Fight for the right to party!

(Dissident teachers at the start of the Alternative Guelaguetza,in Oaxaca. Notimex photo by Hugo Alberto Velasco, printed in The News)

It’s that time again.  The annual running of the protesters in Oaxaca always cumulates in the now traditional duelling traditional Guelaguetzas.  What had been since the 17th century a religious fiesta and market was always running away from the authorities, as the locals had their own ideas of what they expected from the Oaxaca-wide swap meet and party.  In the early 1930s, to satisfy the people’s needs, and at the same time satisfy restrictions on religious processions in public,  Guelaguetza was given a new identity as a “folk festival.”  That was fine until the State, in the 1980s and 90s decided to make the event a tourist attraction.  While the State invested in facilities and brought in “acts” to perform for the tourists.  The chronic political and social unrest within the State, as tourism and other foreign investments (especially in mining) left people feeling more and more alienated from the State government, cumulated in violent uprising in 2006.

One “victim” of the violence was the offical Guelaguetza — dissidents burned down the “traditional” site (in use since the 1930s).  Since “the show must go on” (and the last thing anyone wanted were tour groups cancelling their reservations), the Guelaguetza went on in a heavily guarded compound, while an ad hoc alternative Guelaguetza took place in the streets, sponsored by the dissident unions and other groups.

This year’s events are being held both at the official site (Cerro Fortin) and at the State University Stadium.  The problem in Oaxaca, according to some, was that the state was run by a single political party.  Maybe this doesn’t change the politics, but it’s a step in the right direction to set up a “two party” system.

Used wife, one owner…

I still do not “get” the people who defend “usos y costumbres” as a progressive cause (I’ve had run-ins with the Oaxaca Studies Action Group people over this — the upshot being I subscribe to that yahoo group any more, and I seriously question the journalistic integrity of Narco News Bulletin, which was printing reports by some of these people without fact-checking).  As best I can understand, the traditionalists were among the many who opposed (and still oppose) the Ulises Ruiz administration, and the PRI political machine.  Some on the progressive side seem to think voting by consensus (as opposed to a “free and secret ballot” in the words of the Mexican Constitution) among communities that reject PRI is “good” … and that among those who back the PRI is the result of manipulation.

Setting aside individual rights within traditional communities was probably the worst thing the Fox administration did. I know there are those who defend the constititional change (a capitulation to the Zapatistas — which for some odd reason enjoys wide support from the left) on the grounds that it preserves native culture, but as a human rights issue, I’m not sure it should be supported by these progressives.  Most of them would scream bloody murder if they had to live in small towns run by “traditional family values” rules.

People either have rights just as people, or they don’t.  I don’t see how a modern state, and our modern concept of individual rights can coexist with these “traditional values”… and seriously doubt that preserving them is worthwhile.

My translation is from a 24 June 2008 article in Milenio by Blanca Valadez

Follwing the uses and indigenous customs of the pueblo of Santa María Asunción, Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, Guadalupe was sold by her family on two different occasions, .The first time, as a 17 year old, she sold for seven thousand pesos. The second, having been forced to return home when he husband no longer wanted her, her parents sold her for 3,500 pesos, “slighly used.”

She had been married for six years to the first husband. Her son was left behind. A few days later she was “acquired” by Manuel, who refused to pay the full price to his in-laws, alleging his purchase had been mislabeled as a virgin.

Manuel’s in-laws complained about the non-payment, and a few months later filed a legal demand befor the municipal agency for payment of the 3,500 pesos.

Municipal authorities would not stop the sale. On the contrary, they obliged Manuel to pay up immediately, or risk being sent to jail. The court procedings in this community are in the first langague, Mazateco.

“In Santa María Asunción when a man sees a woman who doesn’t have a boyfriend, he doesn’t try to get to know her, but buys her. He goes to her parents and asks “what do you want for her, and what can I afford?’.”

“In many families, they also require you to feed the family on the wedding day, but not everyone adds that condition,” said Yolanda Bartolo Cortés; whose mother, Cecilia Cortés, was sold by her father over 20 years ago.

Yolanda said that some men have tried to avoid paying for women, as did Ramiro Bartolo Cortés, who refused to pay the 5,000 pesos demanded for Eva, with whom he now lives in Mexico City.
However, under pressure from his in-laws, who tracked them down to their home in colonia Santa Domingo in delegación Coyoacán, he had been obligated to pay at least 3000 pesos.

Now Ramiro wants to send Eva back home, and to live with Maria, a teenager from that same Oaxaca town he met when Eva went back to Santa María Asunción to have their first child.

“Even though Maria’s parents knew Eva was my pregnant sister-in-law and Ramiro was her husband, they offered to sell him their daughter for ten thousand pesos. The only reason he didn’t buy her is that he didn’t have the money. In fact, he’s not working, and his wife is supporting him,” Yolanda Bartolo Cortés related.

“My brother told Eva, “Get lost. I don’t want you any more. I want the other girl,” but my sister-in-law stayed, even though he beats her, not caring that he is pregnant.”
Although the sale of women is practically a custom in that community, not everyone accepts their destiny, and some try to flee.

Cecilia Cortés is 39 years old. At 14 she was sold to Hipólito Bartolo, a year older. “My mother tried to flee when she found out the negotiation. One of her uncles found her down by the river, and dragged her back by her hair.

“There was no way out. To leave, she’d need a boat to get out of that palce, since thee wasn’t any bridge. And my mother had no money or help. There was no other option for her, but to marry my father both in church and in a legal wedding, and to spend years in a living hell.”

Lupita, Eva and Cecilia not only have in common being sold by their families, but being the victims of abuse and family violence as well.

Yolanda saw her alcoholic father knock her mother to the ground several times, as was she several times when she tried to defend her mother.

There is hope for legislative change.

A government agency, Inmujeres – the Women’s Institute — has denounced the mainly poor and indigenous communities of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Campeche and Guerrero, that by use and custom allow women to be sold, often for as little as two cases of soda pop and one case of beer.
A study by Inmujeres finds that in these states the criminal penalities for cattle theft are more severe than for attempting to sell a woman, sexual abuse, holding a woman against her will, or holding her peonage.

Liliana Rojero Luévano, the Executive Secretary of Inmujeres, says the institute is working with the individual legislators in the state congresses to modify the penal codes and civil procedures in these matters.

“In places like Campeche, a man usually is absolved of rape charges if the woman lives in the same house. The same result happens in child abuse cases, if he is able to manipulate the child’s testimony.”

In Oaxaca, for example, there has been in increase in the number of women murdered by their husbands, family, or other men have been increasing, and the legal sanctions are missing.
In the last several months more than 30 women have been murdered, leading to to formation of a commission to recommend a series of changes.

In Oaxaca, women who have attempted to change their situation, or spoken out on the matter have been murdered, as were communal radio journalists Teresa Baptist Merino and Felícitas Martinez Sanchez.

There have also been intimidation in these communities against women like Eufrosina Cruz, whose election first as municipal president and then edil of Santa María Quiegolani were nullified despite votes in her favor.

“If the states do not modify their penal and civil laws, they will not receive a single one of the seven million pesos earmarked for anti-violence programs. In San Luis Potosí major modifications in the law that protect women have been implemented, and, what is important, they were done without targeting any communal uses and customs,” Rojero Luévano said.

Oaxaca… “Totally partial” — say what?

I know some people assume the source (Al Jazeera) would be de facto unreliable, but I’m not sure why a news organization owned by Arab oil money would be any more biased than one owned by any other corporatation.  Besides, not having a dog in this hunt, I can’t see why they’d want to spin anything.  Anyway… the U.S. press seems to have forgotten about Oaxaca, even though protests still go on.

Tens of thousands of protesters have converged on the southern city of Oaxaca in Mexico to protest against the regional government.

The protests on Saturday also mark the second anniversary of a violent crackdown on a teachers’ protest, that left more than two dozens dead.

Florentino Lopex Martinez, a protester, said: “This is a policy of oppression, the most fascist type of oppression in the whole of Oaxaca’s history. The methods of repression have worsened considerably.”

In 2006, protesting teachers had siezed the main plaza demanding better working conditions.

They complained that Ortiz was corrupt and came to office through a stolen election.

The protest developed into a broad demonstration against social and economic conditions in the poor Mexican state.

Violent crackdown

State and federal police violently cracked down on the protest leaving at least 27 people dead.

Witnesses claim gunmen supporting the governor fired into a crowd. There have been no convictions for the killings as yet.

His opponents say Ortiz uses violence to suppress his political opponents.

Amnesty International has said that his administration has been behind the murders of dozens of opposition members.

National and international human rights organisations say most of the violence now takes place in remote villages of Oaxaca.

Talking to Al Jazeera, Ortiz said: “There is no documentation to implicate any government official. Amnesty International’s report is totally partial.”

Ortiz’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has ruled Oaxaca for nearly 80 consecutive years.

Oaxaca– here we go again…

I haven’t checked in with Jennifer Rogers in a while.  When it comes to Oaxaca, and to Mexican traditional agriculture, she’s da (wo)man.  Apparently not being physically in Oaxaca right now is a challenge she’s been able to work around.

Strike in Zocalo Oaxaca:

I wish I was there to give you my own firsthand account. But, for now, here is a post from libcom.org.

Oaxaca in revolt again: the Zócalo reoccupied, motorway tollbooths “liberated”, roads blockaded
May 22nd, 2008 by Alan
A 21 day series of strikes and occupations by the radical Sección 22 in Oaxaca of the Mexican teachers’ union Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores en la Educación kicked off in earnest on Tuesday. As of Thursday, the strike appears to be spreading - with popular support, solidarity and an increasing volume of activity.<!–

The teachers’ strike has various demands, although it’s mostly calling for the freedom for all political prisoners, an end to the arrest orders and ongoing intimidation by the judicial authorities against the movement, new elections within the SNTE, and the handing over of all Oaxacan schools controlled by the pro-government Sección 59.

Tortilla Inflation:

From a blog at the Wall Street Journal:

More Tortilla Inflation?

Annelena Lobb has this report on how rising corn costs continue to affect Mexico.

As the price of food staples continues to rise around the world, some in Mexico are worrying about another flare-up of the tortilla wars.

Corn prices, which impact the price of tortillas, have been rising.

Earlier this week, a tortilla industry group warned of looming price increases for the maize tortilla. The rising price of corn worldwide has fueled inflation in Mexico, causing the central bank to maintain high interest rates in an effort to head off a wage-price spiral in other goods and services.

TV worth watching

You probably won’t find this on U.S. television, nor on the Mexican stations (well, maybe Canal Onze), but worth watching is French journalist Marie-Monique Robin’s two-hour probe of Montsanto — “The World According to Montsanto” — produced for the Franco-German ARTES network.

After reviewing the history of the chemical giant turned bio-tech company — and essential agricultural supplier — the program begins looking at the effects of bio-engineering on crops at after the first hour.  At about an hour and twenty minutes, attention is focused on the problems GM corn has caused in Oaxaca, and the fight by local producers to protect native strains.

The program file is too huge to post here directly.  BSAlert has The World According to Montsanto (in English) on a “Google Video”.

When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet…

When I first wrote this on Sunday, for posting on Thursday afternoon, I depended on “mainstream media” coverage, which made me think this was just a difference of opinion over style. As of Wednesday night (19 March) it was being reported as such in the only U.S. coverage I’ve seen… from Idolator. I still don’t understand what’s going on, but, after looking at alternative sources — anti-emo websites, sports papers and the gay press, this appears to be a more serious incident than I realized. As with all things Mexican, the truth is never pure and seldom simple. Anyone with better information is welcome to comment. I’ll try to revise this before it posts on Thursday, but between my moving, and trying to make sense of what’s going on, this may be posted unfinished. I’ll just keep working on it, and let it automatically post on Thursday…

Los Emos tangled with los Punketos last week… and after punches were thrown, los Granaderos were called out to keep the two warring parties … joined by los Metalicos and los Goths … apart (at la Angel). Los Krishnas appeared on the scene to serenade all factions.

WTF???? I have enough trouble telling one faction from another within the PRD to try fathoming the nuances of Mexico City’s “tribus urban” … youth groups (”gang” is probably too loaded a word).

Los punketos, as their name suggests, take their cues from the punk rock movement. I thought Punk died along with Sid Vicious, but in Mexico older styles sometimes last well beyond their expiration date. Los Krishnas I can’t figure out… maybe second generation Dead Heads?

The rumble with los emos –short for “emotional” (their style seems more that of los Goths –who despite their attempts to look like Aztec vampires were kinda sweet, harmless folks). An e-mail from Queretero describes them as “the kids who dress in Abercrombie and Fitch knockoffs and wear a lot of hair gel.” In other words, about half of all Mexican teenagers. The “Urban Dictionary” is a bit snarkier, defining “emo” as a:

Genre of softcore punk music that integrates unenthusiastic melodramatic 17 year olds who dont smile, high pitched overwrought lyrics and inaudible guitar rifts with tight wool sweaters, tighter jeans, itchy scarfs (even in the summer), ripped chucks with favorite bands signature, black square rimmed glasses, and ebony greasy unwashed hair that is required to cover at least 3/5 ths of the face at an angle.

The problem, according to one punketo, is that the”emos” are guilty of “cultural theft” from the punketos. , El Universal’s report suggested that’s all there was to the fracas — kids staking out not so much a “turf” on the landscape as a style and sensibility.

There are some key differences: going by dueling youtube videos, the emos wear their hair combed down over their foreheads, los punketos wear it sticking up. Oh, and los emos are gay friendly, or — to use a word that was a cliche five minutes after it was coined — “metrosexual”.

This is where the thing goes from being a semi-humorous fight over style to something with a sinister substance.

Sergay Scouting News says the attack was a well-organized “hunt” for emos … and gays. Scouting News also reports that los punketos were joined by a porro (basically a futbol fan club, but sometimes a gang of “rowdies-for-hire”, as with English football fan clubs) representing the UNAM Pumas , and possibly Mexican skinheads.

The fight ranged from Metro Insurgentes to la Angel, which is the de facto “gay ghetto”. It’s not unusual to see young kids from the suburbs or the campo just hanging … well… “out.”

In Queretero, there was a well-organized (via email and text-messaging) attack on los emos at the Plaza des Armes on 7 March. Some comments to an even-handed report on the Mexican blog, “Un trabajo sucio” (dealing mostly with pop culture and music) justify the anti-emo attacks on the grounds that the emos are “maricones”. Of course, comments on blogs do not always reflect general opinion, or even reflect the beliefs of the blogger.

On the other hand, Diario de Querataro describes the attackers as “Fresas” (literally “strawberries,” but figuratively “upper class twits”) — which suggests some kind of “class stuggle”. I don’t know enough about Mexican youth culture to make a guess one way or the other, but have noticed that the anti-emo spokeskids seem to speak and dress more like “juniors” than the “naco” emos. (A humorous take on naco and fresa fashion sensibilities — and language — is here).

Televisa, local newspapers and Sergay have different estimates, ranging from a few hundred to a thousand youths involved. There were also rumbles in Durango and Cuidad Guzman (Jalisco) on 15 March (the day of the Mexico City attack) and at least one anti-emo organizer in Sinoloa who puts out a “hotmail” address for more those interested in joining the anti-emos.

I also found a reference to an attack on emos at a blog called “Moviemento Anti Emosexual Inc.” to an emo-punketo confrontation at an Iron Maiden concert in Monterrey. Noticias de Oaxaca reports rumors of an planned anti-emo action for this coming Saturday (22 March)

From what I can tell, Moviemento Anti Emosexual, Inc.” is the main propaganda organ for the anti-emo crowd (this is a “high tech lynching” — or, rather lynch-mob. This talking head doesn’t shy away from using the term:

That website — laced as it is with obscenity and slang far beyond my ability to translate (HELP!) — suggests the anti-emos are motivated as much by more than homophobia:

[My first attempts at translating suggest the anti-emos justify their attacks on the grounds that the emos are not politically motivated -- do not protest the rise in DF bus fares, or the Colombian rocket attack on Ecuador, which killed several Mexican students... and that the emos are "gay". Suggestions given by the site range from the merely cruel -- "throw gum in their hair" and "send spam to their blogs and "myspace" pages -- to the violent.]

How Kristoff, the Russian born Polish punk rock DJ on Mexican TV fits into this, I don’t know. On the one hand, he attacks the emos for being “gay” and on the other, the punks for being anti-free expression. In the first video, he makes light of the “gay” stereotype, but in the second, he condemns the attacks in no uncertain terms:

Whether the anti-emos are part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” I can’t say. But there are politicians on the right who seem to be in sympathy with the anti-emos. PAN politician Gerardo Hernández Gutiérrez, the Alcade (Mayor) of Celeya, is calling for the emos to be “relocated” from his city’s downtown… because they might give the city a bad image.

By contrast, in the PRD-run Federal District, jefe de Gobierno Marcelo Ebrard, ordered the police to protect the emos. Police commissioner (Secretary of Public Security) Joel Ortega was quoted as saying this was a civil rights matter.

Class and gender-roles seem to figure more in this than hair or musical style. Beyond that, I’ll need more information.

Beneath the surface in Oaxaca: Canadian gold mines

A quick “Google search” for Canadian ownership of Mexican gold mines turns up mostly corporate press releases.  Even within Canada, the extent of Canadian ownership of Mexican mines — the the environmental and social costs engendered by Canadian firms is seldom mentioned.  Canadians own  about 40 percent of Mexican mines, and 75% of mining equipment used in Mexico is imported from Canada.

Dawn Pawley, writes in The Dominion (”a monthly paper published by an incipient network of independent journalists in Canada since May 2003. It aims to provide accurate, critical coverage that is accountable to its readers and the subjects it tackles) on one of the most overlooked foreign-controlled industries in Mexico.

Skyrocketing gold prices, favorable mining laws and a recent flood of speculation-linked financing for junior mining companies have opened up the way for Vancouver-based Continuum Resources to buy up the majority of the mining concessions in the state of Oaxaca. The reactivation of the historic “Natividad” site, reportedly Oaxaca’s richest gold and silver mine, has been spearheaded by Continuum, majority owners in a joint venture which started up in 2004 with a Mexican firm. At the Natividad project alone, Continuum holds more than 54,000 hectares of concessions.

It was gold that first brought Cortés to Mexico, and Mexican gold that financed the Spanish Empire.  After Independence, Britain and the United States vied for economic control of the new Republic, mostly in a bit to gain control of the gold (and, later, other mineral resources).  Although the 1910-20 Revolution returned Mexican resources to Mexican control, under NAFTA, it hasn’t only been the United States that has attempted to control key Mexican resources.

While Canada itself is a major mining country (including gold mining), it has gained more and more control of the Mexican mines — and, with the price of gold still going up — continues to operate mines like Natividad.

As Pawley explains, using the Natividad mine as her focus, these operations are not in the best interests of the locals, in theory, the owners of the minerals.

“While other companies have shied away from exploration due to the violence in Oaxaca, Continuum has been able to acquire highly prospective properties with very large land areas due to a lack of interest there.”

Continuum has made good off of “protest and violence,” doing deals with Oaxaca’s corporatist governments, and joining a host of other mining companies, like Vancouver’s Eurasian Minerals in Haiti and others in Colombia, aiming to make a profit in parts of the Americas where repression and violence are often directed against popular movements.

The Canadians may not be torturing people (and good on them), but they are robbing them and poisoning people throughout the world.  Much of the anti-NAFTA protests you see in rural communities are only incidentally directed at local administrations.  Those crooks have to get their loot from somewhere.  And, in places like Oaxaca, the moneybags are in Vancouver.

The Return of the Barbarians

Without a doubt, this is the longest piece ever posted on the Mex Files. Unfortunately, I’ve had to work from e-mails, and not all programs support accents and punctuation marks in exactly the same way. I did my best to “clean up” the text — and, in one instance (changing “Mexico Plan” to “Plan Mexico”) making a small change. A few typos may have been caused by the changes from platform to platform, but were corrected without note here. I did not edit the footnotes — having only so much time available. I will try to edit the piece later — and to create links where appropriate (or where the Mex Files has commented on the same incidents Albertani mentions).

Whether I agree or disagree with Albertani’s conclusions is irrelevant. The piece deserved wider circulation — and to a more general audience — than it would receive on the Oaxaca Study Action Group Yahoo group. I held off publication until I had heard back from the translator, Kurt Hackbarth, making sure he understood the Mex Files is covered by a “Creative Commons” license, which means others are free to copy and distribute, with attribution.

 

The Return of the Barbarians

 

Resistance and state of exception in Mexico

 

Claudio Albertani

translated from Spanish by Kurt Hackbarth

 

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule.

Walter Benjamin

 

Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of a state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries, but of entire categories of citizens who, for whatever reason, cannot be integrated into the political system.

Giorgio Agamben

 

 

In a small book of great importance for understanding modern times, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben analyzes the paradoxical and disturbing concept of the “state of exception”. [1] A typical feature of Nazism, the �state of exception� is the violent response of the powers-that-be to extreme conflicts; it is the empty space that marks the suspension of the legal system as well as the usual relationship between law and authority. Agamben defines it as a no-man’s-land where the traditional differences between democracy, absolutism and dictatorship melt away; the crack barbarism slides through. Far from disappearing with the defeat of classical totalitarianism, the state of exception insinuated itself at the end of the twentieth century as a power paradigm, attaining today its maximum expansion around the world. Everywhere, governmental violence is free to ignore international law and its regulatory aspects with total impunity.

 

The specter of the dirty war

 

Agamben’s analysis is directed principally at George Bush’s United States. The “Patriot Act”, enacted at the end of 2001, suppressed habeus corpus and introduced a culture of suspicion typical of totalitarian regimes. Whoever receives the stigma of “enemy” automatically loses his or her most basic rights — beginning with the right to life — and is treated as a pariah, subject to torture, clandestine prisons, assassination and forced disappearance. With different levels of intensity, the model is currently being generalized around the world. In Latin America, it has been principally applied in Columbia and, most recently, in Mexico, as we will see.

 

According to a journalistic reconstruction, on May 24^th, 2007, the State of Oaxaca�s �Unidad policial de Operaciones Especiales� (Police Unit for Special Operations) arrived on the scene of the Del Árbol Hotel due to the alleged presence of an “armed group”.[2] Immediately after, the army arrived. A news bulletin reported the apprehension of four people, supposedly ministerial police from Chiapas who had not handed in their official letter of assignment to the state attorney general’s office upon arrival in Oaxaca. Soon, human rights organizations concluded that the four were not police at all but guerrillas, precisely, two members of the EPR, Gabriel Cruz Sánchez (also known as Raymundo Rivera Bravo), 55 years old, and Edmundo Reyes Amaya, 50 years old, who have since then beendetained and disappeared. [3]

 

On June 1^st, the State Committee of the People’s Revolutionary Democratic Party (PDPR), Zone Military Command of the People’s Revolutionary Army (EPR), released a communiqué demanding that its members be returned alive. [4] The age of each (about fifty years old) indicated that they were neither neophytes nor mid-ranking figures but militants with a long history. Other communiqués followed but, except for precious few exceptions, most of the print and electronic media ignored them.

On June 20^th, Alejandro Cerezo, a member of the Cerezo Committee (an organization dedicated to the defense of human rights of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience[5]), received some threatening messages on his cellular phone (given to him by the Interior Department and whose number, along with those of his siblings Francisco and Emiliana, is confidential). On the 26^th, he received an e-mail which it is worth quoting in full[6]:

 

 

From: tiburcio loxicha <misscerezos@hotmail.com>

To: <comitecerezo@nodo50.org>, <comitecerezo@espora.org>

Subject: FROM DADDY

Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007

how are you? hot? what’s up with all the disappeared people? family? beloved uncle? fabulous father? That’s life the family in deep shit again, anyway we’re watching the three of you from close by, those from la palma and your beloved family, and your little assface uncle and his little chatterbox friendwho doesn’t stop talking and the other one who talks and talks too, but maybe it’s better they stop talking and keep quiet or I’ll fuck them up. Only god knows, and those dickheads marx and lenin too. Tell mommy and daddy not to be cowards to do what they’re going to do so they can see how we’re going to strip and fuck you but good. Poor uncle and zapatito they though they were hot shit but they dropped like doves out of the sky. See you later lovies. From the sierra del sur. Your real parents. [7]

 

The Liga Mexicana por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights) (LIMEDDH) pointed out the following: a) the name Tiburcio Loxicha refers to the name Tiburcio, which according to intelligence organs corresponds to Tiburcio Cruz Sánchez, historic leader of the EPR (not being held), supposedly the father of those affected and brother of one of the detainees; b) Loxicha is the region that the intelligence organs mention as being one of EPR influence; c) “misserezos” is an allusion to the message of the young people’s mother. The phrase: “how are you? hot? what’s up with the disappeared people? family? beloved uncle? fabulous father?” [8] clearly refers to the people disappeared in Oaxaca on May 24^th; d) “zapatitito” could be a reference to Gabino Flores Cruz, detained on June 14th, 2007 in Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, and linked with the Other Campaign. [9]

 

The threats contained the unmistakable mark of psychological warfare. Moreover, they flaunted a high level of information that very probably came from intelligence organs. The conclusion is that the Mexican government considers the Cerezo Contreras brothers to be virtual hostages, susceptible to punishment at any moment, their only crime that of being human rights activists.

 

On June 27^th, a new and anguished communiqué from the EPR asked: “What do we have to do to be considered news? Our comrades have been held for 33 days as detainees disappeared by this criminal government; 33 days of vicious torture while the system keeps trying to find some legalistic way to make us out to be delinquents or terrorists.” [10]

 

Once again, both authorities and press were silent. Between July 5^th and 10^th, eight explosions of PEMEX gas and oil pipelines took place, located in Celaya, Salamanca and Valle de Santiago, Guanajuato, as well as in Presa de Bravo, a municipality of Corregidora, Querétaro, seriously affecting the central-northern industrial corridor.

 

Although it was clear who did it, the Mexican authorities at the beginning spoke of “incidents”. On the 10^th, the EPR declared that the attacks were in retaliation for the disappearance of their militants. The communiqué warned that the “harassment will not stop until the governments of Felipe Calderón and Ulises Ruiz return our companions alive”. [11] In the following weeks, the EPR carried out further, demonstrative attacks in Chiapas and in the city of Oaxaca itself, in the days preceding the elections for mayorships and the state legislature. [12]

 

I do not intend to defend the EPR. Without taking into account the damage the explosions caused to the already-deteriorated Mexican environment, it is clear that attacking PEMEX in these days of neo-conservatism is — to say the least — inopportune; the PAN and the private sector already exist to do just that. Furthermore, the bombings in Oaxaca were used by the local government as electoral propaganda to justify their repressive policies. Even so, it is necessary to recognize that the EPR got the burning theme of the disappeared back onto the table.

 

In this respect, the posture of the government — both Oaxacan and federal — is chilling: “there are no disappeared; the people being looked for are not in any of the prisons of the national penitentiary system”. [13] After visiting the Campo Militar (Military Field) No. 1, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) reported that they “did not find the two EPR members supposedly disappeared”.[14] Clearly, even if they had been there (and not in some clandestine dungeon), it is difficult to imagine the army handing them over.

 

The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) — a federal agency — claimed that nobody officially reported the disappeared as missing, but Nadán Reyes Maldonado, daughter of Edmundo Reyes Amaya, reported that the Oaxacan office of the Attorney General refused to receive the official complaint of her father’sdisappearance. [15]

 

And the left? Mostly, they ignored it. Particularly clumsy was the silence of the “Other Campaign”, for neo-Zapatistas themselves, as mentioned, were included among the threats.

 

For his part, the “legitimate” President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, saw the attacks as being executed by the government itself in order to cover up the myriad of scandals it is complicit in. According to AMLO, the real dirty war is the one the government is waging against himself and the center-left coalition that supports him, the Broad Progressive Front.[16]

 

Few, very few, demanded what is elemental: the dismantling of the mechanisms of the dirty war and the presentation, alive, of the two disappeared members of the EPR. Doing so does not mean approving of the attacks, nor does it mean supporting the strategy of the armed groups, much less sharing its Marxist-Leninist point of view. What it does imply, solely, is a fundamental act of justice and a minimum of political perceptiveness. For the moment, the offensive has been unleashed against “terrorist groups”, but peaceful activists and common citizens could be next.

 

 

Unlinked acts?

 

With its sixty million poor people — more than half of whom live in extreme poverty — Mexico has recently vaunted two unusual records: the richest man in the world — the telecommunications magnate, Carlos Slim[17] – and the largest confiscation of cash in the history of humanity, $205 million dollars packed into canvas bags in a quiet villa in an exclusive Mexico City neighborhood. [18]

This being the state of things, social control becomes a strategic priority: the country is like a pressure cooker, ready to explode anywhere and at any moment. This explains why the Mexican government is negotiating a “Plan Mexico” with the United States equivalent to the “Plan Columbia” that has so devastated the South American country. With the pretext of combating drug production, organized crime and terrorism, what “Plan Mexico” is really about is eliminating all political opposition south of the Rio Grande. [19]

 

Equally worrying is the Agreement for Prosperity and Security in North America (ASPAN) that the American government has been promoting since the World Trade Center attacks. Signed on March 23^rd, 2005 in Waco, Texas by the then-Presidents George Bush, Vicente Fox and Paul Martin and reaffirmed on August 21^st, 2007 in Montebello, Canada, by Harper, Calderon and Bush, the agreement seeks primarily to strengthen US security and secondly trade, economy and the energy sector along the lines laid out by NAFTA.[20]

 

“ASPAN,” Carlos Fazio writes, “is part of the trend towards the militarization and transnationalization of the ‘war on drugs’, manufactured and imposed by the United States all over the continent, to which the ‘war on terrorism’ is now added as part of the same counterinsurgency package. Such a tendency contributes to the reinforcement and re-legitimation of the domestic role of the armed forces and the militarized police corps similar to the one played during the Southern Cone dictatorships, which provoked condemnation and their loss of prestige because of the dramatic effects on human rights”.[21]

 

ASPAN, then, is a sort of militarized NAFTA planned by Washington and the North American Competitiveness Council (CCAN), a business organization made up of Mexico, America and Canada�s principal businessmen. One of its objectives is to repeal the Mexican non-intervention law, opening the door to the participation of Mexican troops in imperial wars and, especially, the direct intervention of the American army in the internal affairs of the country, just like in Columbia.[22]

For his part, Felipe Calderon’s government is already making significant steps in this direction. In March, the Senate approved an “Anti-Terrorism Law” that criminalizes social protest and makes it possible for social activists to be accused as terrorists.[23]

 

On May 9^th, 2007, the Diario Oficial de la Federación (Official Federal Record) published a decree — signed by President Calderón and the Secretary of National Defense, General Guillermo Galván Galván, creating the Army and Air Force Special Corps, named the Federal Supportive Forces Corps. Their goal: to reestablish “public order and the rule of law” wherever necessary, which has all the makings of a new tool of repression at the direct disposal of the president.[24]

 

Along the exact same lines of the model imposed by the United States, the National Defense Department (Sedena) and the Public Safety Department (SSP) assert that civil justice cannot try soldiers who commit human rights violations and other crimes while acting as federal police. [25]

 

In June, an unusual event occurred: the dismissal of the entire command structure of the two principal repressive bodies of the Mexican government: the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) and the Federal Preventative Police (PFP).[26] The measure was presented as necessary to “combat corruption and avoid the penetration of crime into the state security forces”, but it is clear in the current context that this also has implications for the government’s counterinsurgency strategy.

 

At the same time, the National Center for Investigation and Security (Cisen) was restructured, the goal of which was to transfer its intelligence functions to the army.[27] Two further events worthy of note: the freeing of General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro and the amparo (legal protection) given to ex-president Luís Echeverría.[28] Tried for drug trafficking (for which he spent six years and ten months in Campo Militar #1), the former is one of the people most responsible for the dirty war of the 1970�s. The sentence restores all his rights to him as well as the rank of general.

 

Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, founder of the ¡Eureka! Committee, denounced the decision as an enormous injustice due to the large amount of testimony proving that Acosta Chaparro was responsible for a large number of forced disappearances and acts of torture in the State of Guerrero.[29]

 

For his part, Echeverría was tried for the Tlatelolco (1968) and Jueves de Corpus (1971) killings, but one accusation after the other has fallen by the wayside. A masterpiece of juridical contradiction, the most recent ruling establishes that the acts under consideration do, indeed, constitute genocide but, at the same time, exonerates the principal organizer of the acts from all responsibility.

 

The impunity of Echeverría and other officials — for example, the sinister torturer Miguel Nazar Haro, ex-head of the Federal Security Office, was also released — has even been approved by the Mexican Supreme Court which determined that, even if they were committed, the statute of limitations for the crimes they were being tried for had already run out.

 

The eagerness to rehabilitate the worst repressors in recent Mexican history goes hand in hand with the constant calls by President Felipe Calderón to the armed forces to “combat the threats of those who attempt to affect the nation’s security with criminal acts”, which directly conveys the idea that the army that is the greatest defender of the legitimacy of the republic.[30]

 

It is clear that such sermons give carte blanche to the tormenters of Cruz Sánchez and Reyes Amaya - and all the torturers in all of the country�s clandestine prisons - to continue what they are doing with the most complete impunity.[31]

 

According to the dissident general José Francisco Gallardo — who suffered eight years of prison for having dared to exist on a military ombudsman for Mexico — Felipe Calderín governs in the states by means of his military commanders. “We are at the point of arriving at a bunker state, where the army is in permanent confrontation with civil society and keeps it permanently fearful. This is already happening now, daily, in the south and the border area.” [32]

 

Only within this disconcerting context — which corresponds to the state of exception described by Agamben — can we understand the detention, disappearance and torture of the members of the EPR. We are not only talking about one barbarous act, but a counterinsurgency maneuver carried out at the highest level. The objective is clear: force the EPR to commit desperate acts so as to then be able to criminalize social movements.

 

Let us remember that the attempt to link social movements with guerrillas is not new. In the course of the uprising led last year by the People’s Assembly of the Pueblos of Oaxaca (APPO), the then-State Attorney General Lizbeth Caña Cadeza accused the organization of “guerrilla and subversive tactics”.[33]

 

Those who carried out the kidnappings: the EPR directly accused General Juan Alfredo Oropeza Garnica, head of the eighth military region with headquarters in Oaxaca and an expert in counterinsurgency [34] -who thought with all probability that the guerrillas’ response would be local. If this were the case, the PEMEX attacks were an unpleasant surprise for the architects of the dirty war, which explains the conflicting declarations made about it by government officials.

 

As part of the same campaign of intimidation, leaks of military intelligence to indulgent reporters linking former political prisoners with the EPR have multiplied in recent months, opening the door to repression.[35] One such reporter, Vladimir Galeana, wrote that the EPR holds its Mexico City meetings at the main office of the Ricardo Flores Magón Libertarian Social Center, an open and publicly-registered group that has absolutely nothing to do with armed struggle and which does not share the EPR’s ideology, though it does have the great sin of having carried out acts of solidarity with political prisoners.[36] Even when the accusations are patently false, the intent is clear: to criminalize dissent.

 

Furthermore, the definition of “subversive” no longer includes only those who engage in armed struggle, but can, based on necessities, be widened to include political activists, inconvenient journalists (two of whom died last year in Oaxaca[37]) and tiresome human rights defenders.

 

It is clear that linking the APPO and its sympathizers with the guerrillas provides an unbeatable excuse for justifying repression against the movement. This being the case, when armed groups do not act — as they did not last year — it becomes necessary to invent them. [38] This explains, first, the appearance of phony guerrillas in Oaxaca and after, the open provocation of the kidnapping-disappearing of the two leaders of the EPR. Now as before, the principal target is the APPO, which intelligence organs consider to be a much graver threat precisely because it is “uncontrollable”.

 

A bloodstained Guelaguetza

 

The “Guelaguetza” that is officially celebrated in Oaxaca is more a simulation than a genuine folk festival. The tradition,however, is authentic. It goes back to the pre-Hispanic era, when the villages of the central valley worshipped Centáotl — the goddess of corn — in a temple situated on the current hill of Carmen Alto and dedicated to Tláloc, the god of rain. With the conquest, the ritual was turned into the commemoration of the Virgin of Carmel, celebrated on the Sunday following July 16^th and repeated eight days later on what was called the “octava”.

 

With the religious ceremony consummated, the secular festival — called Lunes del Cerro (“Monday on the Hill”) — began on the following Monday with its syncretisms and carnvalesque transgressions. The indigenous people from the city and nearby villages came to dance and exchange gifts to the sound of whistles, drums and flutes. The mescal, the aroma of the food, the smoke from the copal and the tobacco merged into the collective communion and ecstasy dedicated to the regeneration of the community.

 

In the 1930’s, the tradition suffered another mutation, transforming into a secular ritual at the service of the post-revolutionary State. What is was now about was paying a “racial homage” to the Oaxacan underclass, which — as Hermann Bellinghausen points out — is in itself a racist idea.[39]

 

The festival began to include delegations from the seven regions (the Central Valleys, the Sierra Juárez, the Cañada, Tuxtepec, the Mixteca, the Coast and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec), who paraded their traditional dress, music and dance before the smiling gaze of the local elite. Soon, it was named “Guelaguetza,” a Zapotec word which evokes the idea of cooperation and reciprocity. “Guelguees” is a compound of the words for “corn field” and “cigar”, as the working of the corn implies mutual support and the cigar evokes a ceremonial, and therefore sacred, element. [40]

 

In recent years — and especially beginning in the 1990’s — the Guelaguetza has turned into big business, to the benefit of the hotel industry, restaurants, travel agencies and shops that cater to tourists, as well as serving to support the governor in office. At the Guelaguetza Auditorium, regional political bosses fight for the best seats in order to be photographed with the governor and other members of the state bureaucracy.

 

In 2006, the APPO successfully disrupted the official festival, forcing the hated governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO), to suspend it. The APPO then organized an alternative festival at the stadium of the Oaxaca Technological Institute, which saw the participation of indigenous dancers from each of the seven regions of the State of Oaxaca plus an eighth, the Sierra Sur (Southern Sierra Mountains), in homage to the struggle of the Loxicha people. The dancers were accompanied by fireworks, bands and thousands of people chanting their political demands, the most prominent of which being the removal of the tyrant Ulises Ruiz. In spite of the fact that, days before, unknown “guerrillas” had burned the platform of the official auditorium, the event was a success.

 

This year, the APPO again promoted a non-commercial Guelaguetza. However, the circumstances were now much more difficult. Emboldened by the climate of repression that has taken hold of the entire country, URO wanted revenge. After the repression of 2006, the police presence in the area had become both spectral and terrifying. Detentions were more selective — such as that of David Venegas, APPO council-member who is still being held despite his having received an amparo — and the militarization more discreet, but the reign of terror continued.[41]

 

With “Operation Guelaguetza 2007,” the state of siege returned which, paradoxically, damaged the tourist industry more than the demonstrations, it being well known that tourists do not appreciate violence. On Sunday, July 15^th, the alternative dancers paraded through the streets of Oaxaca,ready for the celebration. Tension was on the rise: various vehicle caravans trying to enter into the city were intercepted and their riders thrown out of the area without any semblance of legality. Under these conditions, the teachers� union decided to move the event to the Plaza de la Danza (the Plaza of the Dance) and not the traditional auditorium located on the Cerro del Fortin (Fortin Hill), clearly now “enemy” territory.

 

Meanwhile, URO lay in waiting. The opportunity he had been waiting for came on Monday the 16^th. Around 11 inthe morning, approximately ten thousand people, including teachers, dancers and APPO sympathizers began marching from the main plaza called the Zócalo to the Plaza de la Danza. At Crespo Street, they set off towards the Fortin Hill, where the official auditorium is located. When they were a kilometer away, they ran into a blockade installed by hundreds of preventative, auxiliary and municipal police supplemented by members of the military. For a half hour, the demonstrators tried dialoguing with the authorities until a rocket flare went off near the El Fortin Hotel. This was the signal. Municipal, preventative and financial police, the PFP and even the uniformed soldiers (an ominous new development) launched a sudden and massive assault on the protestors.

 

The nightmare was back. The police attacked without qualms while the demonstrators defended themselves however they could, giving rise to a four-hour-long clash which left a total of more than 70 people detained and 40 wounded. Amongst those beaten was the teacher Emeterio M. Cruz, who spent several weeks in a coma and is still suffering the effects of the beating.[42] Although photos exist of the police thrashing him brutally, the Secretary of Civil Protection, Sergio Segreste Ríos, impassively declared that “there is an internal investigation underway, but there is still no proof as to who might have been responsible”. [43]

 

As had already happened during the November 25^th repression the year before, nobody was safe and the forces of order raged against passers-by and reporters alike. Various reporters were injured despite their identifying themselves as members of the press.[44] “This is so you don’t keep defending those fucking APPO members”, spat a rabid anti-riot policeman at the lawyer Jesús Alfredo López García, who was lying lifeless on the pavement covered in blood after being beaten with batons and kicked. [45] Even worse was the treatment given to the detainees. The violence — mostly against women, but also against the men — was not an “excess of the moment” but rather a deliberate and strategy, planned from the top, of psychological warfare.[46]

 

 

From state of exception to state of rebellion

 

If terrorism is a technique designed to provoke fear and anxiety throughout the population without distinguishing between military objectives and civilian victims, what the Mexican government is doing against social movements is pure terrorism. It has eliminated the division between the violence that founds and the violence that maintains the law and has declared a merciless war against all those categories of citizens that are not able to be integrated into the political system. The scenes we impotently witness — blood on the pavement, the terrorized faces of innocent people, children, women and the elderly brutalized, activists on their knees before the sadistic gaze of their repressors — reminds one more of Pinochet’s Chile or present-day Iraq more than a country that calls itself democratic.

 

Whether by fury, impotence or ineptitude, the authorities either do not want to or cannot act within the legal code that supposedly represent. “The police,” Benjamin wrote at the outset of the Nazi era, “intervene for security reasons in countless cases where no clear legal situation exists, … in the form of brutal humiliation, with no relation whatsoever to legal ends.” [47]

 

A year after Felipe Calderon’s inauguration, the repression has become generalized, labor rights have been practically suspended and the government represses miners, teachers, flight attendants, and all other workers whoinsist upon their rights. According to Rosario Ibarra, in seven years of federal administrations ruled by the PAN there have been nearly a hundred forced disappearances. Likewise, the arbitrary detentions, torture, illegal searches, arrest warrants with no legal foundation, and something new, rape, which did not occur in the 70’s and 80’s.[48]

 

All of the facts examined here — the detention/disappearing of the EPR militants, the militarization of the police and intelligence body, the rehabilitation of the architects of the dirty war, ASPAN, the Mexico Plan, the suspension of individual rights and the brutalization of defenseless demonstrators — can be explained within the framework of a latent state of exception. Experimented with in Oaxaca, the model is now being extended all across the country, including those states governed by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

 

In the Montaña region of the State of Guerrero, the attacks by Governor Ceferino Torreblanca (PRD) against the community police, a security and assistance corps created by the Mephaa, Na Savii, Nahua and mestizo communities to defend themselves from political bosses and tree-cutters, are multiplying. [49]

 

An activist, David Valtierra, founder of Radio ?omndaa (�The Word of the Water�) was detained on August 9^th (incidentally, the international day of indigenous peoples). His crime? Defending the customs of his people, fighting for the construction of the autonomous municipality of Sulja (or Xochixtlahuaca), and keeping open a space on the radio where the indigenous Amuzgos could voice their opinions in order to keep excesses of power in check.[50]

 

In the southeast of Morelos, 13 indigenous communities are fighting against a savage project of urbanization imposed by the PAN governor, Marco Adame, in alliance with predatory business interests. The communities object to the construction of 50,000 dwellings in an ecological reserve and the drilling of enormous wells that would finish off the regions already-strained water resources. Faced with public demand to put a halt to building speculation and safeguard natural resources (water in particular), the authorities in Morelos have launched a campaign to bring the people’s movement into disrepute, arguing that it is “illegitimate,” and also trying to link it to… the EPR! [51]

 

In August, the counterinsurgency offensive spilled over into the State of Chiapas, governed by the PRD. On the 18^th, federal and state police helicopters arrived in the towns of San Manuel y Buen Samaritano in the Lacandon Jungle to evict its inhabitants with the outlandish accusation that they were destroying the mountains of the Montes Azules ecological reserve.[52] The real reason is clear: the operations “are part of a global strategy of clearing out the area with greatest biodiversity, acres of forest and sources of fresh, non-contaminated water in the country and all of Mesoamerica”, as the environmental organization Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste asserts.[53]

 

On August 28^th, federal soldiers raided the town of Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas, looking for a training field and people accused of belonging to the Revolutionary People’s Army (EPR). Similar operations took place at the same time in Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca, and in Coyuca de Benítez, Guerrero. [54]

 

In communities without conflicts but with natural resources, it is the authorities themselves who stimulate the violence. Such is the case — and this is only one example of many — of Santiago Xanica, a Zapotec community in the Sierra Sur mountains of Oaxaca. In this lush, peaceful-looking village, the state government has been provoking bloody confrontations amongst residents who used to be supportive neighbors. The goal here? To break up a tradition of sociability considered to be incompatible with dominant values and, especially, to appropriate the area’s natural resources, the most important of which being its water and biodiversity.[55]

 

This being the state of things, how is it possible to stop this hideous violence machine?

 

The investigation and reporting carried out by human rights organizations is very important. In August, a symbolic trial against Ulises Ruiz and Felipe Calderón was held in Mexico City’s Zócalo in which members of the academic, cultural and artistic communities and human rights defenders all participated. The jury’s verdict was categorical: “[throughout the course of the repression] they inflicted pain and physical and psychological suffering along with the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of both detainees and citizens, in order to force them to no longer participate in social mobilizations.”[56]

 

Also worthy of note are the repeated exhortations by Amnesty International, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the International Civil Commission for Human Rights Observation (CCIODH by its Spanish initials) which in one way or another have placed the Mexican government on the defensive. [57]

 

However, it is essential to recognize that even though such reporting is very necessary, it is not sufficient. What is most important is that social movements become conscious of their own strength and do not let themselves become frightened into inaction. If the powerful beef up their military and security forces, it isbecause they fear new waves of social protest.

 

It is necessary to unify resistance and construct a wide, inclusive and non-violent movement that works at the national level — and also at the international level in defense of migrant rights in the northern and southern borders — against the militarization of society and the criminalization of protest.

 

The focal point of such a movement would be the construction of a space that would be autonomous and independent of political parties and whose minimum, basic and unifying goal would be the end of torture, respect for human rights, the freeing of political and social prisoners, and the re-appearing of the detainees/kidnapped. In this way, the dirty war could be ended and the state of exception transformed into a state of rebellion.

 

September 1st, 2007

claudio.albertani@gmail.com

 

 

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[1] Giorgio Agamben, Estado de Excepci�n, Pre-textos, Valencia, 2004.