[News] Testimonies of Rape by Police in the Aftermath of Atenco

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Case Files: Testimonies of Rape by Police in the Aftermath of Atenco

http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1827.html


As Mexican Politicians (Guided by U.S. Advisors) 
Deny the Evidence, Each Woman’s Story Corroborates the Next





By Al Giordano
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in San Salvador Atenco

May 17, 2006

Mexican presidential candidate Felipe Calderón – 
of president Vicente Fox’s National Action Party 
(PAN, in its Spanish initials) – told reporters 
last weekend that he doesn’t believe the reports 
that police raped and sexually abused women 
detained May 3 and 4 in Texcoco and San Salvador Atenco.

The candidate – who is 
<http://www.narconews.com/Issue41//Issue41/article1817.html>advised 
by two gringo political consultants, Dick Morris 
and Rob Allyn, on how to handle questions from 
the press – said that an accusation of rape, “is 
so delicate that it requires clear elements of 
proof.” Calderón went so far as to accuse Fox’s 
own National Commissioner of Human Rights, José 
Soberanes, who furnished hard evidence of at 
least 23 rapes of Mexican women while under 
arrest, of “speaking badly against the country and I totally rebuke him.”

Calderón was joined in this politics-of-denial by 
the police commissioner of the State of Mexico 
(and former national police director) Wilfrido 
Robledo Madrid, the man who personally supervised 
the violent police raids of early May. Robledo – 
intellectual author of the crime – 
<http://www.milenio.com/mexico/milenio/notaanterior.asp?id=600573>told 
the daily 
<http://www.milenio.com/mexico/milenio/notaanterior.asp?id=600573>Milenio 
on May 15:

“As of today we don’t have any reports from 
anyone who says she was raped
 If we had the name 
of somebody who was raped, we would begin the 
investigation. But up to now we don’t have any. I 
put the prosecutor’s office at the disposition of 
everyone arrested, and until now, as far as I 
know, nobody has been interviewed who has been 
raped
. They should present themselves! Why 
haven’t they presented themselves? Why don’t they 
go to the prosecutor?... Ten days have already 
passed and I don’t know of a single woman raped.”

Asked by the Milenio reporters about statements 
by Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos that various 
police rapists used condoms while raping the 
women, suggesting premeditation in the crimes, Robledo exclaimed:

“That makes me laugh!”

As Wilfrido Robledo Madrid was giggling, 
investigators from the human rights organization 
<http://espora.org/comitecerezo/article.php3?id_article=228>Comite 
Cerezo interviewed 19 Mexican women political 
prisoners inside of Robledo’s state prison on Monday.

These are their testimonies. Again and again, 
they corroborate the testimonies of the four 
foreign women who were deported to their home 
countries of Spain, Chile and Germany after their 
arbitrary arrests and sexual torture in Atenco. 
Such as the testimony of Catalonian Maria 
Sostres, who 
<http://www.elpais.es/articulo/internacional/Historia/ultraje/Mexico/elpporint/20060514elpepiint_8/Tes/>told 
the daily El 
Pais<http://www.elpais.es/articulo/internacional/Historia/ultraje/Mexico/elpporint/20060514elpepiint_8/Tes/> 
in Spain: “They stuck objects, fingers and keys 
in their vaginas. They forced one girl to say 
‘Cowboy! Cowboy!’ while a police officer smacked her ass.”

Her testimony is corroborated – and deepened, 
sadly – by the political prisoner who Sostres 
witnessed being sexually abused in that instant, 
according to the Comite Cerezo’s case file. That 
prisoner, Italia Méndez, is known to Narco News 
as a serious, committed, and honest single mom. 
She works with 
<http://www.narconews.com/Issue41//Issue39/article1438.html>La 
Kinta Brigada, a collective that, among other 
projects, works with goat herders in San Luis 
Potosí’s desert regions. An intelligent, 
coherent, soft-spoken, dignified person, we 
interviewed her about sunnier matters last summer 
during 
<http://www.narconews.com/Issue41//Issue38/article1416.html>a 
meeting of Non-Governmental Organizations and 
collectives in the Lacandon Jungle.

The ordeal that Méndez suffered this month at the 
hands of the police – she was arrested during a 
raid on a private home, and charged with blocking 
a highway (from inside the house?) on the morning 
of May 4th – is as upsetting as its consequences. 
Her forthrightness in detailing the abuse to the 
human rights observers makes liars of Wilfrido Robledo and Felipe Calderón.



“Police stripped me, sexually raped me, beat me, 
and forced me to travel nude for approximately four hours”

Méndez, 27, testified:

“I was arrested in a private house in San 
Salvador Atenco, raided by the Federal Preventive 
Police. They stripped me of all my belongings and 
money. They forced me against the wall with my 
hands at the nape of my neck, struck my head with 
the nightstick. They held me up and in front of a 
camera they questioned me about my political 
affiliation, my address, my name and the names of 
my immediate family members. Subsequently I was 
taken from the house and seated on the sidewalk. 
There were many more people around me. I had to 
cover my head and face with my sweater, as they 
struck me repeatedly on the head with clubs and 
kicks in the buttocks and back. They caused a six-centimeter head injury.

“Minutes later they made me walk between two rows 
of police officers escorting the bus in which 
they would transfer us. They went on beating me 
all the way to the bus and inside there were many 
handcuffed people with their heads covered, 
stacked on top of each other. They placed me on 
top of the pile and later they dragged me toward 
the rear seat, there a policeman put his hand 
inside my blouse and he tore my brassier. 
Immediately, he put his hand inside my pants and 
he tore my panties. I found myself on my stomach 
with my face covered, they pulled my pants down 
to the ankles and my blouse over my head. They 
hit my buttocks hard, shouting at me that they 
were going to rape me and kill me.

“Then a policeman shouted at me to call him 
‘cowboy’ and he struck my bottom even more 
violently, but now with his nightstick and he 
didn’t stop until he heard me say what he asked. 
He then penetrated my vagina with his fingers and 
squeezed my breasts hard, then violently pinched 
my nipples. He invited another policeman to do 
the same and all the while they continued 
striking me. Later they invited a third person 
who they called boss, this last one penetrated me 
with an object and they threatened to rape me 
(intercourse). They put me above the penis of one 
of them and he rubbed himself against my buttocks 
while the other two police officers encouraged 
him to penetrate me with his penis, but he did 
not do it. They repeatedly struck me on my 
breasts and they struck my stomach while they 
kissed me on the mouth. How I resisted! The 
punches were so hard that I would open my mouth 
so the policeman could put his tongue in my mouth.

“I was naked for the entire journey on top of two 
more people while a policeman traveled seated on 
my back and head. Until we arrived at the prison 
and they permitted me to dress and I was lowered down off the bus.”

Méndez summarized the abuse se received at the hands of police:

“PFP and State Police stripped me, sexually raped 
me, and beat me, and forced me to travel nude for 
approximately four hours. They beat and abused 
all of the people who were on the bus.”

A photographer, Méndez is left, now, without her 
work tools. According to the human rights 
organization file, the police stole from her 
“photographic equipment, cash, a cell phone, 
books, her diary, debit cards and a credit card,” 
valued at 25,000 pesos (about $2,300 dollars). 
She remained in prison 11 days – perhaps that 
long in order to erase the injuries that would 
prove she was raped – and was released last 
Monday, but still faces charges of blocking a 
highway that she was not even near at the time of her arrest.



“He put his hands under my underwear, forcefully 
pulled my thighs apart, and stuck his fingers in my anus
”

Norma Aide Jimenez Osorio, 23, of the state of 
Mexico, was anally raped by a police officer 
after her arrest. She testified to the Comite Cerezo:

“I was arrested on May 4, 2006, outside of San 
Salvador Atenco by the Federal Preventive Police. 
They beat me with a shield to throw me down, and 
once on the floor two police officers beat me 
with nightsticks and fists. Then they put me on 
my feet and made me run even though I had told 
them that the beating they gave me caused my 
right leg to fall asleep. They kept on beating me 
and a third cop joined them, punching me on the 
back. The others beat me with clubs. All three 
said they were going to rape me and kill me. They 
asked me questions and they beat me. The 
threatened to disappear me and they touched my genitals.

“They put me on a bus and laid me down on the 
floor telling me not to move, not to speak. My 
head was covered by my own sweater from the 
moment they arrested me and there they continued 
moving me around, they kept threatening to rape 
and to kill me. They forced me off the bus with 
punches and kicks and put me on the back of a 
truck where they beat my thighs without stopping 
with their nightsticks. My head was still 
covered, facing down. When I couldn’t take it 
anymore I tried to cover my legs with my hands 
and they beat my hands until I took them away. 
Then he put his hand under my underwear and 
forcefully spread my thighs, sticking his fingers in my anus.

“After more death threats and kicks they took me 
from that truck back onto the bus, and made me 
sit in the last row and put my tongue in their 
mouths. At least four officers squeezed my 
breasts and pinched my nipples. At least three 
cops stuck their fingers, many times, in my 
vagina, while they insulted and beat me. Suddenly 
many other compañeros and compañeras began to be 
put on the bus and I could hear them raping and 
beating them all. They tortured us all the way 
until we arrived at the prison, where I had a lot 
of pain in my hands, on my hip, on my right arm, 
in my womb and on my legs, but they refused to give me medical attention.”

The police took from Jimenez, according to the 
Comite Cerezo file, “a backpack, watch, books, 
personal objects and all my photographic 
equipment: camera, lenses, filters, film, flash, 
cleaning equipment and money.” Estimated value: 
8,500 pesos (more than $800 dollars).



“He put his fingers in my mouth and in my vagina 
and forced me to conduct oral sex. I spit his sperm out onto my white sweater
”

Gabriela Tellez Vanegas is an 18-year-old 
housewife with two children. She was coming home 
from work, in Texcoco (site of the first 
conflicts, when police forced eight florists from 
the marketplace on May 3rd), waiting for the bus 
to take her home. This is her testimony to the Comite Cerezo:

“The police saw me there and one said to me, 
‘what are you looking at?’ And another said, ‘put 
her on the bus because she’s a loser.’ They began 
to hit me and asked my address, age, name; three 
of them took me aside because they wanted to keep 
kicking me and beating me with clubs. One of them 
grabbed my face. He put his fingers in my mouth 
and in my vagina and forced me to conduct anal 
sex. I spit his sperm out onto my white sweater. 
Another cop came and did the same. He grabbed my 
breasts and said: ‘This is very good and she’s 
milking, right? Whore of a bitch!’ They took my photo with my eyes closed.

“Again they made me give oral sex, coming in my 
mouth and I spit it out on my sweater. A third 
one came and did the same to me, and I spit it on 
my sweater. He said that if I wanted him to help 
me I would have to be his prostitute for a year 
and he would come see me whenever he wanted to. 
They took off my sweater, refused to give it back 
to me. A fourth cop came, he put his hands on my 
vagina and breasts and wanted me to give him oral 
sex. Another one came and said, ‘Not now, man, 
because we’ve already arrived.’ They began to 
clean my pants and hands and gave me a cigarette 
to smoke. But I don’t smoke or drink. And they 
took me down, with my eyes closed, to the Santiaguito prison in Almoloya.”

How do you feel, kind reader, after listening to 
just three of these testimonies? There are 
sixteen more case files already posted at the 
<http://espora.org/comitecerezo/article.php3?id_article=228>Comite 
Cerezo website. The rest are no nicer, nor easier 
to read or digest. We will share them all with 
you before this investigation is over. Meanwhile, 
think about these three; imagine these fine 
people as your mother, your sister, your wife, your lover
 or as you.

And in that light, consider the continued denial 
by the Mexican state (and its foreign political 
consultants) that these crimes happened.

Just two hours ago, 
<http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/138433.html>a 
report via the Mexican daily 
<http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/138433.html>El 
Universal told that the same state police 
commissioner who oversaw the police raid that 
carried out these crimes – Wilfrido Robledo 
Madrid – continues to stonewall. His boss, 
Humberto Benítez Treviño, chief of staff for the 
State of Mexico, “said that the state government 
is not in any condition to begin an investigation 
of the alleged sexual rapes committed against 
women by police, since there are no legal bases 
to do so, since the women were not subjected to gynecological exams
”

And think about these three women – your mother, 
your partner, your sister
 – and whether any 
woman in her right mind would allow these animals 
to “examine” them after the repeated abuses they experienced in their custody.

And think about the state’s motive for keeping 
these women incommunicado, behind bars, for ten 
days before allowing human rights organizations 
to interview them. Is it because they are dangers 
to the public? Or was it to erase the evidence in 
the form of bruises and sperm on and in their bodies?

At times like this, for the men in power, it 
doesn’t matter what common sense says. It doesn’t 
matter what conscience demands. What matters, the 
only thing that matters, is surviving 
politically. And so the script they spout is not 
even theirs. The intellectual authors of these 
crimes sit behind desks. They wear suits and 
ties. They take polls and spin dimwit 
journalists, via surrogates, to deny their guilt. 
They beat, rape, steal and lie by remote control. 
But this story is not over. It has only begun to be told


Julie Webb-Pullman and Elizabeth Kath assisted in 
translations of testimony for this story.



The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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