisca de Jesús, was shot in the back last September 7 as she tried to leave San Juan Copala.  She is in a hospital in Oaxaca.  Her brother, Elías, was murdered at the age of nine on November 29, 2009, in a classroom when paramilitaries shot up the school.  Her sister, Maribel, couldn't leave Copala's boarding school and stayed in the town center.  Her father, Benito Fernández, a 53-year-old carpenter with wounds on one foot, is desolate. 

For almost a quarter of her life, she's had to remain hidden in her house.  On the rainy morning of September 19, her father took her in his arms.  Sometimes he had to make her walk over the rocky ground while he carried 80-year-old Jacinta González Guzmán on his back.  Sometimes the man rolled through the brush with the old woman, at other times, with the little girl.

Also in that group that was fleeing from the hail of bullets was 53-year-old peasant Gabino Hernández; Margarita López Martínez, 45; Cornelio López Martínez, 51; and Susana López Martínez, 18.  The group was lucky: they weren't found by the armed groups.

They didn't bring any food with them, because at that point they didn't have any.  They fled with only the clothing on their backs, which they still wear.  They left behind their houses, their huipiles, some animals, personal documents, family photographs, altars, mats, cooking utensils, domestic goods, clothing...

But what they mourn is intangible.  They have been expelled from the Chuman'a, as they call San Juan Copala, the Triquis' ceremonial center.  They are concerned for their saints [2], which are prisoners in the church, without the flowers and candles that sustain them.  Their voices crack when they count the years they lived there: 12, 20, 40, 80, according to their ages.  The women who were not born in San Juan, but married there, could forget their age or the year they were born, but they'll never forget the year they moved to San Juan Copala, nor the time that they lived there.

"There is hope that we'll return to San Juan Copala," says Cornelio López.  He had previously spoken strongly and firmly.  But now that he's talking about the Chuman'a, where he worked the land for almost 40 years, his voice cracks.

"First God," he adds with difficulty, "we don't know; God knows..."

From "loaned" homes, the displaced recount their stories and show their wounds.  Most of the time they talk through an interpreter.  The sadness and indignation are translated from Triqui to Spanish.  They explain how each group, each family, each individual managed to evade the paramilitaries.  All agree that the gunfire that kept them in their homes for almost ten months got worse on September 13, when the armed groups took over the town hall.

From there, they spread out day by day, until they occupied the whole town.  They attacked street by street, house by house.  They used a loadspeaker to order men and women to leave their homes and give themselves up; they warned that they would hang the autonomous municipal president, Jesús Martínez Flores, and the men in the community.  Some families began to leave town the next night.  Others decided to resist a few more days.

Those who began to leave and had the "bad luck" to be discovered by the paramilitaries were shot and subdued.  The women were raped, like 42-year-old Natalia Cruz Bautista, who was tortured and humiliated (they cut her hair, took off her clothes, and raped her), and Francisca de Jesús García (who managed to flee, but with a bullet wound in her right shoulder; she is now in danger of losing the arm).

Those who stayed for a few more days heard walls being torn down, plundering, and they saw the flames.  Angelina Ramírez Ortega, 71, was one of the last people to abandon San Juan Copala.  She witnessed the massacre of farm animals and pets, the shooting of houses where smoke from the kitchen gave away those who were resisting.  The woman left when the armed group occupied almost the entire town, on September 19.

She leans against the door of the house that is giving her shelter now.  Battered, she awaits the reporters' questions with skepticism, but respect.  Her grotesquely bruised and swollen left hand and arm stand out.  Her arm is broken at the elbow.  No doctor has examined her. 

She recounts that she left alone before dawn: she waited for the heaviest darkness.  It was raining.  She slipped in the mud and tumbled until she hit the bottom of a ravine.  She doesn't know how long she was unconscious.  The paramilitaries found her. 

Angelina Ramírez says that when she came to, Antonio "Toño Pájaro" Cruz, one of the leaders of UBISORT,  dragged her by her hair and pointed the barrel of a submachine gun at her head.  Thin with a wrinkled face and her white hair stained with blood, she begged him to spare her life.

Through an interpreter, the grandmother explains that she had no other choice but to tell Toño Pájaro that she was old, that she couldn't harm anybody, that she is a widow and that they had already wounded her granddaughters (Selene and Adela Ramírez, both shot; Adela has a bullet lodged in her spine that has paralyzed her).

Toño Pájaro told Angelina to never come back, that she stop thinking that she still has a house in San Juan Copala.  He promised her that if she tries to return or to tells anyone, that she will be killed.

Others didn't leave.  José González Cruz, María Juana Agustina (grandparents who are about 100 years old) and 17-year-old Sofía Martínez were trapped in their homes.  Their whereabouts remain unknown.

All of the displaced insist that one of the leaders of the group that attacked San Juan Copala is Antonio Cruz.  The other, they claim, is Amado Ortiz, from the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT), from the El Rastrojo community.  They say that UBISORT barely has a dozen armed men, while MULT has an "uncountable" number of armed men.  They say that the majority of the gunmen come from the Rastrojo, Cieneguilla, and Coyuchi communities.  And that amongst the paramilitaries, there were some mestizos (mixed indigenous with Spanish decent) with balaclavas. 

MULT, in the voice of Heriberto Pazos Ortiz and in communiqués, has denied its participation in the occupation of San Juan Copala.

The sun comes up.  The fog begins to rise.  The brush and the plots of cultivated land are an intense green.  The hilly cornfields are yellow.  Clouds of smoke come out of the houses.  The women from Yosoyuxi toss corn tortillas on the griddles.  The displaced from San Juan Copala will eat with their families.    Everything is shared, even the pain.

There are 82 refugees in this community; another 94 are spread out over another four communities and in the cities of Oaxaca and Mexico.  And these are only those who left after September 7.  The total number of people exiled from San Juan Copala since the siege began on November 28, 2009, is over 800.

Since the Autonomous Municipality was founded, the armed groups have murdered at least 15 people and wounded 16.  Leaders of the autonomist movement are amongst the dead.  The region's highest leader, Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez, was executed along with his wife in his own home.  It was an operation that took six months to develop, with masked hitmen. 

The autonomous municipality came out of a MULT splinter group: the Independent Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULTI).  In mid-2006, Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez and the leaders of four other communities broke with the mestizo leadership of MULT, which is lead from Oaxaca City by Heriberto Pazos Ortiz [3].  In addition to the disagreements over the distribution of resources and over the "disciplinary" measures that MULT imposes, MULT created the Popular Unity Party [4].  The Triquis said they felt cheated, and they decided to not join the party.  Both groups accused each other of being traitors.  And the ambushes against those who broke off from MULT began.

In 2007, MULTI promoted the creation of an Autonomous Municipality, based in traditional indigenous governance practices.  They believed that in this way, the indigenous people could be freed from political organizations and parties.  MULTI said that it was willing to dissolve itself as an organization in order to make way for the autonomous government.  Some communities from UBISORT and some MULT members also embraced the autonomous project. 

The two traditional organizations, MULT and UBISORT, antagonists for so long, felt displaced and threatened.  Their leadership rejected the creation of the Autonomous Municipality. [5]

Political power isn't everything.  Federal and state resources [aid] isn't delivered directly to the communities.  Since the 1980s, the money is handed over to the organizations and they decide how to invest it in "their" communities.

In January 2007, San Juan Copala, Yosoyuxi, Paraje Pérez, Santa Cruz Tilapa, Guadalupe Tilapa, and Agua Fría named autonomous municipal authorities who were backed by their respected community assemblies: councils of elders, the mayordomo [a traditional Oaxacan leader chosen through public works], and traditional leaders from each community.

For almost two years, the autonomous project worked: the number of supporters and autonomous educational and health projects grew and took the place of the old projects.  The paramilitary siege began on November 28, 2009.  For almost ten months, residents lived under a state of siege.  The calls for help were not headed, and the paramilitary groups ended up occupying San Juan Copala.  The federal, state, and municipal governments left the Triquis who demanded autonomy to their own fate. 

According to supporters of the autonomous movement, the occupation of Copala was only possible thanks to the assassination of Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez, a great speaker in his Triqui language who enjoyed prestige, even amongst the opposing communities.  He was the highest traditional leader of seven communities and of MULTI.

"Autonomy will go on.  Love live Timo.  I promised Timo that I would give my life for autonomy.  And that's how it will be.  We will not kneel down before MULT or UBISORT," says Miguel Angel Velasco from another community that supports the autonomous movement and has given him shelter.

He explains that he left at the end: on the 19th, with five "little guys," his youngest children.  His adolescent children also left that day, but they took a different route: "If someone was going to have 'bad luck,' we hoped that they wouldn't get all of us."

One of those young men, 16-year-old Pablo Velasco Dorantes,  was wounded by a bullet in his left foot and hand.  Calmly, he explains that in the early hours of September 17, his house was attacked.  It seemed as though it was raining bullets.

In order to leave San Juan Copala, he walked, dragging his foot through 18 km of brush for over five hours.

"And they say that we should sit down and dialogue.  I don't know if you all would agree to dialogue if they run you out of your homes," says an indignant Felipa de Jesús Suárez, 44.

In the houses, the fire dies down but doesn't go out.  Yosoyuxi residents and guests put down straw mats and blankets for the night.  Some prefer to sleep in the backyard in the grass; others lay down with the dogs.

"Narit duini' iue (see you tomorrow)," they say before they stop talking.  Not everyone can get to sleep.

Murders in San Juan Copala Since The Founding of the Autonomous Municipality
Date	Name	Age
April 7, 2008	Teresa Bautista Merino	24
	Felícitas Martínez Sánchez	20
November 1, 2008	Héctor Antonio Ramírez Paz
November 29, 2009	Elías Fernández de Jesús	9
April 17, 2010	José Celestino Hernández Cruz
April 27, 2010	Beatriz Alberta Cariño Trujillo
	Jyri Jaakkola
May 20, 2010	Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez
	Tleriberta Castro
August 21, 2010	Antonio Ramírez López	72
	Antonio Cruz García	29
	Rigoberto González	40
September 5, 2010	Pedro Santos Castro	31
September 18, 2010	David García Réyez	25
September 19, 2010	Paulino Ramírez Réyez	28

Translated by Kristin Bricker.


Translator's Notes:

1.  Amado Ortiz is a MULT leader from the Rastrojo community.  Antonio Cruz is an UBISORT leader whom the autonomous municipality has accused of personally committing various attacks on its supporters.
2.  It is common to put up altars to saints in Mexican homes and churches.  Believers leave offerings for the saints, such as flower, fruits, candles, bread, and alcohol.
3.  Heriberto Pazos Ortiz is not Triqui; he is from Oaxaca's coast.
4.  The Popular Unity Party is billed as the nation's first indigenous party.  However, its candidates are not Triqui; they're not even indigenous.  They have very light skin.
5.  Some UBISORT leaders embraced the formation of the autonomous municipality and left the group.  Here, the author refers to the leaders who stayed in the organization.