*OAXACA UPDATE II: SECOND MEETING WITH GOV'T ENDS IN FAILURE
*LA OTRA UPDATE: TOUR ENDS BACK IN MEXICO CITY
*CALDERON PRESENTS BUDGET
*BORDER NEWS: OAS NAMES U.S. GOVERNOR AS MIGRATION ENVOY
*2 ARRESTED IN JOURNALIST'S DEATH
=================================================================
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.
To view newsletter archives, visit:
http://lists.mutualaid.org/pipermail/mexico-week/
=================================================================
OAXACA UPDATE I: LEADER ARRESTED IN MEXICO CITY
Federal police in Mexico City arrested Flavio Sosa, 42, and three
other leaders of the six-month protest late Monday. The men had
traveled to the Mexican capital to hold talks with officials of the
federal Interior Ministry. The talks began with other protest
leaders. Sosa faces a variety of charges, including kidnapping,
arson, vandalism and assault. "This is a bad sign," Zemen Bravo, the
elected leader of the protesters, told reporters shortly before
entering the Interior Ministry building. "They are hostages. But
there is a social movement that will know what lesson to draw and
continue protesting."
Some human rights activists said that the arrests indicated how
Mexico's new interior minister - Francisco Ramirez, who took office
with President Felipe Calderon - will deal with dissenters. "He's an
enemy of human rights," said Adrian Ramirez, president of the Mexican
League for the Defense of Human Rights, a Mexico City group involved
in Oaxaca. "He's proving it through his first actions just four days
after taking office," said Ramirez, no relation to the interior
minister.
The Interior Ministry said that it would give priority to talks to
find a solution to the Oaxaca standoff. Referring to Sosa's arrest,
the ministry's statement said the government is committed "to the
firm application of the law and to our existing legal framework."
In other Oaxaca news, assailants shot dead an Indian activist police
said. It was not clear if the killing was related to months of
political violence in which at least nine other people have died. The
bullet-ridden corpse of Raul Marcial Perez was found Friday (12/08)
on a road near the Mixtec Indian community of Agua Fria about 120
miles north of Oaxaca City, state police said in a news release. He
had been shot earlier in the day, it said. Marcial Perez had been
involved in disputes involving two rival Triqui Indian rights groups,
but it was not clear if that was related to his slaying.
Sources: Houston Chronicle: 12/06; Associated Press: 12/10
====
OAXACA UPDATE II: SECOND MEETING WITH GOV'T ENDS IN FAILURE
A second meeting between the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of
Oaxaca (APPO) and the present Mexican administration concluded
without agreements on the conflict in that Mexican state. In the
meeting the APPO demanded the release of 138 individuals charged of
committing violent acts on November 25 in the capital of that
demarcation.
The government limited itself to receiving protests issued by the
organization as the meeting was agreed to have dialogue character and
a possible stage for the negotiation of any solution. The APPO
confirmed it would carry out the peaceful march set for December 10
and intended to demand the release of the arrested individuals. With
that objective, they said, all preventive measures will be taken.
Representatives of the Executive and APPO leaders agreed to meet on
December 12 again to analyze the denunciations on human rights
violations issued on Friday.
Source: Prensa Latina: 12/09
====
LA OTRA UPDATE: TOUR ENDS BACK IN MEXICO CITY
After a long journey into the forgotten corners of the country of
Mexico, the Zapatista Other Campaign tour begun on January 1st
finally came to an end" and a new beginning. To celebrate, adherents
of the Other Campaign met together Mexico City to compare notes and
shed light onto some of the results of the tour. The theme, the Other
Campaign and the Anti-Capitalist Struggle, brought together eight
panelists who addressed these topics to a full house, not a single
chair left empty. Four of the panelists were the first four delegates
of the Sixth Commission of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
(EZLN, in its Spanish initials): Delegado Zero, Subcomandante
Insurgente Marcos; Delegada Una, Comandanta Grabiela; Delegado Dos,
Comandante Zebedeo; and Delegada Tres, Comandanta Miriam. Other
representatives as follows: Rosario Hernandez, of the Independent
Francisco Villa Front, Luis Alfonso Vargas of the Party of Mexican
Communists, Sergio Rodríguez of Rebeldia magazine y Lucas Alvarez of
Socialist Worker Unity.
The panelists each identified capitalism as the overriding cause of
the problems that the Mexican people and environment are suffering
today; the grievances heard over the past year by Delegate Zero on
his nationwide listening tour. Vargas mentioned how since the end of
the Cold War, capitalism has been presented to the world as the only
natural and inevitable option. Since this system, according to
Vargas, is based in exploitation and the sale of merchandise, it
causes the destruction of natural resources and an even greater class
struggle. He proposed that the only way out of this situation will be
the destruction of the capitalist system, and described how the
protests are growing around the world. "Now not only poor people are
standing up against it, but people of all classes and especially
indigenous people, immigrants, human rights organizations and more."
The movement against capitalism, Vargas said, is beginning to take
the offensive.
Next Rosario Hernandez remembered that in the year 1810 Mexico fought
for its Independence from Spain, and one hundred years later in 1910,
came the Mexican Revolution against another dictatorship. Now, as
2010 approaches, the Other Campaign is laying the groundwork to
vindicate those victories. "We have hit the limit of the
disappearance of people, of land, and of culture, and every day the
riches of the country are held in fewer and fewer hands." She
declared capitalism to be like a cancer that destroys all of the
natural wealth that is Mexico. "Capitalism has converted everything
into merchandise: education, politics, even man himself. It is a
crucial element of this system to destroy anything that is different,
especially anything rebellious, and within this, to erase the past
itself. Ignorance, by way of historical amnesia, serves as one of the
principal weapons that allows for the continuation of this system.
Erasing the history of centuries of humiliation, of people forced to
sell their land and of people killed in the struggle, makes the
current destruction appear isolated and alone. Another weapon is the
institutional violence that causes anyone who acts out against the
system to be followed, jailed, disappeared, or assassinated." But in
spite of all of this systematic oppression, Hernandez points out a
search for the real past that is still exists, even if underground.
"We are learning today from The Other Campaign how many silent
struggles are going on across the country, that don't appear in the
official data. We are recognizing the honest struggles, and these
people are not alone". Today we are constructing a new form of
politics, of uniting our strengths, together."
Alvarez followed this notion of the formation of a new politics, from
the Zapatista uprising in 1994, and the subsequent struggles over
international trade policies. "Free trade served to deepen the
political struggle against capitalism." He mentioned the fact that
students, now upon graduating, have no place to go to find a job, no
place to create a better condition of life for this country, and for
the defense of the mother earth. "Now what we have to do is find the
links, the connections between all of these different struggles we
have seen in this tour around Mexico. The left has to unite within
itself against capitalism, to join together all of the different
positions within the leftist movement."
Rodríguez of Rebeldia talked about the importance of defining what it
means to be anti-capitalist, and in this way defining exactly what is
capitalism and neo-liberalism. "Today we are living a global offense
of exploitation, of being kicked off of our lands, and of a
development of politics that will destroy us." The politicians, he
continues, are now the "worst" or the "not as bad", and either way
they continue taking everything from us, little by little. "The only
way that we can confront this is by struggling for the impossible or
in other words, the necessary." Rodríguez also talked about how the
only politics that exist now in Mexico are the politics that give
everything over to the great capital, making this country subordinate
to the United States. Every time the demands are more and more
intense, now creating a cultural crisis. The tenets of the Other
Campaign, to unite those from below and to the left, are the
destination of those searching out an alternative. "The possibility
does exist, when we are able to join together all of our efforts."
Delegada Tres, Comandanta Miriam, spoke on behalf of the Zapatista
Sixth Commission. She said the EZLN is on alert for all of the
political prisoners of Atenco, and all of the women raped there. "We
see how the government has not been able to find a solution to the
demands. We are not going to leave them alone. We must continue to
organize ourselves. We also are organizing against the capitalistic
system, which for us means only pain, hunger, oblivion and
inequality." Comandanta Miriam also focused on how important it is to
fight for the lands, and for fair salaries, even if it does provoke
repression. "They are trying to finish off our culture and our
collective way of working, through privatization of our natural
resources, by giving us transgenetic seeds, all from those rich
countries, the capitalists. Every time the prices rise for things we
need, and our salaries are lower and lower. They are making our youth
learn English and the ways of individualism, this is what they put in
the minds through the educational system." She spoke to the need to
understand the collective way of working, as a method within the
struggle. "The politicians talk about democracy, freedom and truth,
but we know this is nothing more than talk and a manipulation of
information. They want to fool us once again. We have to show them
our ways, which don't depend on institutions or on individuals. Our
future is up to us, it depends on how we want it to be." Miriam ended
her speech by saying- "Keep heart! Don't ever stop struggling. Soon
this capitalist system will fall."
Subcomandante Marcos spoke next, introduced by Miriam as "the person
we have put in charge of the work of the Other Campaign." Marcos
began by addressing the situation in Oaxaca, the hundreds of people
who have been illegally tortured, beaten and jailed, young, old,
children and grandparents. "Brothers and Sisters," he called out to
the crowd, "this attack against Oaxaca cannot be forgotten, EZLN
calls on all people to initiate the following demands: One, the
presentation of all of the disappeared peoples, alive. Two, freedom
for all of the political prisoners. Three, the immediate exit of
Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. And four, the recognition of all the wrong doing
that has happened to the people of Oaxaca. Oaxaca is not alone."
Next he referred to the entire journey of the Other Campaign, over
45,000 kilometers, in land that we now can call "from below". Marcos
talked about how this force is growing so much that it can't even be
contained by the country of Mexico, that to the North of the Rio
Bravo there exists another Mexico, "one that we are not going to
lose." He continued: "We cannot continue resisting separately, each
person from their own place. We must unite ourselves." He talked
about how in each of the different eight corners of Mexico they saw
people from below, criminalized for fishing, for taking care of the
land, for struggling to maintain their territory. He talked about how
the great machine of the north is making everything into merchandise,
into property, into banks, malls- and all of the profits go to the
foreigners. "We have returned to where we were in the 1900s, with the
destruction of our land, our culture, our collective way of working,
the destruction of our women, the lack of appreciation of our elders,
and the merchandising of the youth. All of this, including the lack
of maintenance of our educational system and the social security
system, is for the benefit of the grand capital extranjero." Delegate
Zero finished his speech by saying how it was more common in the
North to find women as the bosses, but that this strong indigenous
woman of the North, and her struggle for indigenous rights, was not
created by the Zapatista Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle
that began the Other Campaign, but, rather, that the Sexta serves
simply as a call to get to know each other, to unite ourselves and to
respond to the following questions. "Who are we", Where are we", How
does it look" What do we want" How are we going to get it"" He called
upon all to meet this Monday, December 4th to begin to discuss the
answers to these questions. He also called upon the importance of
creating a movement within the Other Campaign focused upon the
following issues: 1) the high costs of electricity around the
country. 2) the state and care of the environment, and, 3) the
importance supporting small businesses instead of multinational
corporations. "The hour has come," announced Marcos. "It is time to
wake up. It is difficult to distinguish between day and night when
everything appears to be a pre-dawn, but now is the time to
recuperate our shadows. We have to awaken."
Delegado Dos, Zebedeo, rose to invite everyone to the meeting with
the Zapatista communities and with countries from around the world,
in Oventic, the heart in the center of the Zapatista territory,
December 30 to January 2. "So you all can get to know us directly,
but it will not be just to get to know people, but also to see how we
work: Our good health, our autonomous education, our basic
alimentation, and our healthy justice. This is a new practice of
government, a healthy government. It's our new form of politics, our
new way. Never will it be through the current political system, with
big business. We are witnesses to the lies. We are sure that now is
the time to plant the seeds, to create anew. We will make the rich
people shake in their boots. Then we will see each other also in July
of 2006, for the Intergalactic again in the Zapatista communities. We
will be waiting for you all with open arms."
Finally, the last Delegate stood to speak, with an obvious smile not
well hidden behind her black mask. Delegada Una, Grabiela said "We
are here because we have completed our work. El Compa, Marcos, has
now finished his tour. Now we get to return, but you all will not
remain alone. Other compañeros will come. Do not fear the government.
We will continue advancing in our struggle. We must give our whole
heart to this struggle. Now we can return happy to our communities."
She caused the entire audience to laugh by admitting that she was
going to say other things, but she forgot it all. "It doesn't
matter", she proclaims, "I am just so happy with you all and for this
reason we can now go home. Redouble your efforts, friends, and stay
optimistic."
Source: NarcoNews.com: 12/03
====
CALDERON PRESENTS BUDGET
Mexican President Felipe Calderon - under pressure to promote the
social programs his leftist rival championed - presented an austere
budget that increases spending for social programs to help the
country's poorest. The $205 billion budget includes a 10 percent
reduction in Calderon's salary and that of other top government
officials. The salary cuts would free up about $2.5 billion in the
next year, or enough to build about 2,500 schools. Calderon also
promised to send a government spending bill to Congress that builds
long-term savings. "I'm committed to transparency and
accountability," he said.
Former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who lost
the July 2 election by less than one percentage point and is leading
opposition to Calderon's administration, made slashing government
salaries a central theme of his campaign, along with increased
spending on social programs for the elderly and the poor.
Calderon, who took office from outgoing President Vicente Fox, wants
to increase spending on education by 4.2 percent and on health
programs by 9.3 percent, in part to fund the expansion of a program
that offers insurance to the poor. Other areas that will receive more
money in the budget are housing and public safety. Calderon has
promised to crack down on corrupt police and rampant kidnappings and
drug murders, and to increase the salaries of the lowest-paid members
of the police, army and navy. Calderon called for combating tax
evasion and said the budget supports the creation of small and medium
businesses to create jobs. The budget anticipates 3 percent inflation
and 3.6 percent growth in gross domestic product. Calderon said his
proposed budget, which represents a 9.4 percent increase over the
2006 budget, was realistic in the context of international finances,
including a projected decrease in the U.S. economy's growth as well
as a drop in oil prices and in Mexico's oil production capacity next
year.
Lopez Obrador, who pledged that as president he would cut top
government salaries by half, called Calderon's proposed 10 percent
cut a "farce," noting that even after the reduction, the new
president would still earn three times more than the president of
Chile and nearly twice as much as the prime minister of Spain.
Calderon's salary has still not been announced, but Fox earned about
$245,000 this year. After a 10 percent cut, that would be $220,500.
By contrast, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet will earn $72,000
this year, while Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
will make $117,000. President Bush makes $400,000 annually.
Calderon, who campaigned on promises to aid the poor through job
creation, has come under pressure to focus more heavily on social
spending in an effort to steal some of Lopez Obrador's thunder and
earn the support of the 14.7 million Mexicans who voted for the
former Mexico City mayor. Regardless of whether the budget cuts
produce the savings Calderon anticipates, they are unlikely to have a
major impact on the rest of the government's economic activity, said
Mario Correa, an economist at Scotia Casa de Bolsa in Mexico City. "I
think it's more likely a clear message about the social objectives
that President Calderon is trying to meet," he said. "And in that
sense, it is a positive message that he is very conscious that Mexico
is a country that still has a lot of needs and setbacks and that he
is going to focus on attending to those."
Source: Associated Press: 12/05
====
BORDER NEWS: OAS NAMES U.S. GOVERNOR AS MIGRATION ENVOY
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a former UN ambassador, was
named as the Organization of American States' special envoy on
migration in an effort to improve US-Latin American dialogue. The
appointment came amid heated debate in the United States over illegal
immigration, as US lawmakers consider proposals to deal with the 11.5
million undocumented workers, mostly Latin Americans, living in
America.
"The migration issue is key to improving relations (between Latin
America and the United States," Richardson, 59, said at a news
conference alongside OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza.
"Dialogue and democracy are very important and I hope to help the
secretary general with advice and trips to countries to improve
dialogue," he said in Spanish. Richardson said he was ready to visit
leaders who have been critical of the United States in hopes of
improving relations. "I know president (elect of Nicaragua Daniel)
Ortega, I know (Venezuelan) President (Hugo) Chavez, and I will go to
any country," said Richardson, whose mother is Mexican.
Richardson, whose state borders Mexico, rejected plans backed by
President George W. Bush to build a huge fence along the US-Mexico
border to stop the flow of illegal immigration. Instead, he called
for comprehensive reform to regularize undocumented workers. "Two
things must take place. One, a plan to legalize the 12 million
(illegal) immigrants in the United States, and I think that it is
important to improve border security," he said, pointing to the need
for increased patrols and more cooperation with Mexico. Richardson
was a UN ambassador and energy secretary under former president Bill
Clinton. The Democrat has not ruled out running for his party's
nomination in the 2008 presidential election.
Source: AFP: 12/07
====
2 ARRESTED IN JOURNALIST'S DEATH
A journalist killed last week apparently was not the main target of
the attack, authorities said. A preliminary investigation indicated
that two suspects arrested were not after 32-year-old reporter Adolfo
Sanchez Guzman, but the second victim, said Jaime Pizano of the
district attorney's office. The bodies of Sanchez Guzman and Cesar
Martinez Lopez were discovered near Ciudad Mendoza, 75 miles west of
the port city of Veracruz. Sanchez Guzman's abandoned car had been
found two days earlier.
Sanchez Guzman worked for the Veracruz affiliate of the Televisa
television network and reported for a radio station and an Internet
news site. Initially there was some speculation that his killing
might have been related to his work. Since 2004, at least 13
journalists have met violent deaths in Mexico, presumably as revenge
for unfavorable reports on criminals, drug traffickers and corrupt
government officials.
Police arrested Juan Carlos Palestino, 30, and Julian Rosas
Palestino, 34, after witnesses said the two brothers had been looking
for Martinez, Pizano said. The brothers had accused Martinez of
stealing their truck, Pizano said. Investigators believe Sanchez
Guzman had been giving Martinez a ride to a car repair shop. Sanchez
Guzman was shot twice in the back of the head at close range, and
Martinez was shot once in the head, police said. Both had been
tortured before they died, Pizano said.
Source: Associated Press: 12/05
====
The above articles were originally published and copyrighted by the
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.
end: Mexico Week In Review: 12.04-12.10
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