[News] Mexico's Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/
June 17, 2010


The Long Night of San Juan Copala


Mexico's Gaza

By JOHN ROSS

The volunteers set out in high spirits on their 
mission to deliver tons of humanitarian aid to a 
besieged community that had been denied basic 
necessities for many months. But within sight of 
their destination, the convoy came under heavy 
fire from paramilitary gunmen and in the 
pandemonium that ensued, a much-respected human 
rights activist and an international observer 
were killed and a dozen wounded, including 
several reporters who had accompanied the caravan.

Sound familiar?

But this mission was not headed towards Gaza and 
the assassins were not Israelis. Rather, the 
volunteers' goal was to reach the autonomous 
municipality of San Juan Copala in the remote 
Triqui Indian zone in the northeastern corner of 
Oaxaca. 700 Triqui families, about 5000 
villagers, have been denied food deliveries, 
electricity, and medical and educational services 
for the past nine months. Phone lines have been 
cut by the paramilitaries who command the road to Copala.

Much as the Israeli government had warned the 
organizers of the Freedom Flotilla not to set 
sail for Gaza, the Governor of Oaxaca advised the 
activists to turn back or face the consequences. 
Like their international counterparts on the aid ships, they refused.

When the activists turned off the main highway at 
La Sabana, a hamlet within miles of their 
destination this past April 27th, gunmen under 
the orders of a local cacique (rural boss) Rufino 
Juarez, the "director" of a paramilitary group 
dubbed the UBISORT ("United For Social Welfare In 
the Triqui Region"), and affiliated with outgoing 
governor Ulises Ruiz, turned their weapons on the 
caravan. Many of the volunteers abandoned their 
vehicles and fled for their lives, taking refuge 
behind nearby rocks. But Bety Carino, an 
indigenous activist and defender of native corn 
and one of the convoy's organizers, fell under a 
hail of bullets. Finnish solidarity worker Jyri 
Jaakkola immediately threw himself across Bety's 
bleeding body, cradling her head in his hands but 
he too was cut down by the paramilitary fire.

The 33 year-old Jaakkola was the second 
international activist to be slain under the 
murderous regime of Governor Ruiz. On October 
27th 2006, independent journalist and social 
justice advocate Brad Will was fatally shot by 
Ruiz's police at a barricade just outside the 
state capitol. At least 25 Mexicans were killed 
by Oaxaca security agents during the seven 
month-long 2006 uprising that was ignited by a 
police attack on striking teachers.

Inspired by the teachings of Ricardo Flores 
Magon, the Oaxaca-born anarchist and an ideologue 
of the 1910 Mexican revolution, Jyri Jaakkola 
traveled to Mexico in 2009 as a representative of 
a Finnish solidarity group to document human 
rights abuses in that conflictive southern state. 
An anarchist himself, Jyri was much influenced by 
the writings of Murray Bookchin, the late 
Vermont-based social ecologist, and radical 
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, whose counsel he 
took to heart when he sought to protect Bety 
Carino: "solidarity means to put oneself in the 
place of those that we act in solidarity with."

International activists have journeyed to Mexico 
to align themselves with social change movements 
literally for centuries. The Spaniard Javier Mina 
fought against the Crown for Mexico's 
Independence in 1821. The "San Patricios", 
Irish-American volunteers, took up arms against 
the U.S. invasion of 1846 and were hung for their 
troubles. U.S. writers John Reed and John Kenneth 
Turner were significant voices in the landmark Mexican revolution.

The governments that inherited the mantle of the 
revolution were often thin-skinned and didn't 
appreciate criticism by non-Mexicans. Article 33 
of the 1917 Mexican Constitution gave presidents 
fiat to deport any "extranjero" (literally 
"stranger") whose stay in country they considered 
to be "inconvenient." The Italian-born U.S. 
photographer Tina Modotti was tossed out of 
Mexico in 1930 because of her affiliation with the Mexican Communist Party.

In a xenophobic rage during the most incandescent 
moments of the 1994 Zapatista rebellion in 
Chiapas, President Ernesto Zedillo ordered over 
400 non-Mexican human rights observers deported, 
most of them North Americans, Italians, and 
Spaniards but at least a few Norwegians too. An 
entire class of students from Evergreen College 
in Washington State were 33'd after accompanying 
the beleaguered farmers of San Salvador Atenco in 
the May 1st 2003 International Labor Day march.

Much as internationalists Rachel Corrie and Tom 
Hurndall were slain by the Israeli Army in Gaza, 
Jyri Jaakkola and Brad Will left their lives in 
the blood-drenched soil of Oaxaca. Like the 
Israeli government, Ulises Ruiz washes his hands 
of all responsibility. "Who knows what these 
blue-eyed visitors wanted? Did they come as 
tourists or to make trouble for us?" he asked 
reporters after Jaakkola was murdered by his 
proxy gunsills. State prosecutor Luz Candalaria 
Chinas is equally as suspicious of the outsiders' 
intentions, echoing the Israeli government when 
she described the international volunteers as 
"troublemakers masquerading as humanitarian aid volunteers."

San Juan Copala, the April 27th caravan's 
destination, has been wracked by spasms of 
homicidal violence for decades. The skein of 
killings stretches back to 1976 when popular 
community leader Luis Flores was assassinated by 
unknowns. In March 1984, Amnesty International 
sent a team into the Triqui region to probe 37 
murders of indigenous activists. Most of the 
victims were affiliated with the Unified Movement 
of Triqui Struggle or MULT, founded in 1981 to 
defend 13,000 hectares of woodlands from the 
depredations of mestizo caciques from nearby Putla de Guerrero.

The next year, the AI team published a report 
"Human Rights Abuses In Rural Mexico: Oaxaca and 
Chiapas", the London-based organization's first 
investigation into pandemic violence in southern 
Mexico. The report documented "credible 
allegations" of extra-judicial killings, torture, 
police abuse, forced confessions, and the failure 
of authorities to investigate citizens' complaints.

The AI document was instantly rejected by the 
Mexican government, then controlled by the 
Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI. 
Under-Secretary of State Victor Flores Olea (now 
a columnist for the left daily La Jornada) 
questioned Amnesty International's "objectivity." 
25 years later, the governments of President 
Felipe Calderon and the much-maligned Oaxaca 
governor Ulises Ruiz have perpetuated this 
tradition by rejecting every subsequent Amnesty 
International alert to human rights abuses in the state on similar grounds.

Armed with the Amnesty report, I visited San Juan 
Copala in the spring of 1987. Tensions were 
running high. Soldiers from the 28th Military 
Region, which had been linked to the slaughter of 
the MULT members, patrolled the dusty streets. I 
met with the Council of Elders and compared the 
lists of the dead - 13 more had been added since 
the Amnesty International report was formulated. 
Later, I climbed a hillside overlooking the town 
and snapped photos. Abruptly, five soldiers burst 
out of the bushes and pointed their automatic 
weapons at my head. Then they confiscated my 
camera (I protested that I was only photographing 
some nearby chickens) and escorted me up to the 
highway with a warning never to return to San Juan Copala.

Today, nearly a quarter century after the initial 
Amnesty International report, the death toll in 
the Triqui region has mounted to over 400.

Ever-present tensions in the majority indigenous 
state of Oaxaca are exacerbated by upcoming July 
4th elections to choose Ulises's successor. 
According to a consensus of polls, the outgoing 
governor's hand-picked "gallo" (rooster), Eviel 
Perez of the long-ruling PRI party, is running 
neck and neck with Gabino Cue, representing an 
unlikely coalition that includes both the 
left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution 
(PRD) and the right-wing PAN, Felipe Calderon's 
party. The PAN is widely believed to have stolen 
the 2006 presidential elections from Andres 
Manuel Lopez Obrador, the PRD's candidate. 
Although the PRI ceded national power to the PAN 
in 2000, it has continued to rule Oaxaca with an iron hand.

Electoral tensions reverberate in San Juan 
Copala. During the stolen 2006 vote taking, some 
MULT leaders lined up behind the local Party of 
Popular Unity (PUP), a puppet of the PRI designed 
to siphon off votes in indigenous regions from 
Lopez Obrador and his slate. Soon after, the MULT 
split and on January 1st 2007, the 
MULT-Independiente or MULT-I peacefully took 
power in Copala, declaring the Triqui village an 
autonomous municipality modeled on Zapatista "autonomias" in Chiapas.

Under provisions of the never-ratified San Andres 
Accords on Indigenous Rights & Culture negotiated 
between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation 
and the Mexican government in 1996, majority 
Indian municipalities would be granted limited 
autonomy over land, habitat, exploitation of 
natural resources, the environment, education, 
health, and agrarian policies. Authorities would 
be designated by traditional Indian uses and 
customs and not by political parties. 
Self-declared autonomous communities in Chiapas, 
Guerrero, and Mexico state (San Salvador Atenco) 
have chronically been under the "mal gobierno's" ("bad government's") gun.

Since the MULT-MULTI split and the uptick in the 
aggressions of Ulises's UBISORT, escalating 
violence has torn San Juan Copala asunder. Marcos 
Albino, the human rights representative for the 
autonomous municipality, counts 25 fresh deaths in the last six months alone.

On May 26th, Timoteo Alejandro Ramirez and his 
wife Tleriberta, historic founders of the MULT 
who left the organization in 2006 to form the 
MULT-I, were murdered at their home in Yosoyuxi 
near the county seat of Copala. The motives for 
the double killing remain murky. Ramirez had been 
accused by political enemies of the 
disappearances of two Triqui sisters, 14 and 21, 
whose families are associated with the MULT. 
Other victims include two community broadcasters, 
Felicitas Martinez and Teresa Bautista, slain in 
April 2009 on the road to Copala. Felicitas and 
Teresa, protégés of Bety Carino, had a popular 
call-in show on the local low-watt MULT-I station 
"The Voice That Breaks the Silence."

Despite years of killing in Copala and a slew of 
Amnesty International human rights alerts, the 
federal government and the state of Oaxaca have 
declined to intervene to halt the violence. "It 
is between them. It is their silly uses and 
customs that is responsible for the killings. 
Only the Triquis themselves can fix this up," Oaxaca prosecutor Chinas argues.

The shocking violence in the Triqui zone and the 
murders of Bety Carino and Jyri Jaakkola has had 
national and international resonance. In early 
June, the European parliament called upon Mexican 
president Felipe Calderon to open a through 
investigation into the deaths of the activists. A 
new caravan was mounted led by a PRD 
congressional delegation. Governor Ruiz 
immediately condemned the renewed effort to 
deliver humanitarian aid to San Juan Copala as 
outside interference in the upcoming gubernatorial elections.

On June 8th, 250 activists, many aligned with the 
Zapatistas' Other Campaign but led by 15 PRD 
federal deputies, left Mexico City in a seven bus 
convoy for the 500 kilometer trip to San Juan 
Copala, hauling 30 tons of food, clothing, and 
medical supplies. Both the Mexican military and 
the Oaxaca governor refused to provide protection 
- although AG Chinas promised the state would 
send agents to check the documents of 
international observers and warned the Caravanistas of the dangers they faced.

Once again, the activists refused to turn back 
and as in April, the convoy only got as far as La 
Sabana. The road to Copala was blocked by large 
boulders. A string of Triqui women under Rufino 
Juarez's command and backed up by ski-masked 
paramilitaries with long guns refused to allow 
the buses to pass. Shots were heard further down 
the valley. State police who were keeping tabs on 
the buses bailed out right away. The bus carrying 
the PRD deputies turned around and headed back to 
Mexico City, followed reluctantly by the Other Campaign activists.

As in the struggle to break the blockade of Gaza, 
the solidarity workers are not throwing in the 
towel - a third all-women caravan is being planned.

The Israeli Navy's May 31st massacre of nine 
Turkish pacifists carrying humanitarian supplies 
to Gaza has triggered a worldwide wave of 
indignation and Mexico City is no exception. 
When, during the first week in June, a score of 
Mexicans gathered outside the Israeli embassy in 
the affluent western suburbs of this monster 
megalopolis, half the protestors were Triqui 
women dressed in their traditional bright red 
embroidered huipiles that make them look sort of 
like plump strawberries. Behind the barricaded 
doors of their embassy, Israeli diplomats must have been baffled.

"What the Israeli government did to the activists 
bringing aid to Gaza is exactly what Ulisis and 
his paramilitaries did to us," explained Marcos 
Espino, "we came here today to offer our 
solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Gaza. 
A lot of our people have been killed too."

John Ross is at home in the maw of the Monstruo 
watching the World Cup. You can complain to him 
at <mailto:johnross at igc.org>johnross at igc.org




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/20100617/0efb7fe9/attachment.htm>