Massacre in Chiapas: 6 women, 3 men, 2 children

Massacre in Chiapas: Six Women, Three Men, Two Children, Assassinated in
Montes Azules

Indigenous Communities and Human Rights Organizations Warned State and
Federal Governments of Threats, but Authorities Failed to Act

By Al Giordano
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Chiapas

November 13, 2006

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

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

* Marta Pérez Pérez

* María Pérez Hernández

* María Nuñez González

* Petrona Nuñez González

* Pedro Nuñez Pérez

* Eliver Benítez Pérez

* Antonio Pérez López

* Dominga Pérez López

* Felicitas Pérez Parcero

* Noilé Benítez (8 años)

* A recently born infant yet to be baptized

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

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

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

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

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

Early Warnings

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

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

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

The Frayba Center stated in its July 19 alert:

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

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

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

The report concluded:

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

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

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

Escalating Aggressions

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

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

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

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

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

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

It says:

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

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

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

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

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

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



--
compadre,
if i injected my flesh with silicone
did hundreds of situps a day
wore lacey push up bras
got surgery to correct my Asian single-eyelid
wore subtle lipstick, concealer, & gloss
made my gaze bruised with shadow & mascara
wore dainty stilleto heels & flippy skirts
got some hips
would you buy me then?

hermano, does market follow demand, or demand follow market?
i want to be the white girls of your wet dreams with million-dollar
prosthetic bodies, $40,000 makeovers, features imprinted on your cock
by billion-dollar industries

I am beautiful in my mind until you choose them instead slap my ugliness to my face

and you tell me you don't understand this kind of competition!
i didn't write the rules of this game you don't recognize
you just follow the market, the ads, the art, the enterprize...
shaping the sadness of my sickness

Sisters, come together & incite refugees of false dreams to unite.

inciteboston.blogspot.com