* OAXACA UPDATE: THREE KILLED, FEDERAL TROOPS MOVE IN
* LA OTRA: MARCOS: FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN SONORA
* 16,000 CHILDREN SUFFER SEXUAL ABUSE
* BORDER NEWS: BUSH SIGNS BORDER BILL
Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS). CIS is a Washington, D.C.
based activist group committed to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas. CIS is actively supporting the struggles
of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico while simultaneously combating
related structures of oppression within our own communities.
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"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
OAXACA UPDATE: THREE KILLED, FEDERAL TROOPS MOVE IN
In the early afternoon of Oct. 29 hundreds of agents of Mexico's
Federal Preventive Police (PFP) entered Oaxaca city, capital of the
southern state of Oaxaca, to end a five-month occupation of the
downtown area and government offices by striking teachers and their
allies. With helicopters flying overhead and tank-like armored
anti-riot trucks spraying water and tear gas, the police knocked down
barricades while thousands of supporters of the Popular Assembly of
the People of Oaxaca (APPO) chanted insults, sang the national anthem
and attempted to block the operation nonviolently. In some cases the
protesters pushed the police back, and there is a report that APPO
supporters seized one of the anti-riot trucks in the San Jacinto
area. Radio Universidad, which supports the strike, reported one
serious injury by the evening and 40 arrests.
Late in the afternoon the PFP entered the central plaza, the Zocalo,
while hundreds of APPO supporters held the center of the plaza. As of
early evening, the two sides were in a standoff. One of the APPO
leaders in the Zocalo, Flavio Sosa, said he was in contact with the
federal government and was attempting to negotiate an agreement by
which the PFP and the APPO would both withdraw from the plaza to
avoid violence. Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada announced the
deployment of federal forces on the morning of Oct. 28 as the PFP
detachments were already being flown into the Oaxaca city airport.
According to government sources, the deployment consisted of 3,500
federal police, including PFP agents and soldiers in PFP uniforms.
The government sources said the federal forces had no lethal weapons
but would use chemical agents like tear gas. Their equipment included
10 anti-riot trucks that were used in Mexico City on Sept. 1 to guard
Congress against demonstrators protesting what they considered fraud
in the July 2 national elections.
In addition to the PFP agents, the military had three battalions in
reserve in the town of Ixcotel--a total of 1,837 soldiers that could
be deployed to the state capital if needed. Another 5,000 soldiers
were patrolling in various parts of the state under "Plan DN-II," a
counterinsurgency operation in place since Mar. 27 ostensibly to
prevent actions by rebel groups such as the Popular Revolutionary
Army (EPR) and the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI).
The 70,000 teachers and other employees in Section 22 of the National
Education Workers Union (SNTE) went on strike for cost- of-living
increases and better schools on May 22. After Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz,
of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), tried to end
the strike with a police assault on June 14, the teachers escalated
their demands to include Ruiz's removal from office. Indigenous
communities and social movements joined the mobilization, forming the
APPO coalition. As of Oct. 18 at least 10 strikers or strike
supporters had been killed by police, soldiers or PRI supporters,
according to the strikers, and many teachers seemed ready to accept
the federal government's offer of an increase in wages. Although the
Fox administration announced the Oct. 28 police deployment as a
response to violence that occurred in Oaxaca city on Oct. 27, federal
agencies apparently had drawn up the plans weeks earlier. The police
operation seemed timed to coincide with the teachers' decision to end
their strike.
Section 22 members voted 31,078 to 20,387 to end the strike in a
consultation held on Oct. 24 and 25. [A smaller consultation the week
before was challenged by more militant union delegates.] A majority
supported a return to school on Oct. 30 if Federal Governance
Secretary (interior minister) Carlos Abascal Carranza guaranteed back
pay and freedom from reprisals for the strikers; the release of
"political prisoners"; annulment of arrest warrants against strikers;
and a trust fund for the families of teachers who had been killed. An
assembly of union delegates on Oct. 26 stipulated that several
thousand teachers would continue to take part in encampments
demanding Gov. Ruiz's resignation, and that new protests would start
if he had not resigned by Nov. 30. On the night of Oct. 28, as
federal police were preparing to encircle Oaxaca city, Section 22's
representatives signed an agreement with the Governance Secretariat
in Mexico City that met most of the teachers' conditions. Only four
prisoners were to be released on Oct. 30, but Deputy Governance
Secretary Arturo Chavez said the government would review the other
cases, since the "acts didn't necessarily occur in the way in which
they are described in the charges."
An Oct. 29 op-ed by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the center-left
presidential candidate who officially lost the July 2 election to
Felipe Calderon Hinojosa of Fox's center-right National Action Party
(PAN), charged that Fox's decision to send police into Oaxaca
resulted from "national political agreements" between the PAN and the
PRI. Together the PAN and PRI have a majority in Congress that can
back Calderon when he takes office on Dec. 1; to maintain the
coalition, Fox "goes on supporting an anti- popular, sinister and
repressive governor, at the cost of the suffering of Oaxaca's people."
The pretext for the deployment of federal police to Oaxaca was an
outbreak of violence on Oct. 27 in which at least three people were
killed and more than 23 wounded; one of the wounded died that night,
according to some reports. In the morning of Oct. 27 APPO supporters
stepped up their protests by blocking Oaxaca city's access to the
highway to Mexico City and the road to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. By
10am state police backed by PRI supporters had started violent
attacks on protesters. A gang of hooded men tried to attack Radio
Universidad, a pro-strike radio station at the local university,
while there was shooting on the El Rosario bridge. Five simultaneous
attacks on APPO barricades started at about 5 pm. In Santa Lucia del
Camino, a municipality a few miles outside Oaxaca city, people began
firing on the barricade from inside a house. APPO supporters backed a
truck into the house to break down the door, but a group of men, many
in red shirts, began firing on them. Oswaldo Ramirez, a photographer
for the Mexico City daily Milenio, was grazed on the knee by a bullet
while he was covering the incident; the armed men also fired on Raul
Estrella, a photographer from the Mexico City daily El Universal but
missed him. Brad Will, a freelance journalist and photographer who
worked with the Indymedia Center in New York City, was hit twice in
the abdomen as he videotaped the shooting. Strikers rushed him to a
Red Cross hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.
A few minutes later, Emilio Alonso Fabian, an indigenous education
teacher from Pochutla, was shot dead near a barricade in Santa Maria
Coyotepec, a suburb where Gov. Ruiz had his offices; 13 others were
wounded. According to strikers, Santa Maria's mayor had armed a gang
which attacked with assault rifles, revolvers and machetes. A local
campesino whose name is given as Esteban Ruiz and also as Esteban
Zurita was killed in the incident. "They were shooting in all
directions," a striker told a reporter. "At this time we knew that a
villager was killed... They spread a rumor that we killed him, and
people got angry." The state later charged 13 teachers with the
campesino's death. Meanwhile, police agents drove strikers out of
Ruiz's Santa Maria offices, which the strikers had been occupying.
Will, whose full name was William Bradley Roland, was well known as
an activist in New York; as a journalist he covered grassroots
struggles in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador, in addition to
Mexico and the US. In February 2005, Will was among 800 people
arrested in Goiania, Brazil, when state military police violently
evicted some 12,000 squatters, killing two of them [see Update #786].
Witnesses and Will's recovered videotapes indicate his killer was
Pedro Carmona, the former mayor of Felipe Carrillo Puerto
neighborhood; on Oct. 28 he was turned over to state prosecutors for
illegal possession of military weapons, along with several other
officials allegedly involved in the incident.
Source: Weekly News Update- Nicaragua Solidarity Network Of Greater
New York: 10/29
====
LA OTRA: MARCOS: FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN SONORA
In his tour of Mexico's northern state of Sonora, Zapatista
Subcomandante Marcos made public the existence of "forced labor
camps," where mostly indigenous migrant laborers from Chiapas,
Oaxaca, Guerrero and southern Veracruz live in "inhuman conditions"
and "virtual slavery." "They are truly concentration camps for the
indigenous," according to the local Libre Ciudadano (Free Citizenry)
group, which hosted Marcos in the Sonoran coastal town of Guaymas,
whose members have attempted to establish contact with and aid the
camps' inhabitants. Local activists from Libre Ciudadano and the
National Indigenous Congress (CNI) said the camps are maintained by
agribusiness interests.
When local activists drove Marcos and his delegation to the nearby
"Campo Mercurio," run by the firm G-Mark in Empalme municipality,
some 70 workers at the camp were quickly "evacuated" by their
employers aboard a trailer to a nearby ranch. Cries for help were
heard from the trailer as it drove away.
Source: http://ww4report.com: 10/26
====
16,000 CHILDREN SUFFER SEXUAL ABUSE
About 16,000 minors have suffered sexual abuse in Mexico, mostly in
urban areas, the National System for Holistic Family Development
(DIF) said. Speaking at the opening of a conference called the 'Sex
Trade in Urban Areas: Origins and Perspectives', DIF President Ana
Rosa Paya said that 5,000 cases, or nearly one in three of the
reported child abuse cases, took place in Mexico City. There is a
growing risk of illegal trade in child sex abuse, she added. 'These
figures are something we cannot ignore and that demands our
protection of our children.'
Mexican police have detected between 72,000 and 100,000 pornographic
websites, the DIF president said. 'We must find ways to make sure
that child abusers and prostitution rings are not tolerated,' Paya
said. According to the official, 10 percent of child prostitution
took place in working-class areas like La Merced, Garibaldi and
Centro Historico, where adult prostitution is an established
tradition. The DIF president said in La Merced -- a sprawling market
surrounded by slums -- there are more than 2,000 prostitutes, of whom
half are underage. Paya said 34 hotels in the area have made money
from sex trade and that they typically make 100,000 Mexican pesos
($9,090) a month.
Source: Xinhua: 10/26
====
BORDER NEWS: BUSH SIGNS BORDER BILL
On Oct. 26 at a White House ceremony, President George W. Bush signed
a bill authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the nearly
2,000-mile US-Mexico border in what was viewed as an effort to boost
anti-immigrant Republican candidates just before the Nov. 7
elections. "We have a responsibility to enforce our laws," said Bush.
"We have a responsibility to secure our borders. We take this
responsibility serious." The House of Representatives passed the
Secure Fence Act on Sept. 14 by a vote of 283-138. The Senate
approved it on Sept. 29 by a vote of 80-19.
The law authorizes the construction of at least two layers of
reinforced fencing around the border town of Tecate, California, and
across nearly the entire length of Arizona's border with Mexico.
Another expanse would cover much of the southern border of New
Mexico, and in Texas the fencing would cover the border areas between
Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and between Laredo and Brownsville. The
entire fence is supposed to be completed by the end of 2008. The law
also orders the Department of Homeland Security to install
surveillance cameras along the Arizona border by May 30, 2007. The
homeland security secretary is to achieve "operational control" of
the US border within 18 months using unmanned aerial vehicles,
ground-based sensors, satellites, radar and cameras.
The bill includes no money for the fence, although a homeland
security spending measure the president signed earlier in October
included $1.2 billion toward the border project's cost, including
access roads, vehicle barriers, lighting and high-tech equipment. The
entire fence project is expected to cost some $6 billion. T.J.
Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union
representing border agents, said Oct. 25 that Customs and Border
Protection statistics for the year ending Sept. 30 show arrests at
border crossings down 8% nationally, but up in the San Diego
sector--the area of the border with the most fencing.
The Mexican government has prepared a draft resolution with harsh
criticism of plans to build a wall to impede entrance of illegal
immigrants into the United States, the United Nations institution
reported. The project will be presented next week in Geneva at the UN
Human Rights Council, said a spokesman of the Mexican diplomatic
mission. The Mexican authorities gesture seems to be the first
practical response to legislation approved by the US Senate last
month to build a 1,100-km barrier throughout the two- country border.
The resolution will be presented to the 47 members of this new UN
organization, which substituted this year the discredited Human
Rights Commission, at a time in which its presidency is in the hands
of Mexican ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba.
Sources: Immigration News Briefs: 10/27; Prensa Latina: 10/24
====
listed sources. These articles are offered for educational purposes
which CIS maintains is 'fair use' of copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
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