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GIEI: there was no cremation in Cocula
FINAL AYOTZINAPA REPORT
Relatives of the normalistas thanked the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for their investigative work. Photo: Cristina Rodríguez
By: Emir Olivares Alonso and José Antonio Román
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) for the Ayotzinapa case did not find “one single piece of evidence” for assuring that the 43 students of that rural teachers college, disappeared since September 2014, were executed and incinerated in the Cocula, Guerrero garbage dump. To the contrary, a year and a half of work confirmed their conclusion –which the group reached seven months ago– that the incineration of these bodies did not take place in that garbage dump.
Upon presenting its 608-page final report on the case yesterday, the experts assured that the authorities have not followed key lines of investigation, evidence has been manipulated, obstructed and investigative work rejected, officials that would have participated in the disappearance protected, and alleged suspects tortured to obtain confessions that support the government’s version. They emphasized that the Mexican justice system only investigates and punishes the material authors of the crime, but is remiss with the intellectual authors. “Investigation into the chain of command does not exist.”
With this report, the experts close their work in Mexico (their work concludes April 30), after the federal government refused to prolong their mandate. They lamented that the principal objective of the GIEI –the location of the students– had not been achieved.
A key element to the investigations, they said, was to obtain direct testimony from the military personnel that were present at several of the scenes of the violent acts in Iguala, which the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto repeatedly rejected.
The soldiers –they pointed out– even had knowledge of the beating and detention of the normalistas, “but took no measures to protect them.” Another fact to emphasize is that relatives of the Los Avispones soccer players directly requested help from the 27th infantry battalion, where they answered that they could not offer aid because “it’s not our jurisdiction.”
The experts concluded that certainty exists that normalistas there was “perfect coordination” in the attack on the students for more than 10 hours between different police corporations and alleged organized crime members, for the purpose of creating “a circle of control” that embraced up to 80 kilometers, to avoid the exit of the buses (taken over by the students) from Iguala.
In contrast, different police, among them the federal police, would have let the so-called fifth bus pass (which according to the GIEI’s hypothesis is key to the investigation, since it could be related to the shipment of narcotics from Iguala to Chicago). This unit, they added, wasn’t even incorporated into initial case record.
Angela Buitrago emphasized: “We’re dealing with a massive and indiscriminate attack on the civilian population, about which no explanation from the PGR exists as of the moment. The fifth bus is an investigative hypothesis that could justify an attack of that intensity. That line is not and cannot be closed.”
In the midst of great expectation to know the content of the report titled: Informe Ayotzinapa II: avances y nuevas conclusiones sobre la investigación, búsqueda y atención a las víctimas, [1] dozens of people, among them relatives of the victims, human rights defenders, the president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, James Cavallaro, politicians and intellectuals, were invited to the principal patio of the University Cloister of Sor Juana.
Official absences
The places remained empty that were destined for the assistant secretaries of Human Rights in the Secretariat of Governance, Roberto Campa; of Multilateral Issues and Human Rights of the Secretariat of Foreign Relations, Miguel Ruiz, and the assistant prosecutor for Human Rights in the Attorney General of the Republic’s office, Eber Betanzos, despite being invited. The argument for that absence was that they were hoping to know the report before its presentation, but it was finished at 10 PM on Saturday, and therefore it was impossible to get it to them.
Down with the “historic truth!”
In a long presentation and a press conference afterwards, which lasted almost four hours, the experts described some elements to throw down, once again, the so-called “historic truth.”
The GIEI found a registry of the activity of the mobile phones from at least seven of the now disappeared students, several hours and even days after September 26 and 27. For example, one of them made a call at 1:26 AM on the 27th, registered on the Huitzuco-Tenango highway. In the official version, the students would already have been murdered and their cell phones destroyed at that time.
One more element that was not investigated despite a request from the relatives and from the GIEI, is that a text message was sent from Jorge Aníbal Cruz Mendoza’s cell phone to his mother asking her “to give his balance; that telephone remained active even months after” the Iguala events.
The GIEI’s report shows that an alleged member of the Guerreros Unidos criminal organization, identified as El Caminante, and that as of now the authorities don’t know who he is, talked about the “critical hours” with at least seven municipal police located at key places, like Cocula and Iguala. One circumstance that is included in the PGR’s case record is that Jonhatan Osorio, one of the detainees blamed for the alleged incineration of the bodies, made a call from his telephone from the Cocula garbage dump, where–according to the experts– there is no signal.
Different testimonies obtained by the GIEI throw out the hypothesis that the 43 students would have been separated and led to different places. Various witnesses affirmed that between 10 and 14 of them were seen on the patio of the Iguala municipal police command post, where they would have spent the night of September 26 and 27. Others indicate that another group was taken to Huitzuco. “They fucked up a compañero and are taking them to Huitzuco, and the boss there will decide what to do with them,” one police agent would have said to the other.
The experts sent by the IACHR accredited acts of torture to at least 17 of the detainees because of the case, among them the five alleged members Guerreros Unidos that gave statements around the incineration of the 43 bodies in the Cocula garbage dump. Of the complaints presented to (Mexico’s) National Human Rights Commission for torture, 15 are from the 17 pointed out by the GIEI.
They condemned the media disqualifying –with which the federal government was complacent– of its work and they added that since January the PGR unnecessarily delayed or rejected the investigative work the group proposed. The report makes a series of recommendations that hoped would be complied with by the Mexican State.
For these facts, they added, there were 180 direct victims and 700 indirect victims. While they are leaving tranquil with the work carried out, Francisco Cox recognized: “We leave with the worst taste” because of not having fulfilled el principal objective: the location of the disappeared normalistas.
[1] Ayotzinapa Report II: advances and new conclusions about the investigation, search and attention to the victims.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Monday, April 25, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Forensic anthropologists publish report on Cocula garbage dump
43 Missing
* The objective is to encourage scientific and informed debate about the students’ whereabouts
By: José Antonio Román
The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF, its initials in Spanish) decided to place at the disposition of public opinion the entire report of the expert tests done on the garbage dump in Cocula, Guerrero. The report concludes that: “it’s not possible” that the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students were incinerated and executed in that place.
Although the EAAF doesn’t usually publish its work completely, on this occasion it pointed out that the decision seeks “to generate scientific and informed debate” about the acts that occurred on September 26 and 27, 2014 in Iguala, and the disappearance of the young students.
In this way, the judgments of this Argentine team are public and that carried out by the Peruvian expert José Torero, published by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI); consequently only the complete publication of the experts from the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) remain pending and, especially, the report that contains the judgment that the panel of specialists in fire would have recently formalized, announced by its spokesperson Ricardo Damián Torres last this month (April 2016).
“The publication of all the judgments and technical opinions will permit an open discussion among experts for the benefit of the investigation that occupies us. Only transparency and scientific discussion will permit comprehending the findings in the Cocula garbage dump,” it points out in a communiqué diffused by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, one of the instances that represent the parents of the 43 disappeared students.
The work carried out by the recognized Argentine team took more than a year of independent scientific work on the physical evidence collected and analyzed from the garbage dump, in which a group of 26 specialists in archaeology, anthropology, criminalistics, entomology and forensic botany, ballistics, fire dynamics, interpretation of satellite images, forensic dentistry, genetics and bone trauma participated. These specialists are from Argentina, Mexico, United States, Colombia, Uruguay and Canada.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
EZLN and CNI: Declaration of Maximum Alert for Xochicuautla and Ostula
Protected by riot police, construction company’s heavy equipment destroys a house in Xochicuautla. Photo: La Jornada
April 13, 2016
TO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD
TO THE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA
Faced with the cowardly betrayal of the Natho indigenous community of San Francisco Xochicuautla, municipality of Lerma in the State of Mexico, in order to impose the project of the highway from Toluca to Naucalpan, and the attack suffered by Community police of Ostula, municipality of Aquila, Michoacán, we, the Indigenous National Congress declare ourselves on maximum alert and call on the people, organizations and those in solidarity to be vigilant and respond to the call made by the community of Xochicuautla.
We denounce that:
On Monday April 11, at around 9 in the morning, more than 1,000 state police of the State Commission of Public Safety (CES) and the Forces of Action and Reaction (FAR), began arriving, entering the community on 3 sides, the Buenavista colonia, down Cuauhtémoc Street to get to the place known as “Lampeni,” and in the place called “Lapondishi” where the Camp of Peace and Dignified Resistance was situated, which was destroyed by the police.
At the place called “Lampeni,” Compañero Armando Garcia Salazar, uncle of David Ruiz García, delegate of the National Indigenous Congress, who attended the sharing between the CNI and the EZLN in August 2014, held in the Zapatista La Realidad, had his house and his children’s heritage. Inside the house about 25 people were gathered to defend the property, mostly women, they were very violently evicted, pushing and pulling the compañera Isabel Hernandez, aged 64, who is part of the Supreme Indigenous Council and at that time was holding a female child in her arms.
Accompanied by police, a letter was handed to Compañero Armando informing him that his house was on federal property and they had to destroy it; they also showed him the expropriation decree against which they had won an injunction.
Without further words, those inside the house were pushed out, and the possessions that were on the first floor were thrown out, leaving documents, clothing and tools inside.
Once again the bad government demonstrates that the laws it claims to represent and the supposed rule of law are nothing more than tools for dispossession which are used as long as and only when they are against the people. Dispossession and repression violate the suspension granted in injunctions (amparos) 1123/2015 and 771/2015 that were granted on February 18, 2016 and the court notified most authorities on 23 February, including SAASCAEM, which is the institution to which the Xochicuautla territory was granted in the expropriation decree.
Meanwhile, on the night of Sunday 10th April, compañero members of the community police of Santa Maria Ostula were attacked, near the town of San Juan de Alima, Michoacán, when, from a moving car, comunero Francisco Grajeda was killed and comunero Abraham Girón was wounded, he is also commissioner of the community to the National Indigenous Congress and a participant in the sharing held in the Zapatista La Realidad.
We denounce the bad government’s attempt to minimize this crime with which it seeks to encourage the return of violence to the region of Michoacán’s coastal sierra, and to put the territory, natural resources, dignity and peace of the region back into the hands of the narco-politicians, their paramilitaries, gunmen and businesses.
We call on the people of Mexico and the world to show solidarity urgently with the actions in defense of the rights of San Francisco Xochicuautla, by physically being present in the community, and mobilizing wherever they are to denounce and demand the cessation of attacks against community, its territory and peoples.
We hold Eruviel Avila and his boss Enrique Peña Nieto responsible for the integrity of our colleagues and of all those who give solidarity to the dignified struggle.
FOR THE INTEGRAL VINDICATION OF OUR PEOPLES
NEVER AGAIN A MEXICO WITHOUT US
APRIL 12, 2016
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
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Originally Published by in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
Frayba: Repression, torture and arbitrary arrests of Chiapas teachers
CHIAPAS: “ARBITRARY DEPRIVATION OF FREEDOM AND TORTURE OF CNTE TEACHERS,” FRAYBA
Federal Police arrive in Chiapas before teachers’ demonstrations. Photo: Chiapas Paralelo.
The Mexican State’s repression criminalizes social protest in Chiapas.
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, México, April 16, 2016
Press Bulletin
The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) documented human rights violations consistent with: the disproportionate use of Public Force, arbitrary deprivation of freedom, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that form a pattern of repression and criminalization of social protest. Acts committed in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, during the operations for dislodging the demonstrations called by Section VII of the National Coordinator of Education Workers of the State of Chiapas (CNTE) and the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE). Actions perpetrated by members of the Federal Police, the Gendarmería and the State Policía used tear gases and rubber bullets indiscriminately and unjustifiably damaged the salud of those who demonstrated on April 15, 2016, from approximately 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. They also physically injured the population that passed by or those who were at the place of the repression, including girls, boys, women and the elderly.
Testimonies refer to the fact that in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, police aggressions included breaking into private homes and businesses, the use of tear gas damaging the family members sick people that were in the Hospital of Culturas, people beaten although they had nothing to do with the demonstrations, vigilance on the part of soldiers dressed as civilians and the infiltration of shock groups to justify repression and to generate confrontation. At the same time two Federal Police helicopters, without registration, flew over and shot tear gas, and one helicopter from civil protection.
During the protests, the mayor’s offices and several vehicles were set on fire in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Photo: Chiapas Paralelo.
In Tuxtla Gutiérrez they implemented a police circle that started at the La Pochota demonstration point and turned the teachers towards the center, in zones where the attacks with tear gas, rubber bullets and stones affected the population in general. Helicopters also flew over launching tear gas. There were an undetermined number of people injured and with nervous crisis.
In Tuxtla Gutiérrez and San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas members of the police arbitrarily detained and with cruel, inhuman and/or degrading treatment, without respect for individual guaranties or mediating protocols that safeguard security and integrity, at least 8 female professors, 10 male professors and three people that were passing by the place: a distributor of water, an electricity technician and a gym instructor, also a student that was at a mechanics shop and two other unidentified individuals. These detentions were made between 10:00 am and 12:00 Noon in different places and the people detained were taken to the installations of the Attorney General of the Republic in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas.
Car set on fire in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Photo: La Jornada.
Testimonies mention that they knew about the detention of their family member through social networks, but it was not until no 11:00 o’clock at night that they received calls from the individuals detained; thus, they were incommunicado more than 12 hours and they were allowed to see a relative for only 5 minutes each, it being the last visit where they could have contact with their relative at 5:00 am on April 16. The majority said they didn’t know details about the legal situation of the persons detained.
On April 16 in the morning, the 18 teachers were transported in a Boeing 727 airplane, Registration XC_MPF belonging to the Federal Police to the maximum-security prison at Tepic, Nayarit. The teachers are accused of attacking general roadways, damages, terrorism and injuries, typical crimes to inhibit social protest, thereby criminalizing freedom to demonstrate. Lo anterior violates the rights to demonstrate, associate and meet, thought and expression, as well as also wounding the right to personal integrity and security and personal freedom and, in relation to the foregoing, the right to legal due process.
The referenced facts generate a pattern of repression and criminalization of protest in Chiapas and in the country, which puts the general population at risk of being indiscriminately attacked, being that women, boys and girls had specific rights violated.
We place responsibility on the Secretary of Government, Juan Gómez Aranda, who had published his commitment to “privilege dialogue and the un restricted compliance with the law as the only way to con find solutions to the problems of Chiapanecos;” on Manuel Velasco Coello, Governor of the State of Chiapas, on Renato Sales Heredia, National Security Commissioner and on Jorge Llaven Abarca, Secretary of Citizen Security and Protection, who Frayba had informed of the grave situation urging avoiding events and/or damages that are impossible to repair. At the same time, Enrique Peña Nieto and Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, who are producers of the repressive policy of the current authoritarian regime.
This Human Rights Center urges the Mexican State to: assume the obligation to protect, guaranty and respect human rights; cease the repression and criminalization of social protest; guaranty life, integrity and personal security of those who exercise their legitimate right to demonstrate freely; immediately, efficiently, promptly, seriously, exhaustively and impartially attend to these acts sanctioning those responsible for the human rights violations described; and that it immediately free the individuals arbitrarily detained and unjustifiably moved accused of crimes fabricated as a justification for repressive actions.
Source: http://www.frayba.org.mx/archivo/boletines/160416_boletin_10_represion_estado.pdf
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Published by: Pozol Colectivo
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Re-Published with English translation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Zibechi: Financial inclusion and full-spectrum domination
Will money as we know it disappear?
By: Raúl Zibechi
Financial inclusion being one of the principal neoliberal initiatives, it’s difficult to accept the scarce debate existing among those who say they are enemies of that model centered on the domination of financial capital. The World Bank (WB) is the principal impeller of financial inclusion, with the objective that all of the world’s population will be dependent on the banking system, which proposes to eliminate physical money.
The initial argument insisted that financial inclusion is necessary to combat money laundering and drug trafficking. Later the same bank was adding new arguments, very similar to those that it utilizes for “fighting poverty.” In 2015, it says on its web page: “Two billion or 38 percent of the adults in the world don’t use formal financial services and an even greater percentage of the poor don’t have a bank account” (http://goo.gl/3Tf0Nt).
The WB defends the thesis that financial inclusion contributes to reducing poverty, to “empowering women” and “impelling shared prosperity.” Among its objectives it figures that all the income and expenses of the popular sectors are carried out electronically and it promotes that social loans not be paid in cash, but rather through the banking system, as is already happening in several countries.
In the short term, the WB proposes: “to reach another billion people that are now excluded from the financial system,” even using the key word “exclusion,” to give the impression that they are disadvantaged people and that access to financial services is the key to their inclusion as citizens (http://goo.gl/NCpYqp). The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, imposed goals for offering universal access to financial services to all adults of working age no later than 2020.
The objective is to advance the use of banking in the emerging countries and in the world’s South. In the United States and in Europe people that don’t have a bank account are less than 20 percent; a number that climbs in Latina America to 50 percent and in several countries of Africa exceeds 80 percent of the population.
What’s striking, to say the least, is that the progressive governments had adopted this policy without previously opening a debate. In Brazil, the salary grew 80 percent between 2001 and 2015, but individual credit increased 140 percent. The result is an exponential growth of consumerism and of family indebtedness: in 2015, 48 percent of their income was dedicated to the payment of debts; it was 22 percent in 2006.
Financial inclusion is the first step towards the elimination of physical money, with which all of us will be dependent on the bank and the financial system, annulling or making extremely difficult our individual and collective autonomy. It is a “micro” modality of domination of a complete spectrum. In several countries, like Uruguay, limits are already imposed on the amount of money to extract from the ATMs and this year taxi rides will have to be paid with debit or credit cards.
In Germany there is a campaign against the extinction of physical money under the slogan “Cash protects you from the State’s vigilance.” Various political groups condemned the limits on cash money. Konstantin von Notz, a deputy of the Green Party, explained the reasons on Twitter: “Cash permits us to remain in anonymity during day-to-day operations. In a constitutional democracy, it’s a freedom that must be defended” (http://goo.gl/CD53LE).
The data shows a clear difference in the behavior of Germans with respect to citizens of other developed countries. Only 18 percent of payments in Germany were made with cards in 2013, compared to 59 percent in the United Kingdom, 54 percent in the United States and 50 percent in France. They (Germans) pay four of every five invoices with bills and coins (http://goo.gl/CD53LE).
I find two reasons that financial inclusion and the disappearance of physical money are not part of the necessary debates in Latin American critical thought, in the lefts and in the popular movements.
The first reason is the option for not questioning the current basis of capitalism, in other words, putting the one percent in view, although the discourse may say otherwise. Financial capital plays a central role in the current world and disputing power implies playing hard, to the point of putting at risk the conservation of presidential chairs and the benefits that political leaders usually have, since that sector has an enormous capacity to provoke crisis and precipitate the fall of any government.
We’re going through a period of accommodation to the system of the lefts and of progressivism. It’s easier to criticize imperialism abstractly that to work with their social bases that are trapped in consumerism –and therefore with financial capital through the bank– so that they overcome the culture of consumption. The cultural defeat of popular country life has led to underestimating conflict as a source of change and to over-emphasizing the electoral question.
The second completely affects critical thought and the critical thinkers. It can be defined as the inability to go against common sense, to adapt to the reality and to not place in question hegemonic ideas among the popular sectors due to a lack of commitment to them. It is impossible to advance if one isn’t capable of swimming against the current, which evidently implies certain isolation, as much of the state institutions as of the part of the population that still believes in them.
If capital continues consolidating a type of society based on mass consumption, the principal obstacle to its domination will be solved: the existence of structural and social heterogeneities. Although a part of the left believes that they are things of the past, without tianguis [1], tequio [2] and reciprocity we won’t be able to even dream of overcoming capitalism.
[1] Tianguis – outdoor public markets
[2] Tequio – collective work that each member owes to his or her community
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, April 15, 2016
Re-Published with Spanish interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Anti-War Caravan in Mexico City
THE WAR on DRUGS HAS LEFT THE POLITICAL POWER WITH ENORMOUS PROFITS
Caravan for Peace: the economic interests of powerful nations are behind it.
The academic Adolfo Gilly and María Herrera, who is looking for her four sons, during the forum. Photo: Cristina Rodríguez.
By: José Antonio Román
Members of the Caravan for Peace, Life and Justice, to whom are added religious representatives, academics, researchers, intellectuals and activists, asked to put an end “to the war on drugs,” which has left hundreds of thousands of victims, and also left enormous profits for the owners of money and the political power.
They pointed out that this “war,” impelled from the economic interests of the most powerful countries, has left scourges like the militarization of public security, forced internal displacement, disappearances, torture, extra-judicial executions, arbitrary detentions, corruption and impunity in the Mesoamerican nations.
Meeting in a forum organized on behalf of the caravan and specialists, they warned that our societies cannot continue ceding their rights to the “terrible and absurd” fight against drugs, which has placed almost all the countries Central America and Mexico among the most violent nations in the world.
The caravan, which left Honduras on March 28 and since then has traveled through El Salvador and Guatemala to arrive in Mexico, has New York City as its final destination, where it seeks to arrive on April 18, the eve of the special session called by the General Assembly of the United Nations to discuss the theme of international policy on drugs.
Laura Carlson, director of the Americas Program; Martín Baraona, Bishop emeritus of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador, and Alex Sierra, of Global Exchange –all members of the caravan– pointed out that the objective is to demand that the UN have an open dialogue that will give way to alternative policies, emphasizing the extremely high social cost that prohibitionist policy and the war on drugs have had. Respect for human rights and diminishing violence must always be prioritized, they all agreed in their talks.
Meanwhile, the Dominican priest Miguel Concha, the historian and intellectual Adolfo Gilly, and the executive director of the Mexican Commission for Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, José Antonio Guevara, emphasized the enormous importance of this caravan for comprehending what is really behind this “war;” in other words, the interests of the owners of money and political power.
“Enough now of death, violence and of military and police control in the territories and over people,” the priest Miguel Concha said, who questioned why President Enrique Peña Nieto doesn’t attend the UN’s special session especial where the theme of the fight against drugs will be broached, despite the fact that he was the president that asked it go forward.
Adolfo Gilly, for his part, pointed out that: “against the arbitrariness and the autistic craziness of power,” the caravan is recuperating solidarity among the peoples and this collective work transcends borders in the spirit of raising our voice before the death and working for peace, justice and dignity.
During the forum, in the Mexico City Museum, they set forth that this movement, as one of defense of land and territory, forms part of society’s reaction in the face of this phenomenon, which is the “terrible civilizing crisis” that humanity confronts.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/04/12/politica/005n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
60 Chiapas communities reject dam on the Usumacinta River
“According to researchers, the construction of dams across Mexico has displaced some 200, 000 people, while advocacy groups warn that the country’s new water law will just continue to make the situation worse. Many of Mexico’s 4, 462 dams registered in official records are in Indigenous and campesino communities.” TeleSur
By: Elio Henríquez, Correspondent
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas
Representatives of more than 60 communities from seven municipios in the Northern Zone and Jungle regions of Chiapas and from the Petén Front Against Dams of Guatemala issued statements against the construction of the bi-national Boca del Cerro hydroelectric dam, on the Usumacinta River, because it will invade their lands and the communities will be evicted.
In a statement published this Saturday, the almost 300 attendees at the Fourth Forum of resistances and alternatives of peoples of the Northern Zone of Chiapas said that construction work already started on the containment walls on both sides of the Usumacinta, which divides Mexico from Guatemala, for an expanse of 40 kilometers.
The gathering, called by the Peoples Light and Power Civil Resistance Organization of the Northern Region, an adherent to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, was held on April 6 and 7 in the Victórico Grajales Ejido, Palenque Municipio, Chiapas, one of the municipios affected together with Tenosique, Tabasco, and communities in the Department of El Petén, Guatemala.
The bi-national Boca del Cerro hydroelectric dam is one of the five dams planned on the waterway that divides Mexico from Guatemala. According to data of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the works are planned over four years and will have a maximum height of 55.5 meters (approximately 182 feet).
The total surface of the reservoir contemplates 4,443 acres; 1,746 acres are within the municipio of Tenosique and 2,697 within the municipio of Palenque.
Those who attended the Forum pointed out that the start of the work will immediately provoke that: “the San Carlos Boca del Cerro community, Tenosique, will disappear because it will be converted into the offices and camp of the company that constructs the dam’s curtain.”
Their concern, they stated, is because in addition to all the damage that the dam will cause, “the government will not indemnify us for our lands, the cost of living will increase and we, Chols and Tzeltals, will disappear from the region as indigenous peoples.”
They assured that the federal government imposes the dam on them and violates Article 2 of the Mexican Constitution and Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), which refers to the autonomy of Native peoples and their right to consultation.
Due to the above, they committed to applying a work plan for stopping construction of the Boca del Cerro Dam and pledged solidarity “with the actions of sister organizations that are fighting to stop projects for mining, highways, hydroelectric dams and for expelling us from our lands that owners of the big companies have who want to dispossess us of our lands.”
They reported that they agreed to apply actions that permit them to put into practice the control and care of their territory, because said project would contaminate the river and the fish.
They also stated their opposition to the construction of other dams projected for Chiapas territory, because “they would affect the life of the peoples, and the profits that they would generate would be used to enrich foreign companies, the result if the energy reform, at the expense of the eviction of our peoples and of our lands.”
They also demanded justice for the murder of the activist Berta Cáceres Flores, coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, “and for respect of human rights and the lives of those that fight against the megaprojects and against dams, in Mexico, Central America and other places in the world.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Sunday, April 10, 2016
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/04/10/estados/024n1est
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
The Anti-War Caravan from Honduras to New York
The image of Berta Cáceres on a wall near the start of the Anti-War Caravan.
By: Journalists on Foot (Periodistas de a Pie)
The Caravan will tour more than 5, 000 kilometers from this country (Honduras) to New York. Photo: PieDePágina
Text and photograph: Ximena Natera. Text: Daniela Pastrana
Honduras, the largest expeller country of Central American migrants, which has the most violent city in the world and one of the spaces of major citizen struggle and resistance, is the scene of the start of the Caravan for Peace, Life and Justice that will tour 5,000 kilometers, to New York, to demand a debate on the anti-drug policy that has left death, dispossession and misery in this place.
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS. – It’s Holy Sunday. Dozens of people and human rights defenders are headed to the start of the Caravan for Peace, life and justice, a long walk through America that will seek to debate the policy of the war against drugs, impelled from the United States.
The start of the Caravan, which will tour more than 5,000 kilometers from Honduras ta Nueva York, coincides with the anniversary of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Copinh), one of the strongest groups of struggle and resistance in this bruised country.
The road to the starting place, in this Central American capital, is tapestried with the face of Berta Cáceres, an indigenous leader and environmentalist, human rights defender and the founder of Copinh, who was murdered in her home 24 days ago because of her work.
Because of that, this Holy Sunday is very special. Because in the face of Berta, on the anniversary of the Copinh and in the path of the Caravan is symbolized the citizens’ indignation over the violence, but also the resistance of a people that seeks to live in peace.
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This long walk through America, which seeks to arrive in New York on April 18, on the eve of the start of the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGASS) –that after 18 years will discuss drug policy again- seeks to open a dialogue between the civil society of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and the US about the war against drugs policy, which has left hundreds of thousands dead, displaced, arrested and disappeared in the region.
Ted Lewis, of the Global Exchange organization, that organized this walk, is confident that the Caravan is an unprecedented opportunity to review and reorient national drug policies and the future of the international framework for the control of drugs at a time in which there is a strong debate in the United States about criminal justice and a recognition of Michelle Alexander’s thesis about the New Jim Crow (legalizing discrimination).
“It is a very important time and in fact we are in contact with the two presidential campaigns to invite them to the final event,” pointed out Lewis, who emphasized that the Caravan also coincides with the start of the Democratic primaries.
Thirty activists from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico also participate, and Sebastián Sabini, a deputy of the Frente Amplio Party of Uruguay, who has come to explain the reasons that led them to legalize the use of marijuana in that country, as an alternative measure for confronting drug trafficking and the consumption of illegal drugs.
“Militarization and repressive apparatuses don’t lead us to a better place. There are countries that are realizing that it doesn’t work,” the deputy Sabini said, who warns that the greatest risk that the [current] policy is extended in the region is narco-politics.
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Honduras is a country of 8 million inhabitants and one of the poorest in Latin America. It is the principal expeller of Central American migrants to the United States because the country did not achieve recovering from the economic disaster that Hurricane Mitch left in 1998 or from the political effects of the State coup in June 2009, when Manuel Zelaya was deposed.
“We are starting to see things happen here that have already happened in Mexico,” considered Thelma Mejía, an experienced journalist, referring to the infiltration of narcos and power groups and politicians.
Thelma refers to the case of the Rosenthals. In October 2015, the United States Treasury Department determined that Jaime Rosenthal -founder of the Continental Bank, ex Vice President and one of the most powerful families in Honduras-, his son Yani and his nephew Yankel were “specially designated drug traffickers” according to the Kingpin Law. It was the first time that a bank outside of the United States was classified in this category.
The problem in Honduras is a mix of criminal power, of transgression, of gangs like the Maras and of institutions.
But people in Honduras are fed up and following Berta’s fighting example and that of other human rights leaders, they have provoked the earth to move:
In 2016 the Mission for support against corruption and impunity (MACIH) will start to function and will be installed in the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations. Besides, it will be the commission for watching over the funds of the Alliance for Prosperity, an agreement signed between the United States, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to impel development and stopping migration.
Perhaps because of all that movement –of resistance and violence- the Caravan started in Honduras. In their walk through this Central American country, it will tour La Ceiba, Progreso, San Pedro Sula –the most violent city on the continent—and La Esperanza, where the Lencas resist.
Carlos Sierra, a Honduran, a member of the Center for Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights (Ciprodeh) and of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, opined that the Honduras government is obliged to dialogue with groups that it has not wanted to hear: environmentalist leaders, like Berta, the indigenous and migrants.
“The fact that the Caravan starts here, besides making all the problems visible, can favor that the theme includes whether what has been done in the fight against drugs has or has not gone well.”
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As part of the launch of the Caravan, the Forum of organizations was held in this capital. Sandra Maribel Sánchez, of Radio Progreso, a space for migrant support, spoke in the Forum.
“If they don’t kill us with a shovel blow, they’ll kill us with hunger,” she said.
She, like the rest of the participants, considers that the war on drugs –the theme of this Caravan- is a State policy, a war that through terror and militarization seeks territorial control to remain communal wealth.
In this forum the idea resounds that anti-drug policies have in their bowels the legalization of dispossessing territory.
“We are the countries to the South (of the United States) who put up the deaths. If we don‘t initiate a discussion about new anti-drug policies no one else is going to do it,” emphasized Sabini, the Uruguayan politician that traveled from further south to share the experience of his country with the rest of America.
Participants of the countries that make up the Caravan are in agreement on something: at some point the war on drugs became a war against people. And here in Honduras, the people are losing.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
http://www.chiapasparalelo.com/noticias/nacional/2016/03/la-caravana-antiguerra/
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Rigorous questioning from the IACHR of the Mexican government
Members of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts
Washington, DC
In a harsh and unpleasant session, members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) severely questioned the Mexican government not only because of the direct attacks against one of its functionaries, but also because of the negative way in which it has reacted to the critical report about the grave human rights situation in the country.
In an especially harsh tone, Commissioner Enrique Gil Botero said that refusing to recognize that there are situations where these rights are violated is being out of touch with reality. This attitude, he added, “is one of the first manifestations of schizophrenia.”
Commissioner Paulo Vannuchi denounced “the strong attack by Mexico’s public authorities” on the work of the IACHR’s Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI, the group’s initials in Spanish), and the “irreparable harm” inflicted on their Executive Secretary Emilio Álvarez Icaza, a Mexican.
“It’s a bit cowardly because it must have been an attack on the Commission. All of Emilio’s work was in the name of the commissioners,” he added.
Vannuchi recognized that the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto rejected the complaint, but he emphasized that the case would serve to discourage Mexico’s public institutions and those of other countries from accepting those kinds of accusations.
So, in the first of four public hearings about cases in Mexico, dedicated to a general review of human rights in the country, the IACHR called Mexico out for the “strong attack” on its Executive Secretary and the criticisms thrown at a group of experts from the organism that investigate the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero, on the 26 and 27 of September 2014.
In the beginning, during the development of the hearing, the civil organizations representatives of the Mexican government discussed the situation of rights in Mexico, but the accusations against the human rights body stopped it.
A few weeks ago, in a complaint that the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) accepted and later rejected, a citizen accused the Executive Secretary of the IACHR, Emilio Álvarez Icaza, of “fraud” in the investigation into the disappearance of the 43 teachers college students. The same Executive Secretary has complained that a “defamation campaign” exists in Mexico against members of the GIEI, who investigate what happened to the students.
And while the Mexican government has praised the investigation and the experts’ recommendations, the group’s work has not been exempt from confrontations and differences with Mexican institutions.
Just last Wednesday, the GIEI warned that it will break with the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) if it does not clear up questions about a new expert examination of the Cocula garbage dump, with which it seeks to validate the official version presented in November 2014, according to which Iguala police attacked the young men and delivered them to gunmen for the Guerreros Unidos Cartel, who would have murdered them and incinerated their bodies in said garbage dump. However, this new test result is “preliminary.”
In other sessions on Mexico –within the context of the 157th session of the IACHR–specific themes were brought up like the rights of individuals deprived of freedom (detainees) and privatization of the prison system; the disappearances of minors of age, and access to information and indirect restrictions on freedom of expression.
The Mexican government only requested the first one; the remaining three were requested by national civil society organizations.
Freedom of expression
On the other hand, the commissioners and Edison Lanza, the IACHR’s special relator for the Freedom of Expression, asked the Mexican government a series of questions about the theme of freedom of expression, to which Assistant Foreign Relations Secretary Miguel Ruiz Cabañas committed to respond in writing.
The relator asked the government of Enrique Peña Nieto to permit him, together with the United Nations relator for Freedom of Expression, to visit Mexico in order to bring up and observe the lack of transparency theme, harassment of the press and the murder of journalists, on a date in the second half of this year, probably in September, according to what he proposed.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, April 8, 2016
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/04/08/politica/005n1pol
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 