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<h1><b>Seeking Justice in the Snake-Pit of Mexican Politics<br>
</b></h1><h2><b>Oaxacans and Others Fight to Free Political
Prisoners</b></h2><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue51/article3037.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.narconews.com/Issue51/article3037.html<br>
</a></font><h3><b>By Nancy Davies<br>
Commentary from Oaxaca</b></h3><font size=3>March 19, 2008<br><br>
The justice system of Mexico has no category called
“<a href="http://www.narconews.com/presoslibertad/en.html">political
prisoners.</a>” The public knows men and women have been unlawfully
grabbed, tortures, raped and/or jailed, as deterrents to social
movements. The human rights organizations protest. Posters appear on the
walls. Nothing happens. Nobody knows how many persons who in are fact
political prisoners might be imprisoned under the category of common
criminal.<br><br>
David Venegas Reyes, referred to by the nickname “El
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alebrije">Alebrije</a>,” a member
of the directing council of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca
(APPO in its Spanish initials), told me his best guess is that Mexico
holds between 600 and 900 political prisoners or prisoners of
conscience.<br><br>
A forum was held in Oaxaca for three days, March 14, 15, and 16, for the
specific purpose of coordinating planned strategies to obtain release for
all the political prisoners across Mexico. A group inside Oaxaca’s
<a href="http://salonchingon.com/cinema/otra_ixcotel.php?city=ny">Santa
María Ixcotel prison</a> planned and prepared posters. About fifty
delegates attended <i>El Foro de Articulación por la Libertad de los
Pres@s Politic@s del País</i>, most of them youngsters. Freedom for all
prisoners, they say, is inextricably linked to building a new
society.<br><br>
Venegas Reyes, at the forum’s street tent set up between the local
teacher’s union office (Section 22, a founding part of the APPO) and the
HSBC bank, told me on Saturday, “I am free today because others helped.”
He was referring to the determined efforts of not only his sisters and
his lawyer, but also the APPO, including Section 22. “One person alone
struggling to be released with dignity, the government will push down
deeper,” he affirmed. By “released with dignity,” what did he mean? He
obtained his liberty without “the gracious consent of the government, nor
by a negotiation under the table.” He was grabbed on April 13, 2007 in
the Llano public park by plainclothes officers of the Auxiliary, Bank,
Industrial and Commercial Police (PABIC), and charged first with carrying
drugs, and then successively with sedition, criminal association, and
arson. When one accusation of a false criminal charge was nullified by
the higher courts, the state governments fabricated another, thus the
total of three additional accusations.<br><br>
When Venegas was initially accused of carrying drugs, his family put down
4,000 pesos ($375 dollars) to get him freed on bail. However, the
government immediately filed the other charges, so David was kept inside
the Oaxaca prison of Ixcotel for eleven months. Eventually, Venegas says,
that initial drug charge which is still in process will also be ruled
illegitimate, and the 4,000 pesos will be returned. Maybe.<br><br>
During the year’s imprisonment David never confessed to false accusations
against him. “This naming a crime is the government’s way to criminalize
social protests,” Venegas said.<br><br>
In the same time-frame, four of the
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue45/article2651.html">San Salvador
Atenco</a> (in Mexico state) prisoners were also released: Venegas was
freed on March 5 and four Atenco people were freed on March 8, 2008.
Forty-seven remain imprisoned in Chiapas, and jailed members of the
Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) include two Oaxaqueños.
Venegas believes that bringing to bear international pressure, human
rights commissions, and sound legal logic, all helped to gain releases
for the four Atenco people and himself.<br><br>
The forum, taking off from that point, has decided that international
human rights pressure is effective – Mexico is a signatory to indigenous
and human rights agreements – but it’s not enough. It named other areas
which must be confronted, among them the media, which repeat criminal
accusations against social protesters and use biased, denigrating word
such as “riots” and “brutality”, effectively labeling protesters as
criminals.<br><br>
The San Salvador Atenco prisoners (who were
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1827.html">tortured,
raped and brutalized</a>) were grabbed on May 4, 2006. The Oaxaca
teachers were assaulted on June 14, despite placards reading “WE ARE NOT
ATENCO,” but most of the murders, arrests and disappearances conducted by
hired guns and police in civilian clothing, occurred later.<br><br>
Forum participants watched a documentary film about Atenco on Friday
evening, March 14. Sitting in the outdoor audience, I watched the scenes
of violence on the screen with one thought: this film looks just like
events in Oaxaca. The helicopters, the Federal Preventive Police (PFP),
the beatings with clubs and guns, the kicking in of doors during illegal
searches – all too familiar. Several of the forum participants were
former Atenco prisoners, or prisoners from other areas where the social
movement is active. Alongside them were other delegates from Tabasco,
Chiapas, Mexico state, Mexico City and Oaxaca.<br><br>
Also in the audience (and attending the forum) was the father of Alexis
Benhumea Hernández, a National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
student who was
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1884.html">killed at the
age of twenty</a> in Atenco, Mexico on May 4. A
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1807.html">gas
canister</a> shot by the Federal Preventive Police penetrated his skull.
He died after some days in a coma. His father, Ángel Benhumea Salazar,
was wearing a T-shirt with the words “Alex lives” stenciled on the front.
Both Alex Benhumea and his father, Angél were affiliated with the
<a href="http://www.google.com/custom?q=other+campaign&sa=Go&cof=+T%3Awhite%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnarconews.com%2Fgfx%2Fnewlogo1_sm.gif%3BGFNT%3Agrey%3BLC%3Ayellow%3BBGC%3Ablack%3BAH%3Acenter%3BGL%3A2%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnarconews.com%3BGALT%3Ared%3BAWFID%3Aabcde338c7ad74f8%3B&domains=narconews.com&sitesearch=narconews.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8">
Zapatista “Other Campaign.</a>” Benhumea told me that <i>La Otra</i> is
now a national presence, propelled by the anger against international
capital and neoliberalism foisted onto workers and campesinos via the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). As Angél spoke he cradled in
his arms an envelope filled with photographs of his dead son.<br><br>
The <i>campesinos</i> of Atenco
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue38/article1395.html">won a
struggle</a> against the federal government’s attempt to take their land
for expansion of the Mexico City airport, in August of 2002. The
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2006/5/3/211717/2654">
repression in neighboring Texcoco</a> on May 3, 2006, Angél affirmed, was
provoked by the government when flower vendors were refused permission to
sell their flowers as usual, in the market of Belisario Domínguez. The
Peoples’ Front for the Defense of the Land (FPDT) came from its near-by
Atenco base, to support their struggle, as did people from the Other
Campaign.<br><br>
Some from the FPDT also maintained that Texcoco wanted to rid itself of
street vendors in order to attract a Wal-Mart. Whatever the truth of that
may be, ultimately, 300 civilians faced off against more than 3,000 PFP,
Angél Benhumea told me. At present, he continued, those who were involved
have moved in different directions: some like himself stayed with <i>La
Otra</i>, some have gone with the center-left Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD), and some with underground guerrilla forces.<br><br>
Angél, as a trained economist and a present administrator at UNAM, notes
that many in the PRD segment hope for a reform of capitalism. He says he
has no hope for that, given the rampant corruption. As it happens, in
Oaxaca’s elections for national PRD president on Sunday, March 16, one
headline in the statewide daily newspaper <i>Noticias</i> not too subtly
read, “PRD elects president and the PRI wins.” That referred to the
collusion within Oaxaca. The columnist Luis Ocejo Martinez (March 16,
2008, page 19A “Entrevistas”) revealed the names of PRD “leaders” meeting
with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governor Oaxaca Ulises
Ruiz, while another article quotes “the people’s priest” Padre Uvi as
saying that if the PRD doesn’t get clean and represent a true opposition,
they will be buried. The national PRD did choose a person affiliated with
Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador – with the Oaxaca votes not counted.<br><br>
For his part, Ángel cites a statistic of eight million campesinos
impoverished by NAFTA and the use of cheap labor reserves in Mexico.
Regarding the guerrillas, he said, “There are PFP
<a href="http://narconews.com/Issue50/article3005.html">all over the
country</a>; the people are going to mobilize” against the police. People
are stashing weapons, he said, and they will affiliate with the
guerrillas in other words, he believes that Mexico may see armed
uprisings.<br><br>
The forum attendees scheduled a protest march and meeting for Sunday,
March 16, the final day of their stay in Oaxaca. While waiting for the
march to set out, Calypso Mejía Lopez, a forum attendee and organizer who
is the sister of Adán Mejía López, spoke with me. Her brother Adán was
arrested on narcotics charges, and at age twenty-five faces twenty-five
years in prison (he is in Ixcotel) if the committee to free prisoners
doesn’t get him released.<br><br>
Calypso told me: “The struggle at the base is the struggle of political
ideas against capitalism and neoliberalism.” According to Calypso, Adán
is a member of the APPO as well as a Marxist. She repeated his recent
words: “It’s important for me to get out, but it’s so much more important
that the people continue organizing to win social demands and changes in
the political system.” The siblings were not born Oaxaqueños; they came
from Mexico City. Does that mean, “outside agitators”? I don’t think so.
The Oaxaca struggle is considered part of the same national struggle to
which Angél Benhumea alluded.<br><br>
Calypso affirmed that the committee’s task to free political prisoners
includes public discussions, where people, often family members like her,
explain to the public what each prisoner is like: an individual human
being with human rights. This requires that the political situation in
Mexico be openly discussed – why are these people imprisoned? Many
people, like David Venegas, were arrested because they were involved with
the APPO. Similar arrests go on all over Mexico. The courts know it;
that’s why eventually the criminal charges get thrown out. The Human
Rights committees know it; especially because these “criminals” are often
tortured. But when someone is thrown in jail as a “criminal,” most of the
public don’t ask if that is justice – or what is going on. They don’t
recognize these “criminals” as people like themselves, because the
government label of criminal is rarely challenged.<br><br>
The other openly claimed political prisoners remaining in Ixcotel are
Pedro Castillo Aragón, arrested in June, 2006, who was accused of
kidnapping but who was linked to the EPR; and Miguel Ángel
García.<br><br>
The march from Llano Park met up with family and friends at the Ixcotel
prison, on the highway outside Oaxaca city, for a crowd of about two
hundred. Along the march route young graffiti painters left slogans,
despite mournful appeals of private homeowners. McDonalds and the banks
made no appeal; their painters disappeared the slogans an hour after they
appeared. However, as is normal for Oaxaca, photographers and video
makers captured many scenes.<br><br>
This is a nation where social protest has been criminalized, according to
the forum attendees. As David Venegas said, the forum and the
self-organized Santa Maria Ixcotel Political Prisoners Committee are
together formulating a program for struggle and a plan of action “to
achieve liberty for all the men and women political prisoners, and to
stop the militarization and the repression of social struggle.”<br><br>
According to <a href="http://elenemigocomun.net/">the </a><i>El Enemigo
Común</i><a href="http://elenemigocomun.net/"> website of February
19</a>:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>In Oaxaca alone, 28 social activists and comrades were imprisoned for
political reasons. Seventeen of them remain in the Santa María Ixcotel
Central Penitentiary: Adán Mejìa Lòpez, Vìctor Hugo Martínez Toledo,
Miguel Ángel García, Pedro Castillo Aragón, Gonzalo López Cortéz, Isabel
Almaraz Matías, Agustín Luna Valencia, Eleuterio Hernández García, Álvaro
Sebastián Ramírez, Urbano Ruiz Cruz, Cirilo Ambrosio Antonio, Abraham
García Ramírez, Fortino Enríquez Hernández, Ricardo Martínez Enríquez,
Justino Hernández José, Estanislao Martínez Santiago, and Mario Ambrosio
Martínez. <br><br>
<dd>In the Pochutla Regional Prison the following three comrades are
held: Abraham Ramírez Vázquez, Noel García Cruz, and Juventino García
Cruz. There is one prisoner in the Villa de Etla Penitentiary––Zacarías
P. García López––and one more is in the Cuicatlán Regional Prison––Flavio
Sosa Villavicencio. Four comrades are in the Tehuantepéc Prison: José
Luís Sánchez Gómez, Amado Castro López, Nicasio Zaragoza Quintana, and
Edmundo Espinosa Guzmán, and another is in the Juvenile Facility: Jaciel
Cruz Cruz.<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
</i><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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