Mexico Week In Review: 12.04-12.10

[from Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS). Thanks!]

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1. OAXACA UPDATE I: LEADER ARRESTED IN MEXICO CITY
2. OAXACA UPDATE II: SECOND MEETING WITH GOV'T ENDS IN FAILURE
3. LA OTRA UPDATE: TOUR ENDS BACK IN MEXICO CITY
4. CALDERON PRESENTS BUDGET
5. BORDER NEWS: OAS NAMES U.S. GOVERNOR AS MIGRATION ENVOY
6. TWO ARRESTED IN JOURNALIST'S DEATH
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OAXACA UPDATE I: LEADER ARRESTED IN MEXICO CITY

Federal police in Mexico City arrested Flavio Sosa, 42, and three other leaders of the six-month protest late Monday. The men had traveled to the Mexican capital to hold talks with officials of the federal Interior Ministry. The talks began with other protest leaders. Sosa faces a variety of charges, including kidnapping, arson, vandalism and assault. "This is a bad sign," Zemen Bravo, the elected leader of the protesters, told reporters shortly before entering the Interior Ministry building. "They are hostages. But there is a social movement that will know what lesson to draw and continue protesting."

Some human rights activists said that the arrests indicated how Mexico's new interior minister - Francisco Ramirez, who took office with President Felipe Calderon - will deal with dissenters. "He's an enemy of human rights," said Adrian Ramirez, president of the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights, a Mexico City group involved in Oaxaca. "He's proving it through his first actions just four days after taking office," said Ramirez, no relation to the interior minister.

The Interior Ministry said that it would give priority to talks to find a solution to the Oaxaca standoff. Referring to Sosa's arrest, the ministry's statement said the government is committed "to the firm application of the law and to our existing legal framework."
In other Oaxaca news, assailants shot dead an Indian activist police said. It was not clear if the killing was related to months of political violence in which at least nine other people have died. The bullet-ridden corpse of Raul Marcial Perez was found Friday (12/08) on a road near the Mixtec Indian community of Agua Fria about 120 miles north of Oaxaca City, state police said in a news release. He had been shot earlier in the day, it said. Marcial Perez had been involved in disputes involving two rival Triqui Indian rights groups, but it was not clear if that was related to his slaying.

Sources: Houston Chronicle: 12/06; Associated Press: 12/10
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OAXACA UPDATE II: SECOND MEETING WITH GOV'T ENDS IN FAILURE

A second meeting between the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) and the present Mexican administration concluded without agreements on the conflict in that Mexican state. In the meeting the APPO demanded the release of 138 individuals charged of committing violent acts on November 25 in the capital of that demarcation.

The government limited itself to receiving protests issued by the organization as the meeting was agreed to have dialogue character and a possible stage for the negotiation of any solution. The APPO confirmed it would carry out the peaceful march set for December 10 and intended to demand the release of the arrested individuals. With that objective, they said, all preventive measures will be taken. Representatives of the Executive and APPO leaders agreed to meet on December 12 again to analyze the denunciations on human rights violations issued on Friday.

Source: Prensa Latina: 12/09
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LA OTRA UPDATE: TOUR ENDS BACK IN MEXICO CITY

After a long journey into the forgotten corners of the country of Mexico, the Zapatista Other Campaign tour begun on January 1st finally came to an end" and a new beginning. To celebrate, adherents of the Other Campaign met together Mexico City to compare notes and shed light onto some of the results of the tour. The theme, the Other Campaign and the Anti-Capitalist Struggle, brought together eight panelists who addressed these topics to a full house, not a single chair left empty. Four of the panelists were the first four delegates of the Sixth Commission of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, in its Spanish initials): Delegado Zero, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos; Delegada Una, Comandanta Grabiela; Delegado Dos, Comandante Zebedeo; and Delegada Tres, Comandanta Miriam. Other representatives as follows: Rosario Hernandez, of the Independent Francisco Villa Front, Luis Alfonso Vargas of the Party of Mexican Communists, Sergio Rodríguez of Rebeldia magazine y Lucas Alvarez of Socialist Worker Unity.

The panelists each identified capitalism as the overriding cause of the problems that the Mexican people and environment are suffering today; the grievances heard over the past year by Delegate Zero on his nationwide listening tour. Vargas mentioned how since the end of the Cold War, capitalism has been presented to the world as the only natural and inevitable option. Since this system, according to Vargas, is based in exploitation and the sale of merchandise, it causes the destruction of natural resources and an even greater class struggle. He proposed that the only way out of this situation will be the destruction of the capitalist system, and described how the protests are growing around the world. "Now not only poor people are standing up against it, but people of all classes and especially indigenous people, immigrants, human rights organizations and more." The movement against capitalism, Vargas said, is beginning to take the offensive.

Next Rosario Hernandez remembered that in the year 1810 Mexico fought for its Independence from Spain, and one hundred years later in 1910, came the Mexican Revolution against another dictatorship. Now, as 2010 approaches, the Other Campaign is laying the groundwork to vindicate those victories. "We have hit the limit of the disappearance of people, of land, and of culture, and every day the riches of the country are held in fewer and fewer hands." She declared capitalism to be like a cancer that destroys all of the natural wealth that is Mexico. "Capitalism has converted everything into merchandise: education, politics, even man himself. It is a crucial element of this system to destroy anything that is different, especially anything rebellious, and within this, to erase the past itself. Ignorance, by way of historical amnesia, serves as one of the principal weapons that allows for the continuation of this system. Erasing the history of centuries of humiliation, of people forced to sell their land and of people killed in the struggle, makes the current destruction appear isolated and alone. Another weapon is the institutional violence that causes anyone who acts out against the system to be followed, jailed, disappeared, or assassinated." But in spite of all of this systematic oppression, Hernandez points out a search for the real past that is still exists, even if underground. "We are learning today from The Other Campaign how many silent struggles are going on across the country, that don't appear in the official data. We are recognizing the honest struggles, and these people are not alone". Today we are constructing a new form of politics, of uniting our strengths, together."

Alvarez followed this notion of the formation of a new politics, from the Zapatista uprising in 1994, and the subsequent struggles over international trade policies. "Free trade served to deepen the political struggle against capitalism." He mentioned the fact that students, now upon graduating, have no place to go to find a job, no place to create a better condition of life for this country, and for the defense of the mother earth. "Now what we have to do is find the links, the connections between all of these different struggles we have seen in this tour around Mexico. The left has to unite within itself against capitalism, to join together all of the different positions within the leftist movement."

Rodríguez of Rebeldia talked about the importance of defining what it means to be anti-capitalist, and in this way defining exactly what is capitalism and neo-liberalism. "Today we are living a global offense of exploitation, of being kicked off of our lands, and of a development of politics that will destroy us." The politicians, he continues, are now the "worst" or the "not as bad", and either way they continue taking everything from us, little by little. "The only way that we can confront this is by struggling for the impossible or in other words, the necessary." Rodríguez also talked about how the only politics that exist now in Mexico are the politics that give everything over to the great capital, making this country subordinate to the United States. Every time the demands are more and more intense, now creating a cultural crisis. The tenets of the Other Campaign, to unite those from below and to the left, are the destination of those searching out an alternative. "The possibility does exist, when we are able to join together all of our efforts."

Delegada Tres, Comandanta Miriam, spoke on behalf of the Zapatista Sixth Commission. She said the EZLN is on alert for all of the political prisoners of Atenco, and all of the women raped there. "We see how the government has not been able to find a solution to the demands. We are not going to leave them alone. We must continue to organize ourselves. We also are organizing against the capitalistic system, which for us means only pain, hunger, oblivion and inequality." Comandanta Miriam also focused on how important it is to fight for the lands, and for fair salaries, even if it does provoke repression. "They are trying to finish off our culture and our collective way of working, through privatization of our natural resources, by giving us transgenetic seeds, all from those rich countries, the capitalists. Every time the prices rise for things we need, and our salaries are lower and lower. They are making our youth learn English and the ways of individualism, this is what they put in the minds through the educational system." She spoke to the need to understand the collective way of working, as a method within the struggle. "The politicians talk about democracy, freedom and truth, but we know this is nothing more than talk and a manipulation of information. They want to fool us once again. We have to show them our ways, which don't depend on institutions or on individuals. Our future is up to us, it depends on how we want it to be." Miriam ended her speech by saying- "Keep heart! Don't ever stop struggling. Soon this capitalist system will fall."

Subcomandante Marcos spoke next, introduced by Miriam as "the person we have put in charge of the work of the Other Campaign." Marcos began by addressing the situation in Oaxaca, the hundreds of people who have been illegally tortured, beaten and jailed, young, old, children and grandparents. "Brothers and Sisters," he called out to the crowd, "this attack against Oaxaca cannot be forgotten, EZLN calls on all people to initiate the following demands: One, the presentation of all of the disappeared peoples, alive. Two, freedom for all of the political prisoners. Three, the immediate exit of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. And four, the recognition of all the wrong doing that has happened to the people of Oaxaca. Oaxaca is not alone."

Next he referred to the entire journey of the Other Campaign, over 45,000 kilometers, in land that we now can call "from below". Marcos talked about how this force is growing so much that it can't even be contained by the country of Mexico, that to the North of the Rio Bravo there exists another Mexico, "one that we are not going to lose." He continued: "We cannot continue resisting separately, each person from their own place. We must unite ourselves." He talked about how in each of the different eight corners of Mexico they saw people from below, criminalized for fishing, for taking care of the land, for struggling to maintain their territory. He talked about how the great machine of the north is making everything into merchandise, into property, into banks, malls- and all of the profits go to the foreigners. "We have returned to where we were in the 1900s, with the destruction of our land, our culture, our collective way of working, the destruction of our women, the lack of appreciation of our elders, and the merchandising of the youth. All of this, including the lack of maintenance of our educational system and the social security system, is for the benefit of the grand capital extranjero." Delegate Zero finished his speech by saying how it was more common in the North to find women as the bosses, but that this strong indigenous woman of the North, and her struggle for indigenous rights, was not created by the Zapatista Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle that began the Other Campaign, but, rather, that the Sexta serves simply as a call to get to know each other, to unite ourselves and to respond to the following questions. "Who are we", Where are we", How does it look" What do we want" How are we going to get it"" He called upon all to meet this Monday, December 4th to begin to discuss the answers to these questions. He also called upon the importance of creating a movement within the Other Campaign focused upon the following issues: 1) the high costs of electricity around the country. 2) the state and care of the environment, and, 3) the importance supporting small businesses instead of multinational corporations. "The hour has come," announced Marcos. "It is time to wake up. It is difficult to distinguish between day and night when everything appears to be a pre-dawn, but now is the time to recuperate our shadows. We have to awaken."

Delegado Dos, Zebedeo, rose to invite everyone to the meeting with the Zapatista communities and with countries from around the world, in Oventic, the heart in the center of the Zapatista territory, December 30 to January 2. "So you all can get to know us directly, but it will not be just to get to know people, but also to see how we work: Our good health, our autonomous education, our basic alimentation, and our healthy justice. This is a new practice of government, a healthy government. It's our new form of politics, our new way. Never will it be through the current political system, with big business. We are witnesses to the lies. We are sure that now is the time to plant the seeds, to create anew. We will make the rich people shake in their boots. Then we will see each other also in July of 2006, for the Intergalactic again in the Zapatista communities. We will be waiting for you all with open arms."

Finally, the last Delegate stood to speak, with an obvious smile not well hidden behind her black mask. Delegada Una, Grabiela said "We are here because we have completed our work. El Compa, Marcos, has now finished his tour. Now we get to return, but you all will not remain alone. Other compañeros will come. Do not fear the government. We will continue advancing in our struggle. We must give our whole heart to this struggle. Now we can return happy to our communities." She caused the entire audience to laugh by admitting that she was going to say other things, but she forgot it all. "It doesn't matter", she proclaims, "I am just so happy with you all and for this reason we can now go home. Redouble your efforts, friends, and stay optimistic."

Source: NarcoNews.com: 12/03
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CALDERON PRESENTS BUDGET

Mexican President Felipe Calderon - under pressure to promote the social programs his leftist rival championed - presented an austere budget that increases spending for social programs to help the country's poorest. The $205 billion budget includes a 10 percent reduction in Calderon's salary and that of other top government officials. The salary cuts would free up about $2.5 billion in the next year, or enough to build about 2,500 schools. Calderon also promised to send a government spending bill to Congress that builds long-term savings. "I'm committed to transparency and accountability," he said.

Former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who lost the July 2 election by less than one percentage point and is leading opposition to Calderon's administration, made slashing government salaries a central theme of his campaign, along with increased spending on social programs for the elderly and the poor.

Calderon, who took office from outgoing President Vicente Fox, wants to increase spending on education by 4.2 percent and on health programs by 9.3 percent, in part to fund the expansion of a program that offers insurance to the poor. Other areas that will receive more money in the budget are housing and public safety. Calderon has promised to crack down on corrupt police and rampant kidnappings and drug murders, and to increase the salaries of the lowest-paid members of the police, army and navy. Calderon called for combating tax evasion and said the budget supports the creation of small and medium businesses to create jobs. The budget anticipates 3 percent inflation and 3.6 percent growth in gross domestic product. Calderon said his proposed budget, which represents a 9.4 percent increase over the 2006 budget, was realistic in the context of international finances, including a projected decrease in the U.S. economy's growth as well as a drop in oil prices and in Mexico's oil production capacity next year.

Lopez Obrador, who pledged that as president he would cut top government salaries by half, called Calderon's proposed 10 percent cut a "farce," noting that even after the reduction, the new president would still earn three times more than the president of Chile and nearly twice as much as the prime minister of Spain. Calderon's salary has still not been announced, but Fox earned about $245,000 this year. After a 10 percent cut, that would be $220,500. By contrast, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet will earn $72,000 this year, while Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will make $117,000. President Bush makes $400,000 annually.

Calderon, who campaigned on promises to aid the poor through job creation, has come under pressure to focus more heavily on social spending in an effort to steal some of Lopez Obrador's thunder and earn the support of the 14.7 million Mexicans who voted for the former Mexico City mayor. Regardless of whether the budget cuts produce the savings Calderon anticipates, they are unlikely to have a major impact on the rest of the government's economic activity, said Mario Correa, an economist at Scotia Casa de Bolsa in Mexico City. "I think it's more likely a clear message about the social objectives that President Calderon is trying to meet," he said. "And in that sense, it is a positive message that he is very conscious that Mexico is a country that still has a lot of needs and setbacks and that he is going to focus on attending to those."

Source: Associated Press: 12/05
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BORDER NEWS: OAS NAMES U.S. GOVERNOR AS MIGRATION ENVOY

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a former UN ambassador, was named as the Organization of American States' special envoy on migration in an effort to improve US-Latin American dialogue. The appointment came amid heated debate in the United States over illegal immigration, as US lawmakers consider proposals to deal with the 11.5 million undocumented workers, mostly Latin Americans, living in America.

"The migration issue is key to improving relations (between Latin America and the United States," Richardson, 59, said at a news conference alongside OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza. "Dialogue and democracy are very important and I hope to help the secretary general with advice and trips to countries to improve dialogue," he said in Spanish. Richardson said he was ready to visit leaders who have been critical of the United States in hopes of improving relations. "I know president (elect of Nicaragua Daniel) Ortega, I know (Venezuelan) President (Hugo) Chavez, and I will go to any country," said Richardson, whose mother is Mexican.

Richardson, whose state borders Mexico, rejected plans backed by President George W. Bush to build a huge fence along the US-Mexico border to stop the flow of illegal immigration. Instead, he called for comprehensive reform to regularize undocumented workers. "Two things must take place. One, a plan to legalize the 12 million (illegal) immigrants in the United States, and I think that it is important to improve border security," he said, pointing to the need for increased patrols and more cooperation with Mexico. Richardson was a UN ambassador and energy secretary under former president Bill Clinton. The Democrat has not ruled out running for his party's nomination in the 2008 presidential election.

Source: AFP: 12/07
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2 ARRESTED IN JOURNALIST'S DEATH

A journalist killed last week apparently was not the main target of the attack, authorities said. A preliminary investigation indicated that two suspects arrested were not after 32-year-old reporter Adolfo Sanchez Guzman, but the second victim, said Jaime Pizano of the district attorney's office. The bodies of Sanchez Guzman and Cesar Martinez Lopez were discovered near Ciudad Mendoza, 75 miles west of the port city of Veracruz. Sanchez Guzman's abandoned car had been found two days earlier.

Sanchez Guzman worked for the Veracruz affiliate of the Televisa television network and reported for a radio station and an Internet news site. Initially there was some speculation that his killing might have been related to his work. Since 2004, at least 13 journalists have met violent deaths in Mexico, presumably as revenge for unfavorable reports on criminals, drug traffickers and corrupt government officials.

Police arrested Juan Carlos Palestino, 30, and Julian Rosas Palestino, 34, after witnesses said the two brothers had been looking for Martinez, Pizano said. The brothers had accused Martinez of stealing their truck, Pizano said. Investigators believe Sanchez Guzman had been giving Martinez a ride to a car repair shop. Sanchez Guzman was shot twice in the back of the head at close range, and Martinez was shot once in the head, police said. Both had been tortured before they died, Pizano said.

Source: Associated Press: 12/05