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."

 

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

by Kristin Bricker and Santiago Navarro, Upside Down World  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legal Recourses Exhausted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Joshua Stephens, Toward Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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)

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

by Kristin Bricker

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

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

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

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

Photo: EFE

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

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

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

by Sergio Ocampo Arista, La Jornada
translated by Kristin Bricker


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

[…]


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

December 13, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Several of the detainees say they were tortured in police custody

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People Are Still Being Detained

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

[…]

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

[…]

Indigenous Zapatista Supporters “Held Hostage” in Chiapas for Opposing Ecotourism Project

by Kristin Bricker, Upside Down World

This article was published in Upside Down World just before Movement for Justice in El Barrio's "5 Days of Worldwide Action for the Bachajón 5" on April 1-5.  The five indigenous Zapatista supporters (adherents to the Other Campaign) are still in prison, so Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB) has called for "5 MORE Days of Worldwide Action for the Bachajón 5" on April 24-28.  

This past February 3, approximately 300 state police raided a meeting of indigenous Zapatista supporters in San Sebastian Bachajón, Chiapas, and arrested 117 people. The arrests sparked protests across Mexico and in front of Mexican consulates around the world, leading the Chiapas government to release the majority of the prisoners. However, five Tzeltal indigenous men, who are now known as the “Bachajón 5,” remain behind bars. One is accused of murder, another is accused of attempted murder, and all five are accused of crimes against the peace.

The Bachajón Zapatista supporters are adherents to the Other Campaign, which was initiated by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in order to form national and global alliances amongst leftist organizations and movements.

The arrests stem from a confrontation between rival indigenous groups that occurred the previous day in San Sebastian Bachajón, which is an ejido, or communally held lands. Marcos García Moreno, an ejido member who belonged to the faction that allied itself with the government, was shot and killed during the confrontation with ejido members who are Other Campaign adherents. The government accuses the Other Campaign adherents of murdering García Moreno and attempting to murder a second man who was shot during the confrontation. The Other Campaign adherents deny the charges. They say they were unarmed, and that the government-allied ejido members were shooting guns into the air during the confrontation.

The government has attempted to paint the conflict as a dispute between rival indigenous factions over control of a tollbooth that charges a fee to enter the Agua Azul waterfalls, one of Chiapas’ most popular tourist attractions. However, the Bachajón adherents and their lawyers at the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center (“Frayba”) say that they have proof that the tollbooth confrontation was designed to provoke government intervention and police occupation of the region. The Bachajón adherents argue that the government orchestrated the confrontation at the tollbooth “as a pretext to take over the Agua Azul Waterfalls Ecotourism Center for its transnational interests and projects.”

According to leaked government documents provided by Frayba, the government plans to have multinational corporations build a multi-million dollar ecotourism hotel on indigenous land. The leaked“Palenque-Agua Azul Waterfalls Development Strategy” Powerpoint, which was prepared by a United States consulting firm, argues:

"The state and local government need to ensure that tourists that visit Chiapas and Palenque feel safe and protected. The Zapatista movement is still strongly associated with Chiapas… Many of those unfamiliar with the region still consider Chiapas to be unsafe… The state needs to protect the developers and hotel operators against the perception of political instability… Before attracting investments, the state must resolve land acquisition and access problems. The acquisition of lands adjacent to the waterfalls is vital…”

 Bolom Ajaw, a small community founded by Zapatistas after the 1994 uprising, is located directly across the river from the proposed hotel. The San Sebastian Bachajón ejido, home to a few hundred Other Campaign adherents and Zapatista supporters, is located just outside of Agua Azul. The highway that leads to the Agua Azul waterfalls cuts through the Bachajón ejido. A proposed freeway included in the Palenque-Agua Azul Waterfalls Development Strategy would cut through Bachajón and Bolom Ajaw.

History of the Agua Azul Conflict

Prior to 1994, the lands around the Agua Azul waterfalls were ranches owned by rich men and worked by underpaid and poorly treated indigenous peasants. When the Zapatistas rose up in arms in 1994, 96 of those indigenous peasants ran off the rich ranchers and took over the land they had worked for generations. As a result, Zapatistas and their supporters control much of the land in and around what is now the Agua Azul nature reserve.

In 2001, the Mexican government demonstrated that it would not honor its commitments under the San Andres Accords, which, if implemented, would have granted autonomy to Mexico’s indigenous peoples. In response, the EZLN began to unilaterally implement the San Andres Accords. It began to redistribute unoccupied recuperated lands to landless Zapatistas from other areas, such as the families who founded Bolom Ajaw—located next to the Agua Azul waterfalls.

In 2000, the Chiapas governor offered individual land titles to any peasant who occupied recuperated lands. The Zapatistas interpreted the offer as an attempt to divide the collectivized lands and bring recuperated territory back into the government’s sphere of control, and they rejected the land titles. However, many indigenous peasants who benefited from the uprising but were not Zapatistas did title their lands, causing divisions within the communities.

Around this time, non-Zapatista indigenous peasants, such as those who now belong to the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Rights (OPDDIC), took advantage of the diminished government repression of land takeovers, and they began to occupy lands close to the Agua Azul waterfalls. OPDDIC is a Chiapan paramilitary organization that the government officially granted non-profit status. “Little by little [OPDDIC] amplified [its territory] in a disproportionate manner until they began to border the Zapatistas’ parcels, and [then] they began to invade,” Frayba explains. “First [OPDDIC invaded] seven hectares of cultivated land, and later the Bolom Ajaw waterfalls reserve, with the intention of being beneficiaries of the tourism projects that are planned for that territory.”

Divisions in the indigenous communities worsened as the government began to offer “development” projects to peasants who allied themselves with the government, as is the case with the Agua Azul Tzeltal Indigenous Ecotourism Cooperative (Ecoturismo Indígena Tzeltal de Cascadas de Agua Azul S.C. de R.L.), which is affiliated with OPDDIC and operates the Agua Azul waterfalls tourist area with the help of generousgovernment subsidies. OPDDIC, members of the Agua Azul Ecotourism Cooperative, and local indigenous peasants affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, one of the most powerful political parties in Mexico) have carried out armed attacks on the Bolom Ajaw Zapatistas in attempts to drive them off their land. The most recent attack occurred in February 2010, when OPDDIC ambushed Zapatistas who were attempting to retake Bolom Ajaw farmland that OPDDIC occupied the month before. The confrontation resulted in one dead OPDDIC member, whom Zapatistas say was hit by friendly fire as the OPDDIC surrounded Bolom Ajaw and opened fire from various points in the community.

Divisions amongst residents of the Agua Azul area have led to disagreements over how tourism proceeds are spent. As a result, Other Campaign adherents and pro-government ejido members are engaged in a constant battle over the right to charge admission into the Agua Azul tourist area. The tollbooth has changed hands several times, and often, tourists must pay separate entrance fees to different peasant organizations in order to enter Agua Azul. In 2009, Chiapas state police raided the Other Campaign-controlled tollbooth and gave pro-government peasants the right to charge admission. Later that year, the Other Campaign re-took the tollbooth. This past February, in the events leading up to the February 3 mass arrest of Other Campaign adherents, local PRI members attempted to once again take control of the tollbooth.

Showdown in Agua Azul

On February 1, 2011, Bolom Ajaw residents noticed two helicopters flying low over their community. The helicopters were white with red and green stripes, although witnesses could not discern who the helicopters belonged to. The witnesses’ description matches the Air Force helicopter that President Felipe Calderón used that same day to visit Chiapan tourist destinations that are under development by the federal Secretary of Tourism (FONATUR). Calderón visited Palenque, where FONATUR wants to build an integrated tourist center (which includes the proposed hotel in Agua Azul) and a freewaythat would cut straight through San Sebastián Bachajón and Bolom Ajaw.

On February 2—one day after the helicopter flyby in Bolom Ajaw—sixty local PRI members take over the Bachajón tollbooth in a surprise early morning raid. The PRI group was led by Carmen Aguilar Gómez, former leader of the Regional Organization Ocosingo Café Growers (ORCAO), one of the peasant organizations that broke its agreement with the EZLN and legalized recuperated lands.

Following the attack, the Bachajón adherents regroup, and at 2:30pm, 150 of them attempt to retake the tollbooth. “We were armed with sticks and machetes,” one of them told Frayba. “No one carried firearms.” According to Bachajón adherents who participated in the action, the PRI members began to fire their guns into the air. The adherents pushed forward, and when they arrived at the tollbooth, the PRI members fled. An hour and a half later, state police arrived on the scene, accompanied by Carmen Aguilar and several other leaders of the PRI group. The police told the adherents that a PRI member had been murdered and they took over the tollbooth. The zone is now heavily occupied by state police.

On February 3, state police interrupted a meeting of Bachajón adherents to the Other Campaign. A commander asked if they agreed to a three-way dialogue with the government and the PRI ejido members. When the adherents responded that they would not participate in the dialogue, the police arrested 117 people who were in attendance at the meeting.

On February 5, the government released 107 prisoners and filed charges against the remaining ten.

Manufactured Conflict

The Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center, whose lawyers are defending the Bachajón 5, insists that the confrontation at the Agua Azul tollbooth is part of the government’s strategy to strip indigenous Chiapans of their territorial rights. “Territory as an essential element of a dignified life and the clear exercise of indigenous peoples’ collective rights run contrary to the business interests that the federal and state government have promised to private investors. Projects that benefit Mexican and foreign investors and cause poverty and death for residents,” argues Frayba. In Agua Azul, “the State did not intervene to prevent confrontations. Instead, it planned a strategy for territorial control in the zone.”

In addition to the previously mentioned leaked Powerpoint presentation in which a private consulting firm identifies the Zapatistas as problematic for Chiapas’ tourism industry and argues that the “acquisition” of their land next to the Agua Azul waterfalls is “vital,” Frayba says that an informant has told them about secret meetings between the government and PRI ejido members. According to Frayba, “Since March 2010, officials from the Chiapas General Government Secretariat—including Secretary Noé Castañón León—public officials, political operators, police officials, and pro-government ejido members have held a series of meetings in which they designed a plan for territorial control of Agua Azul.” Carmen Aguilar Gómez, who led the February 2 attack on the tollbooth, was present at the meetings.

According to Frayba’s informant, who was present during the meetings, participants agreed on a plan that would result in the government purchasing $20 million pesos ($1.7 million dollars) of land from the pro-government ejido members in order to build the Agua Azul hotel. The informant says that the government told the ejido members present “to look for people in the region who have land titles.”

The Bachajón Other Campaign adherents were specifically mentioned in the meetings. The government “mentioned that from this moment on they [the pro-government ejido members] would be safe,” reports the informant. “Because the Other Campaign adherents were being pursued for being criminals that the Fray Bartolomé [Human Rights Center] was protecting.” In a later meeting, the informant says, they agreed that “together they would find a way to take down the Other Campaign.”

The conspirators decided to use the contested tollbooth to set their plan in motion. “The plan was that the organizations would clash so that the government would intervene and take over the tollbooth.” The ejidomembers investigated how many people they had to carry out a raid on the tollbooth, and how many people the Other Campaign could possibly mobilize to defend it. Then the government and the ejido members agreed on a date when the pro-government ejido members would take over the tollbooth. According to the informant, “Noé Castañón asked [the ejido members] if the majority of their group was in agreement to take over the tollbooth, and they said yes, even if they had to give their lives.”

The government’s behavior following the February 2 incident at the tollbooth appears to corroborate the informant’s testimony. On February 6, the state government held an “Agua Azul Ecotourism Center Dialogue and Coordination,” which was billed as a negotiation to resolve the conflict. Representatives from the Agua Azul and San Sebastian Bachajón attended the Dialogue, creating the appearance of an actual dialogue between conflicting parties. However, the representatives were all pro-government ejido members because the Other Campaign adherents refused to participate. Amongst the “agreements” that came out of the Dialogue are the following: 

• “At the communities’ request, the police will have a permanent presence.”
• “Frayba will not be permitted to participate [in negotiations], because it only exhorts violence and divides the communities.”

 The second point of “agreement” is particularly troubling because the Dialogue purports to address territorial control over indigenous lands, but it explicitly excludes the Bachajón adherents’ lawyers.

According to the Bachajón 5, they are being held “hostage by the state government, as a way of forcing us to accept their ecotourism project and end the Other Campaign organization on the ejido.” They say they have received several visits from government officials who have pressured them to sign on to the Agua Azul Ecotourism Center Dialogue and Coordination “agreement.” Domingo Pérez Álvaro, accused of attempted murder, says that during the confrontation at the tollbooth, he was in a meeting with José Manuel Morales, a government official from Ocosingo, Chiapas, with whom he was attempting to negotiate an agreement over the tollbooth. Morales visited Pérez Álvaro in prison and reportedly told him, “If you sign the agreement, I will say that you were with me, and the charges will go away.”


Global Solidarity

 Mobilizations have occurred around the globe in support of the Bachajón prisoners. Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB, a New York tenants rights organization and fellow Other Campaign adherent) declared this past March 7 to be a Worldwide Day of Action for the Liberation of the Political Prisoners of San Sebastian Bachajón. That day, protests occurred around Mexico and in ten other countries in support of Bachajón.

In an attempt to prevent the protests, the government freed five of the prisoners just before the Worldwide Day of Action. The government-funded Chiapas State Human Rights Commission (CEDH) says that it personally informed the Bachajón adherents that the men had been released in the hopes that it would prevent a highway blockade outside of Agua Azul. Because five of their comrades were still in jail, the Bachajón adherents went forward with the March 7 blockade. In response, the CEDH issued a statement criticizing the Bachajón adherents: “The incident that occurred today, in which the highway in front of the Agua Azul Waterfalls tourist center was blocked, worries this Council because these acts could provoke conflict amongst the region’s inhabitants and cause damage to third parties who are uninvolved in the conflict.”

The CEDH says that the five men now known as the “Bachajón 5” remain in prison because they tested positive on a gunpowder residue test. Its press release does not mention the fact that the men were detained the day after the confrontation at the tollbooth, and that the gunpowder residue test was performed two days later, on February 4. Furthermore, the men’s lawyers argue that they were not provided with adequate interpreters during their detention and interrogation. Instead of providing a qualified Tzeltal-Spanish interpreter, Palenque police officers interpreted during the interrogation.

MJB is keeping up the pressure to release the remaining five prisoners. The group has called for “5 Days of Worldwide Action for the Bachajón 5” on April 1-5 to demand the release of the remaining prisoners. MJB proposes that during the 5 Days of Worldwide Action for the Bachajón 5, “we unite our forces and organize actions–from our particular locations and respective forms of struggle–such as demonstrations, marches, informative street actions, flyering, public forums, theatre, teach-ins, and any other activity.”

Postscript:

MJB reports that since this article was written, the Bachajón Other Campaign adherents have suffered another heinous act of repression:

During the morning of Friday, April 8, 2011, our compas from the ejido of San Sebastián Bachajón once again recovered control of the tollbooth – which they themselves had installed – that marks the entrance to the Agua Azul waterfalls in the territory of the Bachajón ejido. This dignified and rebellious action, which constituted another step forward in the process of building justice and autonomy for indigenous peoples, truly inspired us.

On the following day, April 9, over 800 police and military agents, sent by the repressive PAN president Felipe Calderón and the repressive PRD governor Juan Sabines Guerrero, arrived at the location of the tollbooth and violently displaced the ejidatari@s. Shortly after this act of repression by the bad government, three compas disappeared.

MJB's entire statement, along with the call to action for "5 MORE Days of Worldwide Action for the Bachajón 5," is available here.