Mexico - Mexican Military and Police Use Drug War to Attempt to Enter Zapatista Territory

[Expat98]

Mexican Military and Police Use Drug War to Attempt to Enter Zapatista Territory

They Claimed to Be Looking for Marijuana Plants; Local Civilians Drove them Away

By The Good Government Council
La Garrucha, Chiapas, Mexico

JUNE 4, 2008

DENUNCIATION

ACT OF PROVOCATION

From the Road to the Future Good Government Council (Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro)

To the people of Mexico and the world, to the comrades in the Other Campaign in Mexico and the world, to the national and international news media, to human rights defenders, to the honest non-governmental organizations

The Road to the Future Good Government Council makes the following denunciation:

1. A column was sighted consisting of a military convoy and public safety police, municipal police, and judicial agents at 9:00 in the morning southeastern time; there were 2 big trucks and 3 small trucks of soldiers, 2 public safety trucks, 2 municipal police trucks, an anti-riot tank, and a truckload of judicial agents.

2. All in all there were around 200 provocateurs.

3. Before entering the town of Garrucha, the headquarters of the Caracol, about 30 meters from the edge of the town, 3 trucks from the convoy stopped and 4 soldiers got out of a truck as if to outflank the town of Garrucha by using the road to our collective cornfield. The people reacted and organized themselves to eject the convoy. The soldiers immediately got back in their truck and continued along the road. Those in front were intimidating the people, taking photos and filming them as they waited for the other provocateurs.

4. Arriving at the spot where the soldiers from Patiwitz were stationed, another military convoy joined the column, which continued on its way to engage in another provocation.

5. They arrived at Rancho Alegre, a community known as Chapuyil.

6. They got out of the trucks and headed for the town of Hermenegildo Galeana, where all the people are Zapatista support bases, accusing the townspeople of growing marijuana in their fields.

7. People throughout the Zapatista area of Garrucha, including the autonomous authorities, are witness to the fact that no such fields exist. The Zapatistas here work in their cornfields and banana plantations. They are willing to struggle for freedom, justice, and democracy and resist any provocation whatsoever.

8. Around 100 soldiers, 10 public security police, and 4 judicial agents headed for the town of Galeana. All the repressors painted their faces to confuse people and to avoid being recognized in the hill country. They walked for a while on the road and then went into the hills on their way to the town.

9. The federal column was guided by a person named Feliciano Román Ruiz, who is known to be from the Ocosingo municipal police.

10. The townspeople of Galeana ––men, women, girls, and boys–– organized themselves to eject the troops, come what may.

11. They met up with the troops in the middle of the road and the melee began. All the Zapatista women, men, boys, and girls told the soldiers in no uncertain terms, “Go back to where you came from, you aren’t needed here. We want freedom, justice, and democracy ––not soldiers.”

12. The soldiers said, “We came here because we know there’s marijuana here and we’re going on ahead come hell or high water.” That’s when the people took out their machetes, shovels, rocks, slingshots, ropes and whatever was at hand, and drove them back.

13. The soldiers said, “Well, this time we’re not going any further, but we’ll be back in two weeks and we’re going in there come hell or high water.”

14. They took another road down to the village of Zapatista support bases called San Alejandro where 9 vehicles with 40 soldiers and 10 policemen were waiting for them.

15. On their way down, they trampled the cornfield, which is the town’s only food source.

16. In the Zapatista town of San Alejandro, the 60 repressive agents took up their positions, ready for a confrontation.

17. The people reacted and used everything at hand to drive back the federal forces.

18. Soldiers from Toniná, Patiwitz, and San Quintín participated in the confrontation.

19. People of Mexico and the world, we want to tell you that it won’t be long before another confrontation occurs, provoked by (President Felipe) Calderón and (Governor) Juan Sabines and Carlos Leonel Solórzano, the municipal president of Ocosingo, who’ll call out their dogs from all the forces of repression. We are not drug dealers. As you know, we are brothers and sisters of Mexico and the world. It’s clear that they’re coming for us Zapatistas. All three levels of the bad government are coming after us, and we’re ready to resist them if that’s what’s necessary, just as our slogan says: We’ll live for our homeland or die for freedom.

20. People of Mexico and the world, you know that our struggle is a peaceful, political one. As it says in the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, it’s a peaceful, political struggle known as the Other Campaign. Just look where the violent provocation is coming from.

21. Comrades of the Other Campaign in Mexico and other countries, we ask you to be on the alert because the soldiers said they’ll be back in two weeks. We don’t want war. We want peace with justice and dignity. But we have no other choice than to defend ourselves, resist them, and eject them when they come looking for a confrontation with us in the towns of the Zapatista support bases.

22. All we can tell you is to look and see where the provocation is coming from. We’re now informing you of what’s going on, hopefully in time.

That’s all we have to say.

RESPECTFULLY YOURS,

La Junta de Buen Gobierno
Elena Gordillo Clara Claribel Pérez López
Freddy Rodríguez López Rolando Ruiz Hernández

http://www.narconews.com/Issue54/article3126.html

Expat98 added 1406 Minutes and 42 Seconds later...

Zapatistas and the War on Drugs

Posted by Kristin Bricker - June 12, 2008 at 9:46 am

In the context of Plan Mexico, the US government's material support for Mexican president Felipe Calderón's deadly war on drugs which has already claimed over 4,100 lives, it's worth taking a look at where all that new military hardware will go in the south. Despite having never caught a Zapatista with a single bag of pot (or a bottle of beer, for that matter), the government continues to use the war on drugs as an excuse to terrorize Zapatista communities.

The New Government Provocation Against Zapatismo

by Luis Hernández Navarro
La Jornada, June 10, 2008
translation by Kristin Bricker

Since the January 1994 insurrection, various administrations have wanted to associate the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN in its Spanish initials) with drug trafficking. They've never been able to demonstrate such a link, but they try time and time again.

This past June 4 the tired old story played out again. Only this time the threat is greater than in the past. On that date over 200 agents from the federal Army, the Attorney General's office, and state and municipal police, with their faces painted, entered the Zapatista territory of La Garrucha with the pretext of looking for marijuana plants. Hundreds of residents from the Hermenegildo Galeana and San Alejando communities fended them off with machetes, clubs, and slingshots.

Zapatista communities prohibit the cultivation, trafficking, and consumption of drugs. It's not even permitted to drink or sell alcohol there. This isn't a new fact. The rebel commanders have made this law public since the beginning of the armed uprising. The measure remains in effect under the civil authorities who have been put in charge of the autonomous municipalities and the good government councils. The same can't be said for the PRIista [translator's note: members of the Institutional Revolution Party which ruled Mexico with an iron fist for over 70 years] communities, where illegal drugs are grown in collusion with the police.

In a communique directed at then-president Ernesto Zedillo, dated February 10, 1995, one day after the military offensive that tried to detain, by means of treachery, Subcomandante Marcos, the insurgents stated: "we want to tell you the truth, if it's what you don't know: the criminals, terrorists, drug traffickers are you, they are the same people who make up your cabinet, they are your very own soldiers who traffic drugs, who force the indigenous peasants to plant marijuana and other narcotics. You haven't realized this, Mr. Zedillo? Yes, we Zapatistas, because we live amongst the people, are the same people who have fought against the planting of drugs, against the drug trafficking that your very own soldiers do and have done within the territories we've controlled."

Unfounded, the accusation has been repeated year after year. In 2004, the newspaper Reforma published the news that "on average, every two days members of the Mexican Army enter Zapatista territory in order to destroy marijuana and poppy fields which in the past year have considerably increased in number." Days afterwards, Gen. Jorge Isaac Jiménez García, commander of military operations in the zone, denied that the marijuana fields belonged to EZLN sympathizers.

The police-military provocation this past June 4 against the rebels is not an isolated incident. It forms part of and endless aggression. The government harassment against the insurgents has been constant since the arrival of Gov. Juan Sabines in 2006.

Various peasant groups close to the state government try to take possession of the lands that Zapatista support bases have occupied and worked since 1994. Paramilitary groups such as the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Rights (OPDDIC) harass the autonomous municipalities. The Army has established new positions, made its presence felt in the region, and carried out unusual movements of a clearly intimidating character.

Jaime Martínez Veloz, representative of the Chiapas government on the Commission for Peace and Reconciliation (Cocopa), has explained very clearly the agrarian dimension of the current anti-Zapatista offensive. "The Mexican government," he said to the International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights (CCIODH in its Spanish initials), "I am convinced that in the attitude of trying to confront the EZLN with peasants and indigenous people in the zone, gave land titles to people in need of land, but it entitled them as ejidatarios [trans. note: communal land owners] of the same lands that the Zapatistas occupied. It made them ejidatarios, and obviously it creates a conflict. In the same area there's those who occupy the land and those who have a title to it. This was already happening in the first years, '95, '96... and the repercussions of that, well, now they're surfacing."

Curiously, those responsible for agrarian, rural, and tourist policy in Juan Sabines' government are people like Jorge Constantino Kanter, representative of the plantation owners and ranchers affected by the Zapatista eruption, or Roberto Albores Gleason, son of ex-governor Roberto Albores, who committed countless human rights violations.

The June 4 operation was carried out in the place were just a short while before Subcomandante Marcos was. By the looks of it, his presence in La Garrucha worried the governmental authorities. The spokesperson of the rebel group hasn't appeared before the public for months, and his silence makes the intelligence services nervous. But the red flags that warn of the increasing governmental intolerance when faced with the peaceful civil initiative of the rebels have been raised for some time. En route to the first Continental Gathering of the Peoples of America [sic: Indigenous Peoples of America] in Vicam, Sonora, from October 11-14, 2007, police and military checkpoints detained a convoy that was transporting the Zapatista delegates, forcing the indigenous commanders who were going to attend the event to return to Chiapas.

An opinion poll recently carried out by Felipe Calderón's administration demonstrates that, in addition to the broad public support for the anti-drug campaign, despite the passing years, 26 percent of those surveyed support the Zapatistas. This is not a negligible percentage under the current circumstances.

The new governmental effort to make out the EZLN to be an accomplice in organized crime attempts to take advantage of the wave of anti-narco sentiment in order to try to erode the current positive opinion of the rebels and deal it a repressive blow. A resolute blow with a long history. Does the federal government really lack unresolved conflicts so much that it needs to enflame one that it hasn't been able to resolve for years?

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/not...-and-war-drugs