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NEWS & LETTERS, February 2008 - March 2008Our Life and TimesMexico today: repression and rebellionMexico City, Mexico--Three anniversaries of repression and impunity can tell us about the state of human rights in Mexico today: ACTEAL, CHIAPAS The left daily newspaper, LA JORNADA, carried a series of articles and commentary on the 10th anniversary of the uprising of the Indigenous people of Acteal when more than 40 unarmed Indigenous were murdered, including 21 women and 15 children. Some of the Tzozile peasants were Zapatista supporters. Many were members of Las Abejas (The Bees), a group active in a movement for peace and reconciliation in Chiapas. The killings were done with government complicity. A decade after the events, there has been no serious investigation of the role of then President Zedillo and his associates in the massacre. No charges against government agents except at the lowest level have ever been filed. In an effort to muddy the waters in relation to the government's intellectual, if not outright direct, responsibility for the events, certain intellectuals have been playing a game of distortion in recent writing with respect to the massacre at Acteal. SAN SALVADOR ATENCO A vicious attack, May 4, 2006, by local authorities against citizens in the community of Atenco resulted in two deaths, the sexual abuse of dozens of women, and some 200 detained. Many of those attacked were members of the Front of Peoples in Defense of the Land, a local activist group that was defending the rights of the community against government abuse, and were as well adherents of the Otra Campaign, the social movement organized from below by the Zapatistas. Because the activists from Atenco were determined to defend their rights and not to be passive victims, they were not only repressed by the government but vilified by the mainstream press and politicians for being "violent." The Zapatistas and the Otra Campaign came to their defense, exposing government agents as the real source of violence against the local population. The repression at Atenco did not come out of the blue. The local officials saw a chance to strike out against the people of Atenco and launched their murderous attack with the complicity of high officials when the Front sought to defend the protest of a nearby community. To this day no charges have been filed against the government for the murders and sexual abuse. A number of citizens of Atenco remain in prison on trumped-up charges. OAXACA, MEXICO A little over a year ago, at the height of the "Oaxaca Commune" against repression by Governor Ulises Ruiz, the Federal police intervened to suppress the rebellion with massive arrests and the murder of protesters. More than 20 Oaxaquenos, citizens of Mexico, teachers and activists in the movement were shot down by government authorities or their paramilitary compatriots during the months of the rebellion. Today Oaxaquenos still remain in jail, with new ones joining them as the state represses each new attempt at protest. These anniversaries and impunity take place in the context of the fraud that stole the election from Lopez Obrador and gave the presidency to Felipe Calderon. Mexico remains a land of authoritarian rule and repression. But there is an Other Mexico, el Otro Mexico of protest and rebellion. Its most significant manifestations reside in the Indigenous struggles in Chiapas and in Oaxaca. In Chiapas during the last decade, the autonomous Indigenous communities in support of the Zapatistas have constructed a life independent of what they term "the bad government." They have built their own education system, their own healthcare system and their own autonomous government in many villages and regions. In Oaxaca, the struggle of tens, and indeed hundreds of thousands, of Indigenous citizens, predominantly women--teachers, students, market people, peasant farmers, and some intellectuals--created a form of organization that was at once old and infused with new content, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). Despite the repression, it remains in existence, struggling to function. None of these forms--the Zapatistas, the autonomous Indigenous communities in resistance, the popular assembly in Oaxaca--are in themselves a new society. But they are the seeds of protest and rebellion, new ways of thinking and doing, which, in fusion with other human dimensions for a new society in Mexico, struggle to move toward an emancipatory future. --Eugene Walker |
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