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Two Triqui Community Radio Re****ters Assassinated
Lawlessness, Assassination and Impunity in Oaxaca
By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
April 11, 2008
The Triqui indigenous community of San Juan Copala, which declared
autonomy on January 21, 2007, has suffered the bitter loss of two young
women. Felicitas Martinez, age 20, and Teresa Bautista, age 24, were
traveling in a rural part of Oaxaca state on route to the statewide
meeting “For the Defense of the Rights of the Peoples of Oaxaca,” when
gunmen opened fire on their vehicle late Monday. The gunfire killed the
two women, and wounded three others in the vehicle, a man and wife and
their three-year-old child, the Oaxaca attorney general’s office said in
a statement.
The office said the assailants used high-powered assault rifles in what
it described as an ambush. No arrests have been made. And to make a
point: in Oaxaca, daily assassinations occur of organized crime members,
narco-traffickers, wealthy people, business people, drug dealers,
indigenous people, of police and military officials, plus local and
international re****ters. Arrests are never made. Crimes are never
solved. The daily newspaper prints photos of corpses, newly discovered
or recently excavated, and that’s that.
Despite repeated condemnations by human rights groups within the state,
nationally and internationally, the government response is rhetorical.
Instead, the state of Oaxaca is highly militarized. While I sit at my
computer in the morning I hear the helicopters buzzing overhead, with
armed troopers hanging out the doors -- a bit of theater which serves
only to intimidate. The most publicized clean-up attempt thus far has
been to rotate military and police units in an effort to break their
allegiances with organized crime.
The two assassinated women worked for a community radio station called
“The Voice that Breaks the Silence” in San Juan Copala where activists
in January of 2007 declared San Juan Copala an autonomous municipality
in a challenge to state officials. This declaration included the local
Triqui movement united for struggle, MULT, which had been corrupted by
the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI, in its Spanish initials).
The new Triqui municipality, through its organization called MULTI (the
Independent United Triqui Movement for Struggle), called for union of
all Triquis and implicitly rejected the PRI and government paramilitary,
thus breaking their hegemonic control in the region.
The government of San Juan Copala employs the traditional indigenous
practice of usos y costumbres with a council of elders and open
decisions by the majority in assemblies. The autonomous community came
about as an act of rebellion against caciques and their hired guns, said
to be responsible for killing more than 60 Triquis in the Mixteco Baja,
twelve of which deaths occurred in 2006 during the teachers popular
movement.
The San Juan Copala municipality unified San Juan Copala, Yoxoyuzi,
Santa Cruz Tilaza, Guadalupe Tilaza, Tierra Blanca, Paraje Pérez, El
Carrizal, Sabana, Yerba Santa, San Miguel Copala, Yutazani, Unión de los
Angeles, Río Metates, Río Lagarto, Cerro Pájaro and Cerro Cabeza, among
others, for a total of about 15,000 indigenous people. The total Triqui
population is about 24,000.
The work of Felícitas Martinez and Teresa Bautista, who broadcast on the
frequency 94.9 FM, validated the autonomy of San Juan Copala, as does
the creation of community radios all over the state. These local radio
stations, whose efforts provide meaningful information, are frequently
shot up or burned down. The two MULTI broadcasters were scheduled to
participate in an indigenous statewide meeting entitled “Meeting for the
Defense of the Peoples of Oaxaca” in a worktable dealing specifically
with community radio. They left the radio station at 1:00 in the
afternoon of April 7, 2008 to travel to Oaxaca.
Omar Esparza of the human rights group, Working Together Center for
Community Sup****t, described the assassinated women by saying that they
“had gone out to re****t, to tape people. They were Indian re****ters.”
On April 9 and 10, 2008, that indigenous statewide meeting took place in
the Hotel Magisterio (the Teachers Union Hotel, site of many past
meetings for the social movement in Oaxaca) “to strengthen our struggles
and defend in an effective manner our rights, we convoke this state
Meeting.” (website OaxacaLibre. com). The worktables discussed the
following themes:
1. Community and alternative communication; community radio, video,
press and internet.
2. Community defense of natural resources: land, water, biodiversity,
air, woods, electricity and oil.
3. Repression of human and constitutional rights, freedom for political
prisoners; cancellation of arrest orders and presentation alive of the
disappeared.
4. Organization and social movement in Oaxaca, and construction of an
alternative organization by the people and for the people.
The meeting participants devoted a moment of silence to the assassinated
women. About 200 representatives of 43 indigenous organizations were
present, including re****ters, human rights groups, and community
authorities from around Oaxaca. Also in attendance were national
observers from Puebla, Veracruz, Mexico DF and Chiapas, as well as
international observers from the Basque Country, Canada, the United
States, Spain, France and Italy.
The speakers denounced the climate of repression, the militarization and
constant violence in the state in violation of human rights. The
community authorities of Yosotatu, a small Mixteca town, made public the
campaign of repression against them, which has put several of their
townspeople in jail and also caused the deaths of several land owners.
The most recent is the assassination of Plácido Lopez Castro, whose
killers have not been arrested. (What a surprise.)
The representatives of the community of Xanica denounced the
imprisonment of three of their companions and the privatization of the
River Copalita. The goal of the privatization is to provide water for
the mega-tourist project, Bahías de Huatulco on the Pacific coast of
Oaxaca. Further, several representatives of communities in the Isthmus
de Tehuantepec denounced the taking of lands by the Spanish businesses
constructing the wind electricity generators. The community
spokespersons said that threats and deceit has been used and now more
than 3,000 hectares have been occupied. Recently, 73 campesinos from the
Ejido La Venta were accused by the Federal Electric Commission of the
crime of defending their lands for common use.
The meeting proclaimed that this latest assassination, of the Triqui
women, will not go unpunished, and there will be an exhaustive
investigation on the part of the Special Commission for Crimes against
Journalists by the federal attorney general’s office (PGR). At the same
time the forum demanded that the government of Ulises Ruiz halt its
campaign of hostilities against San Juan Copala. It called for the
liberation of the political prisoners Pedro Castillo Aragon, Flavio
Sosa, Miguel Angel Garcia, Adan Mejía, Victor Hugo Martinez Toledo,
Miguel Juan Hilaria,Roberto Cardenas Rosas, Reynaldo Martinez Ramírez,
Juliantino Martínez Garcia, and of those of Yosotatu, Guevea de Humbolt,
Xanica, San Blas Atempa among others.
The seventeen Oaxaca indigenous groups participating, joined by two from
Mexico, were: Municipal Authorities of San Pedro Yosutatu, Autonomous
Municipality of San Juan Copala, Indian Organizations for the Oaxaca
Human Rights (OIDHO), Union of indigenous Communities of the North Zone
of the Isthmus (Ucizoni), Autonomous Magonista Collective (Cama), Center
of Community Aid Working Together (Cactus), Magonista Zapatista Alliance
(AMZ), Committee of Citizen Defense (Codeci), Committee for the Defense
of Indigenous Rights of Santiago Xanica (Codedi-Xanica), Union of
Indigenous Organizations of the Chinantla (Unorinchi) Council of
Indigenous Organizations and Products of Oaxaca AC (COIPAC), Indigenous
Zapatista Agrarian Movement (MAIZ), Front of the Peoples of the Isthmus
in Defense of the Land, Network of Community Radios of the Southeast,
Solidarity Group La Venta, Center of Studies of the Region Cuicateca
Tepeuxila, Commonwealth of San Juan Jaltepec Yaveo, Mexican Alliance for
Auto-determination of the People; from Mexico DF: Magonista Libertarian
Alliance (Alma), University Assembly of the UAM-A.
In a separate show of the necessity to unify the indigenous populations
against the lawlessness of Oaxaca, four municipalities of the Mixteco ,
Tezoatlán de Segura y Luna, of the district of Huajuapan; Santos Reyes
Tepejillo; San Juan Mixtepec and San Martín Itunyoso, of the district of
Santiago Juxtlahuaca, formally signed an agreement of “brotherhood,” to
constitute a Front of Municipal Presidents. Their objective is to
promote a regional project to benefit more than 150 indigenous
communities of the region, declared Lorenzo Rojas Mendoza, from the
municipality of Tepejillo.
A town councilor, Lorenzo Rojas Mendoza said that the inhabitants of the
region have many “past unmet demands,” so the four municipalities
decided to unify to further projects such as a hospital, schools, roads
and highways.
Rojas Mendoza stated that their priority is the construction, broadening
and paving of a road of approximately 30 kilometers to reach the head
town of Tepejillo.
The march commemorating the anniversary of the death of Emiliano Zapata,
with several goals, took place on April 10, repeating many of the
demands and ideas of the Meeting for the Defense of the Peoples of
Oaxaca. The march, a political event sponsored by the remaining Popular
Revolutionary Front-APPO structure, and Section 22 of the National
Education Workers Union (SNTE), demanded freedom for political
prisoners, cancellation of arrest orders, and the handing over to
Section 22 of about 80 schools still held by Section 59. Section 59 has
been screwed, because despite being hired by government agents, those
“teachers” never had a contract, and never were paid, except under the
table with cash for relatives of members of the state education board, I
was told by Section 59 members. They tried to emulate Section 22 tactics
by maintaining an encampment in the zocalo of Oaxaca, but were advised
to disperse prior to Semana Santa, the big Easter tourist week.
On the national level the Section 22 march protested “restructuring
reforms” (the privatization of PEMEX, the Mexican national oil company),
the Treaty for Free Commerce (TLC, or NAFTA), militarization, the
doubled cost of fertilizers, and demanded the repeal of the law of
ISSSTE which privatizes some social security benefits. A national work
stoppage is planned.
According to APPO spokesperson Cesar Mateos Benitez, the APPO condemns
the government for trying to link the APPO and the Committee of Women of
Oaxaca (COMO, a group of women who took over the state television
channel in 2006) with the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), which
constituted “the media assault of the week” in the mainstream Oaxaca
press. Along with organized crime, the PRI wing uses false accusations
to justify the militarization of the state, and to send in intelligence
or spy agencies. In other words, the propaganda justifies whatever
repression the government seeks, by linking the social movement to armed
revolutionaries.
An encampment presently in the zocalo next to the cathedral with
personnel from the Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR) demands the
presentation of the state’s disappeared, including the indigenous
Chatino man Lauro Juarez whose bones were presented, but not accepted as
authentic. Las Noticias (an article by Pedro Matias) re****ted on April 8
that another Chatino indigenous man was gravely wounded on April 6 by
the paramilitary run by the PRI operator Fredy Gil Pineda. Specifically,
the attack was carried out by a paramilitary group of about 100 persons
headed by Ponciano Torres Quintas. On March 30 they took over by force
the government building of Santa Maria Temaxcaltepec, throwing out the
actual president and illegally imposing as president this Ponciano
Torres, who is protected by Fredy Gil Pineda. The paramilitary pack
governs the region by violence, committing assassinations, arbitrary
detentions, etc.
This includes the disappearances of indigenous persons, one by one, a
genocide trickle.
To my eye, it looks very much like that with the failure of Oaxaca state
as a governable unit, the mini civil war that now prevails resembles a
turf-battle of human wolves, to control territory and money. This means
not only incoming federal monies and drug money, but even more, new
wealth to be extracted from geographical territory rich in natural
resources. Indigenous people remain, to the extent they have not been
driven to emigrate, as an obstacle to the exploitation of minerals,
wind, water, woods, petroleum, shoddy road and school construction, and
glittering beach-front resorts, in a grand sell-off to international
companies.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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