'Dirty War' Returns to Mexico

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'Dirty War' Returns to Mexico

Postby StarmanSkye » Fri May 19, 2006 6:32 pm

Utterly horrific; The behavior of Mexican Troops in destroying property, indiscriminate shootings, mass-arrests, beatings, intimidation, sexual improprieties and rape as techniques to smash collective dissent and resistance may likely boomerang. Perhaps noteable is that the social protest the Mexican organized show of force with significant human rights abuses is intended to dissuade is indicative of growing social activism in the US, in response to heavy-handed anti-immigrant attitudes, racial-profiling, 'illegal' scapegoating, and pending police-state type legislation.<br><br>American corporate pillaging of Mexico's wealth and shameless exploitation of cheap-labour policies, along with severe economic hardships and displacements caused by unfair and unjust NAFTA trade agreements and IMF-imposed 'structural adjustments', and systemic corruption aggravated by the disasterous, immensely lucrative and hypocritical 'drug war' have helped create Mexico's class-war and human-rights crisis. The whole immigrant 'issue' is a red-herring that disguises the immense economic injustice and political illegitimacy that the US has played a leading role in. Mexico's 'dirty war' would seem to be an attempt by the corrupt PTB elites to eliminate the symptoms without addressing the root cause of Mexico's social unrest -- since that would require a massive change in the status quo and reforming Government to serve the People -- and not the ruling class and corporate interests.<br>Starman<br>******<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1831.html">www.narconews.com/Issue41...e1831.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>The “Dirty War” Returns to Mexico<br>San Salvador Atenco Attacks Follow Blueprint of Terror from the 70s and 80s<br><br>By John Ross<br>Blindman’s Buff<br>May 18, 2006<br><br>MEXICO CITY (May 20th): Between 1970 and 1982, three Mexican presidents waged a “dirty war” against dissidents from one end of the country to the next. Recently compiled documentation lists 15,000 illegal detentions during that terrible period, thousands of instances of torture, and the forced disappearance of more than 700 Mexican citizens (see “Disappearing the Disappeared” upcoming next week).<br><br>Nowhere was the dirty war more cruelly fought then along the Pacific coast of Guerrero state where farmers had risen in rebellion behind the rural school teacher-turned guerrillero Lucio Cabanas and his Party of the Poor. Carlos Montemayor, author of “War In Paradise,” perhaps the most vehement expose of that repression, is an assiduous scholar of how the dirty war in Guerrero was organized and carried out.<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.narconews.com/images/imc_mexico_atenco1.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>(See link for more Photos: Indymedia Mexico)<br><br>Writing in the left daily La Jornada, Montemayor recently described the characteristics of that counter-insurgency campaign against farming villages along the Guerrero coast, and the striking similarities to the May 4th assault on San Salvador Atenco just outside of Mexico City by thousands of highly militarized police to quell a campesino rebellion.<br><br>According to Montemayor’s description, first an overwhelming force is assembled with the primary mission of totally subjugating a recalcitrant population. Then informers are introduced into the village to identify and eliminate rebel community leaders and those associated with them. If the leaders evade capture, their families are held hostage. Young men are rounded up and selectively tortured to extract information and to turn them into “soplones” (informers.)<br><br>Meanwhile, shock troops terrorize the civilian population into submission. Indiscriminate beatings, home invasions, the theft of personal items of value, and the systematic destruction of property are encouraged by police commanders. Women are raped and sexually abused to underscore the occupation force’s total domination over the rebellious villagers.<br><br>Virtually all of these dirty war characteristics were on display in San Salvador Atenco May 4th when 3000 armed state police and elements of the Federal Preventative Police (PFP), a force largely extracted from the Mexican military, slammed into that dirt-poor town of 30,000 out on the dried lake beds east of the capital, killing one 14-year-old, leaving a 20-year-old student hovering between life and death, and arresting 209, all of whom required hospitalization from the beatings they received under security force batons – although only some prisoners actually received it (and they were chained to their hospital beds.) Of 47 women arrested, 23 reported that they had been raped or were otherwise sexually abused. One 53 year-old mother who had gone to a local store to buy a birthday present for her son was forced to perform oral sex on three police “officers” to avoid arrest.<br> <br>Those arrested included farmers and farm women, human rights observers, lawyers, alternative reporters, non-Mexicans, and adherents of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation’s Other Campaign who had traveled to San Salvador Atenco in solidarity at the urging of former EZLN Subcomandante Marcos, now doing business as Delegate Zero. All were originally held on charges of participating in an organized criminal conspiracy, a crime that mandates a 20-year sentence.<br><br>One object of such collective repression, noted Montemayor, is the identification and elimination of local leadership. In Atenco, the most identifiable voice of the farmers’ rebellion is Ignacio del Valle, a leader of the Popular Front for the Defense of the Land whose militants picked up their broad machetes three years ago and successively defended the town’s corn lands from expropriation by President Vicente Fox for a new, multi-billion dollar Mexico City International Airport, thereby incurring the undying scorn of the president and his cronies who stood to make a killing on the deal.<br><br>Nacho del Valle and his second-in-command Felipe Alvarez were captured on the first day of the fighting and immediately clapped into Mexico’s maximum lock-up at nearby La Palma on “kidnapping” charges that evolved from an acrimonious February meeting with Mexico state officials – the charges carry 30 to 50 year prison sentences. 26 other members of the Popular Front have since been incarcerated on the same charge.<br><br>As per Carlos Montemayor’s script, Del Valle’s immediate family was singled out for special repression. Their home was destroyed by invading police and one son was disappeared for several days until he turned up badly beaten in a Mexico state prison. Nacho’s daughter, América, increasingly the spokesperson for the Popular Front to Defend the Land, has been forced into hiding.<br><br>In classic dirty war mode, police brought in ski-masked informers who went from house to house pointing out Popular Front sympathizers. Police broke down doors and invaded private homes without warrants, firing weapons, beating the residents bloody, and smashing the furniture into kindling.<br> <br>At least 23 complaints of sexual assault including seven rapes – one boy was sodomized with a police baton – have been registered with the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the non-government Miguel Pro Human Rights Center. Most were victimized on an horrific six hour ride between Atenco and a local Mexico state prison during which police “officers” pawed women, ripped off their underclothes, masturbated openly, and in serial rapist fashion, forced their victims not to look at them to prevent identification.<br><br>Lorena, a diminutive 22 year-old “adherent” to the Other Campaign, tells of being beaten and manhandled by arresting officers and then thrown into a truckful of women prisoners who had been beaten so badly that their blood covered the floor of the vehicle. Ordered to lie face down on top of the injured women, one police “officer” ripped off her pants and upon discovering that she was menstruating, began beating her, screaming that he would make her “really bleed.” Later, he or one of his fellow “officers” tried to anally penetrate Lorena but was warned off because the truck was nearing the prison. In anger, the “officer” smashed Lorena’s head into the truck wall.<br><br>Women are considered “botines” (prizes) in the dirty war, Montemayor explains, and the violations of the women from Atenco were not so much sexual as they were an expression of male government domination – all part of the dirty war plan.<br><br>Four of the arrested and abused women were non-Mexicans and immigration authorities swooped in before they could reveal what had happened during the nightmare ride from Atenco May 4th. Despite ten years of residence in Mexico, Valentina Palma, a Chilean filmmaker who was shooting a documentary in Atenco, and her companion Mario Guerrero were summarily deported under Article 33 of the Mexican constitution which allows the president to kick out any foreigner deemed “inconvenient.”<br><br>Other deportees included Samantha Deitmar, a German documentarian, and two Catalanes Maria Sostres and Cristina Valls, all of whom were physically abused. The women pledge to take legal action against the Fox administration and appeal their summary deportations.<br><br>400 foreign human rights observers were deported from Chiapas by former president Ernesto Zedillo, most after the 1997 Acteal massacre of Zapatista supporters, to prevent dissemination of first hand accounts of abuses in that southernmost Mexican state. While Fox has been more selective in booting out “inconvenient” foreigners, in 2003 he ordered the deportation of 17 Evergreen University (Washington state) students and their professor for marching alongside the “Macheteros” of Atenco, then battling Fox’s airport, in the annual May 1st International Workers Day mobilization.<br><br>In the Montemayor model, collective assaults such as at Atenco are not improvised attacks by out-of-control security forces but meticulously plotted at the highest echelons of power. Such operations invariably involve more than one agency so a high degree of coordination is required. The chain of command often goes straight to the top. Overall responsibility for the assault on San Salvador Atenco fell to Fox’s Secretary of Public Security Eduardo Medina Mora, former chief of the CISEN, Mexico’s lead national security investigative police agency.<br><br>In charge on the ground was Mexico state public security director Wilfrido Robledo, the disgraced ex-head of the Federal Preventative Police under Zedillo and cousin of narco kingpin Mario Villanueva Madrid, former governor of Quintana Roo who is currently doing long time in the same maximum-security prison that now houses Nacho del Valle and the leadership of the Popular Front.<br><br>Five regional PFP commanders were brought in to coordinate logistics. As has been the modus operendi in other recent government assaults on farmers and workers groups in resistance, elite state police sharpshooters led the May 4th retaking of San Salvador Atenco backed up by baton-wielding federal robo-cops.<br><br>Carlos Montemayor’s blueprint for such dirty war thrusts includes the minimizing of press presence to limit the political outfall from such operations – either by silencing the press or “embedding” reporters in security force ranks. At Atenco, reporters were allowed through police lines on the first day of combat to film acts of vandalism by the infuriated farmers but the next day were grouped behind the invading police to record the re-taking of the town. Nonetheless, despite manipulation by both authorities and their own editors, television crews caught some of the most stomach-wrenching footage of police brutality ever shown on Mexican TV screens.<br><br>Finally, Carlos Montemayor points out that because such collective repression is bound to be politically damaging, the political class must sign off on acts of state violence either prior to the attack or once the repression has been accomplished. The assault on Atenco was no exception. Vicente Fox, his right wing PAN party, and its presidential candidate Felipe Calderon, along with once-ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) standard-bearer Roberto Madrazo all endorsed the “hard hand” (“mano dura”) shown at Atenco. The repression was also tacitly approved by left-center challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) who declined to condemn the police brutality. Another big booster: Mexico state governor Enrique Peña Nieto who a week after the bloody confrontation sent thousands of gallons of paint to San Salvador Atenco to white wash the damaged town.<br><br>In contrast to the candidates and their political parties, the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign, an anti-electoral crusade designed to weld together Mexico’s underclass in an anti-neo-liberal alliance, has raised the atrocities committed at Atenco as a flag of resistance. With the EZLN’s quixotic spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos leading marches and inspiring solidarity protests against the Fox government, demonstrations took place last week (May 10th-17th) in 17 countries and 34 cities in support of the farmers of Atenco.<br><br>One of those cities was Vienna, Austria where President Fox was greeted by demonstrators shouting their outrage at human rights abuses in Atenco as he arrived for a Latin America-European Union summit.<br><br>Ironically, the San Salvador Atenco atrocities took place the same week Mexico assumed a position on the newly revised United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, alongside such formidable human rights abusers as China, Russia, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. Mexico joins the commission “with its hands bloodied” by the repression in Atenco, bemoaned National Human Rights Commission ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes, an outspoken critic of the Fox regime’s human rights record.<br><br>“We are again convoked by our pain” Subcomandante Marcos told thousands in a driving rainstorm a mile from the presidential palace on Friday, May 12th after a long week of solidarity actions. “Who can listen to the stories of the women of Atenco, to the men, to the old people who were beaten, and the youth, and remain indifferent? No, not us, not those who are part of the Other Campaign.” Marcos reaffirmed that the Other Campaign will remain in Mexico City indefinitely until all the farmers of Atenco are released from prison.<br>*<br><br>John Ross is in California, watching basketball. “Making Another World Possible – Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006” is in New York being inspected by editors. Ross will return to Mexico in early June to report on the final spasms of the presidential election race and the twitchings of the Other Campaign.<br><br>See http://www.narconews.com/otroperiodismo/en.html for more from The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: 'Dirty War' Returns to Mexico

Postby PeterofLoneTree » Sat May 20, 2006 12:44 am

Those 6,000 U.S. troops on the Mexico/U.S. border <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>are</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> there to keep people <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>out</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, aren't they? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: 'Dirty War' Returns to Mexico. The US popcorn diversion.

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Sat May 20, 2006 3:13 am

***So we have a repressed and martyred popular front leader with the highly memorable name of 'Nacho' in Mexico. Not only that, his activist daughter is named 'America'!***<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Nacho del Valle</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> and his second-in-command Felipe Alvarez were captured on the first day of the fighting and immediately clapped into Mexico’s maximum lock-up at nearby La Palma on “kidnapping” charges that evolved from an acrimonious February meeting with Mexico state officials – the charges carry 30 to 50 year prison sentences. 26 other members of the Popular Front have since been incarcerated on the same charge.<br><br>As per Carlos Montemayor’s script, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Del Valle’s immediate family was singled out for special repression. </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->Their home was destroyed by invading police and one son was disappeared for several days until he turned up badly beaten in a Mexico state prison. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Nacho’s daughter, América, increasingly the spokesperson for the Popular Front to Defend the Land</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, has been forced into hiding.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br>***And <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>our cinema megaplexes have a therapeutic alternative narrative for American youth to stick in their brains complete with hijacked keyword NACHO in the form of this Jack Black comedy called <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>'Nacho Libre.'</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->***<br><br>"In theaters June 16th." Guess they released a tad late.<br> <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.nacholibre.com/">www.nacholibre.com/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Jack Black stars as Ignacio (<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>friends call him Nacho</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->), a cook by day in <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>a Mexican orphanage</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->,<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>who moonlights</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> as a lucha libre wrestler <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>to raise money</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> for the orphans in this comedy from<br>the creators of “Napoleon Dynamite” and the writer of “The School of Rock.”<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I hope this is read by many of you who still stubbornly doubt that the movie industry is solidly an arm of whichever back office of State or Defense Dept. does national psy-ops planning and throws out the media distractions that psychically cover for terrible crimes like this dirty war in Mexico. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 5/20/06 1:45 am<br></i>
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Re: 'Dirty War' Returns to Mexico. The RFID card diversion.

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Sat May 20, 2006 3:58 am

So increased repression in Mexico means the US panopticon merchants can sell the need for a national ID card to enforce, well, any damn thing it wants using resuscitated Reagan-era fear of a wave of brown people caused by south-of-the-border crisis conditions.<br><br>They'll just keep at that one until they get it. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: 'Dirty War' Returns to Mexico. The RFID card diversion.

Postby Iroquois » Sat May 20, 2006 7:56 pm

I'd heard that some of these types of activities were going on, but I was not aware of how widespread the brutality was and how much it had been institutionalized into Mexican dometic policy. Thank you for opening my eyes to this, Starman. <p></p><i></i>
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Personal Witness, Victim of Mexico's Latest 'Dirty War'

Postby StarmanSkye » Sun May 21, 2006 12:21 am

Following is the personal testimony of a Chilean student and documentary filmaker who was brutally attacked, beaten, sexually abused, imprisoned, and expelled during the May 4th Police action in San Salvador. Mexican officials MUST have cleared-this with the White House and the American Consulate in Mexico City, since the attacks were SO greviously over-the-top and blatantly a horrific violation of civil and human rights. The unself-conscious lack shown by the police officials of all decency, regard for law, compassion, and even the appearance of moderation shows that the brutally was specifically authorized from the very top. Has anyone seen the White House or members of Congress denouncing this act of sanctioned Police violence? Can you imagine the White House outrage if this had occurred in Venezuea, Cuba or Boliva (soon to be joined by Ecuador as the Latin American nations the Bush Gang most LOVE to villianize).<br><br>This incident is yet another legacy of the US's history of neocolonialism and neoliberal policies, waging fear-and-awe war on those who resist exploitation, who dare advocate and organize for social justice, human rights, economic opportunity and self-rule autonomy. Like American pols, a great many, perhaps most of Mexico's top 'leaders' have sold-out their citizens.<br><br>I don't think this is anywhere near 'over'.<br>In Solidarity with Truth and Justice,<br>Starman<br>******<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/novoa05132006.html">www.counterpunch.org/novoa05132006.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Police Torture and Sexual Violence in Mexico<br>"They Ordered Me to Lay My Head In a Pool of Blood"<br><br>By VALENTINA PALMA NOVOA<br><br>My name is Valentina Palma Novoa. I am 30 years old, and I have spent the last 11 years of my life in Mexico. I am a student at the National School of Anthropology and History, currently in my fourth year studying Cinematography at the Center for Cinematographic Study. I have an FM 3 student visa.<br><br>I would like to share with you the events that I witnessed during the violent incidents that occurred in the town of San Salvador Atenco on Thursday, May 4, 2006, which ended with my unjust and arbitrary expulsion from the country.<br><br>1.- On Wednesday, May 3, after seeing the news on television and learning of the death of a 14-year-old boy, I was moved by the death of this small child and, as an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, decided to go to San Salvador Atenco to assess the situation.<br><br>I spent the night in the town, documenting the patrol posts that the people of the town had set up, and interviewing the guards. It was cold. I drew closer to the small fires that the people had built and continued to take pictures. The light of dawn announced a new day: Thursday, May 4.<br><br>It must have been about 6am when the church bells of San Salvador Atenco began to ring - bong, bong, bong, over and over again - while a voice shouted over the loudspeaker that the police were surrounding the town. Bicycles hurried past in every direction. The bakery to one side of the church had already opened its doors and the warm smell of recently baked bread filled the street, together with the comings and goings of farmers on bicycles. The man who sold atoles told me to be careful, that the police who were coming were "real bastards."<br><br>I headed towards one of the patrol posts, where the farmers were looking in the direction of the pack of police who could be seen in the distance. I zoomed in with my camera. I saw that there were many of them and that, covered by their shields, they were advancing with small and nearly imperceptible steps. I was afraid. There were many of them, heavily armed, while the farmers were few and unarmed. In the screen of my camera I saw one of the police point and shoot a projectile towards us; when it landed next to me, I could smell and feel that it was tear gas. More and more tear gas quickly began to overpower the warm smell of the recently baked bread and transformed the narrow alley into a battle field.<br><br>The air was no longer breathable and I went to the plaza as the church bells began to toll even louder. Down various streets, I could see the police in the distance, coming nearer. The little resistance that there was from the farm workers disappeared in the face of the attack that the police suddenly launched against the people. I turned my camera off and ran as fast as I could alongside everyone else. In front of the church, there was a public building with its doors open and I went inside to wait in vain for the turbulence to pass. There were two young men also hoping in vain to shield themselves from the attack. The three of us all looked each other in the face, anxious and fearful.<br><br>Cautiously, I got up to look at the street and I saw five police officers, devoid of any compassion, kicking and using their clubs to beat an old man who lay strewn on the ground. I became more afraid. I went inside and told the two young men that we needed to hide in a better place; where we were was too exposed. Mistakenly, we went up to the roof and laid down on our backs, looking up at helicopters that buzzed like hornets in the sky, while the sound of shots became part of the town's landscape of sound. A man's voice yelled violently, "Come down here, you bastards on the roof."<br><br>First, the two young men went down. I watched them being beaten from above. I was panicked and didn't want to come down from the roof; then a police officer yelled up to me, "Come down here, bitch. Come down here now."<br><br>I came down from the roof slowly, terrorized by the sight of the boys being beaten in the head. Two police officers took a hold of me and pulled me forward while others beat me on the chest, back and legs with their clubs. My cries of pain increase when I heard the voice of someone asking my name for the list of arrested. I responded, "Valentina.Valentina Palma Novoa," while a police officer ordered me to shut my mouth and another hit me in the chest.<br><br>A man's voice ordered the officers to cover me with shields so people could not see how badly they had beaten me. They paused to one side of the church and ordered me to join the rest of the arrested, then forced me to kneel and put my hands behind my head. They continued to beat us. My cell phone rang and a voice ordered me to turn over my bag. In that moment, I was separated from my video camera, my cell phone and my small purse containing my identification and fifty pesos.<br><br>They pulled me up by my hair and said, "Get in the truck, bitch." I could barely move but they demanded that we move incredibly quickly. They tossed me on top of other wounded and bleeding bodies and ordered me to lay my head in a pool of blood. I didn't want to put my head in the blood, but the black boot of a police officer forced me to do it. The truck started and began to move. Along the way, I was groped by the hands many police officers. I just closed my eyes and clenched my teeth, hoping that the worst would not happen.<br><br>My pants were down when the truck stopped and I was ordered to get off. I got down awkwardly and a female police officer said, "Leave this bitch to me," then hit my ears with both of her hands. I fell, and two police officers took me through a line of police who kicked us as we moved towards a bus.<br><br>Once on the bus, another female police officer asked me my name, while two male officers grabbed my breasts violently and threw me on top of the body of an old man whose face was nothing more than a crust of blood. The old man cried out in pain when he felt the weight of my body on top of him. I tried to move but a kick to the back stopped me. My own shout made the old man scream out again, asking for God's mercy.<br><br>A woman's voice ordered me to move to the back stairway of the bus. I did as she said and, from there, I could see the bloodied faces of the rest of the prisoners and the blood spreading across the floor. Although I was not bleeding, my hands and clothes were spattered with the blood of other prisoners.<br><br>I stayed still, listening to the groans from the bodies by my side, and heard them continue to bring more prisoners onto the bus, asking their names amidst beatings and shouts of pain. I do not know how much time passed before the bus closed its doors and began to move. The trip lasted about two or three hours. The torture began again and whatever small movement we made garnered more blows. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but the moans of the old man next to me kept me awake. The old man was saying, "My leg, my leg.¡God, have mercy, please have mercy!"<br><br>I wept bitterly. I thought the old man next to me would die. I moved my hand and tried to touch him to calm him a little. A club came down towards my hand, but I begged for compassion with a gesture to the police officer, who then backed off from beating me. Wanting to show the old man a little love, I stroked his leg and he was quiet for a few moments.<br><br>I asked him his name and he responded. "If I die, do not cry; please have a party instead." I cried silently, feeling alone in the company of so many other beaten bodies, thinking the worst - that they would take us to who knows what place and kill us; that we would be disappeared.<br><br>For a moment, I fell asleep. But the smell of blood and death awoke me. Upon opening my eyes, I saw the wall of a jail. The bus stopped and a voice ordered us to get off through the back door.<br><br>They ordered me to stand up and, as the door opened, my uncovered, crying face looked up to find a line of police officers. I felt another surge of fear.<br><br>From below, a voice ordered the door of the bus closed and ordered the prisoners to come off with their faces covered. A police officer covered my head with my jacket and the doors reopened. From outside the bus, a police officer grabbed my pants with one hand and kept my head down with the other. The line of police began to kick my body and the bodies of all of the other prisoners who formed a line behind me.<br><br>The door of the prison opened and they moved us through narrow hallways while beating and kicking us. Before arriving at the registration desk, I made the mistake of raising my head and looking into the eyes of a police officer, who responded to my gaze with a hard punch to the stomach that knocked the air out of me for a few moments.<br><br>At the registration desk, they asked me for my name, age and nationality, after which they put me into a small room where a fat woman ordered me to take off all of my clothes. She asked me to be quick when she saw my awkward, slow movements, which were the result of the beatings I had received. "Ma'am, I am beaten badly, please be patient," I said. She searched me. I got dressed again and put my jacket back over my head. I left the room and they ordered us to form a line of women, to move single file and with our heads down into the patio of the jail, which I would later find out was the jail called "Almoloyita" in the city of Toluca.<br><br>It must have been about 2pm on Thursday, May 4 by the time we were inside the penitentiary. They brought us to a cafeteria and separated the men and women. In a corner, amidst sobs, we women began to tell each other the abuses to which we had been subjected.<br><br>One young woman showed me her ripped underwear and the open, bloody wound on her head. Another told of how they had taken her between two trucks, beaten her, abused her, and threatened her by saying, "We're going to kill you, bitch."<br><br>Another young woman told me that she might be pregnant. All while sobbing and squeezing each others' hands in solidarity. The state of shock among the women was evident. In front of us, the men spoke amongst themselves while we observed their bloodied and deformed faces, the product of their brutal beatings. As we looked at the men, a woman approached us and began to list a few names, asking those named to separate themselves from the group.<br><br>There were four of us: Cristina, María, Samantha, Valentina. A fifth person then joined us: Mario.<br><br>We were the five foreigners who had been arrested. At that moment, a man came who I believe was the director of the jail and he told us that we were safe now, that nobody would beat us anymore, that what had happened before entering the jail did not have to do with him, as if we hadn't also been beaten while inside the jail. We asked him to make a phone call, but our request was denied.<br><br>At this time, the most visibly wounded among the prisoners were taken to the jail's medical center. They were not merely just one or two prisoners; of the hundreds of people detained, there must have been about 40 with very serious injuries.<br><br>One of the first to be taken out was the dying old man who had been next to me in the truck. I never saw him again.<br><br>Then it was our turn to be examined by the medical staff. I had bruises on my chest, back, shoulders, fingers, thighs and legs. The doctor recommended that my ribs be x-rayed because I was having difficulty breathing, which has never happened to me before.<br><br>The nurse who was taking notes and the doctor who examined me did so with total indifference towards both my self and my wounds. I left the medical office to wait for Cristina, María, Samantha and Mario to be examined. The pseudo medical examination ended and they took us to a room to record our statements.<br><br>Strangely, a lawyer appeared from who knows where and recommended that we not give statements, advice that contradicted the people sitting behind the typewriter in front of us.<br><br>"It's OK if you do not want to make a statement, you have the right not to. But it would be good for you to document what happened to you," a woman lawyer said to me. While we were making our declarations, many men in ties arrived and, while making jokes and being friendly, asked us who we were, how and why we had gone to Atenco, and if we knew how dangerous those people were.<br><br>It began to rain, and they took us back to the cafeteria with the rest of the prisoners. They made us sit down and forbade us to make any contact with the Mexican prisoners. If we wanted to go to the bathroom, we had to ask permission. Human rights officials came and took declarations and pictures of our injuries. They took our declarations dispassionately, mechanically.<br><br>We were fingerprinted. They took pictures of us from the front and both profiles. They told us that this was not to start a file, that these were necessary registration procedures, that it was very likely that we would be able to leave in the early morning and for that reason it was necessary to register us. Dinner was a pot of cold coffee and a box of rolls.<br><br>It must have been midnight when I lay down on a hard wooden bench to try to sleep a little. It was impossible.it was cold and I had no blanket. On the men's side, a man with dreadlocks noticed my frustration with not being able to sleep and we began to talk, from across the room, using gestures and hand signals. We were in the middle of this when a guard arrived and called out the names of the five foreigners. We got up, said brief goodbyes to the other prisoners, and left.<br><br>They took us to a registration office. They gave us our few belongings and took us to a pick up truck, telling us they would bring us to an immigration office in Toluca. Outside of the jail, I heard familiar voices shouting my name. I went to the fence and saw many of my friends asking me how I was. I told them I was more or less all right, and that they were taking us to immigration in Toluca.<br><br>They told me they would follow, that they would not leave me alone. My aunt Mónica passed me an envelope that contained my immigration papers and María Novaro, my teacher and mother in Mexico, gave me a jacket for the cold. I got on the bus, the doors closed, and we sped off in the dark. We stopped at an office in Toluca to pick up a lawyer and then they took us to the special cases immigration office in Mexico City.<br><br>It must have been about 3am when we arrived at the immigration office. There, once again, a disinterested doctor recorded our injuries. We slept a little because we had arrived before the office opened, so there were not many officials around. At 7am, an assistant brought us cereal and milk.<br><br>Then they took my declaration, in an interview during which they not only asked my personal information but also asked me questions like, "Are you familiar with the EZLN? Have you been to University City [the National University (UNAM) campus]? Did you participate in the World Water Forum? Did you meet other foreign prisoners?" and so on.<br><br>I signed the declaration that they attached to my other immigration papers, which included a letter from the school where I was studying, a letter from my teacher María Novaro, my passport, my Chilean ID card, and my international student ID. As they were doing this, I received a call from the Chilean Consulate in Mexico, asking me for my name, ID number, and if I had any relatives in Mexico. The ambassador informed me that what he could do would be to make sure that the procedures followed all relevant legal guidelines.<br><br>I went back to giving my declaration, and the questions about the EZLN, Subcomandante Marcos and Atenco were repeated. At the same time, friends and family had gathered outside of the immigration office, but I was not allowed to communicate with them. I tried to do so by using hand signals and signs, but they would not even let us do that.<br><br>They took me to a room with three men who told me they were there to help me. They took photographs of me from the front and both profile views and recorded every moment of our conversation. They asked my name and if I had any aliases, if I was familiar with the EZLN, if I had visited the Lacandon Jungle; they asked for names of people who could testify to my background, and they asked what kind of documentaries I liked to make.<br><br>They told me that "my friend América del Valle" was worried about me, because she had lost track of me while we were trying to run away. Only when I arrived in Chile recently did I find out that this woman was one of the leaders who the police were looking for in Atenco.<br><br>When the interrogation was over, my fingerprints were taken with a very sophisticated machine that fed them into a computer. They took me out of the room and to another room where three visitors from the Commission on Human Rights were waiting. When the two Spanish women and I told them what we had experienced, they recommended urgently that we request a lawyer to seek protection in the face of possible deportation. The atmosphere had become tense, so I asked one of the human rights lawyers for a pen and paper to write to a note to "the lawyer," which I showed to my friends through the window. At that moment, a lawyer from the immigration office entered and said, "Do you need a lawyer? I am a lawyer; what is your problem?" I told her that I wanted to file an order of protection and she told me that would be ill-advised because it would mean that I would have to stay in the immigration station for a month and that we would most likely be released soon anyway. The visitors from the Human Rights Commission argued with her and told her to let me speak to one of the people waiting outside.<br><br>The lawyer conceded and I was allowed to speak for five minutes with Berenice. I told her that I need to seek an order of protection, and she told me that it was already in place. I said goodbye abruptly as they took me to have my second medical exam since arriving at the immigration office.<br><br>When I came out of the medical office, I saw one of the women from Human Rights and I asked her to tell my friends outside that I was about to be taken to another location. I asked a lawyer there to tell me where I was going to be taken and he told me that I was being taken to the main immigration office. They did not let me keep talking to him; I was taken to a private car where Mario, another Chilean, was already waiting.<br><br>I got into the car, followed by three police officers. The doors were closed and one of the police officers asked the driver to close all of the windows. We drove down the highway at more than 100km per hour, in the midst of snarled traffic.<br><br>I asked myself where we could be going and had no answer. Once on our way, I realized that we were headed to the airport and that there were two cars ahead of us: one with Samantha, from Germany, and another with María and Cristina, from Spain.<br><br>Facing an imminent unjust expulsion from the country at any moment, there was nothing I could do but close my eyes, clench my teeth and think: just another violation.<br><br>We arrived at the airport around 6pm. They took us out of the cars and put us into custody in a completely white room, where they detained us for an hour or more. Then they took us, under custody, to the waiting rooms inside the airport. The first plane to leave was Samantha's. We kept waiting and I did nothing but cry. I felt ill. I stood up and tried to walk down the hallway. A guard approached me and told me I should be seated. "I feel ill," I told her, "I will not escape, please let me walk."<br><br>I kept crying and a police officer approached, saying, "Don't be that way. That attitude is not helpful. If it consoles you, let me tell you that you are not being deported, that you are just being expelled from the country, but you can come back whenever you like." Mistakenly, I let her words calm me.<br><br>They took us to a bar so that we could smoke a few cigarettes, because we were all very emotional. The Lan Chile flight, leaving at approximately 11pm, was announced. They called for Mario and me to board. We said goodbye to María and Cristina with big hugs. We got in line and boarded the plane.<br><br>On the plane, one of the passengers approached me and handed me letters that my friends had sent as they tried to do everything possible to stop this unjust expulsion. Tears fell down my cheeks; I cried because I knew I was not alone. The guard, who was seated next to me, asked me what had happened. I told her that I had been living in Mexico for 11 years, that my life is in this country, that they never told me what was happening, that the entire procedure had been illegal, and that I had been beaten and abused by the police.<br><br>She told me that she had only been told 30 minutes before boarding that she was going to be flying to Chile. She said that they had not told her anything, but that she had noticed irregularities in the proceedings, because usually before someone is deported they spend a month at the immigration station, and that it must have been an order that came from above.<br><br>Finally coming to terms with my expulsion, I began to chat with her and I told her which places in Santiago to visit during her short stay. The exhaustion and feeling of powerlessness were too much. I slept. When I woke up, the mountains of the Andes had appeared in the plane window. We landed. We were taken to the office of the international police, where they took our declarations as to why we had been deported and/or expelled from the country.<br><br>Outside, my family was waiting. Sobs, kisses, hugs. We went to the hospital to document my injuries and, quickly, we put together a press conference for radio and television, during which we denounced the illegality of our expulsion and the police violence to which we were subjected.<br><br>After everything that I have told you, I would like to make clear my indignation, anger and complete opposition to:<br><br>1. The use of physical, psychological and sexual violence used as a form of torture and coercion against women. <br><br>2. The police brutality to which all prisoners were subjected, regardless of nationality. <br><br>3. My deportation, for two reasons: all of my papers were in order and valid, and the order of protection that was presented for me was rejected with the claim that I was not in the country when, in fact, I was still in Mexico. <br><br>Given this, we are working with our lawyers to carry out actions aimed at:<br><br>* Reinstituting our right to continue our studies in Mexico, through measures taken with both the Chilean and Mexican governments. <br><br>* Taking measures on the diplomatic level against the Mexican Embassy in Chile. <br><br>* Filing a complaint against the police for the crime of assault. <br><br>* Filing a case against the government of Mexico for illegal deportation. <br><br>No to rape, no to the use of women and men as objects! No to brutality and torture! No to the justification of violence!<br><br>Valentina Palma Novoa is anthropology student and filmmaker from Chile.<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: 'Dirty War' Returns to Mexico. The US popcorn diversion.

Postby professorpan » Sun May 21, 2006 12:27 am

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I hope this is read by many of you who still stubbornly doubt that the movie industry is solidly an arm of whichever back office of State or Defense Dept. does national psy-ops planning and throws out the media distractions that psychically cover for terrible crimes like this dirty war in Mexico.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Well, Homer Simpson wore a hat made out of nachos and sang "Nacho Hat" to the tune of "Macho Man." Another part of the plot?<br><br>A goofy Jack Black film as part of a deliberate psyop tied into internal Mexican political struggles?<br><br>Sorry, Hugh -- that's nuts. <p></p><i></i>
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Reform The System or remove The System?

Postby rothbardian » Sun May 21, 2006 2:33 am

Starman--<br><br>Thanks for that info. If that report from Ms. Novoa doesn't make a case for a complete removal of The System (in Mexico) I don't know what does. Reform is of no use. <br><br>No matter how sweeping the reforms could possibly be...no group of people (like those government police officers she describes) should have that kind of centralized power. It <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>far</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> too dangerous. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: 5 seconds

Postby Gouda » Sun May 21, 2006 8:56 am

Valentina Palma's arrest in San Salvador Atenco caught on film in <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1836.html">these chilling five seconds</a><!--EZCODE LINK END-->:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Video Appears on Internet of the Illegal Arrest of Chilean Filmmaker Valentina Palma, May 4, in Atenco<br>“Help Me,” She Pleaded as They Grabbed Her by the Hair: <br><br>Video Reveals that Police Carried Firearms, Contradicting Claims by the Government of Vicente Fox<br><br>....<br><br>For the benefit of Internet search engines we will add the names of some of the intellectual authors of the crime: <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Vicente Fox, Enrique Peña Nieto, Wilfrido Robledo Madrid, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, Rob Allyn, and Dick Morris.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Reform The System or remove The System?

Postby Dreams End » Sun May 21, 2006 9:22 am

This is sad and also, nothing new. I have been to Chiapas and learned about the handy work of the military. In the tiny town of La Realidad, for example, after the Zapatista uprising, the army came in (with American helicopters, naturally) and destroyed crops. So when we came to visit, they had not much corn at all. <br><br>There is official government repression, then there are the police actions...and the police are so militarized that there's no difference, and then there are paramilitaries, such as the grotesquely named "Paz y Justicia". <br><br>I don't know about "Nacho". We should remember, of course, that "America" refers to this entire continent, which we share with Mexico, and also South America as well. I think Jack Black is funny and I was pretty disappointed to see this new effort.<br><br>I also thought I'd point out a dynamic in Mexico that I know about first hand because I think it goes on here in the US as well. There is a "guerilla" group in Mexico called "PROCUP". Supposedly they are leftists, however what they seem to do is murder OTHER leftists. This, in political activist terms, is called a CLUE. I stood, for example, on the very spot where they had assassinated a journalist for La Jornada, a left-oriented paper (and the one Marcos will often publish his literary/political writings). <br><br>Procup had a member in the US working in the very same building as a group I worked with. The owner of the building was an eccentric millionaire leftist who provided space to peace groups for free. He was an unusual sort of millionaire leftist. He was, at least ostensibly, an ACTUAL leftist and not just some liberal...having no issue working with revolutionary groups, such as the FMLN in El Salvador. Picture of himself and Castro in his office. But I don't really know about him now. We warned him repeatedly about this fellow. Supposedly a leftist guerilla, this guy had an open visa to come and go in the US...another one of those "clues." Other Mexican activists in LA would not even come to parties this guy might attend, so it was a serious issue. Finally he moved on.<br><br>This group, PROCUP, immediately after the Zapatista uprising, set off a couple of bombs in a shopping mall or somewhere. The effect was to look like the Zapatistas were committing "terrorism". This was not true as the FZLN was scrupulous in its adherence to armed conflict law...only targeting military (though as I said, the line between military and police is non-existent. )<br><br>I think we have some similar activity here in the US, though thankfully (so far) without the killing part. This is why in other threads I've pointed out links to the RCP of such groups as Refuse and Resist and Not in Our Name, both projects of the RCP. Not accusing the RCP of murdering leftists...nothing like that, but they really seem state-sponsored to me, much as PROCUP in Mexico. <br><br>Another aspect of Mexican politics we can learn from is elections. Of course, for 70+ years, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution, or PRI, won every Presidential election. The election before the one which I came down to act as an observer for, the opposition figure, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, had a lead...the computers went down and when they came back up...surprise, the lead had vanished. This was back in the 80's so the US isn't even on the cutting edge of computer vote fraud!<br><br>The next Presidential election had more funny business as well, but it wasn't as blatant. Still, all KINDS of tricks. Missing polling places, people disappearing off the voting lists, etc. I saw all of that first hand. They even had a term for it...I think it was "raton loco" - "crazy mouse", where you go to a polling place only to get told you belong at another polling place. Lather, rinse, repeat. When you are WALKING from place to place, it can be a bit discouraging.<br><br>And yes, none of this could go on without a level of complicity from the US government. And sadly, this also can include human rights organizations. The Carter Center certified these elections as free and fair. Maybe this was just a lack of thoroughness as they came and went in three days with very little groundwork.<br><br>Oh, and you'll never guess what the American Embassy buildings house in Mexico City. Largest CIA outpost in the world. And I guess you can also see where all the US "war on drugs" money and arms are going.<br><br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Rape and U.S. political mercenaries

Postby Gouda » Sun May 21, 2006 9:42 am

Al Giordano points out that "U.S. political mercenaries" Dick Morris and Rob Allyn have been and are aiding the Mexican government in spinning away the Atenco rapes, torture, beatings, expulsions and detentions. AG writes: "At moments of crisis, Fox turns to the advice and counsel of the two gringos, Morris and Allyn, whose clients have also included U.S. presidents George W. Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, and Bill Clinton." I think it is imporant to note that the ruling class would have dealt with the situation in the same brutal way with or without Morris and Allyn - but with them, they are able to take the edge off, stall and fool better. <br><br>Thanks to narconews, authentic journalists, brave victims and the Zapatista's <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Other Campaign</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->, they won't get away with it. Spread the word and the testimony. <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1817.html">www.narconews.com/Issue41...e1817.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>- Mexican police raped 30 of the 47 women political prisoners arrested this month in San Salvador Atenco according to legal complaints filed with Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission. <br><br>- Hiding behind the political curtain as the women were raped and tortured were the two gringo political consultants: Dick Morris and Rob Allyn. They advise President Vicente Fox and his favored presidential candidate, Felipe Calderón, of Fox’s National Action Party (PAN, in its Spanish initials) on how to manipulate the mass media and in the art of “crisis management.”<br><br>- And their other client, the candidate Felipe Calderón, now sputters to the press — in frantic denial of the evidence that now boomerangs back upon him — that the rapes never happened. In opting for this strategy of denial, he and his U.S. political consultants Allyn and Morris are gang-raping these women a second time.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1827.html">www.narconews.com/Issue41...e1827.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Mexican presidential candidate Felipe Calderón – of president Vicente Fox’s National Action Party (PAN, in its Spanish initials) – told reporters last weekend that he doesn’t believe the reports that police raped and sexually abused women detained May 3 and 4 in Texcoco and San Salvador Atenco.<br><br>The candidate – who is advised by two gringo political consultants, Dick Morris and Rob Allyn, on how to handle questions from the press – said that an accusation of rape, “is so delicate that it requires clear elements of proof.” Calderón went so far as to accuse Fox’s own National Commissioner of Human Rights, José Soberanes, who furnished hard evidence of at least 23 rapes of Mexican women while under arrest, of “speaking badly against the country and I totally rebuke him.”<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>More rapes and assaults, more testimony:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1827.html">www.narconews.com/Issue41...e1827.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Case Files: Testimonies of Rape by Police in the Aftermath of Atenco - As Mexican Politicians (Guided by U.S. Advisors) Deny the Evidence, Each Woman’s Story Corroborates the Next<br><br>By Al Giordano<br>The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in San Salvador Atenco<br><br>May 17, 2006<br>...<br><br>Italia Méndez: “Police stripped me, sexually raped me, beat me, and forced me to travel nude for approximately four hours”<br><br>...According to the human rights organization file, the police stole from her “photographic equipment, cash, a cell phone, books, her diary, debit cards and a credit card,” valued at 25,000 pesos (about $2,300 dollars). She remained in prison 11 days – perhaps that long in order to erase the injuries that would prove she was raped – and was released last Monday, but still faces charges of blocking a highway that she was not even near at the time of her arrest.<br><br>...<br><br>Norma Aide Jimenez Osorio, 23, of the state of Mexico, was anally raped by a police officer after her arrest.<br><br>...<br><br>Gabriela Tellez Vanegas is an 18-year-old housewife with two children. She was coming home from work, in Texcoco (site of the first conflicts, when police forced eight florists from the marketplace on May 3rd), waiting for the bus to take her home. This is her testimony to the Comite Cerezo:<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em> The police saw me there and one said to me, ‘what are you looking at?’ And another said, ‘put her on the bus because she’s a loser.’ They began to hit me and asked my address, age, name; three of them took me aside because they wanted to keep kicking me and beating me with clubs. One of them grabbed my face. He put his fingers in my mouth and in my vagina and forced me to conduct anal sex. I spit his sperm out onto my white sweater. Another cop came and did the same. He grabbed my breasts and said: ‘This is very good and she’s milking, right? Whore of a bitch!’ They took my photo with my eyes closed.<br><br> Again they made me give oral sex, coming in my mouth and I spit it out on my sweater. A third one came and did the same to me, and I spit it on my sweater. He said that if I wanted him to help me I would have to be his prostitute for a year and he would come see me whenever he wanted to. They took off my sweater, refused to give it back to me. A fourth cop came, he put his hands on my vagina and breasts and wanted me to give him oral sex. Another one came and said, ‘Not now, man, because we’ve already arrived.’ They began to clean my pants and hands and gave me a cigarette to smoke. But I don’t smoke or drink. And they took me down, with my eyes closed, to the Santiaguito prison in Almoloya.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>...<br><br>At times like this, for the men in power, it doesn’t matter what common sense says. It doesn’t matter what conscience demands. What matters, the only thing that matters, is surviving politically. And so the script they spout is not even theirs. The intellectual authors of these crimes sit behind desks. They wear suits and ties. They take polls and spin dimwit journalists, via surrogates, to deny their guilt. They beat, rape, steal and lie by remote control. But this story is not over. It has only begun to be told…<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Rape and U.S. political mercenaries

Postby Gouda » Sun May 21, 2006 10:15 am

DE, post cross-post, thanks for your testimony about PROCUP. Interesting. <br><br>Good reading here:<br><br>"Rebellion in Chiapas and the Mexican Military - National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 109"<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB109/">www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB109/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>There's one doc within (at least) mentioning PROCUP:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB109/920428.pdf">www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSA...920428.pdf</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>but i have not read it yet...<br><br>In addition to all the barriers (NAFTA, CIA, NED, SEDENA, DGISN, PRI & PAN operatives, Oligarchs, US political mercenaries, and age-old racism, sexism, and fascist sexuality) that the EZLN and associated groups face they have also had many, many problems/betrayals by the ostensibly 'leftist' PRD of AMLObrador. <br><br>***<br><br>The Mexican elections ought to be more fun than the recent Italian elections, and maybe even more fun than the last US (s)election. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Rape and U.S. political mercenaries

Postby Dreams End » Sun May 21, 2006 1:08 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>EZLN and associated groups face they have also had many, many problems/betrayals by the ostensibly 'leftist' PRD of AMLObrador. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Very sad and very true. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Rape and U.S. political mercenaries

Postby Dreams End » Sun May 21, 2006 8:10 pm

John Ross in counterpunch. (Note, he knows 94 elections were highly tainted...but leaves that out of this article. Not sure what that means)<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>Mexico's Electoral Wildcard<br>The Marcos Factor<br><br>By JOHN ROSS<br><br>The Marcos Factor has unexpectedly become a wild card in Mexico's closely fought July 2nd presidential election.<br><br>While out of earshot plying the back roads of provincial Mexico with his "Other Campaign", an anti-electoral crusade designed to weld underclass struggle groups into a new left alliance, the ski-masked rebel mouthpiece, now doing business as Delegate Zero, stayed aloof from the electoral mainstream although he attacked it relentlessly. But Marcos's arrival in the capital at the end of April has propelled him back into the national spotlight with less than 50 days to go until Election Day.<br><br>Poll results are brazenly for sale in the run-up to Mexican elections and all are equally untrustworthy. For almost 30 months, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the former Mexico City mayor and candidate of the leftish Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) led preferences, sometimes by as much as 18 points.<br><br>But by April, under an unanswered barrage of attack commercials labeling him a danger to the nation in big block letters across the television screen, AMLO's lead had frittered away into a virtual tie with rightwing National Action Party candidate Felipe Calderon--polls paid for by the PAN even give Calderon a ten point advantage. On the other hand, Mitofsky Associates, contracted to produce monthly polls by the television giant Televisa, which tilts towards Calderon, gives the PANista just a one point edge with a two point margin of error. All pollsters have the once-ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party's Roberto Madrazo running a distant third with 23-28%of voter preferences.<br><br>AMLO's diminished numbers were further complicated by ex-Subcomandante Marcos's arrival in the capitol. Delegate Zero has blasted the PRD and its candidate unceasingly in stump speech after stump speech across much of Mexico for the past five months. Although the Other Campaign focuses on the deficiencies of the electoral process and the political parties to meet the needs of the people, Marcos always reserves special invective for Lopez Obrador and the PRD--the Other Campaign is, after all, a battle for the hearts and minds of the Mexican left.<br><br>But perhaps the cruelest blow that Delegate Zero has yet struck against his rival on the left came when he declared under the heat of national TV cameras that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would be the winner of the July 2nd election. Marcos's "endorsement" is seen in some quarters as being akin to Osama Bin Laden's 2004 U.S. election eve TV appearance that frightened millions of voters into re-electing George Bush.<br><br>In truth, Marcos's appearance in Mexico City at the end of April generated little press interest and numbers at marches and rallies were embarrassingly small. But two days of bloody fighting between farmers affiliated with the Other Campaign and state and federal security forces at San Salvador Atenco just outside the capitol that resulted in hundreds of arrests, rampant violations of human rights, the rape of women prisoners, and the most stomach-wrenching footage of police brutality ever shown on Mexican television, put Marcos back in the media spotlight.<br><br>Leading marches in defense of the imprisoned farmers and vowing to encamp in Mexico City until they are released, Delegate Zero broke a five-year self-imposed ban on interviews with the commercial media (coverage of the Other Campaign has been limited to the alternative press.) A three part exclusive interview in La Jornada--the paper is both favorable to the Zapatista struggle and Lopez Obrador - revealed the ex-Sup's thinking as the EZLN transitions into the larger world beyond the indigenous mountains and jungle of their autonomous communities in southeastern Chiapas. After the Jornada interviews began running, dozens of national and international reporters lined up for more.<br><br>Then on May 8th, Marcos startled Mexico's political class by striding into a Televisa studio, an enterprise he has scorned and lampooned for the past 12 years and which that very morning in La Jornada he denounced as being Mexico's real government, and sat down for the first time ever with a star network anchor for a far-ranging chat on the state of the nation and the coming elections that effectively re-established the ex-Subcomandante's credibility as a national political figure in this TV-obsessed viodeocracy.<br><br>Among Delegate Zero's more pertinent observations: all three candidates were "mediocrities" who would administrate Mexico for the benefit of the transnationals but that Lopez Obrador had a distinct style of dealing with the crisis down below, and would emerge the winner on July 2nd.<br><br>Although observers differ about whether Marcos's "endorsement" was the kiss of death for AMLO's candidacy or just a peck on the cheek, Lopez Obrador's reaction was of the deer-caught-in-the-headlights variety, emphasizing the prolonged animosity between the PRD and the EZLN to disassociate himself from the Zapatista leader.<br><br>It was too late. Calderon, one of whose key advisors is right-wing Washington insider Dick Morris (the PANista is Washington's man), immediately lashed out at Marcos as "a PRD militant", clained AMLO was under Marcos's ski-mask, and accused Lopez Obrador and Delegate Zero of being in cahoots to destabilize Mexico--the TV spots were running within 24 hours of Marcos's Televisa interview. In the background, the PRI's Madrazo called for the "mano duro" (hard hand) to control such subversive elements, tagging the farmers of Atenco whose broad field knives are the symbol of their struggle, AMLO's "yellow machetes" (yellow is the PRD's color.)<br><br>Lopez Obrador's only defense against this latest onslaught was to affirm that the mayor of Texcoco, who had been the first to send police to confront the farmers of Atenco, was a member of the PRD. Party members who are usually quick to denounce human rights violations here have stayed away from the police rampage in Atenco for fear that speaking out will further taint Lopez Obrador.<br><br>There are some who question Delegate Zero's widely circulated assessment that AMLO will be Mexico's next president, as disingenuous. After all, calling the election for Calderon after the Other Campaign has done its damndest to convince voters not to cast a ballot for AMLO could only arouse the ire of PRD bases along the route of the Other Campaign.<br><br>Even as Calderon uses Marcos to raise the fear flag, Marcos argues that voter fear of instability does not alter electoral results. Nonetheless, in 1994, Ernesto Zedillo parleyed fears triggered by the Zapatista rebellion and the assassination of PRI heir-apparent Luis Donaldo Colosio into big numbers to walk off with the Mexican presidency.<br><br>Although Delegate Zero equates all three political parties, the conventional wisdom is that a return to power by the PRI would animate elements in the Mexican military who still want to stamp out the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and incite the lust of the PRI-affiliated paramilitaries for Zapatista blood. On the other hand, repeated violence against EZLN bases in Chiapas by PRD-affiliated farmers' groups, are not a harbinger of better times for the rebels under AMLO's rule.<br><br>Enfrented as the PRD and the EZLN remain, the only avenue of convergence could be in post-electoral protest. As the close race goes down to the wire, one good bet is that the July 2nd margin between Calderon and Lopez Obrador will be less than 100,000 out of a potential 72,000.000 voters. If Calderon is declared the victor by challengeable numbers, the PRD, invoking the stealing of the 1988 election from Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, is apt not to accept results issued by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) which AMLO's rank and file already considers partisan to the PAN, and the PRD will go into the streets--most noticeably in Mexico City where it concentrates great numbers and where the IFE is located.<br><br>How embarrassed Roberto Madrazo is by the PRI's performance July 2nd could determine his party's participation in mobilizations denouncing the results as well--Madrazo has thus far balked at signing a "pact of civility" being promoted by the IFE.<br><br>The EZLN has historically been more drawn to post-electoral protest than elections themselves. In 1994, convinced that Cuauhtemoc Cardenas would not take protests into the streets if he were once again cheated out of victory, the Zapatistas sought to inspire such protest themselves (they were successful only in Chiapas.)<br><br>The best bet is that given a generalized perception of a stolen election, the EZLN will put its animosity aside as it did last year when the PRI and the PAN tried to bar AMLO from the ballot, the "desafuero." But the Zapatistas will join the post-electoral fray calculating that AMLO, a gifted leader of street protest, will seek to channel voters' anger into political acceptable constraints.<br><br>The return of Marcos to the national spotlight is an unintended consequence of the Other Campaign. Determined to use the electoral calendar to unmask the electoral process and the political class that runs it, Marcos's posture as an anti-candidate has made him as much of a candidate as AMLO, Calderon, and Madrazo. Indeed, Delegate Zero's primetime Televisa appearance has inducted him, voluntarily or not, into the very political class that the Other Campaign detests.<br><br>John Ross is on his way to California to watch basketball. His new opus "Making Another World Possible--Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006" is in New York being inspected by editors. Ross will return to Mexico in early June to cover both the final spasms of the presidential race and the continued twitchings of the Other Campaign.<br><br>John Ross has covered four previous Mexican presidential election. He is the author of Murdered By Capitalism.<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/ross05192006.html">www.counterpunch.org/ross05192006.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
Dreams End
 

Re: Rape and U.S. political mercenaries

Postby chiggerbit » Sun May 21, 2006 9:08 pm

It might be interesting to consider how the immigration of Mexicans to the US might have changed the dynamics of politics at home in Mexico. For one thing, I would assume that the majority of the Mexican immigrants to the US are male, and I wonder if that might act as a release valve for these kinds of atrocities, with all that testosterone having moved elsewhere. I would think this is especially significant, considering that most of the illegal immigrants would generally be from the deprived class that is the most dangerous to the government. But also interesting might be to consider what will happen to Mexican politics if these illegal immigrants are forced to return to Mexico after having experienced less repressive (for a while, anyway) government here in the US.<br><br>At the least, this picture gives me a sort of grudging respect for the accomplishments of the Iraqi insurgents, even if it makes my heart ache for our own lost and injured loved ones. I have to wonder if this Bush administration realizes that it is only Mexico that protects them from the growing disturbances in Latin America. <p></p><i></i>
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