Witness for Peace Mexico

Remembering a Massacre: What Acteal Should Mean for U.S. Today

The massacre at Acteal, Chiapas, ten years ago, which left 45 indigenous women, children, and men brutally murdered, should have been a turning point in history. When pacifist refugees are gunned down and savagely annihilated with machetes, the world should weep. When we hear the testimonies of survivors and onlookers which declare that local and state police stood idly by as paramilitaries were allowed to attack the village, we should become sick to our stomachs and ask “Why!?” When we consider the larger context in which this tragedy took place—a federal government counterinsurgency response to the Zapatista uprising, including low intensity warfare tactics learned at the infamous School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA—in outrage our resolve should be this: never again U.S. military training and funding in Latin America.

But have we largely forgotten the U.S. role in the Acteal massacre?  Despite a strong international presence at the commemoration of the massacre’s tenth anniversary, there was a noticeable absence of U.S. participants—only 5 to 10 in attendance according to our observation (ourselves included)—and no on-the-ground presence of the U.S. alternative press.

Have we learned anything as U.S. citizens from the Acteal massacre or are we ignoring the message Acteal has for us today?

U.S. military intervention in Mexico is entering a frightening new phase, perhaps something quite unlike anything we’ve seen from our government in the past. At the worst—as evidenced by the establishment of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and the available details of the $1.4 billion anti-narcotics Merida Initiative (aka “Plan Mexico”) proposed by President Bush (see the Witness alert)—the U.S. is secretly seeking to sure up its access to capital and natural resources—especially oil and water—by establishing a militarized North American security zone that includes Mexico as a proxy in the global “war on terrorism” and strips the public of constitutional guarantees to privacy, protest, and habeus corpus—all while turning a blind eye to human rights.

At best, billions of your tax dollars are going into the military machinery and international database integration necessary to blow immigrant rights out of the water, wage ineffective police and military warfare against drug-trafficking (kind of like Plan Colombia), and make multinational business and banks even richer.

Speaking in the context of the Merida Initiative, Laura Carlsen of the Americas Policy Program states:

The physical presence of U.S. military companies such as Blackwater doing training and equipment maintenance, and direct U.S. involvement in Mexican security could lead to a proxy relationship that compromises national sovereignty and subordinates a traditional Mexican foreign policy of neutrality to a U.S. interventionist foreign policy.

But we don’t have to wait on Congress to approve the Merida Initiative. Our government is now beginning its third year of providing counter-terrorism training to Mexican military personnel on Mexican soil—while at the same time continuing the tradition of training Mexican officers at 4 US military installations, including Ft. Bragg.

Then there are these recent considerations:

• The U.S. Department of Defense has invested $500 million in a University of Kansas study mapping indigenous communal land holdings in Mexico’s Huasteca region and the state of Oaxaca. Simultaneously, transnational mining and informatics companies have been using high-tech methods to map subterranean mineral resources in Oaxaca and other parts of Mexico.
• Mexican federal and Chiapan state authorities have permitted the increasingly violent forced eviction of indigenous peoples and other ejido residents in one of North America’s most bio-diverse—and potentially profitable—regions: the Lacandon Jungle. According to several Chiapas-based organizations, there is evidence that international interests (led by Ford, Monsanto, and Conservation International) are pushing the Mexican government’s expansion of the Montes Azules protected area, perhaps with a strong bio-patenting agenda in mind.
• According to our on-the-ground sources in Chiapas, 56 military installations and military airstrips have been strategically placed throughout the state in such a way that the low-intensity psychological warfare against the Zapatistas (and other organizations such as Las Abejas)—in which the U.S. has invested both money and intellectual support—can be turned to an all-out crush offensive at the drop of a hat. In the meantime, the military has been providing aid to anti-Zapatista organizations and reactivating paramilitaries to incite fear. 

The considerations affecting Chiapas—and ignorance of those issues at a national and international level—may very well have been what prompted Zapatista Army leader Subcomandante Marcos to state (17 Dec 2007):

We understand…that for some media we are only news when we are killing or dying, but at least for now, we prefer to remain missing from their stories and to try moving forward in building civil and peaceful efforts as part of…‘The Other Campaign.’ Yet, at the same time, we are preparing ourselves to resist—alone—the reactivation of aggressions against us, whether by the army, police, or paramilitaries.

We who have made war know how to recognize the way it is prepared and how it comes. The signs of war on the horizon are clear. War, like fear, has its smell. And as we speak it has already begun to breathe its fetid stench in our lands.

* * *

(Family members of victims of the 1997 Acteal Massacre hold Mayan crosses in remembrance of the dead. Photo by Robert M. Saper.)

U.S. military interests did not stop with Acteal or the quelling of the Zapatista “threat to security”; in fact, they have only become more secretive, collaborative and far-reaching in their willingness to back corporate interests and U.S. strategic goals. These are examples of a new wave of corporate globalization in Mexico, enforced at the barrel of a gun.

The meaning of Acteal for us today should not just be one of sentiment and regret, but a firm conviction to reject and confront U.S. militarism and create alternatives to a system that keeps us forever in the business of threatening the lives of the poor for our own gain.

Acteal at Ten: Peace, No Matter the Cost

Ten years ago, on December 22, 1997, the infamous massacre at Acteal, a small and very poor Tsotsil indigenous village in the highlands of Chiapas—populated in large part by homeless refugees at that time—left 45 women, children, and men savagely murdered by paramilitaries. Ten years ago surviving members of the nonviolent organization Las Abejas (“The Bees”) had to begin a long process of mourning their loved ones while also coming to grips with the fact that they had been specifically targeted in federal, state, and local governments’ counterinsurgency tactics designed to crush the Zapatista movement—even though they themselves were not Zapatistas. Ten years ago Las Abejas had to recommit themselves to the long and difficult labor of taking a stand for indigenous justice, while knowing better than anyone the ultimate cost they might pay.

Thus they say: “We opt for peace, no matter the cost, no matter the consequences.”

(Forty-five candles, lit at the beginning of the International Conference against Impunity, commemorate the victims of the 1997 Acteal massacre. Photo by Robert M. Saper.)

Ten years ago, Witness for Peace heard the devastating news and the courageous story of Las Abejas. We recognized the link in tactics at Acteal with U.S. counterinsurgency training, demonstrated at that time by Mexico’s support of paramilitary groups in Chiapas who were trained by some of the hundreds of Mexican officers who graduated from the US Army School of the Americas or who were instructed by the Green Beret 7th Special Forces Group at Ft. Bragg. Thus began our U.S. policy work in Mexico and our ongoing collaboration and support for Las Abejas and their courageous option for peace.

Their efforts continue, and indeed there are many who remember and offer their support.  Several thousand were present for the 10th anniversary celebration at the “Sacred Land of the Martyrs,” and in the days leading up to the event, hundreds of internationals descended on Acteal to take part. At the International Conference against Impunity, convened and hosted by Las Abejas (blog in Spanish at http://acteal.blogspot.com/) on December 20 and 21, there were 220 attendees who showed up for the speaking events and workshops; they included visitors from 13 foreign countries and 53 Mexican and international organizations. Speakers who offered an analysis of the eroding human rights situation in Mexico included leaders of prominent organizations, many of them Witness for Peace partners, as well as the much-loved and revered bishops Samuel Ruiz Garcia (retired bishop of San Cristobal) and Raul Vera Lopez (former auxiliary bishop of San Cristobal, current bishop of Saltillo), who read from “Acteal at 10 Years: Remembering so We Don’t Forget” (link to document in Spanish), the declaration written by the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center (FrayBart) which demands that the government (both federal and state), because of its support for rural paramilitary groups, be held responsible for Acteal.

(Bishops (from L to R) Felipe Arizmendi, Samuel Ruiz, Enrique Diaz and Raul Vera bow their heads in silence as Maria Vasquez Gomez (center) and other members of Las Abejas remember those who died at Acteal. Photo by Robert M. Saper.)

Events concluded festively on December 22 as the crowded open-air auditorium filled to capacity, with many onlookers having to find seats perched on the mountainside in order to get a good view. Tsotsil men with leadership functions from the 5 different municipalities in which Las Abejas are present, clad in the black wool of their chuks and the colorful ribbons of their headdresses, seated themselves facing the altar on one side, and the Mayan Women of Las Abejas, dressed in colorful handwoven designs and often covering their heads with woven prayer shalls, sat opposite them. The Acteal choir welcomed all with song, and with a huge banner depicting the heritage and the struggles of Las Abejas as a backdrop, the current bishops Enrique Diaz (Diocese of San Cristobal) and Felipe Arizmendi (Archdiocese of Tuxtla Gutierrez), as well as Samuel Ruiz and Raul Vera and 20 or so priests and deacons who have long been involved with popular struggles in Chiapas, listened as Maria Vasquez Gomez—who lost 9 family members in the massacre—and several other women stated their demands: respect for women’s rights and participation both inside Las Abejas and in larger society, the end to impunity, and peace in the region and in the world.

During the liturgy that followed, the names of all 45 persons killed in the massacre were solemnly read aloud as their surviving family members carried Mayan crosses to the altar in their memory. Many tears accompanied the prayers of remembrance as they were lifted upward by the fragrance of pine and smoky copal. “Peace, no matter the cost,” is a matter of deep sadness in Acteal, but it has an authenticity there quite unlike that of any other place.

(Women and men of Las Abejas at various points during the commemoration activities. Photos by Robert M. Saper.)

Actions

During the International Conference against Impunity held on December 20 and 21, participants worked in small groups to formulate the next phase of action aimed at addressing the lingering threat of violence (although they are relatively dormant, armed paramilitaries persist in the region without any government effort to disarm them), working for the respect of indigenous and women’s rights, clarifying the facts of the case and counteracting official attempts to downplay the massacre, and demanding that the public hold the highest levels of government accountable.

In the final declaration of the Conference two very concrete measures were adopted.  The first is the creation of a truth commission in order to confront prominent mainstream media attempts to downplay the involvement of the government in the massacre. In this process, Las Abejas hope to create a documentation resource center (populated with videos, interviews, and documents) that will preserve the memory of the massacre for future generations and firmly establish the truth so that reconciliation can begin in the communities in and around Acteal.

A second concrete measure is Las Abejas’ demand that Mexico implement the recently promulgated UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into law, a step that would officially bind government and politicians to recognize autonomy and self-determination for native peoples, as well as to acknowledge officially collective and communal rights. Mexico voted in favor of the declaration at the UN General Assembly, but there has been little if any discussion of how Mexico plans to incorporate it into national policy; failures in the government’s commitment to the 1996 San Andres Accords leave many doubting the possibility of any meaningful legislation. However, if and when there is an international convention to draw up concrete pieces of international legislation, the UN declaration could be cause for a new kind of international pressure for establishing social justice for native peoples.

However, inasmuch as this concerns U.S. citizens, there is a problem: the United States did not vote in favor of the declaration on the classic liberalist grounds that all individuals are equal before the law (surely the unspoken reason is the cost of owning up to the sins of our history of genocide against native peoples in our own country). Without the U.S. becoming a signatory to the declaration or a related convention, there is little official room for U.S. citizens to make an argument about our foreign policy as it affects indigenous claims to land, resources, culture, customs, and—when you consider redress for the massacre at Acteal—maybe even life itself. When we reflect on our involvement in counterinsurgency tactics against indigenous peoples (and when we consider the poverty of and blatant disregard for the self-determination of Native Americans in the U.S.) it should be clear that pressuring our government to recognize the UN declaration is a moral imperative and one of the best ways we can be in solidarity with Las Abejas in their struggle for justice.

International participants at the convention also proposed the following initiatives to promote overseas visibility of, awareness of, and solidarity with Las Abejas:

• Improving collaborative relationships between Las Abejas and the international organizations that support them.
• Collaborating with Las Abejas in the diffusion of information (contributing to their blog, assisting with translation of their communiqués to other languages, using multimedia) and sharing with Las Abejas accounts of solidarity actions taken by the international organizations that support them.
• Facilitating exchange opportunities for members of Las Abejas in other countries (encounters with other native peoples, speakers tours, and other forms of interaction and spreading the word).
• Writing letters pressuring the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to hear and try the still-pending case of government impunity in Acteal (the case was submitted by FrayBart in 2005).
• Writing letters requesting that Yale University dismiss former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization, on the grounds of his complicity in planning and permitting the massacre.

  (Readers can find out more about these latter two actions at the website of the film “A Massacre Foretold” under the section called What You Can Do.)

Ultimately, for those of us from the United States, our solidarity action with Las Abejas—and the many other people in Latin America who suffer military and economic violence—must involve confronting and denouncing U.S. trade policy in the hemisphere and the military support, training, and funding our government uses to secure its interests.

(A surviving family member of one of the Acteal victims, carrying flowers and a traditional Mayan cross in memoriam. Photo by Robert M. Saper.)

Further Reading

See “Las Abejas Civil Organization: 10 years After the Killings in Acteal: ‘We’re Still Hungry for Justice, Thirsty for Peace’” on the NarcoNews Bulletin

See “Ten Years Later, It’s Time to Recognize the U.S. Government’s Responsibility for Acteal” on the NarcoNews Bulletin

See Darrin Wood’s historic (and heavily censored) article “Bury My Heart at Acteal” on the Global Exchange website

Consumer Meets Producer: Waking Up to the Hidden Costs of Fair Trade Coffee

The following entry is composed by Lindsay Etheredge, student at the University of Puget Sound and current intern with WFP in Oaxaca.

I, like many Seattle natives, am a big consumer of coffee. There’s nothing as satisfying for me as a steaming cup of coffee on a cold, cloudy northwest morning. While I learned a little bit about the fair trade movement in my studies, I had never really sat down with my coffee and thought, “Where does this come from? Who harvested the beans? And how much of the price I pay for this cup is going to the producers?” These questions were all answered and my eyes opened to the social, political, and economic conditions of coffee production on our last delegation trip with Witness for Peace to Chiapas.

Chiapas is a southern state in Mexico with a heavily indigenous population and demonstrates the contradiction of having some of the most staggering levels of poverty while also being the most resource-rich region in the country. We stayed in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas for one week, meeting with different organizations working for human rights, as well as for changes in political and economic conditions in Chiapas. We also traveled outside of the city and for two days stayed in a small community a few hours away called Mercedes Isidoro. We met with directors of CIRSA (Indigenous Communities of the Simojovel de Allende Region), a fair trade coffee cooperative, and stayed in the homes of CIRSA producers in the community. On the first day, we spent several hours with the directors, who explained fair trade coffee, the technical process of producing organic coffee, and the history of the organization and its relation to the historical struggles of the state of Chiapas on a larger scale.

Some of the points that stuck with me most were the incredible struggle, perseverance, and leadership required for this community to create an organization from the ground up, seeking to enter the global fair trade market and to turn a profit from their small parcels of land. They explained the incredible forces they were up against and the time, money, labor and dedication they invested just to find a way to make a simple living.

Another point that surprised me was the critique of fair trade and the reality that profits continued to be low despite having abandoned the conventional coffee producing methods and market. Floor prices for fair trade coffee are set by Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (or FLO), a worldwide non-profit network of fair trade producers, labelers, and experts. This base price has not increased over the last ten years. For one pound of coffee a producer receives $1.26 along with a 10-cent per pound social premium intended to aid community development and a 15- to 20-cent per pound organic premium to cover the higher costs of producing organically. A significant problem for small Mexican organic producers is that Mexico has a relatively higher cost of living than most other coffee-producing countries throughout the world, and with the fluctuating prices of conventional coffee, fair trade prices are sometimes only a fraction higher than prices offered by coyotes, or middlemen, who sell to large transnational coffee companies. In the end, whether consumers pay $10 or $5 for a bag of coffee, producers receive the same $1.26, an income that is barely sufficient to provide for family living costs in communities like Mercedes Isidoro.

(Pascual Hernandez Ruiz, a small coffee producer with the CIRSA cooperative, inspects coffee beans as they are separated from their outer fruit covering by a small hand-cranked machine called a "despulpadora". Photo by Kelsey Beaman.)

The production of coffee by small farmers is a long, complex process that requires meticulous detail and dedication—and even more so if production is organic. Each year the co-op must go through several costly organic recertification processes. Standards are constantly being revised, and the co-op must meet the challenge of adapting to these changes. Not only is there an international certification required from FLO, but also specific certifications necessary for each country to which they export (for CIRSA these include Germany, the U.S., France, and Holland). The physical environment for organic production in each coffee orchard is carefully regulated, requiring the planting of an organically approved variety of trees to provide shade for the coffee trees, natural methods to avoid bug infestations, local production of organic fertilizers, specific methods to reduce the impact of erosion, and de-mossing—which requires using a stick to carefully scrape away the moss on each and every tree. When it is time to harvest, each coffee fruit is picked by hand to avoid damaging the fruit spur and to allow reproduction the following year (in contrast, on flat-land planations large machines shake the trees to collect the coffee fruit). Finally—in a process that takes days—the coffee fruit is put through a small hand-cranked machine to rid it of its outer shell; the resulting beans are then fermented in a concrete basin. In organic production low quality beans are meticulously removed during several hand-selection processes and the high quality beans lain out on a patio to dry in the sun.

On the day we spent viewing this process, CIRSA members explained to us that the degree of labor necessary for organic production is significantly more demanding than with conventional methods. After contrasting the labor input, sacrifice, and amount of marginal profit available to these farmers, I wondered how there are any organic, fair trade coffee producers at all.

(Kelsey Quam and Leigh Barrick carrying freshly-picked coffee fruit. Photo by Brittany Mars.)

While learning more about coffee production and the realities of fair trade was important and revealing, a very powerful part of the experience for me was staying with the family of one CIRSA member, Antonio Perez Gomez, for two days. Entering his house for the first time, I realized I had never before felt such a strong culture clash. We were three North-American girls showing up with our backpacks full of clothes, carrying expensive sleeping bags and wearing our nice hiking shoes, and despite our late arrival, we were almost immediately served dinner by Antonio’s daughter. The house was a small, simple building made from wood and aluminum; the bathroom, a hole covered by boards; and the water, a small outdoor spigot pumping water from the ground. The family, except for the father and oldest daughter, spoke only the indigenous language Tzotzil. This inability to communicate easily made the distance between us feel that much greater.

I felt that I represented many things: wealth, an ignorance of Mexican indigenous culture, and above all, consumerism. On the first night, only minutes after arriving, Antonio asked us, “As consumers, would you want to buy honey?” Since we were expecting most conversation to center on coffee, this question struck us as odd until we learned that the coffee producers were also looking to find a profitable market for honey. Throughout the next two days, it became clear that community members identified us above all as “the consumers.” This label provoked some discussion among the students and I realized I was torn between guilt at the truth that I was a wealthy North-American consumer, and the fact that my very consumption, in this case of coffee, made up the livelihood of our hosts.

In our final meeting with CIRSA and the community, we asked the question “With this experience, what can we do after returning to the U.S., and what message would you like us to take back?” The messages they wanted us to carry with us were of the challenges, labor, and costs involved in producing organic, fair trade coffee. As well, we were asked to share our experience and the story of this community. They wanted us to take this knowledge and spread it to our friends, family, and communities and inspire support for fair trade and consciousness in consumer habits. Many members of the community and the organization repeated the sentiment that, while it is tremendously important to pressure fair trade organizations like FLO and to help increase the fair trade price, it is also necessary that U.S. consumers change their buying practices.

The experience of dropping into the lives of these impoverished, overworked and yet exceptionally dedicated people was something so different from the life I live in the U.S.—and even here in Oaxaca—that it took a while to process. It was difficult to observe and only superficially experience that level of poverty and struggle and then reconcile it with my own very comfortable and comparatively materialistic lifestyle. While I realize that consumerism and the endless desire for material goods is a reality in the U.S., I hope to be a more conscientious consumer and influence others to look for products and companies that fairly distribute profits to their producers.

Readers can help improve the situation for small coffee producers in Mexico in a number of ways, including the regular purchase of only fairly traded products from companies such as Equal Exchange.  Also,  consider writing to Equal Exchange requesting that the company pressure FLO to increase the fair trade price of coffee (www.equalexchange.com/faq-form/).

Visit www.equalexchange.com/get-involved for more information on fair trade and additional ways to act.

Educating on Immigration and U.S. Policy: a First-hand Experience with People Forced from Home

The following entry is composed by Lindsay Etheredge, student at the University of Puget Sound and current intern with WFP in Oaxaca.

Growing up in the state of Washington, I have come in contact with many immigrants from Mexico and Central America. This past weekend however, I saw immigration from the other side when I travelled to a small community called Rancho Viejo in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.

I travelled to Rancho Viejo with 20 other students from the Pacific Lutheran University/University of Puget Sound study abroad program in Oaxaca City. The trip was organized with Witness for Peace and focused on learning more about the root causes of immigration in the U.S. The first day was spent in the town of Santiago Juxtlahuaca in the Mixteca Baja region where we met with leaders of the WFP partner organization, Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales. FIOB is a bi-national organization working directly with the causes and consequences of migration in the state of Oaxaca.  In addition to Oaxaca, FIOB also has a presence in the border region (Baja California) and is very active in the U.S. (with offices in California). Here in Oaxaca, they support the development of local community groups as a means of providing an alternative to leaving home. In the U.S., they offer support for immigrants in the form of providing translators and legal aid as well as fighting for labor rights for indigenous immigrants. During our meeting with FIOB the Juxtlahuaca District Coordinator, Centolia Maldonado, explained the push factors behind the overwhelming degree of emigration from southern Mexico, and in particular Oaxaca. The driving force is a lack of work and inability to compete in local markets, which is in large part a result of neo-liberal economic policies and trade agreements such as NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement).

Upon arriving to Rancho Viejo we were welcomed by the Rivera family; Sidronio, his brother Ramiro, and his son Fernando. Rancho Viejo is an indigenous Mixtec community made up of about 200 families, although the number has greatly diminished as a result of people leaving home. The center of the community consists of a church, school, small health center and field for playing Pelota Mixteca, an ancient Mixtec ball game. The houses are widely dispersed, although every house seems to be connected to each other by some small trail winding down the side of the mountain. Next door to each house are large plots of land where the milpa is planted: corn, beans and squash planted together in one field. On our first day we climbed to the top of a mountain and looked out over the whole community and Ramiro pointed out all the abandoned houses that have been left by families who migrated to the U.S.

Towards the beginning of our stay we introduced ourselves, and Ramiro asked that we share where we live, our studies, what we are passionate about and how we want to change the world. These last questions took me by surprise but as we began our introductions, I realized it was an incredibly thought-provoking and relevant question. It also portrayed the genuine interest Ramiro and his family had in our lives and in our visit to their communities. When Ramiro and Sidronio introduced themselves, I was deeply affected by their personal stories of leaving home, experiences on the border, explanation of the migration situation in Rancho Viejo, and their very conscious and informed view of political, economic and social issues. Their knowledge of world issues, juxtaposed with their rustic and traditional lives, forced me to think of the paradox of the conflicting cultures they have experienced; life in Rancho Viejo as farmers working their own land and then as undocumented immigrants working under unfair labor conditions in the crowded cities of California.

(Ramiro Rivera explains the Mixtec ball game to the PLU/UPS group. Photo by Lindsay Etheredge.)

The Riveras explained that while living in Santa Cruz, California, they felt the constant threat of being discovered as undocumented workers. The Riveras are just one example of many immigrant families that have had to sacrifice their traditional lives and working their own agricultural fields to move to cities where they are treated as second-class citizens. They must work for low wages, lack health and safety protections, and are denied basic human rights. I could only imagine the culture shock that families like the Riveras had to face when comparing their lives in the magnificent natural beauty of Rancho Viejo to a modern, crowded and overwhelming U.S. city.

Throughout the weekend, we were shown several of the projects this family and community have started with the aid of FIOB, including growing hongo-setas (a type of mushroom), building a greenhouse for tomatoes, and creating a water reservoir shared by families to irrigate their crops. They profit from the crops that are grown by selling their harvested produce at the local markets. Finding profitable products and a way to utilize their land and community resources are important as alternatives to leaving home. Seeing the progress of their projects demonstrated the dedication and intense physical labor required to simply survive off their land. The projects in Rancho Viejo have been relatively successful as a result of aid from FIOB and the cooperation of the community.

The last morning spent in Rancho Viejo was an incredibly emotional one. It was a common sentiment among our group members that we felt more welcomed, close and emotionally connected to this family after two days together than any of us had felt after a month of living with host families in Oaxaca City. We were touched by the openness and willingness of Ramiro, Sidronio, Fernando, and their families to share their lives with us and show genuine interest in our own very different lives. On our last morning, they shared their thoughts on migration in relation to development and I was struck by many of their comments. A very clear and confronting statement they shared is that their family is only one example of thousands and thousands of similar families affected by migration. They discussed the image of immigrants in the US and the generalization that all are criminals carrying drugs across the border. Fernando described how they emigrate for the sole purpose of making money to send home as a means of survival for their families.

In terms of development and solutions to mass migration from Oaxaca, Fernando explained that even if the US were to open up its borders to all immigrants, this would not be a solution. What they need, he said, is development in their own communities, development initiated by community members and not by outside agencies. Local development, however, is a near impossible obstacle to overcome if U.S. economic policy remains unchanged. These policies, which include the provision of heavy subsidies to industrialized U.S. farms, have lead to the dumping of cheap corn products on the Mexican market and require the reduction of tariffs and the cutting of Mexican support programs. This makes competition impossible for small, local farmers in Mexico like Ramiro and his family.  Since 1992, U.S. corn exports to Mexico have increased by 240-percent and the artificially low price of this corn has forced Mexico out of the market.* This affects some 18 million people who depend on corn for their livelihood.** These are the people who are left with no other choice than to abandon their land in an attempt to survive in the U.S. A majority of this population lives in extreme poverty or in isolated, rural areas of Mexico like Rancho Viejo, areas that receive zero economic profit from free trade.

Before visiting the Mixteca region, I had some prior knowledge of the immigration issue, however after meeting the Rivera family and putting faces to the phenomenon, I was made even more aware of the harsh reality.  I realized the irony that as the U.S. attempts to tighten its borders, it is our economic policies that are the root cause and major push factor of Latin American migration to the U.S.   Indigenous communities like that of Rancho Viejo are up against an enormous challenge. They are faced with trying to maintain their unique traditions and culture while at the same time struggling to find a place in the unjust modern global market. As a citizen of the country that manipulated many of these economic policies, I feel more compelled than ever to inspire some kind of change when I return home. 

For more information on FIOB, see www.fiob.org

* Kupfer, Patty, David Waskow, Kasey Butler. “Reaping the Seeds We Sow: U.S. Farm      Policy and the Immigration Dilemma,” p. 3.

** Ibid.

Oaxaca, The Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit, and Plan Mexico

Oaxaca has returned to a surface-level calm after the tumultuous events surrounding the folkloric dance festival, the Guelaguetza, which officially ended in late July. This put an end to Operation Guelaguetza 2007, the massive State, Municipal police, and military build-up that a march of the APPO and the Section 22 Teacher’s Union clashed with on July 16. In early August the popular movement also took down the small protest encampment in Oaxaca’s center square, with vows that the struggle had not ended, and before long they would be back. The August 5 elections for State Senators came and went with almost no reports of violent incidents, though many were worried about the lower voter turnout – at about 30 percent. Arbitrary detentions have continued; the latest incident was that of a lawyer for the 25th of November Committee who himself had been working on cases of the detained in the conflict. On a state level most eyes are turning to the elections for municipal presidents in early October, and tension may very well rise between now and then. However, the most dramatic changes may be at the international level. There were strong rumors that a U.S. multimillion dollar military aid package for Mexico would be announced during the summit of leaders from the three NAFTA countries, George W. Bush, Felipe Calderon, and Stephen Harper, on August 20 and 21st in Montebello, Canada. This could have huge implications for Oaxaca.

According to the Washington Post the package, dubbed “Plan Mexico”, would include U.S. arms and surveillance equipment, espionage technology and programs, and training for Mexico’s police and army to combat drug cartels. The Post reports that most are predicting that the aid package will be well-received in Washington, despite the fact that many in Congress have complained about the secrecy of the negotiations. It is possible that it will be presented to Congress as early as this month, as an emergency supplemental appropriation for next year’s foreign aid budget, following the same process of the approval and implementation of Plan Colombia in 1999.

According to Laura Carlsen in an article published by the International Relations Center the counter narcotics proposal falls under a new area of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in which the U.S. hopes to extend counter-terrorism strategies to both Mexico and Canada. The meeting in Montebello in August was the third round of SPP negotiations that began in 2005 during a trilateral summit in Waco, Texas. The SPP has been called NAFTA Plus, or the second phase of NAFTA, and according to the joint SPP declarations, it is being built upon NAFTA’s “success”. However if the “Plan Mexico” proposal is any indication, the SPP is going well beyond the economic realm. Taking into account the wealth disparity, extreme poverty, and levels of migration exacerbated by policies such as NAFTA, many wonder if the next key ingredient to any trade agreement would be security measures to both quell the inevitable social discontent and protect private investment.

Civil society, labor, environmental organizations, and researchers who have documented many of NAFTA’s negative impacts have not (up to this point) had any voice in SPP development, which purports to be defining the future of North America. During this year’s summit, civil society found itself on the other side of a thick security cordon and its protests were met with tear gas as has been the case throughout the years as trade agreements are negotiated. Not only is civil society missing from the conversation, but so is Congress, which has Carlsen describing the SPP as a “gentlemen’s agreement between the executive branches and major corporations in the three nations.” Unlike NAFTA, the SPP is not one package but a series of side initiatives, often escaping Congressional oversight.

Big business has not had the same problem as Congress and civil society. The North American Competitive Council (the NACC), comprised of representatives of big business such as Walmart, General Electric, and Chevron, gave specific input and concrete recommendations during the summit. The NACC was formed at the second annual SPP summit in 2006 so that "leadership from governments recognize the importance of business issues to the overall social welfare, and empowers the private sector to engage substantively and pragmatically on trade and security issues without undue deference to political sensibilities," according to a NACC report. In late August the Mexican daily La Jornada reported that the Calderon administration will now follow the agenda and recommendations of the NACC to improve “Mexico’s competitiveness” while determining economic policy. The secrecy that surrounds the SPP makes both these policy “recommendations” and their impacts difficult to detect.

Although the aid package was not announced at the summit, Mexico’s Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said that it would be implemented in some form “sooner or later.” “Plan Mexico” could be the biggest clear policy initiative to emerge from the SPP up to this point. Many Mexicans believe it is much more than a counter narcotics proposal, especially in a country that has shown the capacity to generate massive popular movements, such as the on-going conflict in Oaxaca. One of the primary missions of the Federal Preventive Police (the PFP by its initials in Spanish) upon its founding in 1999 was to combat drug-trafficking. However, on countless occasions the PFP has been used to quell social movements, the most recent example being the November 2006 operation in Oaxaca, for which they now face serious accusations of human rights violations, according to reports put out by a variety of both national and international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International. WFP partner organizations in Colombia have well documented the drastic and serious human rights violations exacerbated by Plan Colombia; Mexico, and especially places like Oaxaca, may well be in for more of the same. Witness for Peace will be attentive to any congressional action on “Plan Mexico”, and will send out an action alert when that happens.

Sources: The Washington Post, International Relations Center, La Jornada, Wikipedia

The Sounds of Conflict Return to the Streets

The silence is deafening. Since I arrived at my dad’s house last night after a long day of traveling back to the States for the first time in almost a year, all I have noticed is how silent it is here. The occasional sound of a car passing by or a few bird songs are the only things that accompany the echo of the refrigerator turning on and off. My ears are filled with the sound of nothing. Of stillness and tranquility. At least they were until I made a call to a friend in Oaxaca this afternoon.

I dialed the number and after a few rings he picked up the phone and immediately I could hear the sounds of helicopters and street noise in the background. The first thing he told me was that the conflict had begun again. “There are buses burning in the streets. They thought they were going to take the Auditorio Nacional (National Auditorium),” he shouted, “the APPO has also blocked the Periférico and there have been confrontations, lots of people are hurt.” When I asked him which police forces were there, he responded that it was the AFI (like the FBI) and the Federal Preventative Police (PFP). My heart began to race and the silence was immediately replaced with memories of the sounds of last fall in Oaxaca: strange explosions, gunshots, helicopters, people marching in the streets, the sounds of a city deep in the midst of a conflict no one ever imagined would reach such gravity.

(A popular movement supporter and bystanders are attacked with teargas by police officials on July 16, 2007. Photo courtesy of Eduardo Garza Crespo.)

Over the past several weeks since the anniversary of the violent repression on June 14th, 2006, the teachers and the APPO have been very active in their mobilizations but on the surface the climate of the city had not seemed to have changed significantly. A small encampment was established once again by the Section 22 teachers and the APPO in the zocalo and posters began to appear asking residents and tourists alike to boycott the upcoming official Guelaguetza (an annual cultural festival in Oaxaca; also the event with the largest attraction and source of income from tourists). Just over a week ago or so, however, tensions began to rise between local business owners and encampment participants and reports of threats to evacuate the zocalo came out in the papers. Then just last week it was reported that the teachers had struck a deal with federal government officials to remove their encampment in exchange for the completion of some of their demands.

This past weekend and today, the 14th, 15th & 16th, the popular Guelaguetza was to be held. As part of these events, a march was planned from the zocalo to the National Auditorium to hold the final ceremonies. Newspapers report that upon marching toward the site, the demonstration was met with heavy police enforcement and a confrontation began in which tear gas was released into the crowd, at least 40 civilians and 20 police officials were injured and several people were detained.  Reports from civil society organizations state that during the confrontation, police brutally beat teachers, movement sympathizers and several reporters. They also state that despite official declarations by the state government that the demonstration would be respected, the operation (which included elites from the Mexican army, PFP, AFI, state preventative and municipal police) owes its coordination to the state Secretary for Citizen Protection.

(Scenes of buses burned by protesters and Federal Preventative Police who supported an operation against them on July 16, 2007. Photos courtesy of Eduardo Garza Crespo.)

Now as I try to sort out my confusion and fear over what must be taking place right now in Oaxaca, I find myself sitting here in a place of incredible peacefulness and safety, a place that seems so far away from the reality I have found myself in over the past ten months. I don’t feel lucky or glad that I’m not there but I do wonder if and when Oaxaca will ever know this type of peace and safety again, if it ever did. Nothing has changed since the conflict started, nor are there any real signs that it will. Until the root causes of the conflict are addressed, there will only be temporary spells of calmness in the state and it will just be a matter of time before they are piercingly shattered once again.

Sources: La Jornada, Accion Urgente del Espacio de Organizaciones Civiles de Oaxaca, 16 de julio, 2007

State and National Demands Intersect and Attract Tens of Thousands to the Streets

The strong presence of the SNTE Section-22 teachers and the APPO has once again been felt in the streets of Oaxaca over the past few weeks. Marches and demonstrations on May 1st, 2nd and 15th centered on the movement’s long-standing demands and joined the national protest against plans to privatize the ISSTE (the Mexican Social Security for government workers), as recommended by the World Bank.  These demonstrations attracted tens of thousands of participants from all over the state. Mobilizations temporarily blocked various state and federal highways, closed dozens of government offices, staged a takeover of Radio Universidad and showed strong participation and support for the national work stoppage.  No major incidents of violence occurred and the state government was even quoted as praising the teachers for the legality of their conduct.

Last Tuesday, May 22nd, was the 1-year anniversary of the establishment of the SNTE Section 22 teachers’ encampment that marked the start of the current social conflict and movement in Oaxaca. This year, as every year, the teachers again submitted their list of demands to the state government on May 1st and awaited a response. Upon receiving “minimal” response to their petition by the 22nd, the State Assembly (the Section-22’s highest authority) decided to consult the organization’s 70,000-member base to determine whether the union will go to a full strike and set up camp once again in the Zócalo. While last year’s principal demand was (among other things) the adjustment of teacher salaries to correspond with the increasingly high cost of living in Oaxaca, this year’s demands center around the teachers’ “social demands,” which match those of the popular movement. These include the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, cancellation of all arrest warrants and the resignation of Governor Ulises Ruíz Ortiz. Secondary demands include an increase in resources for school repairs and infrastructure, programs to provide uniforms and breakfast to children in marginalized communities, and scholarships for teachers' and rural farmers' children. The consultation is scheduled to end on June 2nd, at which time the teachers’ next steps will be revealed. Meanwhile, the APPO has released a statement threatening to block the annual Guelaguetza celebration for the second year in a row if these common demands are not met.

Mobilizations Planned to Start May 1st

The SNTE Section 22 teacher’s union recently announced that May 1st and 2nd will mark the “beginning of a new offensive against the governments of Ulises Ruiz and Felipe Calderón.” Newspapers report that the teacher´s union plans to hold a full work stoppage, take over public offices and buildings, and block state and federal highways. In the upcoming weeks, the group also plans to hold at least four mega-marches in conjunction with the APPO with the goal of entering into the Zocalo and possibly re-establishing their encampment there. The June 14th anniversary will be marked with a mobilization to commemorate the first anniversary of the violent attempt to remove the teachers from the central square of Oaxaca, marking the beginning of the conflict almost one year ago.

Source: Milenio

Neoliberal Projects and the Unresolved Oaxaca Conflict

“We all feel like we are in a pot held over a fire, and we’re not sure when the lid is going to blow off,” said Nora Martínez of the Oaxaca City based Regional Human Rights Center Bartolome Briseño Carrasco (BARCA), referring to the turbulent unresolved conflict that officials still attempt to scrub clean from the city walls. In a recent meeting with Witness for Peace, Martínez and other members of the BARCA expressed that U.S. policy issues in Oaxaca, such as the import of basic food items instead of local production, the privatization of land and water, mining, logging, and paper pulp production are all fanning the fire under the pot, as waves of people without any opportunity in the state head north, expelled from their communities and traditions, leaving behind a broken social fabric. According to the extensive report by the International Civil Commission of Human Rights Observation on the Oaxaca situation, the majority of people interviewed said that poverty was one of the fundamental root causes of the conflict in 2006. They pointed specifically to “the lack of attention to basic necessities such as education, health, work, and food”, saying that public funds were instead diverted to “create new police forces.” For many in Oaxaca, the most tangible and repressive representation of this economic model that has exacerbated the historical poverty suffered in the state is disputed governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, whose resignation is still the principal demand of the APPO.

In late March, Mexican President Felipe Calderon made his first official visit to Oaxaca to inaugurate a wind energy-generating project in the town of La Venta in Oaxaca’s isthmus region. This project is a part of the neoliberal Plan Puebla Panama, and its objective is to integrate energy networks from Panama to Mexico to meet the increasing demands for energy in the U.S. market. On March 3 of this year the Federal Preventative Police forcibly evicted the community Ejido 3 de Abril to make way for this project. The constitutional protection of ejidos, or communal land holdings, was dismantled in 1992, when Mexico made over 120 constitutional revisions to pave the way for NAFTA. Critics of this constitutional change warned that large foreign companies would come in and buy up land for projects such as this. In the case of La Venta, the most significant investor is Spanish multinational Iberdrola.  Controversial Oaxacan governor, Ruiz Ortiz, was present at the inauguration, accompanied by an operation of 2,000 police and military personnel to guard the new foreign investment. During the event, Calderon said they must stop “problems such as corruption, impunity, abuse; problems such as hate and violence between brothers” in the state of Oaxaca.

In early April, Ruiz Ortiz was also present at a conference in the Mexican state of Campeche where Calderon met with all Central American Presidents, except for Nicaragua who sent their Vice President, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, to discuss the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP). The PPP, with funding from both the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank, was first proposed in an initiative by ex Mexican President Vicente Fox in 2001 to create the necessary infrastructure to attract foreign investment in a region spanning from Southern Mexico to Panama, and now, most likely, Colombia. The PPP has huge implications for Oaxaca, including the creation of industrial zones filled with assembly plants and a dry “Panama Canal” in the form of a super-highway between Tehuantepec, Oaxaca and Coatzacoalcos, Vera Cruz, to transport products coming from Asia to the U.S. According to the Oaxaca City daily Noticias, “militarization is a constant associated with huge business projects [like the PPP] in Latin America and is one of the principles under which Calderon is basing his presidency. The need to guarantee stability for investment and, at the same time, stop any social uprisings that are a product of this looting [natural resources, land, etc.] go together.” During the conference Calderon promoted the further militarization of Southern Mexico with the pretext of stopping Central American migration. However, many fear that military and police units will be repositioned, much like in Chiapas, to allow them to quickly smash any social movements in the region, like Oaxaca’s powerful APPO or anything else that might develop out of the unresolved conflict.

In Oaxaca City, the official discourse and the on-the-ground analysis of civil society continue to collide. Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior Francisco Acuña recently said that the Oaxaca case was “resolved.” A few days later, Davíd Venegas of the APPO’s State Council was detained by State Police while walking through a city park, the third such incident to occur in the last two weeks. The Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights reports that State Police have resumed house searches during this time. The already boiling conflict seems to be escalating again. The upcoming Municipal and State Congress elections in Oaxaca bring predictions of heightened violence. And the month of May is not only the anniversary of the beginning of the movement (last year the SNTE Section 22 Teacher’s union took over Oaxaca City’s center square on May 22) but also the traditional month for mobilizations of the teachers, who say that agreements made with the federal government last year have not been met. As international media has become next to silent on the Oaxaca situation, and with the underlying issues of US policy that create much despair and desperation in Oaxaca, it is more important than ever for U.S. citizens to keep a close and critical eye on the situation.

Sources:  La Jornada, Noticias: Voz e Imagen de Oaxaca, Interview with BARCA members on 10 April 2007, "Informe Sobre los Hechos en Oaxaca,” A Report from the Comisión Civil Internacional de Observación por los Derechos Humanos, 2007.

Bush's Visit to Mexico: NAFTA, Migration & the Oaxaca Conflict

President Bush finished his Latin American tour mid-week with a final stop in Mexico to meet with Mexican President, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. During his longest visit of the tour, Bush spent two full days with Calderón discussing a range of topics including immigration reform, the Security & Prosperity Partnership (“NAFTA-Plus”), combating narcotrafficking and NAFTA’s agricultural chapter that is set to expire in 2008. Calderón emphasized that the relationship between the two countries was the most important for both nations and urged Bush to recognize the same. Meanwhile, massive protests erupted in each of the five countries Bush toured, attracting tens of thousands of protestors to the streets in many cities (including Oaxaca, where a protest was organized in front of the U.S. Consular Agency) to demonstrate their rejection of the U.S.  president and his policies in the region and the world.

The need for immigration reform was also highlighted in a recently-released study by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The study shows that during ex-President Fox’s six year term, over 3.4 million Mexicans migrated to the US from over 600 municipalities across the country. Among this group were a greater number of women, indigenous, and unaccompanied minors who all bring with them a series of additional factors, demonstrating the ever-increasing complexity of this issue. The demographic changes were attributed to family reunification and the addition of southern and southeastern states with high indigenous populations (including Oaxaca) to the list of greater migrant-sending regions. This comes as no surprise as many of the very same root causes of this migration (principally, years of neoliberal policy and all of its impacts) manifest themselves in Oaxaca’s still very alive and vibrant social movement.

The movement’s tenth megamarch filled the city with a familiar energy as tens of thousands (estimates range from 40,000-100,000) of members of the APPO and Section 22 teachers union once again filled the streets on March 8th. Led by the women’s civil society group COMO (“Coordination of Oaxacan Women August 1st”)—known for their nonviolent takeover of the state radio and television station last August—the event was organized to coincide with International Women’s Day. Participants came together to demand the resignation of state governor Ruiz Ortiz, the release of all detainees in state and federal jails and the return of 124 schools currently under control of the state-aligned teachers union, Section 59. Also that day, transmissions of the teacher’s Radio Planton were heard for the first time since their installations were destroyed last June. In anticipation of the event, police forces sealed off the Zócalo with metal barricades, barbed wire and hundreds of officials blocking all public access to the city’s central square.

Just a week before, the International Civil Commission for Human Rights Observation (CCIODH)—an international NGO made up of mostly European activists—officially submitted a report outlining the results of their most recent investigation into human rights violations in Oaxaca to the Mexican Interior Secretary. Among the findings are 23 deaths (compared to the National Commission on Human Rights' report of 20 and the state attorney general’s office's 11), several other deaths and disappearances of so-far unidentified persons, arbitrary detentions and torture. In addition to the comprehensive report that included testimonies, a summary of violations committed by state and federal officials, and recommendations for federal officials, the CCIODH used their results to call on the European Union to send a commission to Oaxaca to investigate and consider acting on the clause in their free trade agreement that allows for a pull out by one nation if a partnering country does not guarantee respect for basic human rights.

Bush, however, made it very clear in his visit to Mexico that he had no intentions of renegotiating NAFTA, stating that it “would be a mistake” because it “has been incredibly important on both sides of the border.” It comes as no real surprise that the topic of the conflict in Oaxaca was not mentioned in discussions, nor was the relationship between the trade agreement and migration. Next year when all remaining import tariffs (on corn, beans, sugar and powdered milk) are removed and market prices for local producers further plunge, the daily struggle of small farming communities will be intensified and more people will be called to migrate or join the social struggle.

Condoleeza Rice Ignores Human Rights Situation in Mexico in Report to Congress

On February 6. U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, expressed concern about human rights violations in both Venezuela and Cuba in a general report on international relations to the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs. Rice went as far to say that Venezuelan government was destroying their country ¨politically and economically¨ and the US was the only country that really diffused information about the brutal human rights situation in Cuba. These were the only two Latin American countries that she mentioned as having human rights issues. On the same day, Amnesty International (AI) issued a report:  Mexico, Law without Justice, Human Rights Violations and Impunity in the Public Security & Criminal Justice System. In the report AI denounced that for years they have documented cases of human rights violations and impunity and that in almost the entire country there are cases of arbitrary detentions, fabricated evidence, and torture. “It doesn’t matter that the detained show up in front of a judge with signs of being beaten up or mistreated,” AI representatives said when presenting the report. What has happened in Oaxaca, they said, is one of the worst examples of this. Yet the only message Secretary Rice had for Mexico was that Mexico must do more to stop undocumented immigration to the U.S.

Popular clamor on the streets of Mexico might have some suggestions for Secretary Rice on how migration could be slowed down to the US, however this would involve seriously reforming or dismantling the U.S. promoted North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and neo-liberal economic model. With many prices on the rise, including  staples of the Mexican food basket such as corn and milk, protestors have gathered (including over one million on January 31st in Mexico City) to demand, among other things, a higher minimum wage (which at present is about $4.80 a day) to make up for the increase in basic food costs.  Oaxaca, which rivals Chiapas for the title of most impoverished state in Mexico, knows the effects of a devastated countryside, displaced farmers, and increased food prices.   Nationwide protests included the 9th mega-march of the APPO, in Oaxaca City, where thousands of people took to the streets on February 3, leaving a wake of political graffiti on the freshly painted walls of the historic center.  A popular graffiti message stated that fresh paint cannot cover up spilt blood, hinting that the conflict is far from over and that the violence of last fall has not been forgotten.

Right now it is difficult to say what will happen in Oaxaca. On one hand there is “normalcy”, even the visible police presence is much less than it was one or two months ago, although during the above mentioned march an operation of approximately 2,000 police sealed the access points to Oaxaca’s center square with metal gates and barbed wire. 50-60 people still remain imprisoned, and there are many people still unaccounted for, though according to Sara Mendez of the Oaxacan Network on Human Rights “it is hard to determine an exact number because many people are still in hiding.” According to Mendez the important dynamic to watch in the next months is the electoral process which is “historically violent in Oaxaca, and probably will be even more so this year.” Elections will take place in Oaxaca in both August and October for the state congress and 152 town governments. The APPO has been actively debating if they will officially join the electoral process as a strategy to oust Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. “If they were able to get a majority of seats in the state congress, most likely the governor’s days would be numbered,” said Miguel Angel Vasquez of EDUCA (Services for an Alternative Education). The APPO announced this week that they would not officially take part in the elections, however people involved in the movement might participate as individual candidates. As many predict, violence will once again be on the rise in Oaxaca throughout the upcoming months, and we can only hope that the US takes human rights as seriously in their trade-partner Mexico as they do in Venezuela and Cuba.

Illusions of Normalcy and the Violence behind Radishes and Tortillas

There is a media campaign throughout Mexico advertising that Oaxaca is once again safe for tourists. The buildings are freshly painted, the Federal Forces have left only a skeleton crew in the city (State Police have taken their place), and the media frenzy from past months is gone. Friends from the U.S. have written saying that there is not much in the mainstream media anymore about Oaxaca, just that the situation has been resolved. Though the Mexican media campaign may be right about Oaxaca now being safe for tourists, the conflict itself is clearly far from being over—as demonstrated in this synopsis of events that have happened in Oaxaca since we last wrote:

December 23 is the day that every year artisans display radish sculptures depicting Oaxacan traditions such as candelas (popular religious processions), folkloric dance, and town fiestas. This year the APPO planned to have an alternative “Night of the Radishes,” sculpting different events of the conflict ranging from satirical renditions of the governor and helicopters to coffins representing those who have died in the conflict. A State Police operation early in the morning of the twenty-third sealed off the anticipated venue, the plaza in front of Santo Domingo church, and stopped it from happening. Later that day, the APPO was able to have the event in another smaller plaza, although surrounded by State Police clad in anti-riot gear.

On December 31, authorities forced prisoners released from the Tlacolula prison (three hours south of Oaxaca city by car) to sign a document accusing Yesica Sanchez Maya, coordinator of the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights in Oaxaca, of inciting violence during the events of November 25. Immediately, civil society organizations condemned this, calling for the safety of Sanchez Maya and stating that it represented the on-going pattern of harassment and threats against human rights defenders.

In early January, 20 Triqui indigenous communities, all associated with the APPO, declared themselves autonomous. Regionally they are located in the Mixteca, close to the border with the state of Guerrero. They will no longer respond to municipal governments, who they say are part of the state’s power structure, but to the newly formed autonomous municipal government of San Juan Copala.

On January 4, 5, and 6, a municipal police operation attempted to stop an alliance of organizations from collecting toys for children who were either victims of the conflict or who were from popular neighborhoods or communities. January 6, El Dia de los Reyes Magos or the Day of the Three Kings, is the traditional day during the Christmas festivities on which gifts are exchanged in Oaxaca. They were still able to give out gifts to the kids, but were again forced out of the Santo Domingo plaza and surrounded by dozens of municipal police. Police justified their actions by stating that they were trying to make “the city safe for tourists.”

On January 7, a detained university student accused the Federal Preventative Police of sexually abusing “at least 15 prisoners” while being transported to the state of Nayarit following the detentions of November 25; his accusations include instances of forced oral sex. This comes along with a steady flow of human rights violations reported by prisoners of the conflict, including torture, being held incommunicado, physical and psychological abuse, and constant intimidation. Local, national, and international human rights organizations, including a mission from Europe, The Civil International Commission of Human Rights Organizations, are documenting the testimonies and denouncements. The Federal Government said it would investigate all accusations “on a case by case basis.”

Currently family members of prisoners have established protest encampments in front of the Oaxaca state prisons in Tlacolula and Miahuatlan, only to become victims—just like their incarcerated loved ones—of the most recent round of overt police repression. On Saturday, January 13, State Police broke up the protest outside of the prison at Miahuatlan, beating the participants and detaining 8 of them.

Most prisoners were transferred from Nayarit to Oaxaca in late December. One hundred three prisoners detained after November 25 have been released; 59 remain behind bars. The family members in protest say that the Federal Government promised to release “all prisoners of conscience and political prisoners” before the first of the year. “So,” they ask, “why are our family members still here?”

The Federal Government cancelled negotiations scheduled with the APPO on January 8. The Ministry of the Interior said that the APPO did not provide a proposal for state reforms from which they could make a counter proposal. They said that the APPO was coming to the table with their principal demands—the resignation of governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the release of all political prisoners, and the lifting of all arrest warrants against people in the movement—but that these were already in process and their solutions already being investigated. The APPO responded that, by canceling negotiations, the Federal Government was “minimizing the conflict.” The State Council of the APPO has begun the process of defining their next “general offensive” so their demands would be met, including the ninth mega-march planned for February 3. The council also said that it would come up with a concrete proposal on state reform in order to continue negotiations.

Accusations of rights violations, APPO participants’ ongoing strategizing, the constant floundering of negotiations, and ongoing repression have all taken place in the midst of 2007’s first major economic disaster for Mexico’s poor: the skyrocketing prices of tortillas. Prices have risen from 6 pesos (about 60 cents) a kilogram (2.2 pounds) to anywhere between 10 and 15 pesos (between about $1.00 and $1.50) a kilogram, depending on the region. This blow is felt particularly hard by the poor majority of Mexicans, as a worker earning minimum wage (approximately 48 pesos or about $4.80 a day) has to use 20 percent of his or her salary to pay for this basic staple of the Mexican diet. Many blame the dismantled agricultural sector (many corn farmers have migrated and given up farming in light of cheap market flooding by large corporations) and the monopolizing of the industry by huge companies (such as U.S. grain giants Arthur Daniel’s Midland and Cargill), which are both direct results of NAFTA and other neoliberal economic policy measures. The sudden leap in tortilla prices is fueling popular protest around the already polarized country.

Alberto Gonzales and Eduardo Medina Mora, Attorney Generals of the U.S. and Mexico, respectively, met recently and agreed to increase bi-national cooperation against crime. Though the assumption is that they were talking about drug-trafficking, one has to wonder if Oaxaca’s APPO and other massive popular movements throughout Mexico, fueled by increasing economic violence, were also on their minds.

First WfP Delegation on the Oaxaca Conflict Amidst Conflicting Atmosphere in the City

In a matter of days, the face of Oaxaca’s historic center has gone through a striking transformation. Walking through the streets of downtown, pedestrians duck under or spill into the streets to avoid the dozens of ladders propped against the city’s main colonial buildings, supporting workers applying fresh coats of brightly colored paint. It’s incredible how fast the “cleansing” of the city has taken place, washing over layers of political graffiti and leaving behind a deceiving calmness that suggests the now over six-month conflict has ended. As the holidays approach, the traditionally tourist-filled season begins to welcome a handful of foreigners, who even in their small numbers seem a surprising sight after months of their vacancy. Huge celebrations of annual festivals for the Virgen de Juquila and Guadalupe give way to processions, pilgrimages and huge firework blasts in the streets into the early hours of the morning. To someone just arriving, it even seems conceivable that she/he could at first remain relatively unaware of the events of the past months. With just a slightly closer look however, one would surely note the continued presence and concentration of the Federal Preventative Police in strategic areas of the city, and the continuous patrols of bands of state, federal and—after dark—armed civilian-clothed groups. If out in the streets on or after December 10th, one would also surely observe the first major mobilization since the events of November 25th: a march organized to coincide with the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to demand the release of all political prisoners of the conflict; as well as the fresh trail of graffiti left in its path. These signs allude to the other face of the city, one that reveals the climate of intense fear and intimidation under which many leaders of civil society organizations, members of the social movement, and human rights defenders have been living. Many of them have been forced into hiding due to threats of arrest warrants, testimonies of arbitrary detention and charges, torture in police custody, and many people whose whereabouts are unknown. Though numbers vary, an estimated 300 political prisoners are now in state and federal prisons (including as far away as Tepic, Nayarit), which include teachers removed from their classrooms during the school day, youth without ties to the movement randomly arrested in groups on the street, and principal APPO leaders such as Flavio Sosa, who was apprehended upon leaving a press conference at a human rights organization in Mexico City. According to papers, federal officials also recently entered the state attorney general offices in Oaxaca, arresting five city police and confiscating arms that may have been used against members of the APPO. The APPO responded by criticizing the operation for targeting low-level officials instead of pursuing intellectual authors responsible.

Also not immediately evident among the newly arrived tourists is the presence of foreigners who have come on behalf of international organizations to observe, accompany and report on what is happening in Oaxaca. As a part of our mission to study the impacts of U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, Witness for Peace hosted its first delegation focused on U.S. policy links to the Oaxaca conflict. This pioneering group of 16 delegates from various parts of the US dedicated a week to investigating the conflict firsthand and seeking out root causes linked to neoliberal economic policies promoted by the US. Meetings were held with various actors associated with the conflict including human rights organizations, family members of victims, those involved in the reconciliation process and representatives of the business sector in Oaxaca. The group looked at the events of the conflict with relationship to issues such as migration, NAFTA, privatization, connections between economic and military violence, U.S. foreign aid (including potential military and police training), the extraction of natural resources, and the influence of U.S. expatriate communities. Delegates are currently finishing a report of their findings, which will be posted on the WfP website shortly.

The traditionally vibrant, contrasting colors used to accent buildings in the principal avenues of downtown are a strong metaphor for the divergent realities that currently exist in Oaxaca. As more and more reports of human rights abuses and deeper structural causes of the conflict begin to seep out of Oaxaca, the city continues with efforts to go on with daily life. Though on the surface level the city appears to be returning to “normal,” just on the outskirts remain signs of graffiti on street walls that serve as graphic reminders of the vast number of those affected by the conflict and who are currently in hiding, detained, missing or have fallen victim.

The Witness for Peace Mexico team would like readers to know that although we will be taking a break over the holidays, we will continue to monitor the conflict and update this blog upon return.

Witness for Peace Partner Organization Threatened in Midst of Escalating Tensions

On Monday, November 27, Citizen Radio, a radio station said to be operated by supporters of the governor, called on people to take over and burn the offices of the Oaxaca non-profit organization Servicios para una Educación Alternativa (EDUCA), which has been a close partner organization to Witness for Peace. The radio accused EDUCA of using its office to manufacture Molotov cocktails for the APPO, and they specifically announced the name of their director as the person responsible for it all. EDUCA maintains strong relationships with prominent organizations on a local, national, and international level, all of whom know the organization´s work and know these accusations are false. The non-profit was founded in 1994 and grew out of the Youth Ministry of the Archdiocese of Oaxaca, and is focused on working with the most marginalized sectors of the Oaxacan population—indigenous peoples, small farmers, and women. Their work includes promoting citizens´ rights (including political, economic, and social rights), autonomy in indigenous communities (including a school which promotes the training of local indigenous authorities), and community economies, which promote local markets and networks which benefit Oaxaca communities (for more information about EDUCA, see www.educaoaxaca.org). The false accusations about EDUCA on the radio is one more example of the current climate of tension and psychological warfare which has clearly intensified in the last week.

On Saturday, November 25th the seventh APPO mega march, consisting of a stream of people 8 kilometers long, culminated in the city center in an attempt to create a human fence for 48 hours around the Federal Preventative Police (FPP). At about 5 pm the battle began. The FPP attempted to break up the human barricades and released teargas and threw rocks at the protesters. A five hour confrontation followed: protestors were teargassed, rocks were thrown by both sides, cars and buses burned (reports of up to 40), and government offices torched. The FPP set fire to the APPO encampment near Santo Domingo church, and armed gunmen in civilian clothes fired shots from the ethno botanical gardens in Santo Domingo. More than 140 people were injured, with reports of up to 150 people detained, 39 people disappeared, and three deaths, although the deaths have yet to be confirmed.

On Monday, November 27th, 141 detainees from Saturday’s confrontation were transferred from a prison outside of Oaxaca City to a medium level security prison in the far away state of Nayarit. The federal government has said that it considers all detainees to be very dangerous. The head of the FPP has announced that there will be no more tolerance for protest and that people involved will be punished. In addition, he announced that FPP will begin to implement over 300 outstanding arrest warrants and search for APPO members. Patrols by the local and state police and the FPP continue each night (and day), searching for presumed movement members. Police have also set up check points on main roads in the city and are searching public transportation with lists in hand of presumably guilty parties. The Oaxaca Network on Human Rights has denounced arbitrary detentions and is stating that the situation in the center of Oaxaca City is one of extreme violence. The APPO decided not to rebuild their encampment outside of Santo Domingo church, for fear of another violent encounter with the FPP. Tensions are expected to increase as December 1st nears and president-elect Felipe Calderón takes office amidst intense political division in Mexico.

EDUCA has closed their offices for the week, as a precaution against possible attacks, and human rights organizations are demanding the respect of the physical and psychological integrity of the director of EDUCA, as well as its entire staff. How can such a well respected, well established, effective organization such as EDUCA be victim of such unfounded criticism and violent threats? What effect does a threat to an organization fighting for the rights of the most marginalized people in the region have on civil society as a whole? Witness for Peace has had the honor of working with EDUCA for over 5 years, and are inspired by their dedication to continue in the struggle for justice for all peoples. A threat to our community of organizations working towards a more just world is a threat to all.

New U.S. Warnings, Renewed APPO Strategies, and Reinvented State Rhetoric on the Death of Brad Will

On November 15, the U.S. State Department reissued a travel warning for Mexico (effective until January 18, 2007) speaking not only of escalating violence in Oaxaca, but of chances of danger in any part of the country, with new emphasis on Mexico City due in part to the bombings on November 5th (see our blog entry on the bombings below). However general and sweepingly devastating it may be for Mexican tourism, the warning nevertheless recognizes the concurrent political unrest of both the Oaxaca situation and the political actions intended by many citizens, led by lawmakers and activists, to impede president-elect Felipe Calderón’s inauguration on December 1st.

How the federal government and its armed forces will respond to the increasingly nationalized political pressure and social tension remains unknown. The state government of Oaxaca, however, continues its line of self-legitimization and anti-APPO rhetoric. Oaxaca Attorney General Lizbeth Caña recently argued that U.S. reporter Bradley Will (killed October 27) may have been shot at pointblank range by persons at the barricades who were participating in a premeditated plot that was intended to internationalize attention on the popular movement. Caña’s claim comes despite the existence of clear video footage of armed gunmen, some of whom have been identified as plainclothes municipal authorities, firing in Will’s general direction.

Yesterday in Oaxaca, ongoing tensions were manifest as a large march of APPO supporters once again faced off with the Federal Preventative Police (FPP) in the city center. The FPP, confronted by protest chants demanding their departure, began to hurl stones at the crowd; when the protesters responded in kind, the police stones turned to tear gas canisters. The number of injured persons is unknown.

At the same time, in order to show that the government has been rendered ineffective, thousands of APPO supporters and members of the Section-22 teachers’ union attempted to impede governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz’s annual ceremonial delivery of his state report to the legislature. Protestors used the context of the event to demand both the governor’s resignation and the federal government’s removal of the FPP. Ruiz did not deliver the document or its corresponding address in person.

These protests and altercations come directly after the completion of the APPO’s statewide congress, in which the leadership decided not to reinitiate the thus far failed negotiations with the federal government and instead to reestablish barricades and “moving brigades” to take control of and shut down state buildings and offices. A major component of the strategy in the coming days includes the creation of a “human fence” around the city center to isolate the FPP, with the intended result being their forced de-occupation of the city.

Las Abejas Arrive in Oaxaca Fasting and Praying for “Peace with Justice”

Las Abejas, renown for their nonviolent struggle for indigenous rights in Chiapas and their suffering as targets in the 1997 Acteal massacre, were the first to demonstrate in the militarized city center of Oaxaca on November 11th.  As the principal members of the Chiapas Caravan for Peace and Solidarity with Oaxaca, nearly 250 members of the Abejas community arrived after having trekked for days from Chiapas, packed tightly into the beds of pickup trucks and enduring several mechanical problems along the way.  The Abejas-led caravan arrived to express that they have fasted and prayed that “peace with justice may arrive here in Oaxaca.”

Upon first contact, the Federal Preventative Police (FPP) refused passage into the Zócalo for the Acteal visitors, in response to which representatives of the Abejas group declared that they would perform their ceremony for peace in the street directly in front of one of the main FPP barricades.  Officials finally let them pass, and the police stood vigilant in tight ranks as the pilgrims proceeded to the portico of the Oaxaca cathedral, where they lit candles, played music, danced, and sang for peace and “sufficient political will” on the part of state and federal governments to solve the crisis.  The colors, rhythms, and melodies of the Abejas contrasted starkly w