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).

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"We Will Win One Hundred Times Over": Translating the Zapatista Resurgence

by Joshua Stephens, Toward Freedom

Zapatistas march in Ocosingo,
December 21, 2012.
Source: Roarmag.org

On December 21st of last year, as many across the world were speculating about the end of the Mayan calendar, 40,000 actual Mayans marched silently into five cities in Chiapas, Mexico, putting the Zapatistas and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) back into the forefront of grassroots political discourse the world over, and mainstream political discourse in Mexico. A stream of provocative communiques from the EZLN's spokesperson, Subcomandante Marcos, have followed.

For the better part of the last decade, Kristin Bricker has been documenting popular struggle in Mexico, particularly the Zapatista rebellion, and is one of the most prolific English translators of material produced by grassroots social movements across the country. Given the occasion of the seemingly sudden re-emergence of the Zapatistas, and her translations of its almost-daily literary flourishes, it seemed appropriate to catch up with her and solicit her reflections on the moment.

Joshua Stephens: I think a lot of people reading the pieces you've been translating the last month or so are wondering, so I'm just going to ask: Why now? Generally, the Zapatistas have mobilized at this volume in response to discreet events or conditions – North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the post-Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) electoral landscape, and so on. Do you have the sense that something in particular has sparked the resurgence?

Kristin Bricker: The current resurgence began with the December 21st mobilization in which 40,000 Zapatistas staged a silent march in five Chiapan cities. In their December 30th communique, they explained why they decided to step back into the limelight:  "After the media-driven coup d'état that exalted a poorly concealed and even more poorly disguised ignorance to the federal executive branch, we made ourselves present so that you would know that if they never left, neither did we." Here they are referring to the election of Enrique Peña Nieto to the country's presidency.

Peña Nieto is Mexico's George W. Bush. He won the 2012 election thanks to massive vote-buying. Everyone acknowledges that he is impressively stupid and not at all ashamed of it, and for the Left he's the devil incarnate. His godfather and puppet master is former president Carlos Salinas, who was in office when the Zapatistas staged their 1994 uprising. In order to pave the way for NAFTA, Salinas reformed Mexico's Constitution, essentially removing the land rights Emiliano Zapata and his peasant army fought and died for in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. As a result, Salinas continues to be even more unpopular than Peña Nieto's predecessor, Felipe Calderón, who launched the drug war that currently has Mexico embroiled in a deadly quagmire.

As governor of Mexico State, Peña Nieto laid a deadly trap for the People's Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a civilian peasant organization that has strong ties to the Zapatistas. In 2006, his government negotiated a deal with the FPDT that allowed flower vendors to sell flowers in the downtown area of Texocol, near Atenco. When the vendors, accompanied by the FPDT, showed up to sell flowers at the agreed-upon time and place, Peña Nieto's riot police were waiting for them. In the clashes that followed, police killed two protesters (including a fourteen-year-old boy, shot in the chest with live ammo) and gang-raped over twenty female detainees on a bus in front of other arrested demonstrators. No police have been punished for these abuses, but some demonstrators spent years in jail. Peña Nieto proudly claimed responsibility for the police's actions.

When he won the presidential election, it meant that the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for seventy years as a one-party dictatorship, would return to power after just a twelve-year hiatus. The Zapatistas were an important factor in the PRI's ouster following the 2000 elections, so it's fitting that they've chosen to go back on the offensive now.

JS: The initial communique following the late December march pretty openly acknowledged a widespread sense that the Zapatistas had eroded – as a force or presence – rather considerably. I remember conversations we had about the ebbing of The Other Campaign, autonomous communities' land-loss, and journalists' claims about Marcos being "put out to pasture". Was the "they don't need us in order to fail" comment simply an artful way to stage a return to visibility, or do you feel like it was taking aim at something?

KB: I actually have a different interpretation of that communique. I interpreted it as a response to all of the chatter in the Mexican and international media over the past few years that the Zapatistas had run out of steam, were losing ground, had failed to make any gains, and that Marcos was either dead or had been fired. As Marcos says in that communique, "We never left, even though media from all over the spectrum have dedicated themselves to making you believe that, and we are reemerging as the indigenous Zapatistas that we are and will be."

It's important to note that while this new set of communiques hopefully means that the Zapatistas are planning something proactive, they haven't been invisible over the past few years. In 2011, Marcos had some public written exchanges with two prominent men, intellectual Luis Villoro and writer-turned-activist Javier Sicilia. That same year, thousands of Zapatistas mobilized to march against the drug war in support of Javier Sicilia's peace movement. So if the Zapatista's disappeared from anywhere, it was from the corporate media's echo chamber. In reality, the Zapatistas never went away.

"They don't need us in order to fail" is an allusion to Karl Marx's assertion that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. Earlier in that same communique, he argues that the political class is "too incapable and dishonest to see that within themselves they had and have the seeds of their own destruction." Marcos has said that over and over; he even wrote a children's book called "The Story of the Lion and the Mirror" where the lion represents capitalism and the mirror, which kills the lion in the end, represents how capitalism contains the necessary contradictions for its own destruction.

Current and previous presidential administrations have made it very clear that Mexican politicians and their Yankee puppet masters are perfectly capable of failing miserably without the Zapatistas' help. No one can blame the hell that we are living in Mexico on the Zapatistas. The kidnappings, the guns that are held to our heads, the bodies that hang from bridges as we go to work or take our kids to school–the Zapatistas had nothing to do with that. It is a direct result of the United States-backed drug war that former president Felipe Calderón started with guns blazing in order to distract the country from the fact that he'd stolen the election.

JS: Has the resurgence had effects on the ground? There are references in these texts to collaboration with adherents to the Sixth Declaration, but it seemed in recent years as though that network had languished some.

KB: The Other Campaign's success has depended entirely on the people who make up the local collectives and regional networks. Yes, in some areas, collectives have languished somewhat as they wait for the Zapatistas to tell them what to do next. But one thing that you have to keep in mind is that the Other Campaign is comprised of a lot of groups that have been organizing since before the Other Campaign. That's the case in Guerrero, where human rights organizations and autonomist community policing organizations united under the Other Campaign umbrella. They're on the front lines against the dirty war and drug war violence in that state; they don't sit and wait around for the next Zapatista communique to tell them what to do. They're always proactive, because it's a matter of life and death for them.

The Other Campaign also resulted in like-minded individuals coming together under the pro-Zapatista banner to do community organizing that they might have not been doing prior to the Other Campaign. That's the case in Chalco, a poor, crime-ridden area of Mexico State. In 2010, following a foreseeable disaster where a canal burst and covered Chalco with raw sewage (in some areas putting the entire first floor of houses under what the residents politely referred to as "mud"), a collective of Other Campaign adherents in Chalco built relationships with the local church to do the disaster relief the government refused to do. Operating under the Other Campaign mantra of "If they touch one of us, they touch all of us," the Chalco collective called on Other Campaign adherents in the region to help out. The Chalco collective used the church as a base of operations where Other Campaign adherents from Mexico City and surrounding areas could drop off donations and provide free services. A collective of doctors who are adherents to the Other Campaign came out to Chalco to provide medical care to people who were suffering infections due to their exposure to raw sewage. A hairdresser came out to give kids haircuts before they went back to school. Brigades repainted walls to cover up the flood lines that reminded people of the few days they spent living under a few feet of feces. Having the wall of a government-maintained above-ground canal burst and cover your town with poop is just about the most undignified experience a working class community could possibly suffer. The Other Campaign brought dignity back to Chalco, and the collective there is as strong as ever.

The Other Campaign has also strengthened the movement to free political prisoners.  Instead of every jailed Zapatista sympathizer all over the country having to fight for their freedom in isolation, they're essentially guaranteed a support network, not just in Mexico, but all over the world. Just look at how hard the New York-based Movement for Justice in the Barrio has fought for Mexican political prisoners. The release of these political prisoners over the years is a constant tangible win for the Other Campaign. [Interviewer's note: Since the time of this interview, Zapatista political prisonerFrancisco Sántiz has been released, a day after his being mentioned in an EZLN communique.]

That said, so far I haven't seen any tangible effects of this resurgence–just a lot of anticipation. The latest communique from Subcomandante Marcos said "to be continued…" So I think everyone is anxiously waiting to see what the Zapatistas have up their sleeves. I imagine that Other Campaign collectives all over the country are meeting to analyze and discuss the latest communiques.

Personally, I think the new communiques are uplifting. We've suffered so much under the drug war, myself included. It's debilitating to be constantly bombarded with carnage, guns held to your head, kidnappings, extortion… Can you imagine what it is like to be afraid to look out your window to see what that noise was in the street because you're afraid that you'll be seen seeing something you shouldn't have? I think that, for many people outside of Mexico, it's impossible to imagine living under those conditions, much less organizing under them. When 40,000 Zapatistas took the streets and then they began releasing these new communiques, I felt hope and energy for the first time in two years. I think a lot of other people feel the same way. I'm excited to see what they have to say, and I'm excited to be a part of it. If anyone knows how to go through hell and emerge stronger, the Zapatistas do.

JS: I remember seeing middle school-aged kids studying at the Zapatista school in Oventic back in 2008, and realizing that I was looking at 13 and 14 year olds who had effectively always been Zapatistas, inasmuch as they were born after the '94 uprising. By now, those kids have reached adulthood, entirely within those communities and the mode of being cultivated in them. Is what we're seeing reflective of that generation coming into the fold, as it were?

KB: That is something that a lot of people noticed: how many of the Zapatistas who marched on December 21 were young adults. The Zapatista autonomist process officially kicked off in 2003 when the EZLN unilaterally implemented indigenous rights in the territory it controlled. That's when the EZLN, the Zapatista's military apparatus, created the civilian Good Government Councils to govern in the newly created autonomous territory, which was divided into five caracoles, or regional capitals.  Positions on the five Good Government Councils are rotative and decided through the indigenous tradition of choosing leaders based on their prior service to the community.

The Zapatistas who are now reaching adulthood, getting married, and having children of their own were babies during the uprising, and they were about nine when the autonomous governing system was created with its own schools and healthcare. So they still attended government elementary schools and were neglected by government health clinics when they were sick. They grew up with the feeling of being an outsider, different, inferior, or, as the Zapatistas call it, "other."  Part four of Marcos' "Them and Us" communiques talk about that feeling. But these young adults also spent their very important formative years living under an autonomous indigenous governing system where their indigenousness is celebrated, not scorned. That has to be very important for them. And now they're old enough to serve on the Good Government Councils.

JS: Indigenous resistance is increasingly visible, the world over, especially in light of the Idle No More actions coming out of Canada. And that resistance is increasingly networked. Is that part of the conversation on the ground in southern Mexico?

KB: Since their uprising in 1994, the Zapatistas have been at the forefront of globalizing leftist–not just indigenous–struggle in the new information age. Many people have argued that the protests that shut down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999–an event that radicalized and mobilized my generation–were to some extent inspired by the Zapatista uprising.

Of course, indigenous and anti-colonial struggles have always had a special place in the Zapatistas' hearts. Some of the first people to visit them after the uprising were Irish freedom fighters and leaders from the American Indian Movement. The Zapatistas have organized international meetings of indigenous peoples so that they can share their struggles and strategies. They organized the founding of Mexico's National Indigenous Congress so that the country's indigenous peoples could participate in the indigenous rights negotiations between the Zapatistas and the government. While the Zapatistas haven't specifically mentioned Idle No More (it's still relatively new, and there is a language barrier), Marcos has repeatedly expressed support for Palestinians resisting Israeli colonization. A lot of people in the United States, even leftists, seem to forget that the conflict in Palestine is centered around colonists (although they call themselves settlers) attempting to seize indigenous land and resources by displacing Palestinians and imprisoning them in open-air prisons akin to what the US calls reservations. This fact is not lost on Marcos and the Zapatistas.

The Zapatistas are now closely watching the indigenous Mapuche's struggle for autonomy and indigenous and land rights in Chile. Marcos has mentioned the Mapuches in three of the four "Them and Us" communiques that have been published, at this point. I think we'll see a greater collaboration between those two struggles in the near future.

Video of the Zapatistas' December 21, 2012 march in Chiapas, Mexico:

***

Kristin's translations of the recent Zapatista communiques can be read (along with her coverage of struggle in Mexico more broadly) at My Word is My Weapon. Follow her on Twitter at @kristinbricker.

Joshua Stephens is a writer, editor, activist, and board member with the Institute for Anarchist Studies, and co-editor at Counter Conduct. He splits his time between Brooklyn, NY and the Mediterranean. Follow him on Twitter at @joshuacstephens.

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Only the People Defend the People: Guerrero Human Rights Center Weighs in on Uprising

by the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of la Montaña
translated by Kristin Brickier

Photo: Blog del Narco

On Saturday, January 5, 2013, at about 11pm, citizen Eusebio Alvarado García, commissioner of Rancho Nuevo, Tecoanapa municipality, was taken by force from his home by people who belong to the criminal groups that have overrun the Ayutla region.  Eusebio had recently arrived at his home with the news that he had been elected a subcommander of the Community Police.  That afternoon there was a regional assembly of the authorities of El Portrero, which is also in Tecoanapa, where there were also representatives from other municipalities such as Cuautepec, San Marcos, Cruz Grande, and Ayutla.  Previously, the communities in this corridor of the Costa Chica met to plan joint actions against organized crime, which for years has dominated as the scourge of the indigenous and peasant communities because of the authorities' indifference at all three levels of government.

According to residents, the situation became unbearable because of the cruel and abusive manner in which these groups acted.  That's why, in the assembly on Saturday they felt the pressing need to construct a basic structure that would confront this de facto power.  Various groups of police were formed, each with its own commander, who were given the order to practice armed self defense when faced with any circumstance that would put the fiscal safety, freedom, or life of their compañeros and compañeras in the struggle at risk.

The unease and outrage had risen due to the kidnapping of a commander from Ahuacachahue in the Ayutla de los Libres municipality.  The people managed to identify which persons had carried out this criminal act.  Days afterwards, due to a teachers union conflict that affected the entire Me'phaa indigenous community of Plan de Gatica, the municipal commissioner was the victim of a kidnapping.  The community's immediate reaction led to the compañero's release in Acapulco.  Likewise, as a result of their investigation, the community knew who the intellectual and material architects of the crime were.  The worst was when a citizen from that same town was murdered on December 26, 2012, due to the same teachers union conflict.

These and many other criminal acts that have multiplied so much in the Me'phaa and Na Savi indigenous communities of Ayutla, as well as the extortions, kidnappings, narco-taxes, and murders that the businessmen and businesswomen, students, teachers, mobile vendors, some cab drivers, fathers and mothers suffer daily in the Ayutla, Tecoanapa, Cruz Grande, San Marcos, and Cuautepec municipalities resonated with the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG), which, due to its close work with the people in this zone, had the good sense, intelligence, ability, and bravery to make the largely poor and defenseless populace's suffering its own.  Faced with the urgency that the insecurity situation would further affect the indigenous and mestiza population's heritage, security, and lives, in its latest assemblies the UPOEG put aside the pressing issues on its agenda (such as the fight against high electric bills and the fight for infrastructure projects) in order to put the climate of violence and insecurity that the de facto criminal powers at the center of its agenda.

With skilled and painstaking citizen intelligence, they have a clear, in-depth analysis into crime's modus operandi: its centers of operation, allies, contacts, informants, accomplices, safe houses, etc.  Armed with this information, the communities made the decision to adopt self-defense in order to guarantee a true citizens' security, running the risks that using weapons (some of them in really bad shape) to confront those who were harming the population with weapons would entail.  They staked out the places were they generally operate, installed checkpoints, searched vehicles, detained those whom they managed to identify as members of those groups, seized weapons, and had to use their meager weapons against someone who resisted being searched and who tried to use his pistol against those who were leading the operation.

In a matter of hours, those responsible for searching for the commissioner located him.  Instead of being frightened by this intimidating act, they found the straw that broke the camel's back and set off an armed self-defense movement that forced them to take the populace's security into their own hands.  On Sunday, Three Kings Day, about 800 police arrived in Ayutla and immediately stationed themselves in strategic points in order to counteract any reaction from criminal groups.  They took control in order to institute order and detain those who were identified by the populace as perpetrators of crimes.

Without thinking twice, the 800 police who arrived armed with rudimentary weapons and modest clothing (which tells us something about their precarious economic situation) demonstrated to the authorities and society as a whole that determined and autonomously organized people are capable of instituting order and giving working people back their security.  This armed self-defense movement has achieved a power that is unprecedented in the state and in the country, because it is a tangible example of what citizens really have to do in order to recover the security we lost.

In order for the authorities to once again earn the people's trust, they have the obligation to correct their course, rectify their policies, and recognize that they have failed the citizenry because they are complicit in the tragedy that is bleeding us to death as a state.  The populace notices that various authorities work for the other side, because they don't act with conviction against the crime that festers in the government's own structures.  The vices that accompany corruption live on and are the gears that move a justice and security system that has turned into the citizens' enemy because it is in bed with organized crime.  This union leads to the humiliation, pillage, and devastation of a people besieged and subjugated by organized crime.

For their part, the politicians sit back and don't approach--not even by accident--the people from these communities that suffer the consequences of criminal acts.  They don't make their people's struggle their own.  Nor are they willing to respect and recognize indigenous people's efforts and contributions, which are based on internationally recognized collective rights which the governments have scorned.  Instead, the authorities in their crystal palaces become judges and and issue guilty verdicts, but not against those who have disrupted the populace's lives, but rather against the very police who defend the people and who are doing for free the work of those who continue to enjoy a comfortable life with outrageous salaries.

Now the state government is repeating what it has already done to the residents of Huamuxtitlán and Olinalá; it is asking those who have practiced self defense that they put down their weapons, that they give up their ambitions to establish order and stop detaining those who have committed crimes.  It asks, as it did 18 years ago with the nascent Community Police, that they turn their detainees over to the Public Prosecutor so that it can begin its investigations.  It is also trying to persuade them to go back to their communities and it promises that the saviors of the fatherland will come with Operation Safe Guerrero.  It intimidates them with the legalspeak that they are committing crimes and that they should have criminal investigations opened against them.

This governmental magnanimity is the another face of perversity and complicity, because it does not seek to get to the root of the citizens' security problems, nor does it have any intention of completely destroying the network of complicity and hidden interests that are entrenched in government institutions.  The purging and professionalization of the police departments and the state Attorney General's Office that society has demanded since the very beginning is a governmental issue and remains untouched.  All of the ministerial investigations have been distorted because they have turned into shams and quackery.

This past Sunday the communities once again exercised their right to consultation in order to make better decisions that will result in benefits for the citizens.  Their withdrawal is tactical, because they know that the Safe Guerrero program is not a panacea.  On the contrary, it could mean more risk, because no civil authority will guarantee that it will respect their human rights and that it won't impose martial law, which would generate even more fear, and would also inhibit, demobilize, and criminalize the population that organizes itself and defends its right to live safely.

This lesson of utmost importance is registered in the communities' memories.  Their most precious treasure is that they have ascertained their social and political potential.  They have realized that their power is unshakeable and their strength is unwavering.  These intangible goods are already part of their heritage and are their best community capital.  For that same reason, they are no longer willing to blindly obey nor naively believe in the authorities.  Their subjugation is another chapter in a dreadful story where governments mock and trample the people's dignity.  Trust can no longer be uncritically placed in authorities that have not demonstrated their commitment nor honored their word.  That's why they will remain vigilant and on the front lines in order to monitor those who are now in charge of security.  The communities will know when they have to decide to once again take the responsibility to provide security and guarantee justice into their own hands and apply their own cosmogenic systems based on internationally recognized indigenous peoples' rights.

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Citizen Uprising Against Organized Crime in Guerrero

Introduction and translations by Kristin Bricker

LAST UPDATE: JANUARY 15

On January 6, residents of several indigenous towns in the war-torn state of Guerrero followed the example of Cherán in Michoacan and took up arms to defend themselves against organized crime.

The following is meant to be a primer on the uprising and provide the background needed to understand the context.

Guerrero's indigenous were the hardest hit by Mexico's Dirty War in the 1960s and 1970s.  Guerrero is the only state to be under continuous military occupation since the Dirty War.  The effects of this military occupation are painfully obvious: the rape and torture of indigenous women at the hands of soldiers, the murder of human rights defenders, and the murder and torture of students protesting for the right to study.  It was, then, to be expected that when former president Felipe Calderón declared war on drugs, Guerrero's Dirty War would dovetail into the Drug War with disastrous consequences.

Guerrero has a rich history of armed, autonomous, and social movements.  It was where one of Mexico's most beloved guerrilla leaders, Lucio Cabañas, organized and fought until the military murdered him in 1974.  Guerrero, like Oaxaca, has a strong democratic teachers union, one of the most powerful social-political organizations in the state.  It went so far as to go on strike against organized crime in 2011, something few workers have been valiant enough to do when threatened with extortion.  Guerrero is also home to the autonomist Community Police, a citizens crime-fighting initiative based on indigenous governance that pre-dates the drug war and ardently supports the Zapatistas.

The Community Police appear to be somewhat involved in this new uprising, although they don't lead it.  The Community Police have stated that they are not involved in the uprising in Ayutla.  As their legal advisor explains in the second article below, they are wary that the Guerrero state government is attempting to co-opt the young movement, much as it does with indigenous groups in Chiapas in order to prevent them from allying themselves with the Zapatistas. The Community Police argue that the government wants to use this uprising and the well-intented peasants who are participating in it in order to militarize, paramilitarize, and infiltrate communities who belong to the Community Police.  The Community Police's full statement on the uprising is available here.

Fed Up with Narcos, Townspeople Take Up Arms in Guerrero

by Ezequiel Flores Contrera, Proceso

January 9, 2013

Photo: Ezequiel Flores

Chilpancingo, Guerrero (apro).  Five days ago, inhabitants of Ayutla de los Libres and members of the Community Police took over public security in this municipality located in the Costa Chica region with the goal of expelling organized crime groups that have devastated the region.

This incident once again demonstrates the lack of authority and the government's indifference towards the levels of impunity and violence that persist in the area.

Citizens are fed up with the incessant wave of murders, extortion, and kidnappings, which has set off a series of social movements, mainly in the la Montaña region, where armed townspeople seek to lock up organized criminal gangs, a situation that has shed light on alleged links between local authorities and criminals.

Last year, inhabitants of the municipalities of Huamuxtitlán, Xochihuetlán, Cualac, and Olinalá decided to arm themselves in order to kick out the criminals that operated with impunity in that zone in the la Montaña region.

Now, that same phenomenon is repeating itself in Ayutla de los Libres, the place where on March 1, 1854, the Ayutla Plan was proclaimed by Florencio Villareal and Juan N. Álvarez to disavow Antonio López de Santa Anna as president of the country.

A series of extortions and kidnappings came to a head on Saturday, January 5, when Eusebio Alberto Alvarado García, commissioner of the town of Rancho Nuevo in the Tecoanapa municipality, was kidnapped, according to official reports.

Immediately, close to 400 townspeople from three municipalities, Tecoanapa, Ayutla de los Libres, and Florencio Villareal, with the support from members of the Community Police, mobilized to rescue the commissioner.

Due to the fact that they put up checkpoints along the federal highway that joins these municipalities in the Costa Chica region, Alvarado García was freed and the kidnappers fled.

Notwithstanding, the townspeople and members of the Community Police maintained the checkpoint in Ayutla and, on Sunday, January 6, they shot a taxi driver who refused to be searched, according to the state Attorney General's Office. [Translator's note: The Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of la Montaña claims that the taxi driver was armed and tried to open fire on the men who tried to search his car.]

The justice agency opened a criminal investigation into the death of 40-year-old Cutberto Luna Chávez.

Notwithstanding, on Tuesday, January 8, governor Ángel Aguirre justified the Ayutla townspeople's actions, stating that armed self-defense "sheds light on citizens' desperation with organized crime and the absence of a response from the authorities," according to local media.

Some 200 armed civilians currently maintain a checkpoint at the entrance and exit of the municipal seat of Ayutla de los Libres and they claim they will not leave until they permanently drive out members of criminal groups that operate in the zone.

***

The Example of Armed Self-Defense Spreads in Guerrero Communities

• The protection measures prove the government's failure against organized crime, says NGO
• Local groups say that Governor Aguirre Rivero doesn't listen to them nor does he follow through

by Sergio Ocampo Arista, La Jornada

Nahuas from about 30 communities created the Popular Citizens Police this past December 2 in  Temalcatzingo, Olinalá municipality, in the Montaña Alta.  Photo: Sergio Ocampo

Chilpancingo, Guerrero, Janurary 12.  Dozens of communities in the la Montaña and Costa Chica regions of Guerrero have once again become the scene for actions of armed self-defense due to a lack of response from the three levels of government to deal with the people's demands for security against the organized crime that operates in those two regions in the southeastern part of the state, where Me'pha (Tlapaneco), Ñuu savi (Mixteco), and Amusgo indigenous peoples and Afro-Mexicans live.

Led mainly by contingents from the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (Upoeg in its Spanish initials), the communities joined the movement of citizens who are tired of crime, violations, and extortion at the hands of criminal groups.

Vidulfo Rosales Sierra of the Tlachinollan Montaña Regional Human Rights Center spoke about the causes of the popular uprising that began on January 6 in the municipal seat of Ayutla de los Libres following the kidnapping of Eusebio Álvarez Mendoza, a rancher and commissioner of the Rancho Nuevo community in the Tecoanapa municipality: "That is due to a vacuum of federal and local authority in the exercise of their functions in public security."

Townspeople from Ayutla de los Libres in the Costa Chica
work a checkpoint installed in the Guerrero
municipality without the Community Police.
Photo: Lenin Ocampo Torres

Without doubt, he added, "the security model and its policies have failed; regarding Operation Safe Guerrero, it's important to remember that last year it was in effect, but there weren't considerable advances.  What is happening is proof that the criminals were not apprehended nor did it have an impact on crime levels in that zone; on the contrary, [organized crime] was strengthened."

Rosales Sierra complained, "It can't be possible that peasants who are organized with low-calibre guns are standing up to the criminals in a matter of two days, while the Army, the Navy, and police with high-powered weapons haven't had an impact in three years; that is impossible, it doesn't merit further analysis.  That indicates that there is a high level of complicity and a total lack of authority; for example, the state Attorney General's Office does nothing, it knows about the relationships its police force has and it refuses to remove its personnel, and here we see the consequences."

He insisted that it is evident that "there is a high level of coexistence and complicity between the state authorities such as the Ministerial Police and the state police assigned to the El Limón community in Ayutla with the public prosecutors and judges which generated an environment that allowed organized crime to freely move in those places as if they were at home.  All of that complicity allowed crime to reign and abuse the population."

That vacuum created by the government led to locals organizing themselves.  "The people were fed up and decided to take security into their own hands, to rescue the principles of justice for the indigenous and mestizo peasants."

Perhaps the most important part of this popular uprising is that it demonstrates to Mexico that organized crime is not invincible and that once the people organize, they can keep crime in check, and that society shouldn't be paralyzed by the scourge "as they did these past months in the municipalities of Huamuxtitlán, Cualac, and Olinalá."

But he warned that "when the people return to their communities, [criminal groups] could react and put the safety of the peasants and their families at risk.  We will be watching to see how the authorities react, because this is not about sending in more police."

He proposed that the peasants strengthen themselves and respect "the systems of uses and customs [traditional indigenous governance], to resume the peoples' traditional justice systems, and to not simply organize in the heat of the moment without creating their own justice institutions to avoid that crime threatens them."

The Organizing Process

The first manifestation of the organization of the indigenous, mestizo, and Afro-Mexican peoples was the creation of the Regional Coordinating Body of Community Authorities-Community Police (CRAC-PC) in October of 1995; the municipalities of Huamuztitlán followed their example this past September 17 with their Popular Citizens Police (PCP), as did thirty Nahua towns in Temalacatzingo in the Olinalá municipality this past December 2.

One of the almost 300 volunteer
guards from the town of Tecoanapa,
in the Costa Chica region.
 Photo: Lenin Ocampo Torres

In Huamuxtitlán the PCP was created with over 100 members on September 17, 2012, following the kidnapping of 18 people by an organized crime group.  Guerrero's ex-Attorney General, Alberto López Rosas, was even given a file with over thirty violent crimes, including the kidnapping of former mayor Juan Carlos Jiménez, murders of taxi drivers, the appearance of cadavers in the municipal seat, home burglaries and stolen cars, extortion of business owners, and alleged threats to the ex-mayor Soledad Romero and her husband Víctor Echeverría Valenzuela, a former leader of the teachers union.

On November 25, over 200 Mixteco peasants from at least 30 communities in the Ayutla de los Libres municipality were sworn in as new members of the Community Police to combat organized crime.

With the Mixteco communities joining the CRAC, its territory has grown to 107 towns in thirteen municipalities in Costa Chica and la Montaña: San Luis Acatlán, Marquelia, Metlatónoc, Cochoapa El Grande, Iliatenco, Malinaltepec, Altamajalcingo del Monte, Tlapa, Tlacoapa, Acatepec, Ayutla, Azoyú, and Tlacoachistlahuaca.

The municipalities that have joined the Popular Citizens Police are Huamuxtitlán, Cualac, and Olinalá, which are on the border with the states of Morelos and Puebla.

Over a Year Without a Meeting

Valentín Hernández, the CRAC's legal advisor, recalls that almost as soon as Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero took office on April 1, 2011, they requested a meeting with him, "and it wasn't until May 28, 2012, when CRAC was given its one and only meeting, although afterwards there have been a few meetings with the compañeros with the goal of following up on the demands that were presented, which have only been minimally fulfilled."

He stated that the governor has not complied with the agreements that have been reached, "he only granted a budget of $500,000 pesos, which was given in very small payments; they only gave part of the 500 radios that they had promised, and beyond that, nothing, no uniforms, no weapons, no rations, no vehicles.  As a result of this breach of agreement, we give him the authority that someone who makes promises and doesn't follow through deserves."

He believes that the governor's indifference contrasts with how the towns of Ayutla and Tecoanapa have treated the uprising, which Upoeg is leading.  "Some of these issues have been raised in the Community Police assemblies, and others have come out in the media.  We don't care if attention is payed to other groups as long as it isn't detrimental to the CRAC's demands and organizing process.

"We've seen that while spaces for dialogue and fulfillment of agreements have been closed to the CRAC, other groups where the Community Police has a presence are given full support; this makes it clear that the rumors that have been circulating since December 22 when the regional coordinators and commanders were appointed in the El Paraíso House of Justice in Ayutla de los Libres are true: that the Upoeg is practically working with the state government."

"What's happening in Ayutla," he stressed, "is proof of that.  If you analyze the declarations the Upoeg has made this past week, it's clear that they were behind the uprising from the beginning, and that they are even inviting towns from the region, including those that belong to the CRAC, to join their movement."

Nonetheless, Valentín Hernández announced that CRAC will soon announce its official position.  "There was already a meeting where it was agreed that a position that has been condensed upon between the coordinators and the council members will be given, and we'll probably emit a formal communique on Monday."

Regarding the presence of organized crime in the communities that belong to the CRAC's houses of justice located in San Luis Acatlán, Espino Blanco in the Malinaltepec municipality, and Zitlaltepec in the Metlatónoc municipality, "there's tranquility, although we are on alert due to the situation in Ayutla, it's business as usual."

According to the lawyer from Tlachinollan, Aguirre Rivero has had a very distinct attitude towards the CRAC: "the insensitivity and lack of interest in the people's normative systems is plainly evident.  The government has distain for the CRAC's normative system, when it is a model that could put security back on track and show us how to resolve the problem of insecurity."

Instead, he insisted, the government, far from addressing problems, has criminalized social struggle, "it has designed and maintained the peoples in oblivion, and now it's going to have to face the problem because it's just around the corner and it has to deal with the communities' uprising, because it has to respond to this problem that demonstrates the failures of the state's justice system."

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Rural Student Protesters Under Siege in Guerrero, Two Killed by Police

by Kristin Bricker

Plainclothes police opened fire on unarmed students.
Photo: El Universal

Mexico's normales rurales, or rural teaching schools, are publicly funded socialist schools that train poor peasants to be rural teachers.  In a country where many rural students don't have the opportunity to study because there are no schools in their area, or the schools don't have teachers, the rural teaching schools are crucial to rural development. 

The rural teaching schools believe that a populace must be educated in order to demand that their rights be respected and to organize to raise their standard of living.  For this reason, the Mexican government is attempting to shut down all of the normales rurales by slashing their budgets, doing away with the boarding schools (making it nearly impossible for the schools to teach their desired student base, which is rural, marginalized, isolated, poor students), slashing the incoming class sizes, reducing the number of teaching positions guaranteed to graduates, and eventually shutting down the schools entirely. 

The government's position has forced the normalistas to defend their schools.  The student union frequently negotiates contracts with government officials, and like any union, they use protest to strengthen their hand during these negotiations.  They frequently use highway blockades to force a meeting, as was the case in Guerrero yesterday. 

Photo: EFE

The students were unarmed; the police immediately responded to the protest with high-powered assault rifles.

What follows are translated clips from media reports about the confrontation.  The first two articles are regarding the confrontation itself; the third article provides more background on the situation at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching School and what led up to the protest; and the fourth is an update on the wounded, detained, and disappeared, as well as continuing police and military operations against the students.

Police Kill Two Students While Clearing a Highway Blockade
*They were students at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching School
*The protesters demand a meeting with Gov. Angel Aguirre
*The students report wounded and disappeared persons

by Sergio Ocampo Arista, La Jornada
translated by Kristin Bricker


Chilpancingo, Gro., December 12. Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, students at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teaching School in Ayotzinapa, died after they were hit by shots fired by federal and state police, as well as agents from the state attorney general's office, during a violent [police operation to] clear a group of students from that school who were blocking the Mexico-Acapulco Sun Freeway and a federal highway near the city of Chilpancingo.

At about 11:45am on Monday, about 500 formalists arrived in buses, supported by 26 indigenous people from the Peasant Organization of the Tecoanapa Municipality, and another 20 from the organization Xanii Tsavvi ("Mixtec Dream"), and closed the lanes of the aforementioned highways.

Their main demand is a meeting with Governor Angel Aguirre Rivero, whom they accuse of standing them up four times.  They also ask that classes be reinitiated in the school.  They have been suspended since November 2 because the teachers "are trying to impose" Eugenio Hernández García as school director.  The students say he is a repressor. 

Other demands are an increase in the class size from 140 to 170 students for the 2011-2012 freshman class and that the potential students who have a average of 7 points [on a scale of 1-10] be permitted to take the admission exam.

The blockade had barely begun when at least 300 officers with the federal and state police, with the latter led by Guerrero's undersecretary of Security, General Ramón Arreola Ibarría.  Later, agents from the attorney general's office arrived.

Workers from the Servicio Centro Comercial gas station recounted that just minutes after noon, the federal agents attempted to clear the formalists, who repelled the police by throwing stones, bottle rockets, and molotov cocktails.

At that point, in the gas station, some of the students from Ayotzinapa set fire to a gas pump, and that was when the federal agents shot into the air. [Translator's note: the students deny that they set fire to the gas station, see below.]

Dozens of state police, led by Gen. Arreola, were positioned about 50 meters away, on the bridge over Huacapa River near the Liverpool department store.

Several of the police were dressed in plainclothes.  "Let's go, cabrones!" yelled the undersecretary of Security to incite his officers to confront the formalists.  Several agents fired their guns.

[...]

The students were attacked on two flanks, from the north and the south, from both sides of the Sun Freeway, and from the Huacapa River bridge.

One group of students attempted to take cover in one of the busses, and another attempted to repel the police with bottle rockets and stones, but they didn't succeed.

On the contrary, the gunfire intensified.  The bus windows were shattered and the side panels were pocked with bullet holes.

Astonished and nervous, drivers of cars, busses, and trucks who witnessed the indecent from both lanes, fled to protect themselves from the gunfire.

The driver of a truck with license plate number 249-DC-5 was grazed in the face by a bullet, and an elderly man who took refuge in the truck was detained by police.  His whereabouts remain unknown.

Police also detained Eric Escobar, a reporter with the Chilpancingo weekly Trinchera, whom they beat in the face and body and then later released.

At 12:10pm the gunfire intensified, and that is when student Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús was killed.

Jorge Alexis Herrera was shot down at about the same time.  Their classmates, thinking that they were only injured, tried to get them onto a bus to protect them, but when they realized that they were dead they decided to leave them on the ground.

The gunfire continued for about 20 minutes from both lanes.  The police, guns in hand, chased the students, who threw stones at the agents.

Several students took refuse in the hills located on both sides of the highway and from there they moved to their school.  Others headed towards the town of Petaquillas, located about five kilometers from the highway blockade.

Some fled towards the municipality of Tierra Colorada, located about 45 kilometers away.  According to the students, two of their classmates were injured.

On the ground there remained stones, pipes, molotov cocktails, and dozens of bullet shells from weapons of the calibers that police use.

The shooting ended at about 12:35pm.  Minutes later, three military vehicles arrived.  They stayed for about a half an hour and then headed for the town of Petaquillas.

[…]

At 2:35pm the highway was reopened in both directions.  The persecution of the students didn't cease.  The police searched the hills for formalists until after 4pm.

Herrera Pino was from Atoyac de Alvarez, Guerrero, and Echeverría de Jesús was from Tixtla, Guerrero.  Near their bodies were 7.62 caliber shells for a G-3 rifle.

[…]


We Were Completely Unarmed, Say the Normalistas
El Universal
translated by Kristin Bricker

El Universal's images from the confrontation: http://www.eluniversaltv.com.mx/detalle.php?d=27281

Rural teaching students who participated in the confrontation yesterday with police in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, say that they were unarmed and that they didn't even have bottle rockets.  They blame the state agents for having initiated the aggression with gunfire, which led to the dead of two students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teaching School in Ayotzinapa.

The students, represented by student Jersey Peñaloza, said that they were never at the level of the police because of the weapons the police carried.  They said their intention was only to protest and to demand a meeting with Gov. Angel Aguirre Rivero.

He added that according to a preliminary list from the State Attorney General's Office, nine people were detained following the confrontation, although Peñaloza says that at least another 15 students are disappeared, and it is not known if they were detained.

"We demand that this crime that has been committed against our classmates does not remain in impunity, and that those responsible be punished.  They know who acted, there are videos that show that it was them (the police) who initiated the aggression, the unarmed students sought refuge," he pointed out.

Peñaloza stated that the agents kept shooting at them, and that the students only defended themselves with sticks and stones.

Regarding the fire in the gas station, the students said that it was the police who retreated to the gas station and set it on fire, and then later blamed the students.

[…]

"We Now Have the Green Light," Said Police Before Shooting
by Rogelio Velázquez, Contralinea
translated by Kristin Bricker

December 13, 2011

Students from the rural teaching school in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, demanded negotiations with the governor and recognition of their demands.  The blocked the Sun Freeway as a form of pressure.  The police operation's toll: two students murdered, at least five injured with gunshots, and 18 detained. "It was the Federal Police who shot at us; many of us fled for the hills and even there they pursued us with helicopters," they said in an interview.

This past December 12 at about 11am, students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teaching School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, began to block traffic on the Sun Freeway, which connects Mexico City to Acapulco.  Their demands were clear: a meeting with the state government and compliance with a verbal agreement made my Governor Angel Heladio Aguirre Rivero to increase the incoming class size from 140 to 170 students and to grant 30 teaching positions to the school's graduates.

The operation was led by Federal Police, who were accompanied by Ministerial Police [from the Attorney General's office], and state police.

"There were about 400 of us--students and people from social organizations.  We blocked the freeway because the governor only says 'yes,' but he won't sign our demands.  It has to be signed before the year ends," one of the students who participated in the protest told Contralinea.  He is in hiding in Chilpancingo.

"Special Forces from the Federal Police arrived to clear our blockade.  We were dialoguing with them.  Then one of the police made a phone call--we don't know to whom--and when he hung up, they said that they had the green light to do whatever they wanted."

"That was when the Federal Police began to shoot tear gas at us.  Some of us ran.  Immediately afterwards they began to shoot us point-blank.  They didn't care that there were children and women with us.  The shooting continued, and all of us ran in different directions."

The bodies of two students, Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino, 22, and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, 21, were hit by bullets and fell to the highway.  The young men were students at the rural teaching school.

"Afterwards, they chased is in vehicles and on foot while they shot at us.  Some of us who hid in the hills were chased by helicopters.  We can't communicate with our classmates because the cell phones aren't working," he commented, alleging that the lines were cut.  "They're still looking for us."

Bertoldo Martínez, president of the Coalition of Democratic Organizations of the State of Guerrero explains that the protest also included the demand that missing environmentalists Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista, both disappeared since December 6 as they were headed from Chilpancingo to Mexico City, be presented alive. [Translator's note: Alarcón and Bautista were members of poet Javier Sicilia's anti-drug war Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), and were kidnapped on their way to MPJD meetings.]

The human rights defender says that the Guerrero government is responsible for what is happening: "What is happening in the state is grave and shameful.  These sorts of situations don't get solved.  For example, the supposed suicide of Joel Santana Villa was a murder perpetrated by the State," he commented, referring to the death of an environmentalist who was imprisoned in the Iguala prison since last June.  His death occurred this past December 2 inside the prison.

Students from the Federation of Peasant Socialist Students of Mexico (FECSM) commented in a press conference--which took place in the offices of Local 9 of the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE)--that they still don't know the whereabouts of the detained (about 24) and they blame Gov. Angel Aguirre, Federal Police, State Police, and the Mexican military for the murder of the formalists.

"The attack occurred during a state of calm.  This was a normal protest, just like the ones we always do.  Now, after this, there's going to be movement," which means that they will take more forceful actions and that there will be more mobilizations.  "A few months ago the governor came to the school to talk with us, but he didn't want to sign anything.  His predecessor, ex-governor Zeferino Torreblanca, starved us, and this governor kills us."

Moreover, they stated that the rural teaching school is besieged by the Mexican military: approximately 14 military vehicles surround the school.  About twenty of their classmates are inside.  They fear that the school will be taking over by the armed forces in the next few hours.

They also note that the Secretary of Education in Guerrero has not responded to their demands.  They directly blame [President] Felipe Calderón for the strategy of war that is being carried out and for neoliberal policies that have deteriorated education in the country.

In a communiqué, the Interior Ministry said that it is working in coordination with Guerrero authorities to investigate the incident and to hold responsible those who were responsible for the homicides.  Meanwhile, the Federal Attorney General's Office opened criminal investigation PGR/GRO/CHI/CASO/387/2011 for any federal crimes that resulted from the incident.

José Ramón Salinas, spokesman for the Federal Police, stated that the Federal Police had not participated in the operation; however, Ramón Arreola Ibarra, undersecretary of Police Control for the state of Guerrero, contradicted him and commented that the Federal Police broke up the protest.

The government of Guerrero made a statement on its web site.  It explained that the governor had met with the students on various occasions and that the majority of their demands had been resolved.  Those that had not been resolved, "is because [the government] didn't have the ability to resolve them immediately."  Likewise, the statement reiterated the government's willingness to resolve the problems and demands from diverse sectors of society, respecting free expression of ideas and protest.

In response, the students stated: "We don't believe them.  How is it possible that they want a dialogue while they are preparing to close down the school by force? They want to close it because inside we practice self-government."

The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), initiated a formal complaint with case number CGCP/309/11 regarding the aggression against the students.  In a communiqué it mentioned that it would provide accompaniment, legal support, psychological support, and medical attention if it is required to the victims' families.  Moreover, it declared the incident to be "lamentable and deplorable, and it should not, under any circumstance, remain in impunity."

Normalista Injured in Yesterday's Police Operation is in Grave Condition; 24 Detainees Are Freed
by Sergio Ocampo and Hértor Briseño, La Jornada
translated by Kristin Bricker

Several of the detainees say they were tortured in police custody

Chilpancingo, Gro. The Student Society of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching School stated that student José David Espíritu, who was injured yesterday as police cleared a highway blockade in the capital city carried out by students, has been operated on and his condition is listed as grave.

Iván Alberto Alvarez Adame and Rubén Eduviges Cuautololo were also injured during the operation.  Today the State Attorney General's Office released 24 students who had been detained.

Of those, 11 are from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching School, five are from the Autonomous University of Guerrero's Economics Department, four are from Chilpancingo Tech, and four are peasants from the Coyuca de Benítez municipality in the Costa Grande region of Guerrero.

Manuel Olivares of the Guerrero Human Rights Network, denounced that student Gerardo Torres Pérez, whom the state attorney general's office is accusing of having shot an AK-47, told non-governmental organizations that visited him that he was brutally tortured into stating that he fired a weapon.

The normalista said that the police took him to an area near the municipality of Zumpango de Neri, located about 10 kilometers from the capital, where they took him out of the vehicle in a parcel of land and made him fire the weapon four times.

Olivares also said that the whereabouts of 13 people who came to support the students are unknown.  The missing are from the municipalities of Ayutla de los Libres and Tecoanapa.

At 1pm there will be a protest march in the capital.  The central demand is the ouster of the Chilpancingo government and the removal of governor Angel Aguirre's cabinet.

People Are Still Being Detained

Jersey Peñaloza, representing the normalistas, that hours after "the massacre" teachers and people uninvolved with the protest were still being detained.  Some escaped and have taken cover in the hills.

[…]

Another student said that some of the detained have said that they were tortured.

[…]

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Mexican Civil Society Wants President and Drug Traffickers To Face War Crimes Charges In The International Criminal Court

by Kristin Bricker, SSR Centre

The accused (from left): Public Security Secretary

Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo 

Galván Galván, President Felipe Calderón, and Navy 

Secretary Mariano Francisco Saynez Mendoza. 

A coalition of lawyers, academics, activists, and journalists has announced that it will seek the prosecution of President Felipe Calderón in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from his deployment of the military to battle drug trafficking organizations.  “Our petition is supported by over 20,000 signatures, both handwritten and electronic,” they said in a written statement, “making it the largest citizens’ complaint that the ICC has ever received.”

Netzai Sandoval, the lawyer who is preparing the complaint, argues that the ICC has jurisdiction in this case because Mexico is a signatory to the Rome Statute, and because the country’s drug war constitutes an “armed conflict not of an international nature.” The Rome Statute, which created the court in 2002, defines an “armed conflict not of an international nature” as “armed conflicts that take place in the territory of a State when there is protracted armed conflict between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups.”


Details of the Complaint

In addition to President Calderón, Sandoval has requested that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor investigate Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo Galván Galván, Navy Secretary Francisco Saynez Mendoza, drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and “other authorities, military officials, and drug traffickers who are responsible for war crimes in Mexico.”

The Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for determining admissibility, defendants, and charges.  However, Sandoval has requested that the Prosecutor investigate both government officials and drug trafficking organizations for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  He argues that both sides of the conflict have committed murders, rape and sexual slavery, forced disappearances, physical mutilations, inhuman treatment and torture, extensive destruction of property, and attacks against the civilian population, all of which are classified as war crimes or crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute.

Sandoval notes that the Army has murdered and tortured innocent civilians at military checkpoints and during military operations.  “It has attempted to cover up these incidents in order to guarantee impunity,” argues Sandoval.  In 2010, for example, the military killed two students at the elite private university Tec de Monterrey. Soldiers planted weapons on the students’ corpses and removed their backpacks and student IDs to make them appear to be cartel gunmen.

The complaint that Sandoval will present to the ICC also details war crimes committed by criminal organizations.  It specifically mentions the massacres perpetuated by unidentified gunmen at drug rehabilitation clinics that are occurring with alarming frequency in various northern states.  Moreover, he accuses drug trafficking organizations of forcibly recruiting children under fifteen years of age, which has been demonstrated by arrests of children such as 13-year-old Edgar Jiménez Lugo, a cartel hitman who says that a drug trafficking organization kidnapped him when he was eleven and ordered him to kill or be killed.

Sandoval argues that both the government and drug trafficking organizations have committed physical mutilations.  Early in the war, drug trafficking organizations began to terrorize the civilian population by dumping tortured and mutilated bodies in public places such as in dance clubs, alongside highways, hanging from overpasses, or in front of government buildings or schools. In late 2009, the government responded in kind: the Marines killed drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva in his home, and then employees from the medical examiner’s office stripped him down to his underwear and covered his bullet-ridden corpse with bloody peso notes and U.S. dollar bills.  They took pictures of his semi-nude body and leaked the pictures to the press, presumably to intimidate Beltran Leyva’s criminal organization.

The complaint also accuses officials from the Mexican government’s National Immigration Institute (INM) of collaborating with drug trafficking organizations to kidnap and traffic Central American migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the United States.  The government has admitted widespread corruption in the INM, where alarming numbers of immigration agents detain migrants and then hand them over to cartels in exchange for a fee.  The cartels themselves frequently kidnap dozens of migrants in a single raid.  The criminals detain the migrants in “safe houses” while theydemand ransoms from the migrants’ families in the United States, or they enslave the kidnapped migrants to work in fields or—in the case of women—the sex industry as prostitutes or in pornographic movies.

The Gravity Threshold


Due to its limited capacity, the ICC declines to investigate some cases in which it has compelling evidence that war crimes have occurred, but do not reach the ICC’s standard for gravity.  “Even where there is a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been committed, this is not sufficient for the initiation of an investigation by the International Criminal Court,” wrote ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo when he declined to file charges against coalition forces for war crimes committed in Iraq. “While, in a general sense, any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court is ‘grave,’ the [Rome] Statute requires an additional threshold of gravity even where the subject-matter jurisdiction is satisfied. This assessment is necessary as the Court is faced with multiple situations involving hundreds or thousands of crimes and must select situations” in which the commission of said war crimes are “committed as a part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.”

Migrants’ plight in Mexico might be one of the complaint’s more compelling aspects for the ICC because the crimes committed against them are so widespread.  Germán Guillermo Ramírez Garduaza, who runs the “Santa Faustina Kowalska” Migrante Shelter in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, estimates that 80% of the Centeral American women who pass through his shelter have been raped during their journey.  “They consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate,” explains Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center in Chiapas.

The Mexican government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) documented 214 cases of mass kidnappings of migrants in 2010 alone, with a total of 11,333 victims.  This number does not include unreported mass kidnappings, nor does it include kidnappings of small numbers of migrants, meaning that the total number of Central American migrants kidnapped in Mexico is likely much higher.

Sandoval hopes that the staggering statistics of over 50,000 dead, thousands of forced disappearances, at least 230,000 displaced persons, and the appearance of severely mutilated bodies left on public display in various parts of the country on a daily basis will convince the court that high-ranking government officials and drug trafficking organizations are committing war crimes in Mexico “on a massive scale.”


Goals of an ICC Investigation


Unlike the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), which allows victims to sue State parties over a range of human rights violations, the ICC prosecutes individuals—not States—who are allegedly responsible for a very limited range of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.  Whereas the IACtHR has the power to order States to reform laws or policies that prevent victims from obtaining justice, the ICC only seeks punitive damages, such as imprisonment or indemnity for victims.

Nonetheless, Sandoval believes that an ICC investigation could have important political implications in Mexico.  He hopes that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor will be able to obtain confidential information regarding the military’s role in the drug war because the Mexican military has denied many Transparency Act requests on the basis of national security.  “On May 9, 2007, [Calderón] published an executive order to create an elite force called the Cuerpo de Fuerzas de Apoyo Federal [Federal Support Forces],” explained Sandoval.  “This elite unit is directly controlled by Felipe Calderón and was involved in the drug war… There is no General or other official between Calderón and those soldiers.”  Sandoval hopes that the Office of the Prosecutor will investigate the secretive Federal Support Forces for any possible human rights abuses, because domestic attempts to obtain information about their actions have been futile.  If the ICC finds that the elite unit is responsible for human rights abuses, Sandoval argues that it can hold Calderón directly responsible for their actions.

Due to the corruption and complicity with organized crime that prevails in Mexico’s security institutions, many victims never report crimes for fear of retaliation.  Mexico’s Census Bureau (INEGI) reports that in 2010, 24 percent of the Mexican population reported being the victim of a crime.  However, only 12.3 percent of them reported the crimes to the police. Of those crimes that were reported to the police, the police only investigated eight percent.

“Mexico is a country of impunity,” argues John Ackerman, a legal scholar with the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Legal Investigations Institute.  Ackerman says that bringing a case before the ICC is a way for citizens “to use legal, peaceful means to demand justice and accountability.”

Sandoval hopes that the ICC will open offices in Mexico to carry out a direct and impartial investigation into possible war crimes. “The ICC should open field offices in different parts of the country so that victims can go there and give direct testimony.”

Even though ICC investigations can drag on for years, Sandoval hopes that the complaint will pressure Mexican politicians to reform the country’s security strategy soon.  “The candidates who will compete in the 2012 presidential election should know that if they continue with a militaristic policy that covers up soldiers’ crimes, they will share Calderón’s fate,” said Sandoval.  “One would hope that they would begin to discuss a plan for the military to return to its barracks, and embark on a new strategy for confronting organized crime.”

Kristin Bricker is a Mexico-based freelance journalist who specializes in militarization, human rights, social movements and the drug war in Latin America.

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