Freedom for Yakiri, Imprisoned in Mexico for Defending Herself Against Rapists

"Freedom for Yakiri" 

From Yakiri Libre Tijuana:

"Colectivo Yakiri Libre Tijuana invites you to support action for Yakiri Rubio’s freedom. Yakiri is a 20 year-old activist from Mexico City, who after being raped by two men, in December 2013, is now incarcerated facing homicide charges. As one of the attackers stabbed her, Yakiri fought back to save her life and stabbed him instead. The man died after fleeing the scene along with his accomplice. In January 10, 2014, Colectivo Yakiri Libre Tijuana took action for the first time by making the video “Yo Hubiera Hecho Lo Mismo,” (I would have done the same) in which about 100 people demonstrated against gender violence and the sexist penal law process that threatens human rights, women rights. With this, we attempt to network with others in order to disclose Yakiri’s case and make it an instrument of pressure to condemn the injustice. It is clear that in this case as in others, the present Mexican authorities will not favor the citizens; therefore, if Yakiri becomes free, it would only be because of national and international civil pressure. If you are interested in collaborating, we will be connected and ready to network this Friday January 24 at 7:30 p.m. You can participate from your Twitter and Facebook accounts. These are the hashtags we will use: #24Emx, #YoHubieraHechoLoMismo,#YakiriLibre, #YakiriLibreTijuana, #NoMásViolenciaDeGénero. This event will take place simultaneously with Yakiri Libre (Mexico City). Facebook.com/yakirilibretijuana and Twitter.com/YakiriLibreTJ, Subscribe to our youtube channel.YakirilibreTijuana"

Sign on to the Amicus Curiae filed by the Mexico City Human Rights Commission arguing for Yakiri Rubí Rubio Aupart's release.

"Sexist violence is a crime, so is imprisoning you for defending yourself."

 

Call for Solidarity: For Kuy, in Coma Following Mexican Presidential Inauguration Protest

Kuy in a coma.

In a recent communique, the Zapatista National Liberation Army called upon their supporters to donate money to help with the medical expenses of Juan Francisco "Kuy" Kuykendall, who was injured by a police projectile during the protests against Enrique Peña Nieto's presidential inauguration on December 1, 2012.  Kuy is in a coma and has undergone multiple surgeries.  He's lost portions of his brain due to the attack and subsequent surgeries, including a recent one where surgeons had to cut out infected brain tissue.

As the communique from the Network Against Repression and For Solidarity states below, supporters within Mexico are asked to deposit donations in a Mexican bank account.  If you're not in Mexico, you can do that, or you can donate through my Paypal account.  If you want to make a very large donation (more than a few hundred dollars), it's probably cheaper to make an international wire transfer directly to that account from your bank.  If you want to make a smaller donation, donating through my Paypal account is almost certainly cheaper.  Paypal charges thirty cents USD + 2.9% of the overall donation.  Any questions?  Email me.  I'll email all donors receipts of cash deposits into the Mexican bank account designated for Kuy's medical expenses.  Please use this special button to donate:

Here is the complete Call to Action from the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity, whom the EZLN designated to coordinate Zapatista supporters' donations in Mexico.

Call to Action: For Kuy

On December 1, 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto's first day as president, was the day of his administration's first repression against those who protested against his imposition.  That repression, that attack which was planned and approved by the outgoing administration of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, executed by Peña Nieto's administration and supported by the outgoing and incoming [mayoral] administration in Mexico City of Marcelo Ebrard and Migual Angel Mancera respectively, still continues.  The attack continues in a hospital bed and carries the name of Fancisco Kuykendall, a compañero of the Other Campaign, now known as the Sixth, who was seriously injured in the head by the cowardice of those above who believe they are untouchable.

Almost two months since the attack, Kuy is still hospitalized and fighting for his life, now forgotten by the cameras and reflectors that that December 1st condemned the protests in order to legitimize, voluntarily or involuntarily, the ignorance, banality, and violence of the recently named president.  Kuy is still alive thanks to the strength and conviction and camaraderie of those who collectively work with Otra Cultura ["Other Culture"] and other collectives, organizations, groups, and individuals who are adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. 

But compañero Kuy continues to resist, thanks to the strength and conviction and the camaraderie of those who collectively work with Otra Cultura and other collectives, organizations, groups, and individuals who are adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle.

Kuy resists and needs the solidarity of all of the honest and simple people on this planet in order to be able to keep being treated and so that he recuperates, so that as a cultural worker he can continue saying "no" to the above that oppresses, plunders, disdains, and exploits us, and to build that other form of expressing life and dignity, that Other Culture.

From the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity, we call for all those honest and supportive people to support compañero Kuy, demanding justice for him and for all of those who were injured on December 1; and that the harassment through the prosecution of those who protested on that day against injustice cease.  We asked that you also support the indispensable fundraising efforts for the hospitalization and rehabilitation of the compañero Kuy.

Due to the above, we call for:

Campaign: For Kuy

We call on all of the compañeros in the Network against Repression and For Solidarity, in the Sixth, and good-hearted people to protest, organize, and mobilize all over Planet Earth according to your time, means, and methods, to carry out:

• A campaign of solidarity, denouncing the attack our compañero was subjected to, demanding justice for him and for all of those injured on that date, and to demand unconditional freedom for all of those detained in Mexico City and in Guadalajara during the protests against the imposition of Enrique Peña Nieto as head of the federal executive branch.
• According to each of your methods, time, means, and spaces, join us with local, national, and international activities on Sunday, February 17, 2013, as part of the Political-Cultural Day of Action for Kuy.  In Mexico City we will join the cultural-artistic act in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, beginning at noon.
• Ongoing fundraising campaign, to be deposited in the following bank account:  2824024214 BBVA Bancomer, in the name of Eva Palma Pastrana.
• In the Mexico Valley, take shifts guarding the hospital where our compañero is located, and take up collections as needed.
• Support a political-artistic-cultural act [on a date to be announced] that will denounce the Mexican State and demand justice, as proposed by the compañera Eva [Kuy's partner].

It is important to emphasize that each act should highlight the compañero Juan Francisco Kuykendall's life's work, his organizational work in art and culture, elements of which should be present in our protests and mobilizations.  As well as the demand for unconditional freedom for all of our compañeros who were arrested on December 1, 2012, and the repeal of Article 362 of Mexico City's penal code, which permits the incarceration and persecution of activists and any other person who travels on the streets of Mexico City under the pretext of "disturbing the peace," that was promoted and approved during Andrés Manuel López Obrador's administration; the law includes what [Dirty War president] Gustavo Díaz Ordaz called "social dissolution."

For Kuy…

Against plundering and repression:

Soidarity!

Network Against Repression and for Solidarity [Red Contra la Represión y por la Solidaridad]

(RvsR)

Photo Chronicle of Mexico's Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity

text by Kristin Bricker

photos by Santiago Navarro

published in Upside Down World

On June 4, poet Javier Sicilia and farmer Julian LeBaron led a 500-person caravan through what one major Mexican magazine referred to as the country's "route of blood." Over the following week, the caravan passed through some of the most dangerous places in Mexico: Michoacan, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Chihuahua. The caravan ended on June 10 in Ciudad Juarez, which Sicilia dubbed Mexico's "epicenter of pain" because just over one-fifth of the country's homicides occurred in that city in 2010.

One of the caravan's principle goals was for drug war victims to network and organize. The caravan collected victims' stories and contact information in every town it visited.

Dozens of drug war victims from across the country, such as Nepomuceno Moreno Nuñez from Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, travelled with the caravan to meet other victims and share their stories.

Moreno Nuñez (above, right, shown hugging Javier Sicilia) wants to find his son, 18-year-old Jorge Mario Moreno León, who was kidnapped and disappeared along with five friends on July 1, 2010.

Moreno Nuñez spoke with the kidnappers when they answered Jorge Mario's cell phone. They told him that the young men were kidnapped because they collaborated with the Beltran Leyva criminal organization. "They made a mistake," laments Moreno Nuñez. "They said that one of the boys [Mario Enrique Diaz Islas] was the son of an accomplice to the Beltran Leyvas. It's not true." In reality, Mario Enrique's father, Mario Diaz Garduño, was the director of the Hermosillo municipal Health Department.

The kidnappers killed Mario Enrique. Two families paid million-peso ransoms for their sons, who were released. Jorge Mario remains disappeared along with his friends José Francisco Mercado Ortega and Geovany Otero.

Moreno Nuñez knows that his son survived the initial kidnapping because the kidnappers put Jorge Mario on the phone. Despite evidence that Jorge Mario and his friends could have still been alive, local authorities refused to act. Moreno Nuñez carried out his own investigation into his son's disappearance. "I told [the government], 'Here's the investigation; here's the names of who did it and everything.' I have photos, addresses, everything. I know who it was," says Moreno Nuñez. "They did nothing."

Moreno Nuñez is too familiar with Mexico's version of "justice." For four years, he was imprisoned without charge for a murder the authorities eventually admitted he did not commit. A judge absolved and released Moreno Nuñez in October 2009, just ten months before his son disappeared.

On June 4 in Morelia, Michoacan, (above) drug war victims took the stage at the exact location where unidentified individuals attacked the 2008 Independence Day celebrations with fragmentation grenades, killing five. During each stop along the route, victims who travelled with the caravan and local victims packed the stage beyond capacity. They all shared their experiences living at the mercy of organized crime, soldiers, militarized federal police, and corrupt local police forces. The victims' experiences varied, but all of them were hasta la madre ("fed up") with violence and impunity.

Indigenous residents of Cherán, Michoacan, marched with the caravan in Morelia with their faces covered. Residents have maintainedbarricades in Cherán since April 15 to keep out kidnappers and illegal loggers who are in league with organized crime.

The Zapatista-allied National Indigenous Congress (CNI) has had significant presence in Cherán for years. The CNI's influence has likely played a role in Cherán's organizing style and politics. Plagued for years by corrupt or useless political parties, Cherán made the decision to to put up the barricades in a town assembly. Residents refuse to let political parties participate in their organizing process. They hope to drive out the parties and replace local electoral politics with "uses and customs," or traditional governance mechanisms.
"In this unjust war, we indigenous peoples are not only victims of organized crime," Cherán resident Salvador Campanur Sánchez told President Felipe Calderón during a recent dialogue. "We're also the victims of the Mexican state's institutional violence." As a "starting point," Cherán demands that the Mexican government implement the San Andres Accords, a 1996 indigenous rights agreement between the Zapatistas and the government that the government later betrayed.

Cherán residents accompanied the caravan to Juarez. A caravan had to escort them back home to Cherán because it was too dangerous for them to return alone.

Many of the people who rallied with the caravan in downtown Zacatecas on June 5 were family members of disappeared politicians.

Juan Carlos Guardado Méndez, former mayor of Fresnillo, Zacatecas, waskidnapped along with his driver this past February. At least 17 mayors have been murdered in Mexico since 2010. Guardado's case isn't included in that statistic because the government doesn't keep an official count of disappearances.
While violence against Mexico's mayors is commonly blamed on organized crime, Guardado's brother (shown above) believes that the "most probable" scenario is that his brother was kidnapped for political reasons. "We've talked to a lot of people, even some that we shouldn't have," he says. "They said they don't have him."

"We believe he's alive," says Guardado's brother. "We believe they have him holed up somewhere, and they're waiting for the time to pass, for information that he probably knows to become useless. We believe that someone very important is behind his kidnapping."

Unfortunately for the Guardado family, it is increasingly easy to sweep political crimes under the carpet amidst rampant corruption, impunity, and violence. The government finds it increasingly easy to blame all of its woes on organized crime, and the truth becomes lost in the chaos that has gripped the country.

As the caravan travelled to Durango, 6-year-old Francisco Fernando Rodriguez Flores flagged it down from the side of the freeway. Francisco showed Javier Sicilia a picture of his father, Fernando Rodriguez Maturiño, whose body was found a few months ago wrapped in a blanket. Authorities told Francisco's mother to abandon her husband's murder case, because the blanket was a message that the crime should not be investigated.

Vivien Echavari, whose three sons were gunned down in Durango, is outraged at Calderón's callous attitude towards victims and their families. She takes offense that the president shrugs off civilian deaths as "collateral damage." "The President said that sacrifice is necessary," Echavari told a rally in downtown Durango. "Sir, you made me sacrifice three sons. You destroyed my life and left me with nothing!"

Families United for Freedom and Justice (FULJ) helped organize the caravan's arrival in Monterrey. The organization includes missing police officers' families as well as families of civilians disappeared by police. They might seem like strange bedfellows, but they've all learned the same tragic lesson: that the government treats disappeared cops with the same distain as it treats disappeared civilians.

The government lied and abandoned San Nicolas municipal police officer Mario Jorge Tovar Martinez's family when he disappeared following months of threats and harassment. "They told my daughter-in-law that they would pay her his salary and benefits for five years," says Tovar's mother Laura. "That lasted ten months and then they forgot about us." The mayor told her that he would meet with her every fifteen days regarding her son's case. "I met with him once, and after that they refused to see me," says Laura. "What's worse, they told me 'Don't get the press involved, ma'am, or we'll forget all about you.'"

Melchor Flores' father (pictured above during theMarch for Peace with Justice and Dignity in May) traveled to Monterrey from Mexico State to demand that the government present his son alive. Melchor Flores was a well-known performance artist better known as the "Galactic Cowboy." Flores' character, a flirtatious, silver-plated robotic cowboy, has appeared on television programs and commercials. He was best known as a street performer who moved when passersby deposited coins in his tin can.

The Galactic Cowboy became a working class hero in January 2009 when police arrested him for working on the street without a permit. He'd been arrested for the same offense many times before, but that particular arrest turned into a comedy of the absurd when a TV news crew entered the Monterrey police station where he was held and filmed the Galactic Cowboy performing in police custody. "I told [the police] that if they wanted to arrest me for working, that's fine," Flores told Televisa during his detention. "I've applied for a permit, but no one wants to give me one." Police released Flores after he paid a $500 peso fine.

One month later, the Galactic Cowboy disappeared along with two friends. Witnesses saw Monterrey municipal police put the three men in patrol cars, and they wrote down the vehicles' license plate numbers. The men haven't been seen since. The Monterrey police department officially denies that it ever had them in custody despite the fact that two police officerstestified that their department participated in the kidnapping.

The Galactic Cowboy's numerous arrests and subsequent disappearance has drawn the ire of many Mexicans who question the government's priorities during one of the worst unemployment crises in Mexico's history. The government's own census bureau admitted this month that Mexico's informal sector employs more people than the formal sector. As more Mexicans fall into poverty, work in organized crime becomes a tempting or necessary alternative.
The Galactic Cowboy's father wants to know why police in one of the country's most dangerous cities arrested and disappeared his son, an entertainer. "The Nuevo Leon government stole my son from me because he was making an honest living!"

Masked residents of Torreon's marginalized neighborhoods risked their lives to tell the caravan about how militarization has turned their city into a living hell. In addition to the deployment of militarized Federal Police and soldiers to their city, the State Police are now commanded by a retired military general who trains his cops to shoot first and ask questions later. Interviewed by La Jornada about his policing style in Torreon, General Carlos Bibiano Villa Castillo said, "I like the adrenaline when I am on patrol. When I catch a Zeta or a Chapo I kill him. Why interrogate him? Let him tell Saint Peter what he did."
The problem with Torreon's public security strategy, say local residents, is that they're all treated as criminals in their own neighborhoods. Teenagers complain that soldiers use pat-downs as an excuse to rob and sexually abuse them. Families say that the soldiers use warrantless house searches to steal and break the few things they own. A mother complains that her son refuses to go to school because he's afraid of running into soldiers or police on his way there. A fourteen-year-old boy points to his colostomy bag. He says soldiers beat and stabbed him because he was standing on a street corner.

The residents are terrified that soldiers might see them in the news and retaliate, but they're tired of living with fear and violence. They said the recent mobilizations against the drug war have inspired them to organize. "I saw Javier Sicilia on television," says a mother who wishes to remain anonymous. "We had a meeting, and together we decided to come out today [to protest]. We're various neighborhoods. We're not just a couple of people. We're talking about what we're going to do about this, because they [the police and soldiers] don't help us, they just hurt us."
Chihuahua was one of the few states that didn't draw many new people out to the protests because many stayed home out of fear. Marta Garcia (shown above) carried a picture of her neighbor's husband to the march in Chihuahua City because her neighbor was too afraid to participate herself. The man in her photo, Oscar Zavala, was murdered on July 25, 2009, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a group of men waiting outside of his sister-in-law's baby shower in Chihuahua City.

On June 9, Federal Police sent protesters a message when they rounded up fifty people for the crime of being "suspicious" in an operation in Ciudad Juarez just before the caravan arrived there. Amongst the detainees was Laurencio Barranza, a seasoned Juarez activist who helped organize the caravan's activities in Chihuahua state. Barranza (shown above), a community organizer in Juarez's poorest neighborhoods, wasdetained for two hours and released without charge.

Most of the local participants in the caravan's activities were seasoned activists who have protested publicly for years, and they've suffered threats, attacks, murders, and arrests.

The anti-femicide contingent was one of the largest that participated in the caravan's activities in Chihuahua. They've denounced impunity and corruption in Chihuahua since 1993, when they warned that leaving young women's kidnappers and murderers unpunished would encourage more violence against them. Eighteen years later, it is painfully obvious that they were right. Murders of both women and men have risen sharply in Ciudad Juarez since Calderón deployed the military in the war on drugs. As the military's deployment set off a wave of violence, the very civilian institutions that the anti-femicide groups had criticized for over a decade--namely, the prosecutor's office and the police--found themselves too constrained by incompetence and corruption to punish violent offenders. The result is a situation of lawlessness in which anyone--police, soldier, criminal, civilian--can kidnap and kill with impunity.

Following the caravan, Javier Sicilia and other drug war victims met with President Calderón. They presented him with 25 unsolved cases of murders, disappearances, kidnappings, and massacres and have demanded that the government find and punish those responsible. Likewise, they presented the Attorney General of Nuevo Leon with 41 unsolved cases. Sicilia and Calderón agreed to create a commission to follow-up on the 25 cases that the victims' families presented to the federal government.

Sicilia says that he wants to hold a national conference for drug war victims and their families. In the meantime, Julian LeBaron says that drug war victims will organize another caravan, this time to the Mexico-Guatemala border to see how the drug war has affected Mexico's southern residents. 

Historic Anti-Drug War Caravan Heads to Juarez, Mexico

by Kristin Bricker

The caravan reaches Mexico City.  Photo: Santiago
Navarro

I waited until it was a sure thing to announce it: I'll be covering the Juarez-bound caravan against the drug war that Mexican poet and journalist Javier Sicilia convoked following the brutal murder of his son, Juan Francisco, this past March.   Sicilia chose Juarez--the deadliest city in the world--as the site to sign a "Citizens Pact for Peace" on June 10.

The Citizens Pact for Peace is a commitment that civil society organizations will make to each other to pressure the government to fulfill specific demands within a firm timeframe, such as justly resolving eight high-profile crimes: the deadly campaign against the Reyes Salazar family; the murders of Rubí and Marcela Escobedo, Bety Cariño and Jirí Jaakola; the deadly fire at the ABC Daycare that claimed the lives of 49 toddlers; the murders and kidnappings of members of the LeBarón family in Galeana, Chihuahua; and the youth massacred in Juarez’s Villas de Salvárcar and the state of Morelos.  They are also demanding constitutional human rights reforms and that Congress kill the proposed reform to the National Security Law, which would legalize the unconstitutional drug war.  The Pact also demands that Congress pass laws that would allow impeachment.

The caravan left Cuernavaca this morning.  Following a stop in Mexico City, it'll head to Morelia, Michocan, the site of the horrendous frag grenade attack against Independence Day celebrations in 2008.  The Morelia attack marked the first time the world (including many Mexicans) realized that innocent civilians were targets in the drug war.  Morelia is just one of twelve Mexican cities the caravan will visit.   Sicilia's idea is to caravan into the heart of the drug war, to the cities that have been most affected by drug war violence

The caravan will also visit Toluca, Mexico State; San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosi; Zacatecas, Zacatecas; Durango, Durango; Saltillo, Coahila; Monterrey, NL; Torreon, Coahuila; Chihuahua City, Chihuahua; and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, where a cross-border event will happen with El Paso, Texas.

Check back to this blog, and also on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kristinbricker, because I'll be sending out constant updates about the people I meet as the caravan makes its way through some of Mexico's most war-torn cities.

Today, I would like to leave you with a letter that Julian LeBaron wrote to Javier Sicilia's murdered son, who was known as Juanelo.  LeBaron, whom I wrote about in "Mexico's Drug War Victims Find Their Voice in Massive Silent March," lost his brother and brother-in-law to drug war violence because the LeBaron's community dared to stand up to organized crime.  Here's what LeBaron had to say to Juanelo today:

"I didn't arrive in time to shake your hand.  I couldn't look you in the eyes.  I don't know how many years you lived, or what games you played.  Nor do I know what your favorite food was.  I don't know if you ever held a woman's hand, and I never heard the sound of your voice.  But your absence hurts me greatly.  Your father's gaze has infected me.
"I also don't know much about your friends' lives and what happened to them--those who were murdered with you.  Nor do I know what to say about the 40,000 men, women, and children who are no longer here.

"You know what?  I lost a brother, too.  They killed him because he wanted to live in peace.  But you didn't know him, either. 

"There's too much bloodshed.  The color red accumulates on the ground, and it begins to erase names, last names, professions, ages, sexes, social classes, and skin color. 

"Today, collective tragedy must unite us as we have never been united before.    This time, the cause isn't an earthquake or a flood.  The cause is a seed of disdain for us, the Mexican people, which we have silently cultivated for years.  And now we can see its tricks. 

"I've come to march to scream that all of the dead are sons and daughters of someone.  They aren't stones or numbers.  Imagine the fathers and mothers of all of the people who are dying in Mexico.  We are all sons and daughters of someone.  And sadness and pain is accumulating in fathers' and mothers' eyes.  But hearts accumulate decision. 

"Javier Sicilia's son isn't here anymore.  Many other sons and daughters are no longer here.  I want to march in their name, because I don't want to be anyone's anonymous son.  I don't want apathy to erase everyone's faces. 

"This march is to once again meet with each other on a route of humanity and strength.  This is the beginning of the solution.  The philosopher Keith Raniere says that human suffering is the driving force behind our ability to be noble. 

"Over the next few days, I invite you to march, so that we leave behind prejudices and the hate that keeps us from seeing each other.  Let's propose, in this caravan of condolences, to feel deeply and respect our pain.  Let's use this great instrument as our weapon to connect with the spirit and the truth."

Mexico’s Drug War Victims Find Their Voice in Massive Silent March

by Kristin Bricker, Upside Down World

Drug war victims finally made themselves heard in Mexico in the most unlikely way: a nation-wide silent March for Peace with Justice and Dignity.

Over 100,000 Mexicans took to the streets over the weekend to protest the war on drugs, impunity, corruption, and violence. The largest march lasted four days and covered nearly 100 kilometers from Cuernavaca, Morelos, to Mexico City. On Thursday, May 5, about 500 protesters began marching in Cuernavaca. Along the way, more contingents joined the march, while other marches set out from different states to join the protest in Mexico City. By the time the marches met in Mexico City’s main square on May 8, an estimated 100,000 people were gathered to protest the war.

Those who couldn’t make the trip to Mexico City held protests in their own states. In Chiapas, 25,000 masked Zapatistas marched in complete silence to the main plaza in San Cristobal de las Casas, where Comandante David read a communiqué from Subcomandante Marcos. “Tens of thousands of people have died in this absurd war,” said Comandante David. “Their only sin was to have been born or lived in a country that is badly governed by legal and illegal groups who are thirsty for war, death, and destruction.”

About seventy Central American migrants passing through Mexico to reach the United States also joined the March for Peace with Justice and Dignity. They marched along railroad tracks through Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Puebla, the route that migrants generally travel as they cling precariously to boxcars. Near the border between Veracruz and Puebla, armed men attempted to kidnap at least one woman during the march. The protesters don’t know if the attack was politically motivated, or just another example of the extreme violence migrants suffer daily as they travel through Mexico. Drug trafficking organizations frequently kidnap migrants for ransom or human trafficking. According to Eduardo Almeida of the Puebla-based Nodo human rights organization, the presence of reporters covering the march likely dissuaded the kidnappers in this case.

In Ciudad Juarez, about one thousand protesters marched in silence until they ran into the city’s mayor at the Benito Juarez monument. He fled the area on foot to avoid the protesters as they began chanting at him.

Protests occurred in all 31 states in Mexico. Protests were also reported in the United States, Canada, Europe, and South America. Mexican immigrants organized many of the protests that occurred in foreign cities.

“We Are Not Collateral Damage”

This weekend’s march, convoked by renowned Mexican writer Javier Sicilia after his son Juan Francisco was murdered in Morelos, allowed the drug war’s innocent victims to bring their stories to the national and international media, in many cases for the very first time. Prior to Sicilia’s public outrage over his son’s murder, the government stigmatized drug war murder victims, arguing that 90% of them are “cartel hit men."Government agents have repeatedly doctored crime scenes and planted weapons on bodies to make innocent victims appear to be dangerous criminals. When the government does admit that innocent people have died in the drug war, it justifies the deaths as “collateral damage.”

However, from May 5-8, the drug war’s innocent victims stepped out of the shadows and into the international spotlight.

Many were meeting each other for the first time. When the marchers took breaks along Mexico’s 95D freeway, they sat down together to talk about their shared pain. Variations of the following exchange were frequently overheard during the march:

"Who is the young man in the photo you're carrying?"

"He was my son. He was murdered. And who is the young man on your t-shirt?"

"He is my son. He's disappeared."

Some marchers lost family members within the past few months and had not yet politicized their search for answers; they were still in the initial stages of shock and desperation.

Carlos Castro marched with a 15-foot by 7-foot banner that pleaded “RETURN MY FAMILY TO ME” printed above photos of his missing wife, two daughters, and the family’s housekeeper. “I’m marching today to see if I can find my daughters,” Castro said as he choked back tears. The four women disappeared on January 6, 2011, from their home in Xalapa, Veracruz. Castro says he has no clue who took his family and housekeeper. “They entered [the house] and took the whole family. I’m doing this so that they [the kidnappers] receive this message and return them to me. I don’t know why they took them, they had no reason to take my daughters.” Castro’s wife Josefina Campillo Cerreto had just ended a stint as the Actopan (Veracruz) City Council’s trustee when the family was kidnapped. On December 13, 2010—just three weeks before the kidnapping—she updated her Facebook profile to list her job at the City Council and posted what would be her last status update: “I’d rather die fighting than give up without a fight.”

Most marchers had at least a general idea of who disappeared or killed their family members. Surprisingly, protesters at the march against President Felipe Calderon’s drug war weren’t just limited to victims of military and police abuse. Victims of both organized and unorganized crime also marched against the war in large numbers.

Teresa, a middle-aged woman who lives in Morelos, marched with a photo of her son, Joaquin. “They killed him ten months ago in Mexico City,” she recounts. “I’m carrying his photo so that everyone knows who he was, sees that he had a face and a mother, just like the over 30,000 dead in this country. The dead aren’t just numbers. They were loved ones.” Joaquin was apparently murdered during a mugging. Teresa filed a report with the government, but the investigation, if there ever was one, went nowhere. As long as the investigation remains open, the government won’t let her cremate her son and spread his ashes in Cancun, where he was born. Joaquin is buried in a temporary grave in Morelos. The protests convoked by Javier Sicilia were the first time Teresa took to the streets to demand justice for her son. “I identify with Javier,” she says. “He was a young, productive, happy boy. Joaquin was beginning his third year of college, studying architecture. Joaquin was the type of young man this country needs, just like Juanelo [Javier’s son] was.”

Isaac Gomez Lopez, an art student who lives in Cuernavaca, argues, “A lot of people use the drug war as a pretext to attack other people. Now, it’s almost like anyone can kill someone and justify it by saying ‘it’s the drug war’ and it won’t be investigated. It just goes into a file.” Cuernavaca’s murder rate jumped after soldiers killed drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva there in late 2009. Beltran Leyva’s death destabilized the territory his organization controlled, providing an opening for other organizations to move in an attempt a takeover, which inevitably led to more violence. “You start to see curfews, the streets empty because they’re not as safe,” says Gomez Lopez. “It’s really affecting tourism.”

Victims of organized crime marched against the war as well. “I’m a victim of human trafficking and organized crime,” declares Ivan Monroy Medina of the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking of Women and Girls. “Seven months ago they took my daughter. She was eleven months old and they violently took her from my wife in Mexico State.” Ramos says that human trafficking is a growing problem in his state. “There were meetings in the neighborhood where we were living. They warned us to be careful because a lot of children had been stolen from the neighborhood. Fifteen or twenty days later, it happened to us.” Monroy Medina and his wife reported the kidnapping to the authorities, “but since we don’t live in Predregal [an upscale neighborhood] and since we don’t know how to play golf and don’t know governors, they don’t pay any attention to us.”

Seven members of the LeBaron family drove down from the Mormon community of Colonia LeBaron, Chihuahua, to participate in the march. The LeBarons made international headlines in 2009 when they publicly refused to pay a million-dollar ransom for 16-year-old Erick LeBaron after he was kidnapped. “The kidnappers told Erick, ‘But there’s so many of you, can’t you all chip in and pay the ransom?’” recounts Adrian LeBaron, Erick’s uncle. The LeBarons feared that if they paid one exorbitant ransom, kidnappers would descend upon their community like vultures. Instead, Colonia LeBaron organized protests in Chihuahua City to demand that the government take action to bring Erick home. Their gamble worked; the kidnappers released Erick after seven days.

The LeBaron’s victory was short-lived. Only a few months later, a criminal organization punished Erick’s older brother Benjamin for organizing about fourteen local communities into an anti-kidnapping organization called SOS Chihuahua. “Twenty armed men went to his house and broke all his windows, and so his brother-in-law [Luis Widmar] came over to help him,” recounts Benjamin’s brother Julian. “They kidnapped them both and executed them about a mile down the road.”

Despite the fact that the LeBaron’s battle is with organized crime, Julian argues that his community’s problems started when President Calderon declared war on drugs. “The war on drugs has been a disaster for this country,” he insists.

Chihuahua, particularly Ciudad Juarez, is Mexico’s drug war “laboratory.” There, argues Proceso reporter Marcela Turati, “Not only drug traffickers, drug dealers, and even drug addicts, but also common citizens, above all youngsters, are involuntarily subjected to an experiment: how it would be, in Mexico, to live under military control.” A large contingent from Chihuahua participated in the March for Peace and Justice with Dignity to tell the president that the experiment has failed.

Maria Alvarado traveled all the way from Ciudad Juarez to participate in the march because the military disappeared her sister Nitza Paola Alvarado and cousins Rocío Irene Alvarado and José Ángel Alvarado on December 29, 2009, from Ejido Benito Juarez, where they were spending the holidays with family. “We tried to follow the them,” she recalls. “But it was very dark and they were taking them on back roads. We returned to the house because we were scared.” The military later left Nitza’s truck at a Chihuahua State Investigations Agency office without giving the local authorities any explanation as to why they were leaving it there.

The Alvarado family filed all of the necessary complaints with relevant government agencies, but they hit a brick wall. “The military has always said that there’s no indication that it was them, that they’ve never carried out operations in the town, which is a big lie,” insists Alvaro. “They stayed three weeks on the ejido in a hotel called Los Arcos, and they made rounds in the entire ejido.”

Regardless of who perpetrated the attacks on their families, all of the drug war victims in the march had the same demand: “We’re demanding that the authorities do their jobs,” says Alvarado. “All they do is create fat case files, and they don’t investigate.”

“They told us we had to take the legal route. ‘You have to go give your testimony and file your complaint and we’ll see if we get motivated to go chase the kidnappers,’” complains Adrian LeBaron. “We told them, ‘We don’t want to be another little paper in your mountains of files. We want our son.’ So we protested.”

A common slogan on signs and banners in the March for Peace with Justice and Dignity was directed at the authorities: “If you can’t do your job, then quit!”

National Pact for Peace

The movement to compel Mexican authorities to “do their jobs” and reduce the country’s staggering impunity rate doesn’t show any signs of letting up.

Javier Sicilia says that Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos sent him a letter to tell him that the Zapatistas would join his march. The letter was hand-delivered and came with an oral message, too: “This march, this struggle, transcends the Left. This is a war against all of us, and all of us need to join together.”

“This is a struggle between those who want life and those who want death,” declared Comandante David during the Zapatistas’ march in Chiapas. “And we, the Zapatistas, we chose to struggle for life—that is, for justice, liberty, and peace.”

On May 8 in front of about 100,000 people, Olga Reyes, who has lost six family members in the drug war, and Patricia Duarte, whose son Andrés died in a fire at the ABC Daycare due to government negligence, read the proposal for a National Pact for Peace, a citizens initiative to reduce violence, corruption, and impunity in Mexico. The pact has six central demands:

1. truth and justice
2. an end to the war in favor of a focus on citizen security
3. combat corruption
4. combat crime’s economic roots and profits
5. emergency attention for youths and effective actions to rebuild the social fabric
6. participative democracy, better representative democracy, and democratization of the media

The proposal will be finalized and signed during a public event on June 10 in Ciudad Juarez, the deadliest city in the world. 

Reflections on Mexico's National Anti-War March

by Kristin Bricker





I'm in Morelos covering the "We've Had It Up to Here, Stop the War, For A Just And Peaceful Mexico" march.

I will publish an article about the march when it's over at Upside Down World. But I'm so awestruck by the people I've met in the march that I have to share my initial observations with you.

The march is growing by the hour. It left Cuernavaca with just over 500 people, and by the time it arrived in Coajomulco, Morelos, over a thousand people were marching. When I woke up this morning in Coajomulco, I saw that more marchers had arrived during the night, including a bus from Oaxaca that carried members of CACTUS, the community organization that Bety Cariño founded and led before she was assassinated near San Juan Copala just over a year ago.

Joaquin was murdered in an armed

robbery in Mexico City.

Bety's just one of Mexico's nearly 40,000 dead who are here in spirit and rage today.

I don't think I will interview Javier Sicilia, the poet and journalist whose son's murder sparked this national movement against murder and impunity. He's been interviewed enough, and I am enraged that the media following the march turns off their cameras when other drug war victims speak, and they only turn them on when Sicilia speaks. It's not his fault; it's the corporate media's fault. They've made it their job to ignore the drug war's innocent victims and the families it has torn apart. When one of their own lost his son (Sicilia writes for Proceso and La Jornada), they couldn't ignore it anymore. Actually, a lot of journalists in the corporate media know Sicilia and they knew his son. They feel genuinely terrible for the man, and they've been reporting constantly from the march, step by step. Most of them even camped with us in Coajomulco.

Even if I don't interview Sicilia, I do have to thank him. He's successfully removed--or at least reduced--the stigma that families feel when a loved one is murdered.* As I reported in an earlier article about the Reyes Salazar family, the drug war's victims are nameless. The government wants it that way, because it's easy to paint the drug war's dead as narcos if no one even knows their names, much less their stories. Now, however, that's changing. They're marching alongside and behind Sicilia, and the press is actually interviewing them, some of them for the first time. And they're interviewing them as human beings, not as narco-families.

The march that Sicilia made possible has also allowed survivors to connect with each other for the first time. I saw the following conversation occur multiple times yesterday:

"Who is the young man in the photo you're carrying?"
"He was my son. He was murdered. And who is the young man on your t-shirt?"
"He is my son. He's disappeared."

This march, more than anything, is a march against impunity. In some cases, police kidnapped and disappeared the victims. In another case, organized crime snatches little girls from a community and traffics them. In other cases, victims were killed in armed robberies. The perpetrators vary: organized crime, unorganized crime, or the government. But everyone has one complaint in common: the government has done nothing to stop the violence, and when citizens are victims of violence, the government does nothing to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In a few days, you'll be able to read all about the amazing interviews I've done with some of the strongest people I've ever met. In the meantime, I want to share just one person's story with you: the Galactic Cowboy.

The Galactic Cowboy's dad marches.

The Galactic Cowboy's family is from Mexico State, but up until a year ago he lived and worked in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. He is a street performer, a human silver statue of a cowboy. He stands perfectly still until you insert a coin in his box, and then he makes robotic movements. "Ever since he was little, he wanted to be a cowboy," says his father.

The Galactic Cowboy works in the informal market. Police had detained him several times in Monterrey for working without a permit. One time he managed to get a permit to work on the street, but it was only for one month. "What good is a one-month permit?" asks his dad. Street theater is is a life-long career for the Galactic Cowboy.

One day, Monterrey municipal police detained the Galactic Cowboy and two companions in Monterrey. Witnesses saw police arrest them. They wrote down the patrol car numbers.

The police deny that they detained the Galactic Cowboy and his companions. The witnesses who saw them detain him refuse to testify for fear of reprisal. The government refuses to investigate the disappearance.

The Galactic Cowboy has been missing for a year.


------

* This sentence originally read: "He's single-handedly removed (or at least greatly diminished) the stigma that families feel when a loved one is murdered." Thanks to a reader comment, I changed the sentence, which I admittedly wrote in a hurry, in the heat of the moment, as I followed the march. I want to explain why I wrote this: he's been more successful than anyone else in removing the stigma victims' families feel. Other families have "thrown down" as the smart reader pointed out. And he's right. Actually, families like the LeBarons and the Reyes Salazar took MUCH greater risks than Sicilia, because they were up against much worse odds: their state and towns are more dangerous, they don't have media support, they don't have thousands of people marching with them. In short, what they are doing was a much bigger risk. Interviewing them...I'm amazed at their strength. I love Mexico.

Anti-Drug War Movement Emerges in Mexico

by Kristin Bricker, Upside Down World

After four years of war that has left nearly 40,000 people dead, countless more disappeared, and soldiers on the streets of every state in the country, many Mexicans are finally "fed up" with President Felipe Calderón's drug policy. This weekend, Mexicans in at least 25 of the country’s 31 states will protest to “stop the war, for a just and peaceful Mexico." Protests are also planned in solidarity in at least twelve cities in Europe, Canada, the United States, and Brazil. 

The largest protest will begin on May 5 in Cuernavaca, Morelos, where protesters will march 100 km to Mexico City for a rally on Sunday, May 8. Marchers will follow the Mexico City-Cuernavaca freeway, which could bring traffic on one of the country’s largest freeways to a standstill over the Cinco de Mayo holiday weekend.

Mexico’s beloved journalist and poet Javier Sicilia convoked the protests after his son, Juan Francisco, was found murdered along with six other people in his home state of Morelos on March 28. Sicilia declared that he was “hasta la madre” (“fed up” or had “had it up to here”) with politicians and criminals. He vowed to abandon poetry (“The world is no longer worthy of words,” he wrote in his last poem) and to dedicate himself to stopping the drug war. “I’m going to march,” he said in a video message, “because I don't want any other family to suffer the loss of a son as we are suffering due to a poorly planned, poorly executed, and poorly led war."


Common Cause

After nearly 40,000 drug war murders, it was Juan Francisco’s execution that brought Mexico to the tipping point. This weekend’s mobilizations are expected to be Mexico’s largest anti-drug war protests to-date. Moreover, nearly every sector of Mexican society has confirmed its participation in the protests: labor, indigenous peoples, students, journalists, intellectuals, opposition politicians, feminists, artists, drug war victims and their family members, former political prisoners, Mormons, sex workers, autonomists, peasants, communists, marijuana legalization advocates, migrants in Mexico, Mexican immigrants living abroad, Catholic church leaders…even the commanders of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) have ordered Zapatistas to take to the streets to “end Calderón’s war.”

Sicilia coined the protests, “We’ve had it up to here. Stop the war. For a just and peaceful Mexico.” However, he insists, “I’m just one more voice.” He believes that the movement’s proposals must come from the grassroots. The Network for Peace and Justice, which is helping Sicilia coordinate the protests, is encouraging citizens to hold assemblies and develop proposals for a “re-founding of Mexico.” Those proposals will be taken into account in a document that Sicilia will read at the end of the march on May 8.

Some organizations and individuals have already published their demands and proposals.

Students and young people gathered at the National Forum of Young People in National Emergency in Cuernavaca on April 28-29 to coordinate for the May 8 protests and develop a set of demands. Young people suffer the highest murder rates in the drug war, leading Forum participant Raúl Romero to lament, “Young people are no longer this country’s future; we’re this country’s dead.” The Forum published six demands: immediate demilitarization, an end to violence and impunity, decriminalization of drug consumption, a dignified life (which would include job opportunities), art and culture for everyone (including a proposal to nationalize the corporate media), and a guaranteed college education for everyone.

The Collective for an Integral Drug Policy (Cupihd), an organization of drug policy experts, will hold a march for marijuana legalization on May 7, and on May 8 it will join the national protests in downtown Mexico City.

Sociologist and nationally syndicated columnist John Ackerman borrowed a phrase from Argentina’s recuperated factory movement to sum up his proposal for the movement: “Que se vayan todos” (“they all must go”), referring to Mexican politicians. “We have to demand the immediate ouster of all high-ranking officials who are involved in this criminal war at the federal and state levels,” argues Ackerman. “Beginning with, of course, [Secretary of Public Security] Genaro García Luna, [Defense Secretary] Guillermo Galván, and Calderón. These politicians have spent enough time in office, and they’ve demonstrated that they are incapable of assuring social peace.”

Sicilia has called for the resignation of the governor of Morelos and several state legislators because they are “negligent and corrupt.”
“We’ve Had It Up To Here!”
Juan Francisco’s senseless and brutal murder was the catalyst that united drug war critics from diverse social sectors and across the political spectrum. However, discontent over increasing violence and human rights violations has been brewing in Mexico for quite some time. Pockets of resistance to the drug war have formed across the country, although it is only now that they are all coming together at the national level.

When Calderón declared war on organized crime, some towns racked by violent cartel rivalries initially welcomed the military's presence. However, it quickly became apparent that the military brought more chaos and abuses, not law and order. "The military doesn't solve anything because it commits a lot of abuses," a farmer from Galeana, Chihuahua, told Proceso reporter Marcela Turati. "They beat people, steal vehicles, rob from houses. Their trucks look like moving companies, they drive around loaded with so much furniture."

Initially reported in the press as isolated incidents (if they were reported at all), the military's abuses quickly turned into an epidemic. In mid-2009, human rights organizations noted that the drug war led to a significant increase in human rights abuses. The Mexican military now receives more human rights abuse complaints than any other government agency.

A handful of horrifying incidents shocked the nation and captured headlines for a few days, such as when soldiers killed two unarmed students in March 2010 on the campus of the elite private university Tecnológico de Monterrey (“Tec”). The soldiers planted weapons on the dead students to make them appear to be cartel gunmen. The cover-up managed to temper the public’s response to the shooting; the military’s wrongdoing only became clear months later.

Seven months later, on October 29, 2010, Federal Police shot and gravely wounded student Dario Alvarez Orrantia on the campus of the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez as he participated in the 11th Walk Against Death during the International Forum Against Militarization and Violence. The shooting enraged students across the country and provoked protests. Students from the Mexico City metropolitan area who participated in the Forum and witnessed the shooting decided to form the Metropolitan Coordinating Committee Against Militarization and Violence (COMECOM). "We decided to begin to join together to denounce the crimes that are repeatedly committed against students," says COMECOM member Raúl Romero. "We want to network with organizations, regardless of political affiliation, in order to unify our voice and demand an end to Felipe Calderón's war." COMECOM is currently comprised of twenty-five metropolitan-area organizations.

Up until recently, the only killings, shootings, or kidnappings that provoked public outcry were those that were obviously perpetrated by government security forces. Cases in which the perpetrator was unknown or believed to be linked to organized crime were ignored. The Calderón administration labeled these murders “collateral damage” and Calderón himself argued (without substantiating his claim) that 90% of drug war murder victims were linked “in one way or another” to organized crime. The stigma meant that drug war murders weren’t mourned, let alone investigated.

The drug war’s true impact on Mexico’s civilians became apparent earlier this year when three members of the beleaguered Reyes Salazar family were found tortured and murdered in Chihuahua, bringing the family death toll to six. The Reyes Salazars are prominent activists and upstanding citizens who appear to have been targeted by a criminal organization. The government’s response was typical: it attempted to deflect public outrage over the murders by spreading rumors that the bodies were found with “narco-messages” that accused the victims of working for organized crime. The family fought back against attempts to smear their loved ones’ names and organized protests that brought organized crime’s innocent victims into the international spotlight for the first time.

The government also attempted to downplay Juan Francisco’s murder through “unconfirmed reports” leaked to the media that a message from the Gulf cartel was found with the bodies that said, “This is what happens for making anonymous calls to soldiers.”
A National Movement Is Born
Like the Reyes Salazars, Javier Sicilia refused to let the government write off his son’s murder as yet another tick on the country’s so-called execution-meter. “Many of the dead, maybe the majority of the dead, they have a story. They were innocent and they were killed stupidly for no reason,” Sicilia argues. “They're human beings, and behind them there are families who are suffering very much."

Sicilia’s outrage over his son’s murder—amplified by his excellent public speaking skills and his contacts in Mexican media—has caused disparate struggles to coalesce into a national movement against the drug war. The protests began with over 500 people in Cuernavaca on March 29, the day after Juan Francisco’s body was found. On March 30, protesters held a candlelight vigil in Cuernavaca.

By April 6, the protests had spread to at least 21 Mexican states and twelve cities in eight foreign countries.

On April 27, the protesters diversified their tactics. That day, young protesters dyed Cuernavaca’s “Peace Dove” fountain blood red. Then, twenty young members of the Network for Peace and Justice temporarily shut down the State Attorney General’s Office. Later, they burst onto the floor of the Morelos State Congress and read a declaration. The protesters called upon politicians to combat impunity and corruption, and to promote human rights and a "dignified life."

That same day, Sicilia hung a plaque bearing his son’s name on City Hall in downtown Cuernavaca and called on others to do the same. “It's important that when we arrive in any plaza in any city in the country, that we see the names of our dead,“ declared Sicilia. “The plaques are being put up to remember them and to tell the authorities who criminalized them that these people are not mysterious statistics; they're human beings.”




I'll be tweeting live from the anti-war march on May 5-8.  Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/kristinbricker, or follow my tweets below.