Chiapas Support Committee
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UN: Over 150,000 dead in Mexico Drug War
UN: OVER 150,000 PEOPLE MURDERED IN MEXICO SINCE DECEMBER 2006
[It is doubtful that anyone, including the UN, really knows the number of dead in Mexico. There are different estimates. The federal government hides its dead and the local agencies in Mexico that keep statistics on murders don’t have accurate counts. However, what’s interesting in this article, other than a higher estimate of drug war deaths, is that multilateral organizations have Mexico’s human rights abuses under review. This is front page news in La Jornada. The question is: will anything change? Ed.]
The U.N.’s human rights commissioner said Mexico has a 98 percent impunity rate, while most crimes aren’t even investigated.
More than 151,230 have been murdered in Mexico since December 2006, a figure that includes thousands of Central American migrants making the dangerous trek through the country toward the United States, Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, denounced.
The U.N. official met Wednesday with President Enrique Peña Nieto, after which he delivered a press conference, noting that in Mexico there is a 98 percent rate of impunity, that most cases remain unresolved, and that many more are not investigated.
“Impunity in Mexico is a generalized practice,” he reiterated, while saying there is an urgent need in Mexico to protect women, who are being killed and sexually abused in the thousands.
He also highlighted the grim fact that in Mexico it is very dangerous to be a journalist or a human rights defender.
“I urgently call on authorities in Mexico to offer more and improved protection to human rights defenders, to those who are journalists, and to those who have suffered a terrible series of murders, threats, beatings and other forms of intimidation,” he said.
Al-Hussein also asked the Mexican government to strengthen prosecutors’ offices at all levels and the functions of all security forces, to make sure that all human rights violations be investigated.
The human rights defender particularly asked Mexican authorities to adopt a chronogram for the removal of armed forces from all public safety functions and operations.
There is a “strong convergence of eyes” on Mexico due to the seriously poor situation of human rights, he said, referring to the strong criticism that has surfaced against the Latin American country.
The Ayotzinapa Case
Regarding Ayotzinapa, Al Hussein said Mexican authorities should allow international investigators to interview soldiers who may have witnessed the abduction and apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers last year; an idea the Mexican Ministry of Defense had strongly rejected.
The enforced disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students in Iguala, in the southern state of Guerrero, and subsequent investigation into the attack, has prompted very harsh criticism of the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto for its inability to solve the case.
Al-Hussein suggested that Mexico’s top military brass should allow a panel of experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to interview soldiers.
“It is important that the government acts decisively on the recommendations of the (IACHR panel of experts), including its insistence that authorities reverse their decision to not allow the experts to interview members of the 27th Battalion,” said Al-Hussein.
On Monday, however, Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos said he would not permit the panel to interrogate his troops, and rejected any suggestion they may have been involved.
A panel of international investigators last month rejected official accounts, pointing to suspicions of forced confessions and possible collusion by federal and state security forces, including the military.
Published in English by TeleSur
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Para español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/10/08/politica/003n2pol
OTHER ARTICLES ON THE DEATH TOLL IN MEXICO’S DRUG WAR:
http://compamanuel.com/2014/11/23/the-drug-war-on-our-southern-border/
Human Rights: time to tell the truth
Members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights give a report on their 5-day visit.
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
One blow after another! Hard and to the head! The provisional report on the Human rights situation in Mexico, elaborated by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), caused tremendous discontent in the Enrique Peña Nieto administration.
It’s one more strike at the tiger. Since a year ago, one after the other, the Peña Nieto administration has lost all relevant diplomatic battles about the condition of human rights in the country. His policy of contesting harm in international forums seems strained. His ability to pressure multilateral organisms is extremely diminished. His maneuvers have not been able to impede the grave human rights situation that prevails in the country from being known.
The IACHR delegation was in Mexico between September 28 and October 2. Its arrival was preceded by multiple tensions with the federal government. According to what the director of the Pro Human Rights Center, Mario Patrón, reported at a session in Washington held the last week of July, in which they discussed prolonging the mandate of the GIEI, Mexico’s ambassador to the OAS, Emilio Rabasa, and the executive secretary of the IACHR, Emilio Álvarez Icaza, had a confrontation.
Finally, the Secretary of Foreign Relations (SRE, its initials in Spanish) felt forced to extend an invitation at the IACHR plenary in order to avoid that the organism would include Mexico in the fourth chapter of its annual report. A State is included in the fourth chapter if the organism (the IACHR) assembles information from multiple sources that show evidence of grave and systematic violations of human rights, including the conclusions of other international human rights organisms about the country’s situation.
Rabasa, who, during the time of Ernesto Zedillo headed, with more pain than glory, coordinating the dialogue in Chiapas, wanted to paint favorably in the media his differing with the IACHR. Nevertheless, several sources maintain that effectively the clash was presented and regarded much as being terse. The angry governmental response, accompanied by a media barrage against Emilio Álvarez Icaza, shows that the pulse among both was not exactly hunky-dory.
In the field, the IACHR proved the grave human rights crisis that the country is experiencing, characterized by a situation of extreme insecurity and violence, a lack of access to justice and impunity. What happened to the 43 Ayotzinapa students –the commission concluded– is not an isolated tragedy, but rather part of a pattern of violating human rights.
Regarding the disappeared students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College, the Commission’s president, Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, said that in the investigation in charge of the PGR the organism is obliged to determine corresponding criminal responsibilities. Besides –she pointed out– the attorney general’s office must adopt as soon as possible the measures requested by the GIEI: designating a special counsel in charge of the investigation, renewing the whole team, reorienting the investigation and permitting the experts to interview all the witnesses, including the soldiers from the 27th infantry battalion.
The federal government, through the assistant secretary of Governance, Roberto Campa Cifrián, turned to saying that the document of the IACHR “does not reflect the country’s situation,” and that the Ayotzinapa case is “absolutely extraordinary.” He questioned the objectivity of a preliminary report made in just five days, based on their tour through only five federated states and the Federal District.
The arguments of assistant secretary Campa were not very original. They are almost the same that were used to fence with the presentation of the first human rights reports in our country in 1986. One of them is titled Mexico, human rights in rural zones: exchange of documents with the Mexican government on human rights violations in Oaxaca and Chiapas; the other was titled: Amnesty International’s Concerns about Mexico. Miguel de la Madrid was president then. Both reports –like those that would come afterwards– were objected to with the same reasoning that Campa is using now.
The official ignorant stubbornness in the face of the assignations about the grave situation that human rights are held in the country from the beginning of the Enrique Peña administration is not limited to the case of the IACHR. A embarrassing incident also occurred with the UN’s special relator against torture, Juan Méndez, with whom the SRE entered into direct confrontation. Nor did the assignations of the United Nations Committee against Enforced Disappearance Comité and those of the relator against extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns, sit well with the federal government.
The IACHR’s report given in the preamble to the visit of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Hussein, which started October 4. Together with other pronouncements emitted in the UN, they set a precedent about the orientation that the visit of this functionary could have.
The Inter-American Commission’s report put on the table the need to create an organism against impunity in the country, or for investigating the case of the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students, similar to the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig, its initials in Spanish). A great variety of voices, both national and foreign, were heard demanding an exit in this direction.
Immediately, Campa Cifrián hushed them saying that the “outside institutions do not substitute for the Mexican ones, because outside solutions are easy exits that lead to failure… history also assures that Mexicans have to find the country’s solutions.
The governmental version about the human rights crisis has become unsustainable on the international terrain. Its diplomatic maneuvers for conceal what’s evident function less and less each time.
The German dramaturge Berthold Brecht wrote: “When the hypocrisy begins to be of very bad quality, it’s time to begin telling the truth.” In human rights matters that time has come for Mexico.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/10/06/opinion/015a2pol
Special Economic Zones for Southern Mexico
SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES, AN INITIATIVE FOR DISPOSSESSION
A cruise ship docks at Puerto Madero.
By: Angeles Mariscal, Chiapas Paralelo
Destining 115 billion pesos coming from public resources in order to attract transnational and Mexican private investment to zones “with high productive potential,” sounds like dispossession.
The proposal of a law for the creation of special economic zones that President Enrique Peña Nieto made yesterday (September 29) in the city of Tapachula, Chiapas was clear: designed on behalf of and for private capital, in a market logic –principally transnational-, wherein the population of Chiapas is only present in the project as labor, setting aside the fact that it is the owner of the natural resources and raw materials.
Representatives of the World Bank and of the Business Council Coordinator attended the presentation of the initiative that awaits the approval of the Congress of the Union as guests of honor.
In the presentation of the initiative Peña Nieto said that the proposal seeks to guaranty special customs fiscal benefits for foreign trade, which favors private initiative in regions with high productive potential in the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Quintana Roo, Yucatán and Campeche.
In no part of the proposal did he talk about the social sector –owner of the lands and resources- save for tangentially referring to the “poverty” in which the region’s residents live -according to market parameters and logic- and the possibility of them obtaining “employment.”
According to the president, to construct the initiative they had as advisors industrialists and representatives of transnationals that already have operations in Mexico, among them exporters and industrial park developers.
He said that upon approval of the initiative, three special economic zones would be created first; one of them he defined as the interoceanic industrial corridor on the Isthmus de Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, which would permit the movement of merchandise between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
Another zone would encompass the states of Michoacán and Guerrero, so that exporting through the Port of Lázaro Cárdenas is favored; and a third one at Puerto Chiapas, through which merchandise would be able to go out towards Asia, through the Pacific Ocean.
According to this project proposed by President Peña Nieto, infrastructure would be created for installing a transoceanic gas pipeline, which goes from Salina Cruz in Oaxaca, to Guatemala, passing through Puerto Chiapas.
As the president said, each special economic zone will offer direct financial benefits to investment and employment, special customs regulations, additional facilities for foreign trade and a regulatory framework that makes it easier to open businesses.
The infrastructure also assures the supply of energy and logistical connections with the rest of the country and with the international markets.
He said that in order for the plan to become a reality, they would offer financing through the development bank, support for training workers, for the implementation of processes for technology innovation, and for the “modernization” of the cities.
Peña Nieto said that the impact and consolidation that the Special Economic Zones would have on the regions where they are installed would be seen in the medium and long-term. Sin embargo, he maintained that he hopes to have the first businesses installed before he finished his term of office.
This project is not new! The World Bank has impelled the creation of other special economic zones in various parts of the world where the private sector can find “permanent first class infrastructure, water and electricity.”
The example of the “success” Special Economic Zones is China, a country that is now considered “prosperous” because its population produces, buys and sells thousands of various products. In Mexico, the country’s northern states are the example of “prosperity.” With these examples, I wonder whether any Chiapas resident would want to have the quality of life that the residents of China have, whether anyone would want to make their home in Monterey.
The basic issue is the concept of “development,” “wealth” and “prosperity.” Is “development” having a job as a qualified laborer? Is it “wealth” to own a car? Is it “prosperity” to live in a city?
What does Chiapas have? What does it have apart from large reserves of water, forests that provide oxygen, minerals, oil, natural gas, thousands of species of flora and fauna, a large extension of fertile land where it’s enough to plant a seed to make a tree full of fruit grow?
In recent years the vindication of some original peoples -owners of the largest part of the land and territory-, of the concept of “good living” (kuxlejal) has been more evident, based not on the accumulation of goods, but rather on the construction of the interior harmony of individuals with community and nature, in a different conception of what quality of life means.
Certainly more than 70% of Chiapas inhabitants suffer from the lack of some components of basic wellbeing, but will have to ask themselves what the cost-benefit of this new governmental “strategy” is and get ready for the process that’s coming.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Notes:
- In an article posted here Magdalena Gómez expressed the opinion that the Special Economic Zones were one reason for the release of Compañero Galeano’s killers. http://compamanuel.com/2015/09/12/impunity-and-provocation-of-the-ezln/
- Gustavo Esteva also expressed the opinion that the regressive laws in Oaxaca and the sending of federal troops to the state were connected to imposing the special economic zones. http://compamanuel.com/2015/09/06/esteva-the-storm-in-oaxaca/
CNI Solidarity with Ayotzinapa
MEMBERS of the NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS ARE IN SOLIDARITY with AYOTZINAPA
By Daniel camacho
Chiapas Mexico, September 27, 2015
“With all respect and if you permit us, we want to be in the heart of the young normalistas’ parents, we want to be in the Heart of Ayotzinapa,” expressed members of the Civil Society Organization Las Abejas, members of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI, its initials in Spanish), in a September 26 comunicado, on the one-year anniversary of the enforced disappearance of the teachers college students in Iguala, Guerrero.
“We want to be in the heart, in the dream, in the soul, in the struggle and in the memory and hope of the 43 disappeared, the 3 murder and one other compañero that is in a coma. And we also want to be in the heart, in the dreams, in the memory and hope of the thousands of disappeared in all of Mexico,” the Indigenous Tsotsils added. They held a day of prayer in solidarity with the disappeared students. “We began in the ceremonial center of the Acteal martyrs by presenting the photographs of the disappeared students,” they shared.
“The Other Justice always has to be Memory and Not Oblivion,” the adherents to the Sixth stated. At the same time they pointed out that: “the intellectual authors of the crime against the normalistas are: José Luis Abarca, the former Iguala mayor; Angel Aguirre Rivero, ex Governor of Guerrero; Enrique Peña Nieto, president of Mexico; the Mexican Army and the Iguala Municipal Police.” “Ayotzinapa is the continuation of the rage, of the Hydra’s fire,” they abounded.
For its part the Autonomous Council of the Chiapas Coast, also a CNI member, mobilized in solidarity with Ayotzinapa, through a march in Pijijiapan, Chiapas, together with the teachers movement and social organizations in solidarity. At the end of the march, during the meeting in the coastal community’s central park, the different speakers demanded: “the presentation with life of the 43 normalistas as well as the fulfillment of the eight demand presented to Peña Nieto by the families of the 43 disappeared”
CNI communities of Chiapas, like the Tila Ejido, Candelaria el Alto, Cruztón, San Francisco Teopisca and adherents to the Sixth headed to Mexico City, in order to participate in the march for the one-year anniversary of the enforced disappearance of the normalistas of Guerrero.
On the other hand, the San Sebastián Bachajón Ejido of Chilón, Chiapas, also a CNI member, stated in a comunicado all its “scorn and rage at the narco-government, for all the suffering and pain that it generates for the families of the 43 disappeared compañeros and for the entire world.” In the same vein the Indigenous Tzeltals expressed that on the one-year anniversary of the students’ disappearance: “together and united we will construct a new path and we need to continue adding to our struggle to construct a new world and spaces of freedom.”
In Mexico City contingents of the National Indigenous Congress from different parts of the country, adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle and members of the Network against Repression and for Solidarity, marched together with family members of the Ayotzinapa students and diverse sectors of society in solidarity.
Adherents and sympathizers of the Sixth also demonstrated in San Cristóbal de las Casas “To make the Ayotzinapa 43 present.” The displays of solidarity take place in the context of the mobilizations at the national and international level, demanding that the students are presented alive.
Comunicados:
Las Abejas de Acteal en solidaridad con Ayotzinapa 26sep2015
Consejo Autónomo Regional de la Zona Costa de Chiapas
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Translators’ Note: What seems important here, in addition to the solidarity with Ayotzinapa, is that indigenous communities in Chiapas adhered to the Sixth Declaration appear to be consolidated through membership in the National Indigenous Congress. This is not the first indication of consolidation; however, it’s important to understand in light of the EZLN’s emphasis on “getting organized.”
Originally Published by Pozol Colectivo
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
September 28, 2015
EZLN mobilizes in solidarity with Ayotzinapa
IN CHIAPAS, THOUSANDS MOBILIZE IN SOLIDARITY WITH AYOTZINAPA
Indigenous Zapatistas give offerings and prayers asking for justice for the Ayotzinapa 43. Photo: Angeles Mariscal/Chiapas Paralelo
By: Angeles Mariscal
Students, independent citizens, collectives, activists, civil society organizations, teachers and members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, its initials in Spanish) participated since early this morning in demonstrations of support for relatives of the 43 students of the Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College, in Ayotzinapa Guerrero, who complete one year today since they were disappeared after authorities detained them.
The Zapatistas carried out solidarity actions in the headquarters of their good government juntas, which exist in 5 Chiapas regions. On stages in front of thousands of the rebel group’s members, they placed 43 chairs with the names of the disappeared students, as part of silent ceremonies where they named each one of the absent youths, while the crowd shouted “present!” They also lit offerings of 43 candles and flowers offerings on the side of the roads by their communities.
They hung banners with the legend: “The struggle for the 43 disappeared of Ayotzinapa continues and will continue,” “Parents and relatives of the disappeared, your pain is our pain.”
In a prior comunicado announced on the eve of the demonstrations, the EZLN also expressed solidarity with the family members and with thousands of other persons who have disappeared in the country. They questioned the authorities and said that sooner or later those guilty of the disappearances and homicides will pay for their crimes.
They also demonstrated with marches and roadblocks in at least 40 Chiapas municipalities. In each one of them they ask for a transparent and independent investigation of the facts, locating the young men and for punishing those responsible.
The protest actions continue and it is expected that other cultural activities and forums will be held later in support of the parents of the Ayotzinapa students. All the demonstrations have been peaceful.
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Note: The article has many photos of Chiapas/Zapatista solidarity mobilizations attached. Click on the source below for the photos.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Acción solidaria | Join us to demand justice for the 43 Ayotzinapa families
(Versión en español sigue abajo)
The Chiapas Support Committee of Oakland asks you and the members of your organization and community to join us in mobilizing to uplift the demand for deep justice and more starting on Saturday, September 26, 2015, the one-year anniversary of the attack, killing and disappearance of 43 student-teachers from Ayotzinapa in the city of Iguala in the State of Guerrero, Mexico.
Starting now and over the next week, call, email, tweet, and fax the President of Mexico saying:
¡Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos!
You took them alive and we want them back alive!
Tell the President of Mexico:
“I join with the families of the 43 disappeared students from Ayotzinapa in calling for a new internationally supervised investigation and review of former-Attorney General Jesus Murillo and other officials’ involvement in the previous investigation, for their obstruction of justice.”
Fax: +52 55 5520 7125
Phone: +52 55 5093 5300
Email: enrique.penanieto@presidencia.gob.mx
Twitter: @EPN
More background information on Ayotzinapa:
Ayotzinapa: 10 Reasons to Keep the Search for Truth Alive
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ted-lewis/ayotzinapa-ten-reasons_b_8099778.html
Mexico parents of 43 missing students reject President’s response to demands
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/72437120/mexico-parents-of-43-missing-students-reject-presidents-response-to-demands
*
Please send us a copy of your message to the President of Mexico to:
enapoyo@gmail.com
For more information, visit:
http://compamanuel.com
_________________________
Únete con nosotr@s para exigir justicia para las 43 familias de los desaparecidos de Ayotzinapa
El Comité de Apoyo a Chiapas de Oakland le invita a usted y a los miembros de su organización y comunidad a movilazarse para alzar la demanda por una justicia profunda y más empezando el sábado 26 de septiembre, 2015, el primer aniversario del ataque, la matanza y la desaparición de los 43 normalistas de Ayotzinapa, en Iguala, Guerrero, México.
Por favor llame, envíe un fax, mande correos electrónicos y twits al Presidente de México empezando ya y durante la semana que viene exigiendo:
¡Vivos se los llevaron!
¡Vivos los queremos!
Díle al Presidente de México:
<<Yo me uno con las familias de los 43 normalistas desaparecidos de Ayotzinapa en su llamada por una nueva investigación bajo la supervisión internacional, incluyendo un repaso de la participación de Jesus Murillo y otras autoridades en la investigación previa, por su obstrucción de la justicia.>>
Fax: +52 55 5520 7125
Fono: +52 55 5093 5300
Email: enrique.penanieto@presidencia.gob.mx
Twitter: @EPN
Más información:
Familias de Ayotzinapa presentan 8 exigencias esenciales a Peña Nieto
http://www.centroprodh.org.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1650%3A2015-09-24-18-58-03&catid=209%3Afront-rokstories&lang=es
*
Por favor enviarnos una copia de su mensaje al Presidente de México a:
enapoyo@gmail.com
Para más información:
http://compamanuel.com
EZLN: For pain, for rage, for truth, for justice
FOR PAIN, FOR RAGE, FOR TRUTH, FOR JUSTICE
September 2015
Compañeras, compañeroas & compañeros of the Sixth of Mexico and the World:
Sisters and brothers of the people of the Earth:
Our collective heart knows, before and now, that our sorrow is not a sterile lament.
She knows that our rage is not a useless release.
We know who and what we are, that our sorrows and rages are born and nourished by lies and injustices.
We are what we are because the one who is above at the expense of those of us below lies as a way of making politics and adorns death, forced disappearance, incarceration, persecution and assassination with the scandal of his corruption.
The one who is above is a criminal with immunity and without shame; the color of his politics doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if he tries to hide behind a change of name and banner.
It’s always the same face, the same arrogance, the same ambition and the same stupidity.
As if by disappearing and murdering they also want to disappear and murder memory.
From above and from those who therein dwell, their perversions and meanness, we will only receive the lie as a salary and injustice as payment.
The injustice and the lie arrive on time every day, at all hours, everywhere.
Dispossessing us of our labor, life, land and the natural world doesn’t satiate them.
They also rob us of those who are our sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, relatives, compas and friends.
He who is above persectus, incarcerates, kidnaps, disappears and assassinates.
They not only finish off bodies, lives.
They also destroy histories.
On top of forgetfulness he from above builds his impunity.
Forgetfulness is the judge that not only absolves him, but also rewards him.
That’s why, and more, our sorrows and rages seek truth and justice.
Sooner or later we will learn that these are not to be found anywhere, that there is no book or speech, nor judicial system, institution, promise, time, place for them.
We learn that we have to build them.
As if the world was not already sane, as if an emptiness wounded her womb, lacerating the heart of the color of those who are of the Earth.
That’s how we learn that without truth and without justice, there is no sane day or night. The calendar doesn’t take a day off; geography does not rest.
In many languages, idioms, signs, we name those missing.
And every sorrow and every rage takes on a name, a face, a history, an emptiness that hurts and shames.
The world and her history are filled with absences.
And those absences become a murmur, a strong word, a cry or a scream.
We do not scream for regret. We do not weep for pity. We do not moan in resignation.
We do so for those missing can find their way back.
So that they know they are here even though they are missing.
So that they do not forget that we do not forget.
Because: for the sorrow, for the rage, for truth, for justice.
For Ayotzinapa and all the Ayotzinapas that wound the calendars and the geographies of those below.
That’s why resistance.
That’s why rebellion.
Because the time will come when those who owe us everything will pay.
He who persecuted will pay, he who jailed will pay, he who beat and tortured will pay. He who imposed the desperation of the forced disappearance will pay. He who assassinated will pay.
Because the system he created, fed, covered up and protected crime with, dressed as the evil government, will be destroyed. Not prettied up, not reformed, not modernized. It will be demolished, destroyed, finished, buried.
That’s why at this time our message is not one of consolation and resignation for those who suffer because of one or many absences.
Our message is of rage, of bravery.
Because we know that same sorrow.
Because we have in our guts the same rage.
Because, being different, that’s how we are the same.
That’s why our resistance, that’s why our rebellion.
For the sorrow and the rage.
For truth and justice.
That’s why:
Don’t waver. Don’t sell out. Don’t surrender.
That’s why:
¡Truth and justice!
From the mountains of southeast Mexico,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
In a corner of the planet called “Earth,” September 2015.
On this day, 26 of September, thousands of Zapatistas, boys, girls, youth, women, men, others, elders, alive and dead, will march in our territories to embrace all the persons who carry sorrow and rage because of the jailings, disappearances and death imposed by those from above.
We will also embrace them because that’s how we will also embrace ourselves, Zapatistas.
And that’s how we call on all honest and reasonable persons of the planet to do the same, in their calendars and geographies, according to their time and way of doing things.
Because while they try to supplant with lies and jeers the lack of truth and justice, humanity will continue being a grotesque smirk on the face of the Earth.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Guerrero police and Ayotzinapa students clash
Normalistas and police clash on the Chilpancingo-Tixtla Highway
Image of vehicle burned in the zone known as The Tunnels. Photo: José Hernández /Cuartoscuro
By: Sergio Ocampo Arista, Correspondent
Tixtla, Guerrero
A dozen normalistas [1] and six state police, including two women, were beaten, besides a cargo truck burned, during a confrontation that occurred this Tuesday morning on the Chilpancingo-Tixtla federal highway.
The quarrel started in the zone of Los Túneles (The Tunnels) around 8 o’clock in the morning, when the police impeded passage towards Mexico City to a convoy of 11 trucks and some private vehicles in which were traveling the parents of the 43 disappeared normalistas, the majority from the Ayotzinapa Teachers College.
The parents attempted to convince the police, but they said that they would first inspect the vehicles, which the normalistas rejected. The confrontation began at that moment; the youths set fire to a soft drink truck that they had “taken” last Monday and then put it across the highway.
The police that were in the nearby hills started to launch tear gas at the civilians, who answered with stones and large fireworks, which resulted in six state agents and a dozen students injured.
Felipe de la Cruz, spokesperson for the Ayotzinapa families, said that two students were hospitalized with head trauma.
The student José Nava denounced that the women police agents started to push some of the mothers. The students “we made a wall around the parents so that they could board the buses to the school, but the police pushed them and hit them.”
After several minutes of rumpus, the normalistas took four police they detained to the Ayotzinapa Teachers College. The government identified them as: Mariana López Bernal, Alma Delia Rivera Ávila, Lázaro Meza Gutiérrez and David Gil Vázquez. They took away their bulletproof vests, shields and leather straps there, and around 10 o’clock in the morning a student commission transported them to the Tixtla municipal police installations, where they received attention from the civil protection paramedics.
The students accused Governor Rogelio Ortega Martínez of having ordered the operation in the tunnel and nearby hills, where the police intercepted the contingents to impede them passage, first to Chilpancingo, where they would hold a meeting, although it was not specified with which instance, and afterwards to Mexico City.
Around noon, a group of normalistas moved once again to the Tixtla-Chilpancingo highway tollbooth to collect funds from the drivers and finance the parents’ travel to Mexico City.
They plan to realize a fast in the capital, to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto and march to the Zócalo; activities they announced for commemorating the first anniversary of the Iguala events, when municipal police murdered civilians, including students, and disappeared 43 normalistas from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal.
Alluding to the demonstrations held yesterday and the attack on the offices of the State’s Attorney General last Monday, Governor Rogelio Ortega warned: “We have now reached a situation in which the limits of extreme tolerance have concluded: each action that is carried out, whoever it may be, will have to face to its legal responsibilities.”
The attorney general’s office, he said, initiated the process for obtaining arrest warrants against las personas identified in the attacks on the institution.
Community police that operate in Tixtla guarded the installations of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal (teachers college), at Ayotzinapa, although the state government also installed a police checkpoint in El Molino. The state police were reinforced with one hundred members of the Federal Police and the Gendarmerie (militarized riot police).
[1] In Mexico, the word for a rural teachers college is “normal;” thus students at a “normal” are called normalistas.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/09/23/politica/003n1pol
Zibechi: Red-hot interest in Fanon
THE RED-HOT CURRENCY OF FANON
Frantz Fanon
By: Raúl Zibechi
Frantz Fanon’s thinking has returned. Five decades after his death, his books are being read again in universities and in spaces of the organized popular sectors. Some of his central reflections enlighten aspects of the new realities and they contribute to the comprehension of capitalism in this stage of blood and pain for those below.
The re-publication of some of his works like Black Skin, White Masks (published in Spanish by Akal, 2009), with commentary from de Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, Judith Butler, Lewis R. Gordon, Ramón Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Sylvia Wynter and Walter Mignolo, has contributed to the spreading of his thinking, as well as periodic re-publications of his principal work, The Wretched of the Earth, with a prologue by Jean Paul Sartre. The republication of his book Sociology of a revolution, published in 1966 by Grove Press would also be important.
Nevertheless, the renewed interest in Fanon goes way beyond his books and writings. I believe we’re dealing with an epochal interest, in the double sense of the current period that our societies are crossing through and the birth of powerful anti-systemic movements championed by diverse peoples from below. I want to say that we are seeing a political interest more than academic or literary curiosity.
In my opinion, there are five reasons that explain the currency of Fanon.
The first is that capitalism in its current stage, centered on accumulation by dispossession (or the fourth world war), produces some aspects of colonial domination. The occupation of territorial enclaves by the multi-national corporations and the occasional but important military occupation by the imperialisms of various countries with the excuse of the war against terrorism, are two of those aspects.
There are others that it’s at least necessary to mention. The population has been converted into a military objective, either for their control or their eventual elimination, since it is an “obstacle” to accumulation by dispossession. The war on women, converted into new spoils of the conquest of territories, is another aspect of the new colonialism, as well the growing militarization of popular neighborhoods on the peripheries of the big cities.
To the extent that capitalism accumulates by robbing the wealth of entire peoples, it permits us to say that we are facing neo-colonialism although, strictly, we’re dealing with the decadence phase of the system that no longer aspires to integrate the dominated classes, but simply, to watch them and exterminate them in case they resist.
The second is that it is more evident all the time that current society is divided, as Grosfoguel says based on Fanon, into two zones: the zone of being, where the rights of persons are respected and where violence is exceptional, and the zone of non-being, where violence is the rule. Fanon’s thinking helps us reflect about this reality that places so much distance between XXI Century capitalism with that of the Welfare State.
The third is the criticism that Fanon makes of the world’s left-of-center parties, in the sense that their forms of work are directed exclusively at a working class elite, setting aside the different bellows that in Marxism are disposed of as belonging to the lumpenproletariat. To the contrary, Fanon deposits in the common people of below his greatest hope as possible subjects of their self-emancipation, or emancipación a secas.
In fourth place, Fanon was not an intellectual or an academic, but rather he put his knowledge at the service of a people in struggle like the Algerian, whose cause he served until the day he died. This figure of the thinker-militant, or as he likes to call himself the professional that was unconditionally committed to those from below, is an extraordinary contribution to the struggle of the popular sectors.
In this sense, it’s worth emphasizing the critique of Euro-centrism of the lefts, to the la pretension of mechanically transfer proposals and analysis born in the world of being to that of the non-being. The birth of Indian, Black and popular feminisms on our continent is a sample of the limitations of that first (and fundamental) European feminism that, nevertheless, needed to be reinvented among the women of the color of the earth, based on their own traditions and realities, among them the centrality of the family in the Latin American feminine world.
Although this brief recapitulation leaves out various important aspects of Fanon’s work, like his reflections on the violence of the oppressed, it seems necessary to me to emphasize an additional aspect, which I believe is central to current critical thought. It questions the reasons why the black man desires to lighten his skin, the reasons the black woman desires to be blonde or get a partner as white as possible. The dominated, Fanon says, the persecuted, don’t just seek to recuperate the hacienda appropriated by the master, but rather want the master’s place. It’s evident that, after the failure of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, this consideration must occupy a central place in the anti-capitalist struggle.
I do not share the place that Fanon grants to the violence of those from below in this process of converting themselves into the subjects of their lives, in their liberation from oppression. Violence is necessary, but is not the solution, as Wallerstein reflects in his commentary on Black skin, white masks.
I think that we must deepen this debate. What to do to not reproduce the history in which the oppressed repeat in one way or another the oppression of which they were victims. The way I see it, we’re dealing with creating something new, a new world or new realities, which are not traced and copied from the world of those above, which may be sufficiently powerful as to make the central place that the oppressor, the master or the boss occupies disappear from the collective imaginary. I continue believing that the experience of the EZLN support bases is an example in this direction.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee/Comité de Apoyo a Chiapas
Friday, September 4, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/09/04/opinion/019a2pol
Chiapas Support Committee 