[News] Massacre in Montes Azules: 11 Dead,Nov 13

[Anti-Imperialist News]

This message is forwarded to you by the editors of the Chiapas95
newslists.  To contact the editors or to submit material for posting send
to: <chiapas-i at eco.utexas.edu>.

Massacre in Chiapas: Six Women, Three Men, Two Children, Assassinated in
Montes Azules
Indigenous Communities and Human Rights Organizations Warned State and
Federal Governments of Threats, but Authorities Failed to Act

By Al Giordano
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Chiapas
November 13, 2006
http://www.narconews.com/Issue43/article2339.html

Today, Monday, November 13, presumed paramilitaries committed a massacre in
the Montes Azules jungle region of Chiapas, killing nine indigenous women
and men and two children.

The assassinated, according to a hand-written document received by Narco
News from inside Zapatista civilian communities in the region, are:

Marta Perez Perez
Maria Perez Hernandez
Maria Nunez Gonzalez
Petrona Nunez Gonzalez
Pedro Nunez Perez
Eliver Benitez Perez
Antonio Perez Lopez
Dominga Perez Lopez
Felicitas Perez Parcero
Noila Benitez (8 anos)
A recently born infant yet to be baptized

The details of the massacre, in a very isolated area, far from urban and
media centers, are still sketchy, but the warning signs that violence on
this scale was brewing in the region have been known by state and federal
officials all along. They were specifically warned by human rights
organizations last July and August, but in lieu of taking positive action,
their police and other agencies merely aggravated the problems since then.

The dead lived and worked in the Ejido Dr. Manuel Velasco Suarez II, known
as Viejo Velasco Suarez, a farming community established in 1984 through an
agreement with the Mexican government. They and their previous generations
had lived in other parts of the Lacandon Jungle that, in 1972, had been
declared a "nature preserve." Then, as now, the ecological imprimatur turned
out to have more to do with looting Mother Nature than protecting her: the
creation of the Montes Azules biosphere served to grant the Mexican
government monopoly control over exploitation of hardwoods and other natural
resources. As part of the environmental show and simulation, 66 families of
the Lacandon indigenous group " a population that today numbers in the
hundreds, descendants of Maya peoples of the Yucatan Peninsula that had
emigrated to Chiapas centuries ago" were declared sole stewards of more
than 600,000 hectares of rainforest, but on the condition that they cede
economic rights to the government over the land.

Since then, members of other Maya indigenous peoples " primarily Tzeltal and
Chol" have lived under siege by the government, its police agencies, its
Armed Forces, the Lacandones, and other communities of Tzeltales (from the
town of Nueva Palestina) and Choles (from the town of Frontera Corrazal)
that had allied with and benefited from the deal. The remaining indigenous
communities in the region found themselves under permanent attack since
then. Conflicts in the zone led to the 1984 agreement that created Viejo
Velasco Suarez and other communally farmed communities, protected,
supposedly, by law: Flor de Cacao, Nuevo Tila, Ojo de Agua and San Jacinto
Lacanja, all in the same region as the world-renowned ancient Maya temples
and ruins at Yaxchilin, near the gigantic Usamacinta River that is Mexico's
border with much of Guatemala.

The eleven deaths in today's massacre come " as massacres often do" at a
time when the Mexican federal government has returned to the bad old days of
large scale repression (in Atenco last May, and in Oaxaca at present). At
times like this, paramilitaries and police agencies are emboldened by the
signals sent from the top, and increase their historic aggressions against
those "especially indigenous" communities perceived as being in the way of
economic interests.

The federal government of Vicente Fox and his Interior Minister Carlos
Abascal (the Butcher of Oaxacaa) was warned as recently as this year about
the time bomb of violence threatening Viejo Velasco Suarez and the other
communities in the Montes Azules regions.


Early Warnings

On July 19 of this year, the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Human Rights Center
issued an alert titled "Threats of Eviction and Harrassment Against
Indigenous Peoples in the Lacandon Jungle." Known as the Frayba Center,
this organization was founded by former Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz and is
respected throughout the world as thorough and honest in its work.

The human rights organization alerted that it had received reports that:


"on Saturday, July 14, the (state of Chiapas) Public Security police
installed itself near the community of Ojo de Agua in El Progreso,
threatening to violently evict the families of that community, families that
are defending their right to the land as indigenous peoples  "We who live in
San Jacinto Lacanja, Flor de Cacao and Viejo Velasco are also threatened
with eviction."

The Frayba Center stated in its July 19 alert:


"In the opinion of Frayba this is an historic problem with a series of
irregularities and clumsiness by institutions and functionaries that
disregard previous agreements, manipulate parties to the conflict generating
more problems, threaten violent eviction to force the communities and
organizations to "sit down and negotiate" or don't understand the
commitments assumed during negotiations with the communities in dispute."

The Frayba Center demanded that government authorities take measures to
"guarantee the personal security and integrity of the families" of the four
threatened indigenous communities, that they respect the 1984 agreement and
others that granted them their lands, and that international treaties
guaranteeing such protections for indigenous peoples be respected.

A few weeks later, representatives of that organization, together with a
delegation of North Americans from Global Exchange, as well as the NGOs
Maderas del Pueblo (Hardwoods of the People) and Xia Nich, went on a
fact-finding mission to the afflicted communities. Global Exchange issued a
detailed seven page report, which explains much of the background history of
the conflict and, also, interestingly, the difficulties and obstacles
presented to their attempts to visit the communities.

The report concluded:


"While the exact reasons for the exclusion of these four communities from
the land legalization process are unclear, geographical and political
factors offer an important clue. Three of the communities "Flor de Cacao, San
Jacinto Lacanja, Ojo de Agua el Progresoa" are located in a terrain where
there are still precious woods that the Lacandon community wants to exploit,
according to Miguel Angel Garcia from Maderas del Pueblo. They are also on
the banks of the Usumacinta River, one of the most important sources of
pristine drinking water in the region. "Plan Puebla-Panama," the government's
proposal for economic "modernization" for the country, also contemplates the
construction of hydroelectric dams on the Usumacinta. Additionally, many of
the individuals who testified believe the reason that the Lacandon community
and comuneros want the land for themselves is so they can develop it for
tourism purposes, as the archaeological site of Yaxchilan is located nearby,
and the Lacandon community engages heavily in the tourism business. The
fourth community, Viejo Velasco, because of its affiliations with the EZLN,
also is likely perceived by the Mexican government to be an impediment to
the maximization of profit. Indeed, shortly after our visit to El
Desempenio, government officials violently evicted the EZLN civilian support
base community Chol de Tumbala that was similarly in the process of securing
their land claims. Federal, state, and local government officials should
take immediate steps to guarantee the integrity and safety of Ojo de Agua El
Progreso, Flor de Cacao, San Jacinto Lacanja, and Viejo Velasco. These
communities are entitled "under both the covenant of 1984 and the agreements
reached at the Limonar roundtable" to land security. The local, state, and
federal government should immediately take action to stop the threatened
illegal evictions and restore the families who have fled to their lands, if
those families wish. Fairness and justice demand nothing less."

The international human rights organization sent its findings to Mexican
president Vicente Fox, his Interior Minister Carlos Abascal, to Chiapas
Governor Pablo Salazar Mendigucha and various bureaucrats under each of
them.

Instead of taking action to correct the wrongs, the state and federal
governments set in motion the events  "and gave signals that would be
received as impunity by the opponents of these communities that have
violently threatened them" that brought about, today, the massacre of
eleven indigenous civilians.


Escalating Aggressions

According to a hand-written chronology of the events since then, received
today by Narco News, authored by members of the afflicted communities, the
aggressions against them increased after the Fox and Salazar governments
were informed:


September 19: at 4:30 p.m. comuneros from Nueva Palestina came armed with
machetes, rifles, shovels, pickaxes and stones. They destroyed the home of
one family. At 8 p.m. they shot bullets into a building where women and
children slept.

October 4: Comuneros from Nueva Palestina attacked two farmers in their bean
field with guns, destroying the crops.

October 8: Members of the government-allied Nueva Palestina community met
and agreed to attack the inhabitants Viejo Velasco Suarez.

October 9: The attack was carried out and the home of one family razed; that
afternoon they kidnapped a community member who was seriously wounded in
the altercation.

And in another handwritten document sent to Narco News, dated Saturday,
November 11, community members explain that the comuneros from Nueva
Palestina shut off their water supply, leading the community of Viejo
Velasco Suarez to turn the water back on and expel eleven of the occupying
comuneros from their community. The document contains the names and
signatures of the 11 men expelled.

It says:


"We ask the Palestinas, the state and federal governments, to respect this
agreement to cease the violence in both parts of our community. We hold the
government responsible for anything that happens"

"On Wednesday, November 1, 2006, the Palestinas began to close the tap for
piped water through today, Saturday, November 11 of this year. That is why
the original groups of this community take the following action" we totally
disassociate ourselves from the Palestina groups and we don't want them to
keep harassing us in this community of Viejo Velasco, where each one of them
signs his agreement to leave and to never return so as not to cause more
problems with the original residents."


According to an email just received from the families of the dead:


"The aggressors have been residents of the community of Nueva Palestina, and
in common with the sad occurrences of the Acteal Massacre (of December 22,
1997, also in Chiapas) the families of the victims confirm that there are
now various police roadblocks put up around them."

According to a communique tonight from Maderas del Pueblo, the attackers
were from Nueva Palestina, and they came at dawn:  "four subcomuneros from
the aggressor group who came to the community strongly armed with intentions
of violently evicting the families that lived there."

Two days later, today, six women, three men, and two children from this
afflicted community are dead. At press time, various human rights
organizations and the Good Government Council in Roberto Barrios of the
civilian bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, in its
Spanish initials), as well as the Other Journalism with the Other Campaign,
are investigating the details of another massacre forewarned.

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20061114/899f665e/attachment.htm>