Chiapas Support Committee
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EZLN: Almost 5 times
ALMOST 5 TIMES
ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
MEXICO
July 2014.
To the compañer@s of the Sixth in Mexico and the world.
Dear Compas:
Zapatista greetings to all those who supported our compañero and compañera bases of support. We send an embrace to all those who helped generate funds for the reconstruction of the school and clinic in the Zapatista La Realidad that were destroyed by the bad governments via their paramilitaries from the CIOAC-Historic.
Today, July 18, 2014, we want to give you an updated report of the funds generated to date. Since the last report we sent, more money has come in which hadn’t arrived before due to lack of adequate means to send it. For example, our compas of the Sixth in Europe had problems getting the money here, but they resolved that issue and those funds have now arrived in full. The same happened to other compas and collectives in Mexico and in the world.
So here is the total amount, including what we reported in June, of what has, to our knowledge, been raised. Some of it is not actually here yet but is in good hands and sure to arrive safely.
From collectives from all over the world, a total (including the $344,612 that we listed in the last report) of: $937,922.26 (nine hundred thirty-seven thousand, nine hundred twenty-two pesos and 26 cents).
From individuals from all over the world, a total of: $20,724.00 (twenty thousand seven hundred twenty-four pesos). All together, this comes to a total of $958,646.26 (nine hundred fifty-eight thousand six hundred forty-six pesos and twenty-six cents).
The strength of your collective efforts together with individual contributions has raised five times the amount budged for the reconstruction. That is, the amount is almost quintuple what we asked for, which is $200,209.00.
This doesn’t include the money we are told will be raised at the concert to be held tomorrow, July 19, 2014, at the SME-Coapa sports complex, where musicians in struggle will perform, including Ideología Vigente, MC Lokoter, Sonora Skandalera, El Aarón, Barricada Sur, NARS MC, Mexikan Sound Sytem, Su Merce, To Ciuc Libre, Sound Sisters, Kori Fyah, Los Zopes, Resistencia de México. You’ll have to forgive me if the names aren’t exactly right, because we’re looking at them on a poster on twitter; it says that the music starts at 11:30 and ends at 7:30. That is, there will be 8 hours of musical resistance.
With these funds the compañeras and compañeros of La Realidad Zapatista will be able to buy both supplies and medicines.
In the name of our compañeras and compañeros bases of support of the EZLN, all we can say is thank you for your conscientious struggle and support.
With this support it is clear that the “big heads” that say we are alone and forgotten are mistaken.
Soon we will begin reconstruction work and then it will be clear that those who are against us did not manage to destroy or detain the struggle for a new world. The newly constructed school and clinic are going to be even better than they were before.
And so it goes, compañer@s of the Sixth, because those of us who say we are below and to the left and part of the anticapitalist Sixth have to be good and decided in what we are doing.
Look at the compañero Galeano: he wasn’t murdered because he stole or because he didn’t pay his debts in dollars or euros to the capitalists. He didn’t steal and he didn’t have any debts to anyone even in his own town. On the contrary, people owed him money.
He was murdered for being below and to the left and anti capitalist.
Those who carried out the murder are still free, only a few of those who planned the murder are in jail. Justice has not been done.
We are remembering him these days because we are in meetings about the exchange that is coming up with the compañer@s of the National Indigenous Congress. As we were going over the list of coordinators, his name came up and all of the compañer@s who were there, upon hearing the compañero Galeano’s name, shouted “presente!”
Thus the work goes on and the struggle continues.
There is little time left to support the compañeros of the National Indigenous Congress in their travel to the exchange.
But each person’s art of struggle will help us find a way.
So, onward compañer@s.
Because the anticapitalist struggle below and to the left continues.
That’s all for now. We will keep you updated.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Mexico, July 2014. In the twentieth year of the war against oblivion.
En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2014/07/20/almost-5-times
Tribunal Investigates Chiapas Massacre
THEY WILL TAKE THE VIEJO VELASCO MASSACRE TO THE PERMANENT TRIBUNAL OF THE PEOPLES
By: Hermann Bellinghausen
Palenque March for the Freedom of Diego Arcos
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, July 16, 2014
The Permanent Tribunal of the Peoples (TPP, its initials in Spanish) announced in a press conference the pre-hearing With Justice and Peace We Find Truth, which will be held Friday in El Limonar community, in the northern part of the Lacandón Jungle.
The event “seeks to construct another justice from the collective memory of the peoples in the face the impunity promoted by the Mexican State.” Survivors, witnesses and relatives will present especially the case of the Viejo Velasco Massacre, occurred in that zone eight years ago and that remains unpunished.
Diego Moreno Vázquez, representing family members of the victims and the massacre’s survivors, confirmed that the case will be presented at the TPP’s pre-hearing. That deadly attack “came to a head in the context of the struggle for agrarian rights inside of the so-called ‘Lacandón Community’ during the government of President Vicente Fox Quezada; despite the denunciations about harassment and threats of eviction that the communities were suffering, the government didn’t do anything to avoid these grave acts.” The mode of the aggressors’ behavior “is framed within the counterinsurgency strategy implemented by the government since 1994, with putting its Chiapas 94 Campaign Plan into effect, when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rose up in arms.”
The Chol representative exposed: “Eight years after the massacre the family members continue demanding justice, punishment of the intellectual and material authors of these grave acts and our right to know the truth about what happened, as well as the whereabouts of our disappeared family members. The only thing that the Mexican government has done is to continue nourishing the impunity.”
He remembered that the attack occurred on November 13, 2006: “Some 40 people from the community of Nueva Palestina, very well armed, some with uniforms of the military or Public Security, violently entered Viejo Velasco.” 300 members of the Sectorial Police accompanied them with high-powered weapons “known as ‘goat horns’ and R-15s.” At times, other authorities accompanied them. “They all surrounded the community to later enter homes and steal our relatives’ belongings.”
Filemón Benítez Pérez, Antonio Mayor Benítez Pérez, María Núñez González and Vicente Pérez Díaz (the latter from the aggressor group) died in the acts. Four more were disappeared: Mariano Pérez Guzmán, Miguel Moreno Montejo, Pedro Núñez Pérez and Antonio Peñate López. The survivors fled into the mountains and afterwards were given refuge in the neighboring Nuevo Tila community.
Moreno Vázquez adds: “Faced with the lack of justice we took on the task of looking for our disappeared and on July 6, 2007 with a Civilian Observation Commission we toured the route that goes from Paraíso to Viejo Velasco and we found two bones, which turned out to be from Miguel Moreno Montejo, my father, and Pedro Núñez Pérez. The government said that our family members ‘had grabbed their backpacks and had left for the north.’ It wasn’t until November 2011 that they delivered the remains to us and we gave them a Christian burial.”
Mariano Pérez Guzmán and Antonio Peñate López remain disappeared. The displaced “are borrowing lands or working in different places.” Four Nuevo Tila residents “continue with (pending) arrest warrants, accused of the death of our family members, while to the contrary, they received those displaced that day.”
They run the same risk as Diego Arcos Meneses, who stayed in prison for almost a year “accused of the death of our family members, being that he is a health promoter, like I am, who only offered support” to the displaced.
See also: https://compamanuel.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/viejo-velasco-massacre-7-years-later/
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Thursday, July 17, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/07/17/politica/021n1pol
Zibechi: Financial capital loots Rio de Janeiro
FINANCIAL CAPITAL LOOTS RIO DE JANEIRO
By: Raúl Zibechi
In less than a decade Río de Janeiro has suffered three large events that modify its features: the Pan American Games in 2007, the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Financial capital takes advantage of that succession of sports mega-events in so short a time to remodel one of the most beautiful cities in the world, where it obtains enormous profits and provokes irreparable damage to the poor.
This month the Rio Popular Committee of the Cup and the Olympics launched the fourth dossier titled Mega-events and Human Rights Violations in Río de Janeiro (comitepopulario.wordpress.com). Throughout the 170 pages it analyzes the principal consequences that the events are having on the city and its population, at the same time that it reveals those who benefit from the million-dollar works that the FIFA and the International Olympic Committee, among others, impose.
“The sports mega-events mark the return of the most violent form of contempt for housing rights in the city,” can be read at the beginning of the dossier. We’re talking about a “social cleansing” that consists in relocating the poor to open opportunities for businesses of the large corporations, in “noble” zones like Barra da Tijuca, Jacarepaguá and the historic center, while it moves them to far away zones where they must begin their lives over again from nothing. As of now almost 5,000 families are displaced from 29 communities, with another 5,000 threatened with eviction.
The Cup Committee supports the desolate communities with studies and analysis, but its members also put their bodies on the line to resist the bulldozers that knock down homes. Women are at the head of the resistance, like Inalva Britos, in Vila Autódromo, and Alessandra in Providencia Hill. In the popular barrios the women sell food in the neighborhood or they make artesanía, a strategy for survival that they will not be able to continue in the desolate “barrios” of the Mi Casa Mi Vida program. Resisting is a question of life.
Río is the city most affected by real estate speculation. The price of housing rose 65 percent between 2011 and 2014 compared to an average of 52 percent in Brazil. The price of rent rose 43 percent, compared to 26 percent in São Paulo. The list of works is impressive: two stadiums (Olympic and Maracaná), the Olympic Village and Port Maravilla; six light train lines, expansion of the metro and of the freeways or rapid urban highways: all financed with public money.
Just the remodeling of Maracaná in Río demanded 1 billion 50 million reals (470 million dollars). The public works budget increased 65 percent since the 2010 budget, reaching the astronomical number of 1 billion 500 million dollars just for public works on the World Cup and the Olympics. The principal beneficiaries are the large construction companies: Odebrecht, OAS, Camargo Corrêa and Andrade Gutierrez, coincidentally, those that make large contributions to the political parties in electoral campaigns.
Odebrecht has completely remodeled Maracaná, which also manages the enclosure. It (Odebrecht) also shares with Andrade Gutierrez the construction and management of the Olympic Village, management of Olympic stadium with OAS, and even 20 large public works in Río de Janeiro, hundreds in the 12 cities that are World Cup seats, including new airports and hotels. Just the new Terminal 3 at Guarulhos Airport (São Paulo) had, as of now, a cost of 1 billion 500 million dollars.
None of this can be done without repression. The Army’s occupation of the Complexo da Maré (130,000 inhabitants in 16 favelas), until the World Cup ends, is hardly the action the population knows best. This week, the government of Río state reported on the incorporation of eight new armored vehicles for the Special Operations Battalion (BOPE, its initials in Spanish), which will be used in the “pacification of the favelas” operations(O Globo, 24/06/14).
In the four months prior to the Mundial, the Secretary of the State of Río reported 4,250 compulsory admissions of homeless people, who are transported to a shelter 70 kilometers from the city’s center, where, according to the dossier of the Cup Committee, they are lodged in precarious conditions and suffer torture practices.
“Río de Janeiro is becoming a more expensive and unequal city all the time,” the dossier of the Cup Committee points out. A fractured, conflictive city as happened at the recent Carnaval, when more than 70 percent of the 14,000 garbage collectors went on strike. After eight days of harsh conflict and disqualifications, one of the categories of low-paid workers obtained a 37 percent increase in their base salary, which is still barely 500 dollars. Despite the pressures, the enormous encampment of 4,000 people organized by the MTST (Movimiento de Trabajadores Sin Techo) three kilometers from the Itaquerão Stadium.
While half of the World Cup is still in dispute, demonstrations have decreased and the number of people mobilized is less than in previous weeks. Even so, the protests are far from disappearing. The success of the days in June 2013 is not forgotten; they stopped the increase in tickets for urban transportation, but in reality they were questioning the city model that capital is imposing with support from a broad coalition of parties.
A recent MTST communiqué, which maintains an encampment of 400 people in front of the municipal chamber demanding affordable housing, assures that its struggle did not begin with the World Cup, nor will it end with when it’s over. “We reaffirm that the big legacy of the World Cup was the real estate speculation and urban exclusion.”
After July, when the ball stops rolling and the fires of the media artifice die out, Brazilians will return to their everyday life, paying abusive prices for very bad transportation. The resistance to the recent urban extractivism begins.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, June 27, 2014
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/06/27/opinion/021a1pol
ACNUR wants Mexico to consider refugee status for minor migrants
ACNUR WANTS MEXICO TO CONSIDER MINORS TRAVELING TO THE U.S. AS REFUGEES
A Honduran child rests under the train, in Arriaga, Chiapas, waiting to board The Beast. Photo: Alfredo Domínguez
By: Blanche Petrich
** They cannot be forcibly returned to their country if there is a risk: commissioner
** From January to June they have deported 8,239 without the knowledge of Comar: Francisco Sieber
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Acnur) mobilizes in Mexico to assure that the Mexican government guaranty the right to protection of those Central American children and adolescents, the majority Hondurans, who because of the risky conditions and violence that obliges them to emigrate towards the north, alone or accompanied, merit obtaining refugee status.
In an interview, the Acnur official for protection in Mexico, José Francisco Sieber, reported that in the last 18 months (2013-2014) the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) recognized 56 minors as refugees.
It is barely a drop in the ocean. Last semester alone 11, 265 Central American children were “rescued” (according to the official lexicon) and processed by authorities migratory. Some 8 mil 239, were deported without passing through the Comar.
Faced with the high number of children deported, Sieber insists on “a fundamental point” of the international right of displaced children: “the right of not being forcibly returned to their place of origin if their life or their security is at risk.” Also, faced with the crisis of minors detained in United States border cities, the country has the same obligation as the region’s other states: protecting and giving refuge if their security is threatened in case of being repatriated.
Acnur report soon
In March of this year the Acnur office in the United States published a report on the new lines of displacement of the Central American population towards that country and the situation of the unaccompanied minors detained in border cities. Titled Niños en fuga (Children on the run), the report emphasizes the urgency of strengthening access to asylum and other forms of protection. A similar report with investigations of the United Nations officials about child migrants that cross through Mexico will be published soon.
In the stories collected in this field investigation, Sieber indicates, “we observe that there are more and more elements of violence in their narrative all the time; the children comment that there are situations of extortion, homicides, threats, attempts at recruitment into criminal groups, like gangs, and those are factors that caused their exit.”
That obliges the region’s governments to extend their protection practices. The challenge, in this case for the government of Mexico, which is the transit country, “is to identify the cases in which the minors effectively cannot return to their places of origin because they can confront risks to their security.” Those are the cases where the right to refuge must be applied.
“We are not saying that violence is the only reason for these rising flows. Reasons for migration are multiple. But we do say that violence appears with greater frequency in dialogues held by our officials with the children and, above all, with the adolescents, the majority coming from Honduras. We are hearing many and very diverse references to different forms of violence. That worries Acnur and makes us mobilize and work with the authorities to take measures that would permit responding to this situation.”
Challenge: distinguishing between migrants and refugees
–Given the circumstances in which the displaced are moving, how do you differentiate between those who emigrate because of economic causes, like poverty, and those who do it fleeing from violence?
–That’s why I speak of the challenge. There are situations where many of the children could have, as the best solution based on their best interest, family reunification in the country of origin. However, there could be others that no longer can return and that, therefore, should be considered refugees.
–Is it adequate to treat the petitions for refuge case-by-case when one is talking not about a migratory flow, but rather of a mass exodus? In the 1980s, with the mass arrival of Guatemalans that were fleeing from the war, the focus was not on individual asylum, but rather on refuge to entire communities. Would it not be applicable to the emergency that is experienced now?
–At the moment, what we see is that response mechanisms for the cases that seek international protection as refugees do exist. Another big challenge is that people know about these proceedings and they understand that they can access them. Not all of them have knowledge of the existence of an office like the Comar.
“The difference is that now not only do we have a legal framework of international refugee law, but also a Mexican law on refugees that is innovative in certain aspects like that of complementary protection.”
–Are these mechanisms sufficient to impede the Mexican State from deporting those who need protection?
–Exactly. And this is a fundamental point. There is a principle in international refugee law that protects them against any measure of forced return. If the person is recognized as a refugee, he or she is under the protection of this legal principle, and cannot be returned to their country of origin.
–We see in the Honduran press that in recent weeks there had been record numbers of children and women deported, after being detained in Mexico. Did these people have guarantees against forced return?
–What we see is that to the extent that a person does demonstrate to the Mexican authority the need for protection in the face of these situations of violence, of persecution, the person must automatically be channeled to the Comar. Effectively, we’re seeking that the people that are indeed at risk be listened to in a confidential manner within the context of an interview, and that they express the reasons for which they no longer want to return to their country of origin and to decide if this person is going to be considered as a refugee.
–Then what happened with these deportees of recent weeks, or that are being deported right now?
–As is known, Mexico is familiar with this migratory flow, which is not new. There is a situation where high numbers enter its territory for the purpose of reaching the United States. In two cases, migrants or refugees, they use the same ways. We must be careful because not all are refugees. Therefore, we insist on the challenge of identifying who is really a refugee.
–What is the situation in the United States, in the detention centers on its southern border, where there are still tens of thousands of children, some with their mothers, trapped in a legal proceeding? President Barack Obama has asked his Congress for discretionary ability to deport them. How does Acnur intervene in those cases?
–It is the same challenge: the identification of cases that do merit protection of the right to refuge. It’s the same for all countries. We’re talking about international refugee law. There are two other principles of international law: one is the prevalence, the observance of the superior interest of childhood, and the second is the right of the child, of the adolescent, to be consulted, to participate in the decision, to have their voice heard in the hearings and proceedings.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Thursday, July 10, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/07/10/politica/013n1pol
Moisés Reports on Zapatista Reconstruction Account
RECONSTRUCTION ACCOUNT
ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
MEXICO
July 2014.
To the compas of the Sixth in Mexico and the World:
To all those who have cooperated or contributed to the reconstruction of the clinic and school in La Realidad:
The Zapatistas send you greetings.
We want to let you know how things are going with the collection of funds for rebuilding the school and clinic destroyed by paramilitaries in our Zapatista Reality.
As of today, July 3, nearly a month after we announced the request for support for this construction, we have received:
From collectives: the total generated by various collectives is $344,612.50 [Mexican pesos].
From individuals: the total generated from various individuals is $20,724.00 [Mexican pesos].
Here you can see clearly, as we already know, that things are better done collectively because what results is bigger, better, and happier.
The overall total is $365,336.50 (three hundred seventy-five thousand three hundred thirty-six pesos and fifty cents).
This is the report of the total amount generated through the task of acquiring the funds for construction, in accordance with the budget laid out by the Zapatista compañer@s of the community of La Realidad.
More was generated than had been budgeted; we had said we would need $200,209.00 and $365,336.50 was collected. Do the math and you will see the difference. The extra amount we will use to buy equipment and medicine.
So we want to thank all of you for your efforts. We know that you organized yourselves and put on events to raise money, that you even made tacos and held dance parties and concerts and sold things to generate funds.
To all of you, those who organized events and those who participated, we send many thanks for your support.
Right now the compañer@s bases of support are looking for the expert carpenters who will build and finish the construction in order to see which and how many materials they need to buy.
I see that there is already movement stirring around the construction.
And this is in fact a time of movement. I am told that the compañer@s here are already hard at work readying the place where they will meet with the compañer@s from the National Indigenous Congress [CNI].
There is already news coming in about the work being done to support the travel of the compañer@s from the CNI to and from the exchange they will have here.
We have been asking ourselves: How many exchanges will we have with the compañer@s of the CNI? How will we support them with their travel costs? These are the questions we ask ourselves; I see the compañer@s scratching their heads and pulling out their hair from so much thinking. But we know that all of you will support the CNI from your own realities so that they can get to CIDECI in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. From there our Zapatista chauffer-ologists will take over in order to bring them here to La Realidad; that part will be up to us.
So compañer@s of the Sixth, scratch your heads also and be careful not to pull your hair out, but above all send us your ideas for how you can help the compañer@s from the National Indigenous Congress travel to the exchange that we will have with them and the EZLN compas and bases of support. The first round of this exchange will be August 4-8.
We are going to ask the compas who work on the Enlace Zapatista webpage to make a special section called something like, “Exchange to support the exchange of the CNI.” There you can send your ideas and share the efforts that you are making or planning to help the CNI communities who are invited to this first exchange get here. This is how we are going to remember and cherish the memory of our CNI compa, DAVID RUIZ GARCIA, whose name we have given to this first exchange.
This way you can get ideas from each other on what to do, because there is little time left. This section will also serve to show us who is acting the fool, because we remember that some said that they didn’t support the Zapatista communities because they didn’t like the now defunct SupMarcos. Now that he is gone we can see that it wasn’t really about him at all, but that it was and is because those who made those comments do not like that the people, the communities, rule themselves; they want the people to obey them. They want to give the people orders to vote for this or that soccer team or political party, which is really the same thing when both are bought and paid. Here we can see clearly that educated people also harbor racism. That is, racism exists in the heart, even when the head is highly educated.
Oh, and another thing: compas of the independent, alternative, free, or whatever-you-call-it media, remember that you are invited to come after the exchange ends, on Saturday August 9, 2014, to hear and carry far and wide the word of the indigenous people who are participating. And perhaps this time we can do the press conference or whatever-you-call-it that we left pending last time. All of the Sixth is invited also.
That is all we wanted to tell you, compañer@s.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Mexico, July of 2014. In the twentieth year since the beginning of the war against oblivion.
Mireles: “I am a political prisoner”
“I AM A POLITICAL PRISONER,” MIRELES VALVERDE MAINTAINS
José Manuel Mireles behind bars with head shaved
By: Sanjuana Martínez, Special to La Jornada
Doctor José Manuel Mireles Valverde laughs, cries, gets emotional when his lawyer Talía Vázquez Alatorre tells him about the shows of support that he is receiving because of his arrest, and laughs loudly when he finds out that people are shaving their heads as a sign of solidarity. Next, with firmness and conviction, recognizes that prison, was a foreseen scenario in his activity as an autodefensa and puts out the definition of his situation: “I am a political prisoner.”
Prisoner number 5557 of the Federal Center for Social Re-adaptation (Cefereso, its acronym in Spanish) 11 located in Hermosillo, Sonora, after federal judge Armando Wong dictated an order of formal prison against him in criminal cause of action 137/2014, together with his three escorts Javier Reyes Magaña, Salvador Mendoza García and Gerardo López Casillas, for the alleged crimes of “carrying firearms for the exclusive use of the Army and (crimes) against health, in its category of narcomenudeo with the specific charge of simple possession of marijuana and cocaine.”
Crimes that, according to his defense, are false: “We are against the order for formal prison for two things: one, for grave due process violations and other, because of the declarations of the public officials that place him as a political prisoner,” Talía Vázquez Alatorre says in an interview with La Jornada, who tells the details of her one-hour visit to her defendant in prison.
Doctor Mireles’ defense team prepares the amparo [1], the appeal and, at the same time, a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR): “We have 15 working days to go against the order of formal prison, while the case continues, but we seek to arrive at international instances like the IACHR, where we already initiated the necessary steps.”
Alfredo Castillo did not comply
According to the papers of statements for resolving the legal situation of Doctor Mireles, to which La Jornada has had access, the lawyer Salvador Molina Navarro makes an allegation about obedience to the law and the justification for the autodefensas based on an analysis presented by the el academic Jaime Cárdenas, where they argue the “non-chargeability” against those processed due to the fact that they belong to a known “social movement” like the autodefensas of Michoacán.
The defense considers that the doctor and his three escorts are victims of as “illegal arrest,” realized without an arrest warrant and without being treated as a case of being caught in the act or of urgency, which contravenes Article 16 of the Constitution. They argue that Doctor Mireles Valverde suffered “acts of torture” and a judge’s omission exists by not investigating the facts, besides he was not permitted to make an allowed call to a defender inside then time limit set by law and the evidence the authorities presented was “planted,” which makes them false and illegal.
They point out that “torture, like that of which the accused were victims, including since their detention, is aggravated even more on the person of José Manuel Mireles Valverde, because he was blindfolded for no reason or justification, making him believe that they would throw him into the, even impeding his immediate communication as is his inalienable right, annuls each and every piece of evidence that the Public Ministry (district attorney’s office) would be able to gather in the investigation stage,” says the text of allegations in favor of Doctor Mireles, which consists of 55 pages.
Among the arguments presented, is the “legitimate defense,” personal and collective, due to the fact that the government has not guaranteed security in Michoacán.
“From here the state of necessity in which society is found to lack legal security on the part of State forces. The lack of legal security in which the inhabitants of different sectors of the population are found is evident; they are found unprotected before attempts against their integrity, as much physical as patrimonial, because of the of organized crime organizations. As a consequence of that and as a reaction to an attack on their physical and patrimonial integrity, they find themselves in complete necessity of defending themselves and their property collectively. From there, one can infer the result of the conduct that is employed to safeguard the property of the population, by seizing control of any means of defense that may be feasible, to repel the aggressions of their transgressors.”
The defense insists that Doctor Mireles is a “political prisoner” due to the fact that it has been officials like the Commissioner for Security in Michoacán, Alfredo Castillo, and the Secretary of Governance, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, who have declared that the detainee is a prisoner for not having complied with the May accords.
The lawyer Talía Vázquez specifies: “The one who did not comply with any of the accords was Castillo. He did not release the 517 prisoners from the self-defense groups, in Michoacán alone; nor did he free Hipólito Mora before May 10. And, above all, he did not comply with the arrest of La Tuta and neither did he re-establish the state of law. Nothing happened. The one who broke the pact was Alfredo Castillo and not Doctor Mireles. That also shows that he is a political prisoner.”
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[1] According to Wikipedia, a recurso de amparo in Mexico is a legal procedure to protect a person’s human rights.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Monday, July 7, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/07/07/politica/015n1pol
Javier Sicilia on Mireles’ Arrest
THE CAPTURE OF MIRELES SHOWS THAT THE GOVERNMENT SEEKS CONTROL OF THE NARCO: SICILIA
José Mireles (left) and Javier Sicilia (right)
[The disaster that Michoacán experiences is because the government has not even investigated punishing the authorities that are in collusion with organized crime, the poet Javier Sicilia (right) points out. In left image on the left, José Manuel Mireles during his visit to the Autonomous University of Mexico City, last May 29. Photo: María Meléndrez Parada and María Luisa Severiano]
By: Rubicela Morelos Cruz y Ulises Gutiérrez Ruelas, Correspondents
The arrest of José Manuel Mireles, ex spokesperson of the Michoacán self-defense groups (autodefensas), demonstrates that the federal government the PRI member Enrique Peña Nieto heads, is on the side of the criminals and that the only thing that it seeks with the alleged combat against organized crime “is to harmonize and again control the drug trafficking networks” in the country, asserted Javier Sicilia, leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity.
At the same time, he called on intellectuals and organizations to demand his liberation, and demanded the removal of Alfredo Castillo, federal commissioner for the peace and development of Michoacán, “who has betrayed the citizens.”
He asserted that: “the disaster that Michoacán lives” is because the federal government has not even investigated punishing the authorities that are in collusion with organized crime; as of now it has not arrested La Tuta, leader of Los caballeros templarios, nor has it investigated ex governor Fausto Vallejo.
“Castillo has lied, has betrayed and has played against the citizens of that state, and is no longer functioning; it seems that he is on the criminals’ side. If Peña Nieto is really working for the people he ought to remove him (Castillo) and do deep investigations, starting with Vallejo.
In Cuernavaca, Morelos, Sicilia called on the intellectual class, organizations and the country’s social strugglers to jointly demand the liberation of Mireles, because “the only crime that he has committed, just like other social strugglers, has been to demonstrate against the State’s inefficiencies and corruptions.” He reiterated that the government criminalizes Mireles and treats him as a criminal, but in the future it can be any other social struggler or any Mexican that criticizes corruption.
Michoacán, he said, represents what the whole country is suffering: insecurity, violence and the operation of drug cartels with or without support from the authorities, because of which he requested coherence from the federal government, concretely the Attorney General of the Republic. “One cannot put Pancho Villa in prison and leave Vallejo without facing charges.”
Meanwhile, in Hermosillo, Sonora, Tomás Rojo Valencia, spokesperson for members of the Yaqui tribe that oppose the operation of the Independencia Aqueduct, visited Hermosillo to report on the conditions of Mireles’ seclusion in Federal Prison Number 11 (Cefereso), on the outskirts of the Sonoran capital.
He said that as social strugglers, many members of the Yaqui tribe identify with him (Mireles), because he confronts an attack from the spheres of power similar to what they have confronted for years: “a constant struggle to defend the rights of the population.”
He said that after gathering information about the case of the leader of the autodefensas, he will take the data to the government organs of the Yaqui people, and in a few days it will announce the position of that ethnicity about the criminal case that he confronts, for the alleged possession of weapons for the exclusive use of the Army.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Thursday, July 3, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/07/03/politica/004n1pol
Zapatista News Summary for June 2014
JUNE 2014 ZAPATISTA NEWS SUMMARY
Migrants Boarding The Beast in Chiapas
In Chiapas
1. Sup Moisés Describes What Is Needed to Rebuild the Autonomous School and Clinic in La Realidad – In this communiqué Subcomandante Moisés describes in detail the materials and equipment necessary to rebuild the autonomous school and clinic in La Realidad that the CIOAC-H members destroyed in the May 2 attack in which Compañero Galeano was murdered. The communiqué is entitled A meeting in La Realidad a few days ago. Instructions for sending donations can be found here.
2. More CIOAC-H Attacks – Primero de Agosto, a pro-Zapatista Tojolabal community in the same region as La Realidad, denounced aggressions from the Independent Central of Agricultural Workers-Historic (CIOAC-H, its initials in Spanish) and another organization called the ASSI. The aggressions include provocations, threats, attempted murders, robbery and a land invasion. Those who murdered Compañero Galeano belonged to the CIOAC-H and the Zapatistas classified the organization as paramilitary. According to the denunciation, the paramilitary behavior continues.
3. Militarizing Mexico’s Southern Border: Chiapas – The Chiapas border with Guatemala has suddenly become an important issue! According to the Frayba Human Rights Center, complaints of human rights abuse have doubled since implementation of the new “security” program for Mexico’s southern border. Chiapas is Mexico’s southernmost state, bordering the Central American country of Guatemala. Militarization of this international border is the latest phase of the US-backed Drug War, allegedly designed to deter drug trafficking from Central America into Mexico. However, it is also aimed directly at deterring migration from Central America and officials report a sharp rise in the number of unaccompanied migrant minors and entire families fleeing the violence. Chiapas NGOs report that militarization has increased in Chiapas municipalities along the border, and there are Zapatista communities in those border municipalities. (See more below.)
4. US Ambassador Anthony Wayne Inspects Chiapas Border with Guatemala – For two days during the last week of June, the US Ambassador to Mexico, Anthony Wayne, flew over portions of the Chiapas border with Guatemala and met with commanders of the Mexican Army and Navy regarding security on that border. He also visited the large migrant detention center (capacity 2,500 per day) and learned that Mexico has detained and deported 10,505 minors in the past year. The ambassador’s visit dramatizes the importance this issue has taken on and the importance of Mexico’s southern border.
In other parts of Mexico
1. Jose Manuel Mireles, Self-Defense Leader, Arrested – In April, we reported that leaders of the various self-defense groups from 20 Michoacán municipalities signed an agreement with the federal commissioner for Michoacán, Alfredo Castillo, and other government officials to “demobilize” and register their weapons. The deadline set for the demobilization was May 10. Not all of the self-defense leaders supported this agreement. In other words, the federal government divided the leadership. So, some of the self-defense members have registered their weapons and joined the rural police; while others have not. One of the self-defense leaders that did not register his weapons or join the rural police is Doctor Jose Manuel Mireles. Instead, he criticized the government’s role in Michoacán. Soon after he led a group of armed autodefensas into the small town of La Mira, federal police and members of the Mexican Army and Navy arrested Mireles and 69 others (later reports say 82) accompanying him for carrying their unregistered weapons.
2. Guerrero’s Community Police Suffer Internal Division – On June 21, one community police agent died in a confrontation between the two opposing factions in a struggle for control of the San Luis Acatlán House of Justice. The Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities-Community Police (CRAC-PC, its initials in Spanish) suffered a serious internal division this year, which some attribute to the government’s interference in this autonomous project. Details here.
3. The FPDT in San Salvador Struggling to Defend its Land Again! – The People’s Front in Defense of Land (FPDT, its initials in Spanish) is once again facing the threat of losing some of its farmland to urban development and a new airport in Mexico City. On June 1, the ejido assembly approved a measure that would permit converting agricultural lands into private property, thus opening the door to a new Mexico City Airport and the Ciudad Futura (Future City) Project. The ejido Commissioner is a PRI member and the FPDT emphasized the “irregular and illegal” nature of the assembly and said it would take legal action as well as engage in social protests. The FPDT is remembered for the valiant defense of its land and marches with machetes raised from 2001 to 2002, after the federal government’s first effort to construct the new airport on Atenco’s land.
In the United States
1. 52,000 Unaccompanied Migrant Minors – The tragedy of children attempting to migrate without a parent or other adult relative has overwhelmed US immigration facilities; and those are only the children that get caught! The Pew Research Institute reports the following percentages for the countries of origin of unaccompanied children apprehended between October 1, 2013 and May 31, 2014: 25 percent are Mexican, an equal percentage are Guatemalan, 29 percent are Honduran and 21 percent are Salvadoran. This is a dramatic increase of Central American children. The United States has agreements with Mexico for returning the Mexican minors promptly. That is not the case for the Central American minors. The US government must find housing for them while their immigration cases are processed. Many of the Mexican and Central American children are fleeing the violence of criminal gangs and drug traffickers, trying to reunite with parents that are working in the United States. Many have asylum claims. Immigration reform would grant relief to others, but the US government seems incapable of reforming that obsolete system.
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Compiled monthly by the Chiapas Support Committee.The primary sources for our information are: La Jornada, Enlace Zapatista and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba).
We encourage folks to distribute this information widely, but please include our name and contact information in the distribution. Gracias/Thanks.
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Chiapas Support Committee/Comité de Apoyo a Chiapas
P.O. Box 3421, Oakland, CA 94609
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Email: cezmat@igc.org
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Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles and 69 more arrested
[On Friday, June 27 around 5:30 PM, members of the federal police and the Mexican Army arrested Doctor José Manuel Mireles and 69 other autodefensas that were accompanying him, in the administrative district (tenencia) of La Mira. Around 30 federal trucks arrived in the place. Mireles was transported to the Port of Lázaro Cárdenas, 15 kilometers from La Mira. The day before, Mireles led a hundred armed men that entered La Mira, just 15 kilometers from Port Lázaro Cárdenas, a strategic place for Los caballeros templarios. Below is an editorial that appeared in La Jornada regarding the hypocrisy of his arrest. And the United States government continues giving beaucoup bucks to Mexico to fight the Drug War in Michoacán and elsewhere in Mexico when it’s obvious that the Mexican government is fighting the people instead of the drug traffickers!]
Mireles arrested! Photo: La Jornada
MIRELES: PARTISAN JUSTICE
The arrest of José Manuel Mireles, ex member of the Council of Autodefensas of Michoacán, occurred yesterday at the hands of federal forces, constitutes a clear example of the partisan application of justice and distortion of the state of law that state has endured in recent months and that has sharpened beginning with the federal government’s intervention in the Michoacán scenario and the virtual annulment of state sovereignty.
It’s noteworthy, in the first place, the lack of consequence of a federal government that announces zero tolerance to armed civilian groups just weeks after it used them to pursue and abate the alleged ringleaders of criminal organizations. With respect to that, it’s appropriate to remember the participation of self-defense groups –according to what Mireles himself related– in the operation that led to the death of Nazario Moreno, El Chayo, supposed founder of the Knights Templar (Los caballeros templarios).
It is significant that, a little before his capture, Mireles and his men had advanced and taken control of La Mira, located in Lázaro Cárdenas municipality.
To start, it is certainly undesirable that the State permits the uncontrolled presence of armed groups of citizens, even less in such an explosive and violent atmosphere as Michoacán. But in this case the official discourse ignores –because it thus appears to suit its interests– that the presence of those groups is a consequence, not the cause, of an annulment of the legality originally provoked by the tolerance and passivity of the very same authority faced with the behavior of the criminal organizations that operate in the referenced state, which obliged diverse sectors of the Michoacán population to take up arms to defender themselves. That omission was aggravated by a governmental strategy that, far from restoring the peace and the state of law, it multiplied the factors for tension and rancor in the territories in conflict, first by permitting the proliferation of self-defense groups and later undertaking a campaign of criminalization and persecution against some of them, which began with the unjust incarceration of Hipólito Mora and now continues with the capture of Mireles Valverde.
In that sense, the accusations against the leader of Tepalcatepec –violations of the Federal Firearms and Explosives Law– appear as a masquerade of justice to give formal support to the capture of a personage whose true “fault,” according to what one can see, has been to maintain a posture less complacent towards the government than the other self-defense leaders, and to systematically reject the Enrique Peña Nieto administration’s actions of registering and disarming of civilian guards implanted in Michoacán.
For the rest, the continuation of the violence and deepening of the institutional and political crisis in the state, and the fact that the criminal organizations that operate there have not been dismantled or their businesses substantially affected, end up making right those who, like Mireles, have criticized the uselessness governmental actions and have pointed them out as a way of demobilizing the sectors of society that decided to rise up against organized crime.
In sum, the capture of the founder of the Michoacán autodefensas is one more exhibition of the erratic conduct, slanted and murky of the federal government in Michoacán, and could also result in a counterproductive maneuver for the government: if the federal authorities do not quickly begin a police or military operation –similar or larger than it launched against Mireles– to dismantle the criminal organizations that operate in Michoacán territory, society will have ample reason for questioning the alleged legalistic zeal of Peña in that state.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Saturday, June 28, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/06/28/opinion/002a1edi
Guerrero: the siege against the CRAC-PC
GUERRERO: THE SIEGE AGAINST THE CRAC-PC
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
Community Police of Guerrero
Relentlessly pursued by the government and internally divided, the community police and the systems of community justice of Guerrero are living through a grave crisis. Arbitrary arrests of its leaders have happened one after another, the formation of rural police sponsored by the government and grave aggressions of one group against the other.
One week ago, on June 17, Guerrero’s ministerial police detained and brutally beat the spokesperson of the Council of Ejidos and Com munities Opposed to La Parota Dam, Marco Antonio Suástegui Muñoz. He is pointed to as the one probably responsible for “the commission of different illicit acts.” Recently, Marco Antonio organized a self-defense group in the rural Acapulco zone, with the support of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities-Community Police (CRAC-PC).
This weekend, deputies from the PRD, Citizen Movement and Heladio Aguirre, will intervene in favor of the community police leader of Olinalá, Nestora Salgado. Comandanta Salgado is unjustly detained in the Tepic women’s federal prison and has been the victim of serious violations of his rights.
On June 20, 18 communities of the Sierra received in the municipality of Leonardo Bravo, with flowers and a fiesta, the first generation of the state’s rural community police. This new armed force is a presidential initiative to stop the expansion of the authentic community police.
One day later, the CRAC-PC faction led by Eliseo Villar Castillo attempted to violently takeover the historic seat of the San Luis Acatlán House of Justice, in which its detractors participate. At least one community police agent died.
The Eliseo Villar group has the support of Governor Angel Aguirre. The relationship between the two is close. The journalist Sergio Ocampo tells that the governor declared that Eliseo supported him in his campaign, gave him a calf, is his friend and now he’s going to reciprocate. That’s how he did it. His faction, besides having open doors in different government offices, he receives around one million pesos per month.
The conflict has a historia behind it. In 2013, the CRAC suffered a strong implosion. The internal cohesion cracked and different groups and leaders disputed the leadership of the movement and interlocution with the State. The currents attacked each other furiously and launched grave accusations in each other’s faces: paramilitaries, agents of the government and traitors. The essence and direction of the original project was lost.
In its 19 years of life, the CRAC has suffered three ruptures. The first, with the group that vindicated itself as “founding peoples,” founded the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (Upoeg, its initials in Spanish) in 2010, was expelled from the Coordinator, and in June and September 2013 it unsuccessfully tried to takeover the San Luis Acatlán House of Justice. The second, also in 2013, was the product of the clash between the communities of Tixtla, Olinalá and Ayutla, which followed a more radical dynamic of social mobilization. And the third, resulted from a severe fracture inside the leadership team of the House of Justice.
The state government’s intervention has been a key factor in the development and exacerbation of the internal contradictions of the Coordinator. The authorities seek to domesticate it anyway possible, take away its autonomist edge and impose its agenda by virtue of financial cannon shots and repression. The local and federal governments desire to disappear by any means the spaces of resistance to the mining invasion in the zone. Curiously, all the parties in the fight admit that the government foments the internal quarrel.
The tragic confrontation last June 21 is the latest link of the third rupture. Originally its protagonists made up part of the same group. In fact, it was their dispute with the leadership team of the Upoeg that opened the door for Eliseo Villar to lead the CRAC. The fear that people from the Upoeg would come to the front of the Coordinator led them to promote a hard personage to confront them, overlooking their traditions. Eliseo was that figure: a police agent without a long community trajectory.
The fracture inside this group was produced when Eliseo Villar installed an agenda very pragmatic and very tied with the state’s interests, confronting a sector of majority communities in San Luis Acatlán, advised by Valentín Hernández Chapa and Pablo Guzmán.
According to Abel Barrera, Eliseo’s agenda at the front of the Coordinator is guided by the search for support to productive projects, increasing the economic resources that the state government gives them and obtaining money for the construction of the houses of justice, armament and uniforms. This orientation had as a final result that the most political theme, the theme of how to strengthen a security model of the peoples from their own cosmovision and autonomy, was blurred. Villar began to manage that resource without transparency or rendering accounts. His opponents accuse him of diverting 740,000 pesos. Additionally, he refused to struggle for the freedom of imprisoned community leaders.
His detractors removed Eliseo Villar in an assembly held on March 31, 2014. The deposed coordinator denied the validity of the act and said that his adversaries were a minority.
Those who failed to recognize Villar –Abel Barrera explains– are part of a mixed coalition of advisors, coordinators, commissioners and ex commissioners –historic leaders of the Costa-Montaña region–, who have greater clarity about the original sense of the project. Their axes of action consist of having coordinators truly subordinate to assembly decisions, naming the police in the communities, respecting and complying with internal rules, and promoting the re-education of those who commit crimes.
The governmental siege on the community police of Guerrero advances. The Eliseo Villar group’s attempt to take overthe historic San Luis Acatlán House of Justice is no more than the latest play to achieve it.
Twitter: @lhan55
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/06/24/opinion/027a1pol
Chiapas Support Committee 