Counterinsurgency operations against indigenous communities in resistance intensify

Fray Bartolome de Las Casas
Human Rights Center

San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas on June 11, 2008
Press Release 13

Counterinsurgency operations against indigenous communities in resistance intensify

• Military and police accompanied by civilians enter indigenous communities in Chiapas and Guerrero.
• Aggressions against residents and persecution of members of dissident social organizations during the incursions are reported

Since the beginning of this year, this Human Rights Center has received denunciations of military and police incursions in various communities in Chiapas and Guerrero in a logic of counterinsurgency owed to the fact that said operations operate in a manner of mixed military and police forces along with civilian actors from the same communities, establishing deployment tactics in the territories inhabited by a civilian population organized around just social demands. The testimonies of the assaulted residents are clear and permit the documentation of the harassment of the civilian population, by means of unlawful entry into properties, physical and verbal aggressions, as well as videotaping and photographing of people and places in the assaulted communities.

The establishment of the Mexican army's operations attempt to be justified under the pretext of “detecting Marijuana fields, Arms, and Clandestine Landing strips.” However, the already numerous documented raids allow us to see the heightened counterinsurgency plan by means of the discrediting of the communities and organizations in the public opinion with the objective of “earning the civilian population's support of the government”, moreover, establishing a climate of psychological harassment by means of territorial deployment and reconnaissance, which permits them to also observe the response of the civilian population to such operations.

It should be emphasized that these military incursions are attended by various federal, state, and local actors such as: the Federal Agency of Investigations (AFI in its Spanish initials), Federal and State Public Ministries, the State Preventive Police (PEP in its Spanish initials), and Civilian Residents from the region.

We believe that the series of events are not isolated incidents and that they correspond to a logic of offensives against indigenous populations, particularly those who are in resistance. Those which this Human Rights Center has received information about are the following:

• Sunday, April 27, 2008, before sunrise, according to direct testimony from the inhabitants of the Community of Cruztón, Venustiano Carranza municipality, Chiapas, a police operation was carried out by approximately 500 police, who were guided by seven armed civilians from the Teopisca municipality and from the Ejido Nuevo Leon in the Venustiano Carranza municipality; seemingly to execute arrest warrants against Cruztón residents.
• May 19 and 20, members of the Mexican Army accompanied by various police forces entered the community of San Jeronimo Tulija in the official municipality of Chilon and the autonomous rebel Zapatista municipality of Ricardo Flores Magon, where the residents witnessed the unlawful entry of three residences.
  The military operation was made up of a convoy of at least 11 vehicles, among which was documented the presence of forces from the 18th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army, the State Preventive Police (PEP), and the Federal Agency of Investigations (AFI), all of them guided by a resident of the community. It's worth emphasizing that it was evident that the tactical movement was set up in order to surround Zapatista community installations where meeting places and health assistance were located, and also directed at the location of the Zapatista autonomous authorities of said community.
• May 22 in the 28 de Junio and San José, Venustiano Carranza municipality, members of the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization-Carranza Region (OCEZ-RC in its Spanish initials) denounced the presence and installation of Mexican Army checkpoints in the neighborhoods of these communities.
  The information we received reports that that day in the morning members of the armed forces began to patrol in 11 communities where the OCEZ-RC has a presence, which are: Santa Rufina Las Perlas, 28 de junio, Nuevo San José La Grandeza, San José La Grandeza 3ra Ampliación, Guadalupe La Cuchilla, Mesa El Porvernir, Las Delicias, El Puerto, Nuevo Paraíso, Laguna Verde, San Caralampio Chavín.
• On May 23 the residents of the Cruz Palenque, Usipá, Retorno Miguel Alemán y Nuevo Limar communities, in the Tila municipality, expressed their concern about the possible armed incursion of the Mexican Army because in the afternoon they discovered that the Mexican Army began to install intermittent checkpoints in the zone taking positions that altered the population.
• On May 23 the residents of the Carrizal and Río Florido communities, in the Ocosingo municipality, reported low flybys by the Mexican Armed Forces and on the 26th of the same month, flybys happened again in these communities and also in the Chalam del Carmen community. In these three communities there are members of the OCEZ-FNLS organization.
• On May 27 in the neighborhoods of the ejido “Nuevo Chamizal,” in the Ocosingo municipality, the presence of members of the Mexican Army, agents from the Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR in its Spanish initials), from the State Preventive Police (PEP), and civilians were reported, supposedly in order to destroy marijuana fields in Zapatista territory. However, the information received by this Center reports that there are no EZLN members in the zone of the raid.
• On the same May 27, an article published in La Jornada the next day reported the eviction of the towns El Semental and Nuevo Salvador Allende, located in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. It was reported that the Federal Attorney General's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa in its Spanish abbreviation) participated in the operation, supported by the Federal Police, the Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR), and members of the Mexican Army. They justified the operation in the name of the Zero Tolerance for Clandestine Tree-felling program.
• On May 29 residents of the El Carrizal community, Ocosingo municipality, reported this Center that a convoy comprised of 9 federal army buses and 3 State Preventive Police (PEP) trucks, accompanied also by Ocosingo municipal police, tried to enter said community. However, upon noticing it, women from the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization (OCEZ) of the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS in its Spanish initials) formed a human circle that impeded their passage. Rio florido, Chuina
  Members of the army justified themselves saying that they were on their way to lands in the neighboring municipality of Oxchuc, where they had supposedly located marijuana fields, insisting that the operation was accompanied by members of the Public Ministry, the Ocosingo City Council, and personnel from the State Human Rights Commission (CEDH in its Spanish initials). However, none of these agreed to identify themselves to the population.
• On June 4 the “El Camino del Futuro” Good Government Council headquartered in the La Garrucha caracol, Ocosingo, denounced the incursion of a military convoy that was accompanied by municipal police, state public security, and the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) in the La Garracha, Rancho Alegre (known as Chapuyil), Hermenegildo Galeana, San Alejandro.
  In this action, qualified as a provocation against the EZLN, soldiers assigned to the Tonina, Patiwitz, and San Quintin barracks. However, after the rebuff of the military incursion, members of the Mexican Army warned that they would return in 15 days in order to enter the communities which resisted this time.
  This military incursion, simultaneously carried out in different communities on the perimeter of caracol III “Resistencia Hacia un Nuevo Amanecer,” appears to be particularly serious given that it puts peace in serious peril owed to the fact that it is a provocation of the Mexican government towards the EZLN, with whom it supposedly maintains a ceasefire in which it was agreed to not carry out military actions against said insurgent organization, being that the La Garrucha community is the headquarters of the “El Camino del futuro” Good Government Council, as well as an emblematic space for the Zapatista struggle. Therefor we assure again that said military operations are framed in the Counterinsurgency Plan.

On the other hand it is important to observe and pay attention to the denunciations that various organizations and communities in Guerrero State have made to denounce the incursion of the Mexican Army under patterns of action similar to those which we've recorded in Chiapas.

• In August 2007 the Human Rights Center of La Montana “Tlachinollan” denounced that members of the Mexican Army, presumed agents from the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) and from the Ministerial Investigative Police (PIM), remained active in the Nahual indigenous communities of Temalacatzingo and Tlaquilcingo, in the La Montana region, warning the population that they would carry out searches of their houses.
  On August 11, 2007, ten PIM vehicles entered Tlaquilcingo, and on August 15 some one hundred soldiers erected a checkpoint very close to Temalacatzingo; afterwards, at approximately 1 am, they arrived at the community in their vehicles and, without consulting the community authorities, established a camp on the edge of the town, within the territory of Community Goods. They remained there for three days, searching and interrogating the neighbors at a checkpoint that they established in the route that connects Temalacatzingo with Ixcamilpa.
• On April 28, 2008, the Regional Coordinating Council of Community Authorities (CRAC in its Spanish initials) demanded that the Mexican Army, the Federal Agency of Investigations (AFI), and the Ministerial Investigative Police (PIM) leave the communities that requested the departure of the Army and the police that set up checkpoints at the entrances of El Limon, El Camalote, Te Cruz, Lomotepec, and Barranca de Guadalupe, in Ayutla weeks ago.
  In this respect, various regional commanders of the Community Police (in la Costa Chica and Montaña, Guerrero) announced that they would also support members of the Me'phaa communities and closely watch the moves of the Army and the AFI. Both forces have also carried out operations in Colombia de Guadalupe, Malinaltepec municipality, in search of supposed kidnappers.
  Throughout 2008, the denunciations regarding military incursions in the Sierra in Guerrero have been constant. The climate of polarization in the southeast regions of the country resembles past decades where the persecution of organizations and communities in resistance was exacerbated to the point of provoking confrontations in order to reactivate the unresolved internal armed conflict.

This Human Rights Center expresses its concern for the clear intensification of the Counterinsurgency Plan against indigenous communities, particularly in those where members of peasant and indigenous organizations who are organized around just demands have a presence. The above puts social stability, respect of Human Rights, and communities in serious danger.

As a Human Rights Center we remind the Mexican government that Democracy requires full respect for Human Rights in general and in this case the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, and not what is happening how, where paying attention to the peoples' demands means the implementation of military operations that tend to destroy the will to demand social justice.
As has been demonstrated since 1994, the mobilization of civil society has been a fundamental component in defense of the communities faced with attempted military incursions. For this reason we make a call to be alert during this worsening of the Counterinsurgency Plan against organized indigenous communities.

Translated by Kristin Bricker

Corporate Media Lies; We Can Still Beat Plan Mexico

The news that Plan Mexico passed without human rights conditions (meaning it would be a slam dunk for Bush and Calderon) that's been circulating around Mexican corporate media is simply incorrect. It seems as though when Calderon made his statement in Spain celebrating the passage of Plan Mexico without conditions, he was either misinformed about the US legislative process or he is posturing because the conditions is what makes the Mexican legislature and his own cabinet say they will certainly reject Plan Mexico. He knows that the human rights conditions are useless and unenforceable and won't change a thing about his "iron fist" way of governing. So if he can convince Mexican corporate press and politicians that Plan Mexico is coming without conditions, they won't oppose it.

Below is an excellent explanation of what the heck is going on with Plan Mexico in Congress. It cuts through all the corporate media misinformation, and as an added bonus it provides a preview of what a Mexico under Plan Mexico would look like a few years down the road by examining Plan Mexico's inspiration in action, Plan Colombia.

Plan Columbia and Beyond

from the Center for International Policy's Colombia Program

This morning’s El Tiempo has the first solid official statistics for Colombian land area under coca cultivation in 2007. The news is not good. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, whose 2006 figure of 78,000 hectares (193,000 acres) was half the U.S. government’s estimate, detected 98,000 hectares (242,000 acres) in 2007 - 20,000 hectares or 26% more coca. While some of this increase likely owes to methodological adjustments, the figures make clear that narcotrafficking is one area where Colombia has made no progress since the “dark days” of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The UNODC data are not public yet, but will eventually appear here. No final word yet on when the U.S. government will release its (normally higher) coca-cultivation estimates for 2007.

* On Tuesday, the House of Representatives debated (go to http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r110:H10JN8-0043:) and approved (go to http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r110:H10JN8-0049:) a bill (go to http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.06028:) authorizing expenditures for the “Mérida Initiative” aid package to Mexico and Central America. It is important to note that this is not the bill that will send any money to Mexico and Central America. That is a separate bill: the 2008 supplemental appropriations bill (go to http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.02642:), which would provide piles of money for Iraq and Afghanistan, includes the Mérida aid in a few pages. The bill that passed the House this week, by contrast, only authorizes this use of funds for Mexico and Central America, laying out a statement of policy and adding provisions to permanent law.

In Congress, it is considered good practice to “authorize” appropriations like this before laying out money for them. But it doesn’t happen all the time; where foreign aid is concerned, in fact, “unauthorized” appropriations have been the norm since the mid-1980s. Though the House made the effort to pass authorizing legislation, the Mérida Initiative aid will be no exception: the Senate has no similar authorizing bill, so the bill that the House passed on Tuesday is unlikely ever to become law.

The supplemental appropriations bill that will actually “write the checks,” on the other hand, is on a separate track: the House and Senate both passed it in May, and now they are working out the differences in the two bills. This bill would give Mexico less money, and include stronger human rights conditions on military aid, than what this week’s House authorization bill recommends. The Mexican government has loudly complained about these human-rights conditions, especially the more specifically worded ones in the Senate’s version of the appropriations bill.

The New York Times reported - very briefly - on Wednesday that the House and Senate had worked out their differences and rewritten the conditions in a way that leaves them “intact, although softened.” The new text has not been made publicly available, but would appear here (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.02642:) when it does.

* Meanwhile, back in Colombia: another unpleasant chapter has been opened in the two-year-old scandal surrounding Jorge Noguera. For more than three years, Noguera headed President Uribe’s powerful presidential intelligence service (DAS). Today, he stands accused of using his position to help paramilitary leaders, including passing them lists of labor leaders and activists to be killed. For the second time, Noguera’s lawyers have managed to get him out of prison on a slim technicality (something involving the fact that a delegate of the prosecutor-general, and not the Prosecutor General himself, filed the charges - look it up yourself and try to understand it).

Zapatistas and the War on Drugs

In the context of Plan Mexico, the US government's material support for Mexican president Felipe Calderón's deadly war on drugs which has already claimed over 4,100 lives, it's worth taking a look at where all that new military hardware will go in the south. Despite having never caught a Zapatista with a single bag of pot (or a bottle of beer, for that matter), the government continues to use the war on drugs as an excuse to terrorize Zapatista communities.

The New Government Provocation Against Zapatismo
by Luis Hernández Navarro
La Jornada, June 10, 2008
translation by Kristin Bricker

Since the January 1994 insurrection, various administrations have wanted to associate the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN in its Spanish initials) with drug trafficking. They've never been able to demonstrate such a link, but they try time and time again.

This past June 4 the tired old story played out again. Only this time the threat is greater than in the past. On that date over 200 agents from the federal Army, the Attorney General's office, and state and municipal police, with their faces painted, entered the Zapatista territory of La Garrucha with the pretext of looking for marijuana plants. Hundreds of residents from the Hermenegildo Galeana and San Alejando communities fended them off with machetes, clubs, and slingshots.

Zapatista communities prohibit the cultivation, trafficking, and consumption of drugs. It's not even permitted to drink or sell alcohol there. This isn't a new fact. The rebel commanders have made this law public since the beginning of the armed uprising. The measure remains in effect under the civil authorities who have been put in charge of the autonomous municipalities and the good government councils. The same can't be said for the PRIista [translator's note: members of the Institutional Revolution Party which ruled Mexico with an iron fist for over 70 years] communities, where illegal drugs are grown in collusion with the police.

In a communique directed at then-president Ernesto Zedillo, dated February 10, 1995, one day after the military offensive that tried to detain, by means of treachery, Subcomandante Marcos, the insurgents stated: "we want to tell you the truth, if it's what you don't know: the criminals, terrorists, drug traffickers are you, they are the same people who make up your cabinet, they are your very own soldiers who traffic drugs, who force the indigenous peasants to plant marijuana and other narcotics. You haven't realized this, Mr. Zedillo? Yes, we Zapatistas, because we live amongst the people, are the same people who have fought against the planting of drugs, against the drug trafficking that your very own soldiers do and have done within the territories we've controlled."

Unfounded, the accusation has been repeated year after year. In 2004, the newspaper Reforma published the news that "on average, every two days members of the Mexican Army enter Zapatista territory in order to destroy marijuana and poppy fields which in the past year have considerably increased in number." Days afterwards, Gen. Jorge Isaac Jiménez García, commander of military operations in the zone, denied that the marijuana fields belonged to EZLN sympathizers.

The police-military provocation this past June 4 against the rebels is not an isolated incident. It forms part of and endless aggression. The government harassment against the insurgents has been constant since the arrival of Gov. Juan Sabines in 2006.

Various peasant groups close to the state government try to take possession of the lands that Zapatista support bases have occupied and worked since 1994. Paramilitary groups such as the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Rights (OPDDIC) harass the autonomous municipalities. The Army has established new positions, made its presence felt in the region, and carried out unusual movements of a clearly intimidating character.

Jaime Martínez Veloz, representative of the Chiapas government on the Commission for Peace and Reconciliation (Cocopa), has explained very clearly the agrarian dimension of the current anti-Zapatista offensive. "The Mexican government," he said to the International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights (CCIODH in its Spanish initials), "I am convinced that in the attitude of trying to confront the EZLN with peasants and indigenous people in the zone, gave land titles to people in need of land, but it entitled them as ejidatarios [trans. note: communal land owners] of the same lands that the Zapatistas occupied. It made them ejidatarios, and obviously it creates a conflict. In the same area there's those who occupy the land and those who have a title to it. This was already happening in the first years, '95, '96... and the repercussions of that, well, now they're surfacing."

Curiously, those responsible for agrarian, rural, and tourist policy in Juan Sabines' government are people like Jorge Constantino Kanter, representative of the plantation owners and ranchers affected by the Zapatista eruption, or Roberto Albores Gleason, son of ex-governor Roberto Albores, who committed countless human rights violations.

The June 4 operation was carried out in the place were just a short while before Subcomandante Marcos was. By the looks of it, his presence in La Garrucha worried the governmental authorities. The spokesperson of the rebel group hasn't appeared before the public for months, and his silence makes the intelligence services nervous. But the red flags that warn of the increasing governmental intolerance when faced with the peaceful civil initiative of the rebels have been raised for some time. En route to the first Continental Gathering of the Peoples of America [sic: Indigenous Peoples of America] in Vicam, Sonora, from October 11-14, 2007, police and military checkpoints detained a convoy that was transporting the Zapatista delegates, forcing the indigenous commanders who were going to attend the event to return to Chiapas.

An opinion poll recently carried out by Felipe Calderón's administration demonstrates that, in addition to the broad public support for the anti-drug campaign, despite the passing years, 26 percent of those surveyed support the Zapatistas. This is not a negligible percentage under the current circumstances.

The new governmental effort to make out the EZLN to be an accomplice in organized crime attempts to take advantage of the wave of anti-narco sentiment in order to try to erode the current positive opinion of the rebels and deal it a repressive blow. A resolute blow with a long history. Does the federal government really lack unresolved conflicts so much that it needs to enflame one that it hasn't been able to resolve for years?

From the Acteal Massacre to the Merida Initiative

by Rafael Landerreche, translation and footnotes by Kristin Bricker
La Jornada - November 10, 2007

Las Abejas from Chenalhó is an organization that professes non-violent principles. Time and time again they've declared that they don't want revenge for the Acrtal massacre, but that they won't give up their demand for justice so that incidents like that don't happen again.

It couldn't be a better time to review some tragic lessons from the Acteal case, since an agreement with the United States government known officially as the Merida Initiative is being cooked up right now.

The Acteal massacre almost ten years ago was the result of an operation meticulously planned and executed by a series of concentric circles, each one successively more distant from the scene of the crime than the one before it, but each one at the same time closer and closer to the true circles of power. In the first place, in the center of the concentric circles and in the material execution of the murders, are the armed indigenous people who attacked the Acteal chapel that December 22 while Las Abejas were fasting and praying for peace in their municipality. Immediately after this circle were the municipal council and the Chenalhó members of the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI in its Spanish initials), whose municipal president ended up in jail together with the people who carried out the murders. From here we can arrive at the Attorney General, although minimizing mention of the PRI.

The next circle is made up of the state Public Security forces and consequently the Chiapas state government. Their complicity with the people who carried out the massacre was very obvious; anyone who takes the trouble to review the testimony from the trial will be convinced of their evident participation. The height of this complicity is apparent in the presence of a state Public Security unit which was stationed a few meters from where Las Abejas were being massacred during the almost six hours in which the shooting lasted. Finding it impossible to cover up or deny this fact, the authorities had no other option but to affirm that those in charge of public security were guilty of negligence. From here we arrive at the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH in its Spanish initials).[1]

The third circle was a little more concealed than the one before it, because the Mexican Army was careful to not show itself in such a crude manner as the police did. It was careful to never appear officially as the army, and when uniformed individuals or people with military training who had participated in the training or arming of the people who carried out the massacre surfaced, it had to do with the institutional connection with the Army by means of the not-so-subtle dossier which confirmed that said individuals were discharged or on leave (sic). But even though the Army might deny its relationship with these individuals, it can't deny its relation to the Manual of non-conventional warfare. The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center has demonstrated the manual's relation to the Acteal operation.

The last circle consists of the military and security apparatus of the United States which advises the Mexican Army.

The identity of the people who carried out the massacre is defined by its relation to these concentric circles. The uncovered relationship with the Army demands the logic and need to call them very clearly paramilitary groups. Inversely, the entire strategy of the government and its co-conspirators, from the Attorney General in 1998 to Héctor Aguilar Camín in 2007[2], consists in denying, covering up, or disguising the relationship between the first circle and the others; in this way those in first circle are tamely defined as "civilian self-defense groups."

Beyond these cover-up attempts are the tracks left by the murders. One in particular is of supreme importance: the brutality and sadism with which the victims were killed, particularly the pregnant mothers.[3] People in the government recognized this and for this reason tried to cover it up, just like they did with the dead bodies. On October 27, Aída Hernández Castillo recounted in La Jornada how they wanted to get a favorable report from the Social Anthropology Research and Superior Studies Center (CIESAS in its Spanish initials) and how a group of anthropologists maintained that that type of violence had nothing to do with community conflicts, that it didn't have anything to do with the Tzotzil culture, but rather with the "culture of counterinsurgency that has its roots above all in the training centers for special forces in Central America and the United States."

There is no doubt that many Mexican soldiers studied in the School of the Americas; apparently there is not the same certainty as far as their training in the Kaibil School.[4] Curiously, neither the Mexican government nor the army has denied it. And at the beginning of this year the Chiapan Cuarto Poder published an odd report about the kaibil school, where it was straight out confirmed that "53 soldiers from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua took course number 67 in the Kaibil School."

Ten years after the Acteal massacre, Felipe Calderón's government tries to impose an agreement with President Bush on the country so that he would bestow upon Mexico, amongst other things, military guidance in questions of security. With precedents like Acteal and others that we've cited, there are more than enough reasons to be worried. Therefore, getting to the bottom of what happened in Acteal is important not only for the Las Abejas in Chenalhó, but also for all Mexicans.

Rafael Landerreche is the former coordinator of the Analysis and Diffusion Department of the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center. He now works in an indigenous education project in the Chenalhó municipality.

Notes
1. The CNDH is the government-funded but theoretically independent human rights watchdog in Mexico. It has been accused both of complicity with the government and ineffectiveness.

2. John Ross reports that Héctor Aguilar Camín is "a high profile journalist and author...(he has his own late night show on Televisa) whose three-part series 'Return to Acteal' published in Nexos, the glossy highbrow monthly he co-edits, seeks to debunk the Zapatista 'legend' that the 'mal gobierno' (bad government) was responsible for the murders of the Abejas. Aguilar Camin was the house intellectual during the reigns of Carlos Salinas (1988-94) and Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) and has had a continued presence under PANista Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and his successor Felipe Calderon. 'Aguilar Camin always serves the princes,' sneers [Luis] Hernandez Navarro, op ed editor at the left daily La Jornada.

"Aguilar Camin's lengthy chronicle not only redeems Zedillo, who now heads Yale's Institute for Globalization Studies, but also neglects overwhelming evidence of his government's involvement in the events of December 22nd, 1997, instead ascribing the cause of the massacre to long latent 'inter-communal' and religious disputes that he suggests are inherent in Highland Maya culture and which were exacerbated by the Zapatista uprising."

3. During the Acteal massacre, paramilitaries murdered pregnant women and cut open their wombs to rip out and mutilate their fetuses.

4. Kaibiles are a special operations force of the Guatemalan military. They are infamous for their savagery and brutality. They are responsible for human rights abuses and various massacres that took place during Guatemala's Dirty War. They have a commando school called the Kaibil School. Kaibiles have trained Mexican soldiers and possibly paramilitaries, and Zapatistas report seeing them in Chiapas with Mexican soldiers. Mexico's ministry of defense also reports that Kaibil deserters have trained the Zetas, a group of ex-special forces from the Mexican military who now work as hitmen for the Gulf drug cartel.

The Indypendent: Congress Approves Plan Mexico

An updated version of my Plan Mexico article appears in the current issue of The Indypendent. If you're in NYC, pick up a free copy.

Congress Approves Plan Mexico

By Kristin Bricker
From the June 6, 2008 issue | Posted in International | Email this article

NAFTA + Homeland Security = Mega Arms Deal

The U.S. Congress recently approved Plan Mexico, also known as the Mérida Initiative, dealing a potentially deadly blow to Mexican activists and indigenous communities. If signed into law, Plan Mexico would provide resources, equipment, and training to the Mexican government, police, and military. President Bush’s original proposal requested $1.4 billion over a period of three years. However, Tim Rieser, aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, says that three years won’t be enough, confirming what many activists suspected: Plan Mexico, like the War on Drugs, is designed to continue indefinitely.

Read more...

LASC Position on the Merida Initiative

As Congress enters the final stages to approve the Merida Initiative, an aid package to Mexico and Central America that seeks to further militarize the region under the guise of the U.S.’s “war on drugs/war on terror,” we find manifold reasons to stand in opposition:

1) Money for Central America through the Merida Initiative would mark a significant increase in funding for military/police equipment and training in the region at a time when the need is for anti-poverty and crime-prevention programs.

The Merida Initiative, also known as Plan Mexico, builds on the troubling model of Plan Colombia, which has poured billions of dollars into a failed military approach to combating drugs while doing little to address rural poverty and urban unemployment. Central America has already become a satellite for U.S. military and police training in Latin America, despite the poor human rights records of some governments in the region. With the opening of the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in 2005, El Salvador—already the second largest recipient of military training in the region—became the hub of police training. The ILEA has the capacity to train 1500 students per year, more than the current Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation, also known as the SOA. U.S. officials refuse to acknowledge the corruption, misconduct and human rights violations committed by the Salvadoran police. To the contrary, the Merida Initiative now proposes to further support ILEA and further equip those police. Meanwhile, the Initiative wholly ignores the root problems that continue to compel regional involvement in drug trafficking—poverty and unemployment.

2) The Merida Initiative would further threaten human rights by supporting repression of the rights to free speech and protest. The money from the U.S. would be an open invitation for the Mexican and Central American governments to continue using “iron fist” and anti-terrorism laws to crack down on legitimate social movements.

Over the last decade, Mexican police and military personnel have repeatedly committed human rights violations in attempt to silence civil dissent. Taking the most recent example, in 2006 security forces responded to civil society protest in Oaxaca with hundreds of arbitrary detentions, acts of torture, and over 20 assassinations. Numerous Mexican and international human rights organizations have expressed concern that Merida Initiative aid for Mexico's military and police constitutes a recipe for unchecked human rights violations.

Meanwhile, an “anti-terrorism” law passed by the Salvadoran legislature in 2006 uses language that, like the Iron Fist laws implemented in other Latin American countries, is very vague, leaving them open to a wide variety of repressive applications. The Salvadoran government has already used these laws to further criminalize protest tactics commonly used by social movements. The US Ambassador to El Salvador has expressed explicit support for police crackdowns, condoning the use of police force in protecting US trade interests. Through funding the ILEA – in addition to other police training programs in Central America and the Caribbean – the Merida Initiative would legitimize and justify such crackdowns . Vague human rights provisions in the bill would not change this reality.

Finally, there is evidence that the countries receiving aid from the Merida Initiative are already working to militarize their police forces. The separation between police and military in El Salvador and Guatemala, the top two Central American recipients of Merida Initiative aid, has declined dramatically in the years since Peace Accords led to the demilitarization of police in those countries. There has also been a resurgence of death squad-style murders, some linked to the police, in both Guatemala and El Salvador.

3) The Initiative would not effectively combat drug-trafficking.

Military interdiction efforts have a "balloon" effect. In Colombia, U.S. military efforts to stop coca production and trafficking in key locations have simply shifted production and trafficking to new locations, causing the number of coca-producing states to jump from 8 to 24 over the course of Plan Colombia. The Merida Initiative would likely have a parallel effect on drug trafficking, simply diverting trafficking routes from one place to another and forcing cartels to become more sophisticated.

Military interdiction efforts fail because they ignore a root cause of the problem: U.S. demand. Widespread drug use in the U.S. makes drug trafficking a lucrative business. Colombia has taught us that so long as demand remains high, even a multi-billion dollar military solution will fail. Even the right-wing RAND Corporation has concluded that far-flung attempts to stop drugs at their source is 23 times less cost effective than domestic drug treatment at home. While Merida proposes another step down the failed supply-side path, no parallel funds are being destined to state-side drug demand reduction programs.

4) Programs like the Merida Initiative have a worrisome lack of oversight and transparency.

Congress has not been given sufficient information about how the Central American and Mexican police will utilize the funding included for the region in the Merida Initiative. The examples of the ILEA and the SOA are instructive, in that officials at these institutions have actually blocked availability to basic information. Human rights groups that have sought to monitor the SOA and the ILEA have been denied documentation, such as course descriptions and names of students and instructors. Though backers of these military and police training programs promise conditions will be placed on the funds, given the history of poor oversight of such programs there is no guarantee this will occur.

In addition, the process in Congress for assessing the Merida Initiative was rushed and unclear, preventing opposition voices from making themselves heard. By including the Merida Initiative in the Emergency Supplemental bill to fund the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, promoters of the initiative short-circuited the normal process of going first through authorization and then through appropriations, preventing all sides and viewpoints to be heard and considered.

5) US military and police training contributes to violence rather than diminishing it.

Ample evidence gathered by SOA Watch and other human rights groups demonstrates that US training increases the level of official and extrajudicial violence in Latin America. There is no reason to believe that any of the structural problems have been addressed when it comes to police training. Reports from Mexico indicate that over 200 soldiers and police trained and equipped by the US have used the skills they learned to join and prop up various drug cartels. The proliferation of repression tactics only perpetuates the cycles of violence. The governments of Latin America do not need more police and military equipment and training from the country whose training has only raised the level of violence in the hemisphere.

The Latin America Solidarity Coalition demands:

1. No funding for the Merida Initiative.
2. Close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation (SOA).
3. Close the International Law Enforcement Academy for Latin America.

Wed: Plan Mexico on KCSB FM 91.9

I'll be on the "No Alibis" program on KCSB FM 91.9 in Santa Barbara on Wednesday, June 4, at 8:30am PST/11:30am EST, talking about Plan Mexico, the military and police aid package to Mexico that's frighteningly similar to the failed Plan Colombia. My article on Plan Mexico is available here: http://mywordismyweapon.blogspot.com/2008/05/plan-mexico-passes-house-senate-vote.html. A shorter, updated version will run in the upcoming issue of The Indypendent (NYC).

You can stream the show live at http://www.kcsb.org/?page_id=9