New Video Newsreel from Oaxaca & More!

New in the Salón Chingón screening room today, the latest newsreel from the Other Journalism with the Other Campaign. In this installment, the Other Journalism video team presents footage from the Other Campaign caravan's February visit to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos met with local fishermen and peasant farmers fighting against a series of energy projects that threaten to destroy their livelihoods and homes. Their words joined Marcos' in a powerful rejection of the political and economic system and a call for such local struggles, which exist all over Mexico, to join forces.

An amazing group of filmmakers have come together in the Other Journalism video team, including Corrugated Films' Jill Frieberg, Greg Berger of Gringoyo Productions, longtime Narco News collaborators Barrett Hawes and Sarahy Flores Sosa, and others. Watch the video newsreel here:

http://www.salonchingon.com/cinema/otra_istmo.php?city=ny

And in The Narco News Bulletin, two new stories from the Other Journalism road team, now in the Mexican state of Guerrero, show how that joining of forces across the country is beginning to happen. Bertha Rodríguez Santos reports from the town of Agua Caliente:

"The harsh state repression against members of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the Parota Dam (CECOP in its Spanish initials), a group whose members have faced the assassination of three peasant farmers as well as threats to expropriate their land, inspired Zapatista Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos today to warn President Vicente Fox that if the Mexican army attacks these communities rejecting the hydroelectric installation, it will be considered an aggression against the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. He declared "they will only be able to build the dam with a war in the Mexican southeast."

"'We want to warn Vicente Fox and his yellow-and-black (colors of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD) hand in Guerrero, Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, that if the army attacks these lands it will have to attack the mountains of the Mexican southeast as well,' said Delegate Zero before about 1,500 people who had awaited his arrival in the coastal community of Agua Caliente since early this morning."

"The combative character of the people of the Guerrero coast made the meeting a special event, where shouts of ¡viva! abounded for the EZLN, the peasant farmers against the Parota Dam, as well as Lucio Cabañas and Genaro Vásquez, guerrilla leaders who defended the local campesinos' rights in the late 1960s and early 70s."

Read that full story, here:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1737.html

Also, Al Giordano reports on a unique effort in community organization "from below" on the Guerrero coast, which has brought a degree of safety and calm to the poor residents of this embattled region:

"One hundred policemen, armed and in uniform, waited along the side of the road on Tuesday for Subcomandante Marcos. When he saw them, he stepped out of his vehicle and approached them. The commander-in- chief of the soldiers of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, in its Spanish initials) - twelve years into its declaration of war against the Mexican state - stood at attention... and saluted.

"Later, the guerrilla spokesman confessed, 'That was the first time that we, the Zapatistas, have ever saluted police officers.'

"Throughout Mexico and the world, police in uniform inspire fear among the poor and the workers. Not here. The Community Police movement of this mountainous indigenous region on the Costa Chica of Guerrero celebrated its tenth anniversary last year, stronger and more popular than ever. These officers are unpaid, chosen by their neighbors in public assemblies. These 612 men have succeeded at what the government failed to do: they chased the robbers, rapists and predators out of their towns, off their country roads, and restored peace and tranquility to their families."

http://www.narconews.com/otroperiodismo/en.html

From somewhere in a country called América,

Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com

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