First Atenco, then Oaxaca – Chiapas, You’re Next

Clouds over Chiapas
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The ominous clouds looming lately over San Cristobal de las Casas, scene of the 1994 Zapatista uprising, are more than just a bad-weather warning - they portend the ratcheting up in Southern Mexico of even more rampant repression than that experienced in recent times in San Salvador Atenco, Oaxaca, and elsewhere.

While the international corporate media studiously maintains a silence bordering on autism, Mexican human rights abuses look set to surpass even those of their northern neighbour – who seemingly shares the increasing disquiet at their methods, and is building a BIG fence to keep them out of his backyard. After all, the US mostly does it to foreigners, and preferably in other countries, whereas these honchos have it in for their own citizens – and anyone else who sticks their nose in.

Take the four Spanish citizens snatched off the street in Oaxaca a couple of weeks of ago. Laia Serra (human rights lawyer), Ramón Sesén (professor), Nuria Morelló (anthropologist) and Ariadna Nieto (journalist) were walking with a Mexican friend in the historic centre of Oaxaca at 9.30pm on 5th August when they were surrounded by police, thrown up against a wall, then forced into a pick-up truck. They were taken to what appeared to them to be military or police quarters “...where people were dressed in blue and green uniforms. When they took us out of the truck they covered our heads and dragged us to a wall where we were forced to kneel down while they took away our back packs, fanny packs, documentation, and money.” After being robbed, they were variously photographed, interrogated, threatened, beaten, sexually assaulted, forced to do “humiliating acts” and terrorized – but they were not informed of what offences they were accused of or why they had been detained ie, they were subjected to what now appears to be standard Mexican police procedure – violent arbitrary detention. THEN they were taken to a police station, processed (but not permitted to make a phone call or contact their Consulate), and appeared before a judge who informed them that they had been caught without identification – she was completely uninterested in the fact that the police who took their bags had it all, and ordered their transfer to an immigration detention centre in Mexico City, pending deportation. From there they managed to contact the Spanish Consulate, and were finally released on 13 August, when Mexican authorities admitted they were in the country legally, and there was no justification for their deportation. Of course it is pure coincidence that both Laia and Ramón were involved in the 5th International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights, which in February presented a damning report detailing human rights abuses in Oaxaca, and all four had attended the Zapatista International Encuentro in Chiapas the previous week...

The good thing about being a foreigner who is illegally detained, robbed, beaten, sexually assaulted, threatened, tortured and terrorised in Mexico is that afterwards you can jump on a plane and go home, pretty sure that your house will still be there when you arrive back. The option for indigenous Mexicans is somewhat more limited, as the people of Montes Azules in San Manuel municipality found out this week. About the only jumping they got to choose was from the helicopters that, like some fifth-rate video game, police used to round the community up like cattle then forced them aboard to transfer them to the municipal capital, while staff from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources destroyed their houses and pastures.

Keeping the home fires burning seems to be the order of the day, as I discovered 1-14 August while human rights observing in another San Manuel Zapatista Autonomous community, Emiliano Zapata. Local paramilitary group OPDICC are suspected of setting fire to neighbouring land two days after our arrival, but a well-timed torrential rainfall put it out within a few hours. A couple of days later they set another, which burnt overnight but was also rained out (see photo - brown areas are fire- burnt). Obviously unsatisfied with these efforts, and perhaps in honour of the meeting of the San Manuel Municipal Council attended by members from throughout the entire region, Saturday 11th saw an even bigger fire at the end of our valley, blocking the only road out for several hours.

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The third fire was on the other side of the valley from the first two. The comunity, and all houses, clinic, school, etc are in the middle.

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Areas of burnt-out hillside from the first two fire adjacent to Emiliano Zapata autonomous community, where I was human rights observing.

Such incidents, increasing in frequency, are not restricted merely to ‘threats’ such as fires. For several months, the Community of 24 de Diciembre, Autonomous Municipality of San Pedro de Michoacán, has been under constant attack from members of the organisation UES (partners and distributors of Cafe de la Selva), supported by federal institutions and the federal army. The 31 families are at risk of being expelled from their lands, as occurred this week to the people of Montes Azules. This month alone:

- on August 2 in the Community of Francisco Villa, Autonomous Municipality of La Paz, Northern Zone, anti-Zapatistas burned down María López Oñate’s house. There are constant threats against this community to keep the population in fear, especially threats of rape directed at the women.

- August 10 in the Community of Ba yulumax, Autonomous Municipality of Chilón, 13 members of the paramilitary organization OPDDIC brutally attacked Leonardo Navarrese, kidnapping, beating and shooting him, resulting in six serious bullet wounds, while his son Juan received a head injury, and a bullet wound in his shoulder.

- August 18, in addition to the attack in Montes Azules, seven people were detained in Buen Samaritano, San Manuel Municipality. Their identities and whereabouts are stillunknown, as are their physical and psychological welfare.

- Eviction threats also currently exist for the communities of Salvador Allende and Nuevo Corozal.

These recent repressions are hot on the heels of the Second Zapatista International Encuentro, a seemingly exceedingly cynical response to international interest, and a challenge to all defenders of human rights.

The events of Atenco, Oaxaca, Chiapas are clearly not aberrations. They all involve the considered, premeditated, and continued use of municipal, state, and federal forces and institutions to illegally, and with apparent total impunity, trample the human rights of both Mexicans and foreigners alike, including those of international human rights observers and media representatives like the four Spanish citizens abducted by police in Oaxaca, like Valentina Palma, Cristina Valls, and María Sostres similarly abducted then deported from Atenco, like Brad Will murdered in Oaxaca while trying to get word out to the rest of the world about what was happening then, and is still happening today, right now, in Mexico – gross, systematic, federally- and seemingly internationally-sanctioned, human rights abuses – and this from the country occupying the chair of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Whats for Xmas this year?
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Maybe we’ll get lucky, and Santa is bringing a sack full of justice for Christmas...

Julie Webb-Pullman is a expat Kiwi writing from Mexico.

ENDS

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