CNTE: Negotiations or Burnout?

Por

24 August, 2016

August 18, 2016
Translated by El Enemigo Común

Oaxacan teachers and community members know that it was the assassination of 10 common citizens during recent mobilizations, primarily in Nochixtlán on the 19th of June, which drew the attention of national and international press to Oaxaca and the CNTE´s struggle, and which gave way to the re-initiation of dialogue committees and government negotiations with the teachers.

Through several sessions in three different dialogue committees (the political committee, the educational committee, and the social committee), on Tuesday the 16th of August the political committee closed its session with no further solutions resolved between the Secretary of Governance and the CNTE. Meanwhile the CNTE´s assembly, which took place on the 17th of August in Mexico City, agreed upon the re-activation of blockades of major roadways throughout the state of Oaxaca. They also agreed to not beginning the new 2016-2017 school year until their demands are met.

On the other hand, the spokesperson for the Section 7 from the state of Chiapas, Pedro Gómez Bahamaca, stated that the union gave the government an August 22nd deadline to give a favorable response to their demands; otherwise “we have decided to continue an indefinite strike, which includes not returning to work nor initiating the school year.” The states of Guerrero and Michoacán will also be joining the indefinite strike.

“The government is clever and is trying to wear us out and divide us. That is why they created the political committee, the educational committee, and the social committee”, pointed out Marcelina Linares Arrollo to Avispa Midia. She is a PTA member who participated in the Nochixtlán dialogue commission with the federal government regarding the assassinated and injured.

Vicente Mateo Rodríguez Manzano, member of the Asunción Nochixtlán Popular Committee and one of the attorneys who aided families of the assassinated and injured, expressed that the state had to weaken the escalation of demands regarding not only the abolition of the education reform, but also the abolition of the structural reforms as a whole, which has now become a popular demand for the people of Oaxaca. “The first division was created when the government opened separate negotiating committees for the injured and the teachers as if the situations were separated. The situation in Nochixtlán is rooted in the teacher´s struggle. The end result was the government taking the injured to Mexico City and the people of Nochixtlán no longer had a voice to demand justice. Once again they are trying to divide us”, stated the attorney for Avispa Midia.

Despite being persecuted and harassed by unknown individuals, Linares speaks with indignation and determination about her experience during the negotiations with the state. “There is nothing happening within the committees. When you sit down to speak to them there is no seriousness, respect, truth, or commitment. All they are looking out for is who they can buy out and who they have to look out for. That is what they created the committees for. That is what I felt when I participated. If the negotiations were public, only then would they offer a serious commitment”, declared Linares.

“We know the government´s strategies very well. They co-opt, they persecute selectively, they harass, they buy off leaders or incarcerate those who won´t sell out or will not follow their orders,” Linares added.

Hacienda-Blanca-barricade-oaxaca-teacher

What is left to be done

Linares insists that if the people of Oaxaca and Mexico do not take the reins of this movement there will continue to be cases such as in Ayotzinapa which exist in impunity to this very day. “Today we are strengthening ourselves as parents of students along with the teachers. In addition, as communities with our municipal and agrarian authorities and with organizations, because the government will not stop until they have divided us once again.”

Linares makes a call: ”We ask that the community not stop struggling, and we have to raise the blockades once again throughout Oaxaca. People are still not taking into account the serious impact of the structural reforms. The education reform is just the tip of the iceberg. We will not forgive or forget nor will we rest until the structural reforms fall apart,” declared the mother.

No to Murat taking office

As part of the agreements taken during the teacher´s state assembly in Oaxaca the 12th of August, the teachers have agreed to continue meeting with municipal authorities from Oaxaca´s 8 regions this Saturday the 20th. Another decision was to “not allow the new governor to take office.” Incoming governor Alejandro Murat is set to take office the 1st of December, 2016.

The reform is an international doctrine

There are 11 reforms which accompany the educational reform as part of the Programs for Structural Adjustments (PAE) set into motion by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Inter-American Development Bank. These reforms were set into motion prior to the 2008 economic crisis. They follow the line of thinking espoused by Milton Friedman, the ironclad economist who promoted neoliberal politics through terror and violence in Latin America. He argued that it is important to “wait until a crisis is taking place or a state of shock is initiated, to then sell to the highest bidder the pieces of the state to private agents while the citizenry is recuperating from the trauma, in order to ensure that the reforms will be permanent.”

Terrorized by Police Raids and Mass Displacement, Rio Prepares for Olympics

Por

Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F

16 July, 2016

Translated by Martha Pskowski prepared this article for publication in English.

At least 77,206 people have already been displaced from Rio de Janeiro as the city prepares to host the Olympic Games on August 5-21, and police raids -- predominantly against Black youth in favelas and working class neighborhoods -- have intensified.

According to Larissa Lacerda, a member of the Rio Cup and Olympics Popular Committee, since the start of 2016, police raids in the favelas have provoked mass killings of poor, Black youth. Lacerda's organization is a collective that brings together unions, NGOs, researchers, students and impacted communities. She said she expects the situation to only get worse in the final days before the start of the Olympic Games, just as abuses worsened before the Panamerican Games and the World Cup.

"We are seeing an increased militarization of the city, in the context of a violent and racist security policy that particularly impacts Black youth who live in working class neighborhoods and favelas," Lacerda told Truthout. "These youth are murdered on a daily basis by police. But everyone is impacted by these policies that are based in fear, that create walls, both visible and invisible, and promote the social and spatial segregation of the city, and the increasing criminalization of social movements."

The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro will be the first Olympics to be held in South America specifically and only the second Olympic Games to be played in all of Latin America (with the first being in Mexico in 1968). Rio's transformation began with the World Cup in 2014. The projects undertaken for the World Cup -- including modernizing sports facilities, new transportation infrastructure, urbanizing marginal neighborhoods, and the restructuring and beautification of public spaces -- supported Rio's bid to become the host of the Olympic Games as well.

Since Rio de Janeiro was selected as host, mass media, politicians and various analysts have emphasized the benefits of increased investment in the city. In contrast, activists and social organizations have decried the mega sporting events as a direct attack against the most vulnerable sectors of Brazilian society.

Displacement and Police Raids

The Rio Cup and Olympics Popular Committee has reported that at least 22,059 families -- in total 77,206 people -- were displaced in Rio de Janeiro, between 2009, when Rio was chosen as the Olympic host, and 2015.

While the government avoids providing official statistics about sporting events, based on research in their communities and state statistics, the Popular Committee estimates that at least 4,120 families have been displaced and at least 2,486 more are at risk of displacement due to the infrastructure projects required for the Olympic Games.

The majority of displacement takes place in neighborhoods where real estate speculation has led to big returns for investors. In the past three years, the value per square meter of real estate in Rio de Janeiro has increased on average 29.4 percent, but there are some parts of the city, such as the Vidigal favela, where it has gone up as much as 481%. Of Rio de Janeiro's 11.8 million residents, between 1.5 to 2 million are spread between 900 to 1,000 favela neighborhoods. The favelas are settlements characterized by informal buildings, low-quality housing, limited access to public services, high population density and insecure property rights.

"The relocations related to the Olympic Games have affected thousands of families through coercion and institutional violence, gravely violating human rights,"
SAYS THE POPULAR COMMITTEE'S REPORT.

Brazilian authorities, to guarantee their bid for the Games in 2009, promised improved public security. According to the Brazilian government, public security planning began with the Panamerican Games in 2007 and the 2014 World Cup.

Youth are murdered on a daily basis by police.

Meanwhile, an Amnesty International report, "Violence is not part of this game! Major risks for human rights violations in the 2016 Olympic Games," warns that Brazilian authorities and the Olympic organization have put into practice the same security policies that led to an increase in murders and human rights violations by security forces since the 2014 World Cup.

Since 2009, police have killed 2,500 people in the city. "Justice was served in a small fraction of these cases," argues Atila Roque, Executive Director of Amnesty International in Brazil. The vast majority of the victims have been Black youth in favelas and working class neighborhoods.

Authorities recently announced that close to 65,000 police officers and 20,000 military troops will take part in security operations during the Olympics, making it the largest operation in Brazilian history, according to Amnesty International. The plan foresees part of this security force carrying out raids in the favelas. In the past year there have been high rates of human rights violations in the lead-up to the Games, with continued murders of youth in the favelas.

"Social Sanitization"

Since 2011, to prepare the city for mega sporting events, what Lacerda terms "social sanitization" operations, including clearing homeless children and youth, have taken place in areas in the city with tourism potential.

"In spite of the difficulties in obtaining specific statistics, reports have increased from youth and also adults who live in the streets," explains Larissa Lacerda.

The UN Committee on the Rights of Children, in its 2015 report on issues facing youth in Brazil, denounced the government initiative to "clean up" the city for the 2016 Olympics and issued the following call: "The Committee is very concerned with the high number of children living in the streets who are vulnerable to extrajudicial killings, torture, forced disappearance, recruitment by criminal groups, drug abuse and sexual exploitation." The committee also indicated it is necessary to promote laws against arbitrary detention of youth in the streets.

A Failed State

A wall in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo: Aldo Santiago)

There is less than a month until the Olympics begin and Brazil is in the midst of a political and economic crisis, following the Senate decision to suspend president Dilma Rousseff for 180 days. Many people in Brazil and internationally consider Rousseff's ouster a coup d'etat. During the 180-day period she will be investigated for manipulation of public funds between 2014 and 2015.

"Rio de Janeiro is in the midst of a social and economic chaos," says Felipe Araújo, a resident of the Banqu neighborhood and researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. "Professors in the state system and at two universities have been on strike for more than three months. Teachers' salaries are frozen. Students continue to mobilize and demonstrate solidarity, despite the repression they have faced. The civil police are striking over their salaries and a lack of infrastructure, and the health system is in a serious crisis."

Meanwhile, Michel Elías Temer, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), affirmed on the day he assumed the presidency that the Olympic Games are an opportunity that "will improve the image" of Brazil and will contribute to "the international positioning of our economy."

The governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Francisco Dornelles, decreed a public emergency in the state's financial administration: The state was no longer able to maintain public services like health, transportation and education. Temer's interim government approved on June 22 a sum of $895 million for security and the completion of a subway line to connect visitors to the Olympic venues.

"The priority is not the people and their quality of life, but these big events, which in reality are a way to justify the flow of public resources for construction, favoring the contracting companies and a supposed growth in the tourism sector. In practice, this does nothing to help poor people, because all of the income is concentrated in big companies,"
SAYS ARAÚJO.

In terms of public security, it is important to mention that Brazil does not have riot police. It is the military that is sent to the streets to contain social discontent. Brazil's military structure was inherited from the coup d'état in 1964 and leaders were trained according to US and French military doctrine. This repressive and abusive legacy is on display today.

The United States suggested anti-terrorism security measures to Brazil, which appear to have been very influential in mega sporting events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics.

In 2010, under former President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, Brazil signed a cooperation agreement with the United States which allowed for the US company Academi, previously known as Blackwater, to train the military police to prevent terrorist activities during the World Cup and the Olympics. Even though during the World Cup there were no terrorist attacks, in the Olympics the interim president is adopting the same discourse.

Unfulfilled Promises

A favela in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. (Photo: Aldo Santiago)

The state's expressed motive is security, which has justified increased segregation of rich and poor in the city. Yet the Popular Committee shows in its report that the authorities are not complying with the majority of its promises to improve quality of life in the city.The projects that they are carrying out lack a basic respect for human rights.

Rio de Janeiro's government promised, for example, a "revolution in public transportation" in the infrastructure projects for the mega sporting events. However, the Popular Committee shows that the enormous investment in public transportation is distributed unequally. Investment only benefits a small portion of the population, concentrated in the rich neighborhoods of the city. Meanwhile, transportation lines that connect the rich neighborhoods with poor neighborhoods have been cut.

Working conditions have also suffered. For example, the Popular Committee denounces the repressive measures the government has taken against street vendors. This is due in large part to the construction of exclusive commercial zones, promoted by FIFA and its sponsors, surrounding the sports stadiums.

Another serious human rights violation, reported by the Public Labor Ministry of Rio, was carried out by Brazil Global Services, one of the construction companies contracted to build the Olympic Village. The company held 11 workers in conditions that the Public Prosecutors office compared to slavery. They were held in a house that was infested by cockroaches and rats and reeked of backed-up sewage.

According to the Committee report, since the selection of Rio to host the Olympics, environmental protection has been lauded as an important component of the construction projects. However, among other damaging projects, the Transolympic Via, which was built for the games, resulted in the destruction of 200,000 square meters of the Atlantic Forest. These projects violate the same environmental laws that in other instances have been used to justify the violent expulsion of entire communities in the name of conservation and to combat global warming.

According to Larissa Lacerda, the Olympic Games' legacy in Rio de Janeiro will be an even more segregated and exclusionary city. "Olympic City's design was premised on the deepening of socio-spatial inequalities, and it was built on a foundation of a policy of 'cleaning up' the city," she said.

Published in ⇒ Trutout

Sylvia Federici: Primitive Accumulation of Capital and Violence Against Women

Por

Avispa

13 July, 2016

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An interview with Sylvia Federici, during a stop in Quito, about primitive accumulation and violence against women

"You destroy a community by terrorizing its women."

By Manuel Bayón, for Agencia Tegantai

Translated by Brian Gruters

Agencia Tegantai: You describe in Caliban and the Witch the connection between violence against women and the origin of capitalism. How should we view this connection today in Ecuador when abortion is criminalized at the same time as the petroleum and mining industries are expanding?

Sylvia Federici: There’s a direct relationship between what the State is trying to do today, not just in Ecuador but at an international level, to expand its control and vigilance over women's bodies, the drive toward extractivist policies, and as a consequence, an increase in violence against women's bodies. It is an increase that begins to resemble femicide because quantitatively and qualitatively it has no precedent. The number of women who were beaten and killed, and the appalling nature of the violence, make it appear that this is something new in our time. I believe that the common element is in the attempts by governments today, in the new wave of primitive accumulation, to extend control over all natural resources and all territories, rural and urban, as well as over women's bodies. Capitalism, the governments that represent it, and the objectives of capitalist investors, have attempted to control women's bodies because they see them as a natural resource, a tool for the production of a workforce and something that should be controlled.

AT: How do they achieve this control over the production of new bodies for capitalist labor at the same time that they unleash violence against women?

SF: Today, at the international level, control over women's bodies and over procreation does not appear in a single form. In some places women are sterilized. During the ‘90s a policy of the World Bank was adopted at the international level, which was called population control, because it accused women of producing too many children. Women were accused of causing poverty in their communities. And for that reason they adopted a policy of sterilization. And in other parts of the world women are required to procreate. The common theme is that the State wants to control the bodies of women, just as it wants to control natural resources and territory. Regarding the land, an extractivist policy of the sort that is being applied today, as destructive as mining or petroleum are, truly requires the control women and attacking them directly. Through violence against women you destroy the resistance of the community.

AT: So then for extractive capital, is violence against women among the main strategies of territorial control?

SF: They try to displace entire populations from their ancestral lands in order to excavate petroleum, diamonds, or coltan, and in doing so they terrorize women. It's what happens today in so many parts of the world: this unjustified terror, which appears to be an end in and of itself, is so disproportionate. Because women are generally unarmed, they don't pose a threat to any community, but nevertheless they are killed, tortured...it's appalling. Rita Segarro has spoken about this on many occasions and has said some very interesting things, highlighting that today violence against women is not just domestic violence, but rather public violence, violence that comes from paramilitaries, which is connected, with its deepest roots in this extractivist policy, in the objective of general population displacement. You destroy a community by terrorizing its women.

AT: What is the role of women against this looting, against the destruction of communities?

SF: This is another reason for the violence against women: they are on the front lines in the defense of the commons. Women are not only victims of violence, but are particularly victims of violence because they are on the front line in the defense of the earth, the forest, and ancestral knowledge. It’s really important to highlight this. And also because women, more than men, are defending the noncommercial use of natural resources. They are defending, for example, the organization of resistance. And in much of Africa, subsistence farming is carried out by women. This is a true war by the World Bank against the subsistence agriculture. The World Bank that accuses women of producing too many children and impoverishing their communities with excessive procreation also accuses women of being tied to this backward method of cultivation and production. According to the World Bank, only money and business create social prosperity, and it accuses women of being tied to subsistence agriculture, and that this is the cause of poverty in their communities. For this reason it has pushed programs such as microfinance, which has been a complete disaster because it has not reduced the onset of poverty, but rather has increased it, creating a whole population of indebted women.

AT: One fundamental thesis of Caliban and the Witch is that the counterrevolution that initiated capitalism required patriarchy in order to be effective. Does this mean that we must do away with inequality in order to do away with capital?

SF: This is the challenge, the most important question facing us. I have always said that capitalism's power is not solely in nuclear bombs, prisons, and torture, but, more importantly, the divisions that capitalism has created historically within the global proletariat. Divisions in labor hierarchies allow the creation of different experiences, different realities, which permit the delegation of power to banks and salaried workers, the power to control women, people of color...

AT: How can we confront these divisions in order to strengthen our unity in the fight?

SF: We can confront them in various ways. One that I learned from my experience with the feminist movement is that those who have the least amount of power must be capable of organizing themselves autonomously. The feminist movement was born in the United States among women who had become active in various mixed movements--the antiwar movement, the student movement, organizing for civil rights--always realizing that they were unable to speak, analyze their specific situation, their specific exploitation. Because in this mixed organizing no room was given to the exploitation of women. When women left these male-dominated organizations and began to unite amongst themselves, there was an explosion of creativity, because when they began to share their experiences they realized that the problem was not caused by individual shortcomings, and that they were confronting a common concern. This allowed them the ability to think about the struggle. At the same time, this was important because sharing their experience and analyzing their situation allowed them to discover an entire history, and an area of exploitation, that until then had been obscured. If women had remained alone in mixed organizations, an entire area of capitalist exploitation would have been ignored and would have continued. Capitalism would have been able to continue with this form of exploitation. The same thing happened with the struggle for civil rights in the United States. The Black Power movement was when black people began to organize autonomously. This does not mean that you can't have common struggles or that unifying should not be an objective. But we can't organize ourselves around unity that doesn't exist, one that is an affirmation of the interests of those who have the most power.

AT: What is the role of men in overcoming these hierarchies that might reestablish unity against capitalism?

SF: It's also clear that the difficulties of the feminist movement should be concerning to men as well. Femicide is not just a problem for women. Women suffer directly, but it's also a problem for men. Today it is very important for men to organize themselves, educate other men, and mobilize themselves. Why is there no men's march against femicide? Why is it women who always must march against femicide, or against other forms of exploitation of women? Why don't men march in support of abortion, or in support of women controlling their own bodies? The mobilization of men against these examples of patriarchy would be extremely important. We women we have been waiting a long, long time for men to mobilize, because this problem is not one women should face alone. Through this type of exploitation, capitalism has spread its roots into the body of the proletariat at large, not just the bodies of women.

Published June 2, 2016

México: Documentary of Nochixtlan, Oaxaca Land of the brave people

Por

Avispa

10 July, 2016

The following documentary is a collection of testimonies from the people of Nochixtlán who lived through the massacre of June 19, 2016, where the police assassinated at least 11 protesters. After several attempts of negotiation by the government, with the family members of the dead, the people of Oaxaca maintain their position of rejecting both the Educational Reforms and the Structural Reforms.

“We don’t negotiate with our dead, rather we ask the federal government to leave, and the state government to move aside, because they don’t know how to govern the people and communities of Oaxaca,” said a mother who was part of Nochixtlán’s committee to dialogue with the federal government."

México: Nochixtlán, The Toll of an Attack Denied by the Interior Ministry

Por

Avispa

3 July, 2016

By Regeneración Radio

Translated by Tucson ABC

The morning of June 19, the Ministry of Public Security of Oaxaca (SSP-O) and the Federal Police (PF) perpetrated a coordinated attack to evict the highway blockade maintained by the students, teachers, and inhabitants of Nochixtlán. The result was 12 murdered, 27 arrested, 7 disappeared, and 45 injured, 37 by live ammunition from firearms.

An act of war they are trying to hide

Faces illuminated by the heat of the barricade, which would later be deprived of life. Tense days in Nochixtlán. A tense calm. In the mornings, the cold is accompanied by coffee, bread, or atole, the result of collective organization. By night, military harassment and the absence of sleep, but also music and a determination to defend education.

To block the road only to police and transnational businesses was the agreement. After all, the blockade had been initiated to impede the flow of police who were intending to evict the encampment in the center of the city of Oaxaca.

In the collective imagination, an eviction or an attack similar to those that had come before was assumed – reason for staying alert – not a massacre, not an operation with helicopters, firearms, and police with the order to “shoot to kill”.

More than 800 members of the Federal Police arrived in Nochixtlán at 8am on June 19. The first attacks took place with tear gas and rubber bullets, but the Mixtec residents were able to repel them with clubs, rocks, and the defining feature running through their veins: Oaxacan resistance.

The first injury by firearm was the sign that the police were carrying guns and had complete permission to fire them. “They’re shooting bullets, man,” shouted a resident while guiding the first of the wounded, who later would be added as one of the 12 killed, a massacre they try to undermine, a massacre denied even as the proof is there, despite the dead that are there. A massacre that would not appear in the “official truth,” that which is so full of lies and contradictions.

A face, a life snatched away, a name worthy of being spoken

The hours passed. The attack seemed to be endless. Slowly, a few at a time, the bodies were falling. “There go two more, they’re killing us,” announced a mother. The number increased along with the uncertainty. No one knew the exact number of dead for almost the entire day. They suspected six. The first images began to circulate on social media. Mixtecs whose lives were snatched away by the state exposed in photographs that similarly took away pieces of their dignity.

Ten fell on the day of the attack:

Andrés Aguilar Sanabria was 23 years old and taught indigenous education in his community. A bullet ended his life.

Yalid Jiménez Santiago was 29 years old, father of a family, originally from Santa María Apazco, Nochixtlán. The church bells rang as a call for help at the barricades. Yalid responded to the call, and was driving his truck there when the Federal Police opened fire.

Anselmo Cruz Aquino was 33 years old, in his free time he went around the Mixteca region and enjoyed riding his motorcycle. He worked as a shopkeeper in Santiago Amatlán.

Jesús Cadena Sánchez Meza was 19 years old. He was a student in Asunción Nochixtlán. He was killed by gunfire.

Oscar Nicolás Santiago was 22 years old. He was a campesino originally from the municipality of Santiago de las Flores Tilantongo. Member of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE). He was wounded during the attack by a .38 caliber pistol. He was denied medical attention at the Nochixtlán hospital, as the police took over the place for hours. He died due to hemorrhaging caused by a bullet.

Iralvin Jiménez Santiago was 29 years old. He was a health counselor from Santa María Apaxco.

Omar González Santiago, 22 years of age, an employee of the municipality of Tlaxiaco.

Antonio Pérez García, a high school student.

Oscar Ramírez Aguilar, 25, a native of Asunción Nochixtlán.

Silverio Chávez Sosa, a campesino from San Pedro Ñumi, Tlaxiaco.

Two more wounded died the following day in the Huajuapan hospital:

After the attack in Nochixtlán, in Hacienda Blanca, helicopters fired tear gas grenades for more than two hours. A fatal environment, one in which Azarel Galán Mendoza, a young, 18-year-old mechanic was killed by the Federal Police when a bullet pierced his chest near the Viguera intersection.

César Hernández Santiago was 19 years old. He was wounded by Federal Police gunfire in Nochixtlán and later transported to Huajuapan. He died in the city’s hospital.

“We want a cleaned out Nochixtlán. We don’t want murderers like those they sent who came and killed our loved ones”, said the father of Yalid Jiménez Santiago. The caskets of the fallen are in the city center of Oaxaca breathing out atmosphere of indignation and fury. Hundreds of people shout “Murderers!”

Oscar’s father said that his only objective was to defend public education for his children. “We want to raise a new generation of children that know how to express themselves and defend their rights. They want to silence us with machine guns, their parents will be remembered by history”, he concluded.

The day has ended, but for the families the pain of knowing that the state had taken their loved ones had only just begun. A girl cried, grasping the coffin where the body of her murdered father rested. Her father who sought a just education for her, a future. Who will offer her justice? Who will return her father to her? Her father who should have died of old age, with a cane in his hand, with gray hair, wrinkles accompanying his smile when he returns home in the afternoon, or when he announces “we won the battle against the goddamn state”.

Arrests and disappearances

“They told us that if they disappeared and burned 43, what couldn’t they do to us?” recounted Oscar Bautista Sarmiento after leaving the State Police headquarters in Santa María Coyotepec. Twenty-seven of the arrested were released late in the day on June 21, after more than 24 hours imprisoned, accused of resisting arrest.

There is also talk of seven forced disappearances: Ángel Santiago Hernández, Juan Velasco Méndez, Daniel Medina, María Carrillo, Gustavo Moreno Bravo, Inocente Pinacho, and Alejandro N., all of whom have been missing for three days.
BACKGROUND: THE OAXACAN BARRICADES BURN

June 11: Arrest of two leaders of Section 22 of the CNTE: Francisco Villalobos Ricárdez, Organization Secretary, Rubén Núñez Gines, Secretary General.

In the afternoon three highway blockades are erected in Oaxaca: Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Tuxtepec, and the city of Oaxaca outside of the Oaxaca State Institute of Public Education (IEEPO). Federal forces arrived at nightfall and evict the teachers of the third blockade, firing tear gas and beating them.

June 13: The highway blockade in Nochixtlán put in place to impede 12 trucks of Federal Police heading to evict the encampment in the city of Oaxaca.

June 14: In the first minutes of the day, 13 barricades burn at different locations in the city of Oaxaca. At this point it is no longer just the teachers union, as residents, teachers, students join and a Parents Committee is created.

June 15: The 13 barricades remain in place: Nochixtlán (three points), Teotitlán, San Gabriel Mixtepec, Santa Catarina, Juquila, Amiltepec, Tlaxiaco, Miahuatlán, Salina Cruz, San Pedro Tapanatepec, Juchitán de Zaragoza, Matías Romero. After their failed attempt to reach the city by land, the Federal Police begin to arrive by air.

June 16: Federal forces, military police, and the army arrive at Tequisistlan (Matías Romero) and evict the blockade with tear gas and rubber bullets. The residents put it in place again.

June 17: Federal Police attack the blockade at Zanacatepec (Isthmus of Tehuantepec). They use tear gas, rubber bullets, and two helicopters. The blockade is reinstalled.

June 18: Federal Police attack the CNTE’s blockade at Salina Cruz (Isthmus of Tehuantepec). The resistance is able to force the police to retrea

Published June 22, 2016

México: In Oaxaca, Police Threatening the Relatives of those Killed by the Government

Por

Renata Bessi y Santiago Navarro F

2 July, 2016

Translated by Scott Campbell

It has been more than a week since the massacre of June 19, perpetrated by the Mexican state, which gave the order to the Federal Police to retake control of this state. There is still no justice. The toll continues to climb, 12 deaths recorded so far, dozens disappeared and at least 100 wounded by firearms. On top of dealing with the aftermath of the deaths, now the relatives of the dead and wounded are being threatened so they don’t take any legal action. This was reported by lawyers advising the families.

“There is fear because there have already been threats directed towards the families and the prisoners who were arrested. They even arrested twenty people who were in the municipal cemetery digging a grave to bury a family member who passed away on June 18 due to causes unrelated to this situation. They tortured them during transport and they were held in the state police barracks for more than two days and in the end they released them and told them to go, that nothing had happened. Things are not so simple", said Mariana Arrellanes, a lawyer with Section 22 (of the teachers union) in Oaxaca.

While preparing this report a neighbor from Nochixtlán approached us and gave us a list of those wounded by weapons fire, she did not want to give her name for security reasons. “There are at least five with bullet wounds, but they don’t want to go to the hospital out of fear. Because family members are already getting threats for filing complaints,” she said.

Later, research for this report led to the collection of statements from some inhabitants of Nochixtlán, whose names are not mentioned for security reasons, who maintain that those “at the ISSSTE (health clinics for government employees) in Nochixtlán told them that they had to be operated on in the city hospital and if not, they would die.” The wounded rushed to the hospital but were received by the state prosecutor to take their statements. Four of them returned to Nochixtlán and only one was operated on.

Barricada-Nochixtlan2 — Photo by Santiago Navarro F

Torture and irregularities

The lawyer states that the Federal Police performed acts of extreme torture on all those arrested in Nochixtlán and in the city of Oaxaca. For the first four detainees, there is not even a document stating that they were arrested, she says. “They just opened the doors and let them go because they were the most badly injured, they could not physically hide the kind of torture they were subjected to. They are willing to file formal complaints but there are also fears due to the threats, but we are not going to allow more impunity,” Arrellanes adds.

The lawyer discusses the irregularities in the investigations being carried out by the authorities. Bringing the prisoners before the appropriate authorities took more than 24 hours, for example. According to the new criminal justice system, immediately upon arrest they should have been brought before the appropriate authorities. “For us, they had been disappeared. In that moment, we filed a motion seeking protection from forced disappearance and a complaint seeking protective measures for them, to be presented alive in front of an official and for them to be released,” she adds.

Arrellanes is concerned with the chain of investigation. She notes that the autopsies and chain of custody have been irregular. “We have realized that there are irregularities in the compiling of the investigatory file. There is no chain of custody for the objects that were used, such as bullet casings. They haven’t safeguarded any of these things and this worries us because we don’t want history to repeat itself, where they take away a body with one gunshot wound and later two or three more appear. The chain of custody is not working,” the lawyer said.

Access denied to justice and healthcare

According to the lawyer, the Federal Judiciary suspended its work on the days of the incidents and during those moments “they denied us access to justice, because we tried to file an injunction against forced disappearance and there was no district judge.”

It was the same with access to healthcare. “The hospitals closed and that went for everybody. The Oaxaca Health Ministry will have to answer for the people who died due to lack of medical attention.”

Strategy of war

It is clear that the operation carried out in Oaxaca by the Federal Police was premeditated from the start and nothing was spontaneous. It is not news that the leadership of the army and federal police have received training in the United States in line with the Mérida Initiative agreements for the war against drug trafficking, the same ones who carried out the orders in the State of Oaxaca.

The first strategy deployed in this operation is one of the principles of US military doctrine, a media war, carried out through the manipulation of information in the media. In this case, they use this strategy to legitimize the Educational Reform and so justify the use of public force, and delegitimize the demands of the teachers.

In a second phase, this strategy of social control turned into psychological terrorism in Oaxaca. They took over the signal of the teachers’ radio station (Radio Plantón) and later that of Radio Universidad. Meanwhile, on social networks and in the corporate media, information circulated that “the Marines and the army were having confrontations with the teachers,” that “trucks with heavy artillery” were advancing on the city of Oaxaca. Before the federal police killed demonstrators, is was already on social networks that some demonstrators had “died in the confrontations” and they had been “infiltrated by teachers firing at the police.” However, in the images taken by various independent media outlets, one can see the police firing their weapons at people while the demonstrators take cover. The false alarms were immediately disproven by updates from independent media.

“It’s a dirty war where they are using terrorism to try to scare us. I can say that our young fallen were outflanked by the army. The death of each one of them is not by chance. Young people, 17, 19, 18, 25, and 32 years old. The youth have gained a strong consciousness through this struggle. There are young people today against schools bearing the name of Gabino Cué Monteagudo – governor of Oaxaca – because they don’t want the name of a murderer on their graduating class. Of course this is a media war using terrorism to scare us",
SAID ADRIANA MARCELINA LINARES ARROLLO, A MOTHER FROM TAMAZULAPAN, OAXACA.

The weapons didn’t appear out of nowhere and it was not a decision taken at the last minute. “They not only wanted to break up the demonstrations and blockades but wanted to generate terror so that the people would stop coming out into the streets to join this resistance. But the strategy has failed, now the people are angry and are ready for anything,” says a contributor to Radio Plantón who did not want to give his name for his own safety, as several members of that station have been threatened because they continue broadcasting.

“We demand the right to the truth. Who were those who gave the orders? Who allowed them to leave the barracks armed? Someone gave the order and that person is a high-ranking official. Because they didn’t pick them up passing by the store,” said the lawyer, Mariana Arrellanes.

The organizing of the people tends to aspire not to throwing out the governor, but going beyond that. “In Oaxaca there are experiences of self-government and the lessons from 2006 were precisely the experience of the assemblies, but we have to be aware of opportunists and those seeking to hop on the struggle that today is not only of the teachers but of the people of Oaxaca. We have to create processes of self-government and to not take any more of these corrupt and murderous governments,” the lawyer adds.

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