narco news

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON --The death squads of the Zetas, trained at the US School of the Americas, are now carrying out murders for Mexican drug cartels and hired as killers in Iraq. The Kaibiles, Guatemalan death squads trained by US Special Forces, are now responsible for murders and rapes in the Congo and around the world. In Mexico, US trained death squads attack and murder Indigenous Peoples, including the Zapatistas, struggling for dignity, autonomy and survival. The United States training of death squads and torturers is one of the most censored issues in the media.

Urging news reporters to report the facts, reader Swaneagle writes, "The following is critical under-reported urgent news. Zetas are mutinous Mexican army troops who graduated from School of the Americas. Hired by the cartels, they are directly responsible for an astounding rise in brutal, grisly killings, including many of the murders of women in Juarez, which are up to 75 this year.

"Zetas have also been hired as mercenaries in Iraq. The spread of the SOA template must be halted." Swaneagle adds, "I wonder how many follow the pattern of child soldiers in Africa."

"School of the Americas Watch is where I first came across the involvement of the Zetas with the cartels. Then I saw a website by Mothers of the murdered young women of Juarez accusing the Zetas of being involved in the torture killings of their daughters. The saddest part of all is that Guatemalan Kaibiles, notorious death squads trained by US Special Forces and known for disemboweling pregnant Mayan women in Guatemala and Chiapas at Acteal, also have been working for the cartels as many of them mutinied as well for more money.

"Both Zetas and Kaibiles have been hired as mercenaries in Iraq. Kaibiles were even hired as UN Peacekeepers in the Congo! So called Peacekeepers have been killing and raping in Haiti, the Congo and Bosnia." There is more information:
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=77215

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/GUATEMALAN+SPECIAL+FORCES+VETERANS+ENLIST+IN+IRAQ,+NARCO+WARS.-a0170290778

"As one who has been studying, documenting, interviewing and writing about the plight of marginalized peoples and how so many are murdered with killers rarely apprehended, I have seen a pattern emerging targeting Indigenous, homeless, prostitutes, migrants, gays, any who are extremely poor and voiceless, where killers, when arrested and convicted, tend to be white males often extreme right wing Christian or lifers in the military or white supremacist. I call them amerikkkan death squads," Swaneagle writes.

"I am concerned about the growing death squads that have direct ties to the US military and how they commit egregious crimes against humanity, especially to women and girls. What has happened in Africa, is unfolding in Mexico rapidly and heading our way."

Wikipedia states, "... More recently, some former members of the Kaibiles (along with members of the Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13 street gang), have formed relationships with the Los Zetas mercenary group. Los Zetas are a group of elite Mexican anti-drug paratroopers and intelligence operatives who deserted their Special Air Mobile Force Group in 1991 and have since been hired as enforcers'" by the drugs traffickers of the Gulf Cartel."

The Zetas' original group -- the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Special Forces Airmobile Group, GAFE) -- is a special forces unit of the Mexican Army's Special Forces Corps, trained by the world's special forces. They are responsible for attacks on the Zapatistas in southern Mexico. Mayan Zapatistas are struggling in Chiapas for dignity, autonomy and survival as corporations, military and paramilitaries push them off their land and murder those who resist. GAFE's agents of COIFE, considered Mexican Green Berets, Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales del Alto Mando carry out black ops and are known as the  (High Command GAFEs,) according to Wikipedia.

In Fort Benning, Georgia, the US School of the Americas Watch continues to protest the torture training of Latin American leaders who carry out the heinous crimes. In conjunction, protesters at Fort Huachuca's US Army Intelligence Center and School demand a halt to torture training. The "No to Torture" movement has exposed the role of Fort Huachuca, located in southeastern Arizona, in publication of the SOA's first torture training manual, made public in 1996. During the Iraq war, Fort Huachuca also trained army personnel responsible for the torture of detainees at Abu-Ghraib.

In Tucson, a weekend to end torture will be held Nov. 14 - 16, 2008, beginning with a talk by Col. Ann Wright, author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience. Col. Wright is a retired US Army Reserves colonel, with 29 years of military service and a career US diplomat. She resigned from the diplomatic corps in March 2003 in opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. She was in the news recently when Canada denied her entry.

Featured during Tucson's weekend to halt torture is the Theater of the Oppressed, a live performance of Nightwind by Hector Aristizabal. Torture survivor Aristizabal is a native of Medellin, Colombia and currently living in Pasadena, CA.

"His commitment to human rights forced him to leave his country due to death threats. Hector's main work has been on the use of Theater of The Oppressed techniques, traditional myths and storytelling as a way to combine theater, drumming, and dance with psychotherapy as a way to address the healing needs of many of our communities. He is a survivor of torture and active in SOA Watch," Tucson organizers said. Following the theater, there will be a "No to Torture Candlelight Procession," to the federal building downtown, followed by a vigil.

The "No to Torture Rally," on Sunday, Nov. 16, will be followed by a procession and presence at the Ft. Huachuca main gate Veterans Memorial Park at 3105 E. Fry Blvd in Sierra Vista. There will also be a presence at one of the private contractor's offices nearby. The events are sponsored by Southwest Witness, Tucson SOA Watch, and Torture on Trialin solidarity with SOA Watch and their annual Vigil & Action at Ft. Benning.

The connection between the Zetas and US training at the School of the Americas has been exposed by some mainstream media. Jerry Zeper, at the Washington Times, writes, "Many of the Zeta leaders have been identified by Mexican officials as former members of an elite paratroop and intelligence battalion known as the Special Air Mobile Force Group, formerly assigned to the state of Tamaulipas, which borders southern Texas, to fight drug traffickers.
"Several of them, according to the Mexican government, were trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga. The school, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is the U.S. Army's principal Spanish-language training facility for Latin American military personnel.
"A core of 31 former battalion members are thought to lead the Zetas, but the gang's total membership is not known. The name Zeta was taken from the Mexican federal police in Tamaulipas, who used it in the late 1980s as radio code to locate high-ranking battalion commanders.
"Several members deserted the Special Air Mobile Force Group in 1991, aligning themselves with drug traffickers and establishing their own smuggling routes into the United States."

More at Censored News

State police summarily executed three peasants in front of a child

The Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) issued a press release on denouncing the October 4 police operation in Chincultik that left six peasants dead, 17 wounded, and 36 detained.  Of the wounded, ten were beaten and six were shot.  Three men were gravely injured: one was transfered to a hospital in Mexico City, and the other to a hospital in the Chiapas capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez.

According to a communique from the state attorney general's office, about 40 police had entered the community to carry out subpoenas against 28 people whom it suspected were involved in the takeover of the Chincultik ruins and the booth at the entrance to the ruins where visitors are charged an entrance fee.  The police entered on horseback, in vehicles, and on foot, shooting tear gas and kicking down doors in various houses.

The townspeople, who claim that the government does not properly maintain the ruins and that the tourism proceeds from the ruins should benefit the town, defended themselves from the attack.  They surrounded the police and disarmed them, guarding the 77 police weapons in the town.  The residents detained the police officers, holding them in the town office.

Hours later, 300 State Preventative Police officers entered the community, again shooting tear gas at the residents.  The peasants responded with sticks and stones, at which point the police opened fire, injuring several residents.

Agustin Alfaro Alfaro, his wife Eloisa Margarita Espinoza Morales, and their young son arrived from a neighboring ranch to transport four of the injured men to the nearest hospital.  However, before reaching the hospital the State Preventative Police intercepted their truck and opened fire.  A bullet struck Alfaro in the leg.  The police pulled him from the car and shot him in the chest.  Then they summarily executed three of the injured men: Rigoberto López, Alfredo Hernández, and Miguel Antonio Martínez.  Espinoza Morales and her son were uninjured.

During the operation, police also shot Ignacio Hernández López and Ricardo Ramírez Ramírez, who died on the way to the hospital.

The 36 peasants who were detained during the operation were released the following day in exchange for the weapons the peasants confiscated from the police they detained.

Frayba reports that state and federal authorities have decided to pay the dead peasants' families MX$35,000 (USD$2,851.31) in funeral costs and MX$75,000 (USD$6,109.95) in "economic support."  They've also promised residents food rations, community development projects to build tourist hostels or restaurants.  The residents are offended by the offer.

Meridiano90 released the following photo montage of the operation and its aftermath:

(Warning: includes graphic images of murdered peasants.)

By Brenda Norrell

SELLS, Arizona - The Tohono O'odham mother of a teenager who was ran over and killed by the US Border Patrol made a plea for help so she can continue to pursue court action and charge the Border Patrol agent with murder.
Bennett Patricio, Jr., 18, was ran over and killed during the predawn hours in a remote area of the Tohono O'odham Nation in 2002. Although the family's civil case reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the family was abandoned by their attorney.
Angelita Reino Ramon, Bennett's mother, made an appeal for help on Sunday.
"We sold all our furniture, our truck and our car, so we could get to San Francisco and the Ninth Circuit Court," Angelita said.
"We are in a very desperate situation," she said. Angelita said now the family has no car to take the children to school, go shopping for food or look for jobs.
"No one wants to help us. We are in a really difficult situation."
"We're looking for someone who can help us with Bennett Patricio, Jr.'s case. We want to take it back to court in Tucson and file a murder charge. We need a lawyer who isn't afraid of the government and will stick with it all the way through.
"Our attorney stole the money from us, our fear is now, ‘Who can we trust?'"
After the lower court, the US District Court in Tucson, ruled in favor of the Border Patrol, the civil case reached the Ninth Circuit. The family prepared much of the case themselves, selling everything to travel to San Francisco, focused on justice for Bennett.
When they arrived in San Francisco, the people who had promised to help them failed to do so.
"We thought people would help us when we got to San Francisco, but they didn't help us, even though they invited us to come and offered to help us there."
When they became desperate in the Bay Area, the late Floyd Westerman did help them. The students at DQ University also helped them and eventually the family made it back home to the Tohono O'odham Nation.
"Thanks to them, and the Aztecs in San Jose also helped us with gas," she said.
For Angelita, sometimes, there is just too much pain and sorrow, the memories too painful.
Bennett was walking home across the desert in the predawn hours of April 9, 2002, when he was ran over and killed by a border patrol officer in a remote area, south of Sells near the international border.
US Border Patrol Agent Cody Rouse struck Bennett and dragged his body at least 50 feet before stopping. When the agent called in to report the incident, Rouse simply claimed there was a body on the side of the road. Initially, Rouse did not admit that he ran over and killed Bennett. Later, in a series of conflicting stories, the US Border Patrol claimed that it was an accident.
Based on the evidence, Ramon and her husband, Irvin Ramon, believe that Bennett was walking home through the desert and happened upon an illegal transfer of drugs being carried out by US Border Patrol agents. The couple believe that as Bennett walked away, into the darkness, that he was intentionally ran over and killed by border patrol agents.
After Angelita was told that her son was killed, she waited for an apology for her son's death from the Border Patrol. The apology never came. Neither did help or support. The Tohono O'odham Nation would not provide funds, nor an attorney, in the family's fight for justice.
"I'm here to let everyone know about the Border Patrol and how they killed my son," Angelita said, speaking to the Indigenous Peoples Border Summit of the Americas in San Xavier, Arizona.
Angelita said no mother should ever have to identify the body of their child crushed from his head to his feet. Shouldering this sorrow, she has persevered with little or no support. Intensifying the pain, she endures hostility toward her, because she pursued justice for her son in federal court.
Ramon can be reached at: Angelita Reino Ramon, PO Box 1082, Sells, Arizona 85634

 

Related article: "While the Bush regime pillages, the people march against the Border Wall in El Paso" While the US economy sinks thanks to the thieves of Wall Street, the people of El Paso continue to fight against the Border Wall

By Carlos Marentes
EL PASO, Texas -- While the Bush regime was rewarding 700 billion dollars to the thieves responsible for the financial pillage, we completed another week of daily protests against the border wall.
While Bush was giving away taxpayers' money to Wall Street, with the enthusiastic support of both Democrats and Republicans, and of course Obama and McCain, we intensified our acts of opposition against the infamous 7.5 million dollars per mile wall being built by the Kiewit Corporation of Omaha, Nebraska. Kiewit is not only one of the largest recipients of juicy government contracts, but the CEO of Kiewit was also one of the most generous contributors to the Bush/Cheney electoral campaigns. Read article:
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2008/10/while-bush-regime-pillages-people-march.html

Yuma, Arizona - U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) special agents violated criminal laws while obtaining a federal search warrant which resulted with the seizure of 600 pounds of marijuana and no arrests.

In July of 2008, I received information that a criminal act had been committed by a group of ICE special agents under the supervision of JAY CREED in September or October 2007.

Allegedly, ICE’s supervisory criminal investigator JAY CREED’s group received information from a confidential informant that a large quantity of marijuana was secreted inside a tractor-trailer outside the Yuma city limits, and inside an alfalfa shed or warehouse.

The ICE agents responded to the site and observed that three tractor-trailers were inside the warehouse. The warehouse and tractor trailers were surrounded by a high wired security fence with the entrance door under lock and key. Thus, the owner of the warehouse property had an expectation of his privacy.

The special agents’ initiated a physical and visual surveillance of the warehouse under CREED’s supervision. As standard procedure, it is highly probable that CREED briefed his immediate supervisor, Assistant Special Agent in Charge KEVIN JETER.

When the agents saw that two of the tractor-trailers exited the site, the agents followed the two trailers. Later they stopped the two conveyances and found nothing. CREED and his group of ICE investigators believed that the marijuana was possibly inside the third trailer at the warehouse.

However, CREED decided to take the easy route and instead of continuing their surveillance, CREED authorized and ordered two special agents to jump over the fence (trespassing), at night time (the building site main entrance was locked) and somehow they “welcomed themselves” by looking inside the trailer where they saw numerous bales of marijuana (600 pounds).

Thus, somewhere in the vicinity of the City of Yuma, there sits a warehouse owned by a private individual or business entity who is seeking justice.

An ICE special agent swore as to the truthfulness of the affidavit for a search warrant. The search warrant was signed by U.S. Magistrate Jay Irwin, Yuma, AZ. The warrant was executed and the agents seized 600 pounds of marijuana. No arrests were made and the case was immediately closed.   

In my 30 years of public law enforcement, I learned from my first very basic police academy Rule Number 1: never lie to a judge. I personally know federal magistrate Jay Irwin. I also know that when he finds out that an ICE special agent deceived him, judge Irwin will not be a happy camper.

The Assistant U.S. Attorney who authorized the search warrant now works as Assistant City Attorney, with the City of Yuma, AZ. After the marijuana seizure was made the case was closed 

I conducted some Google searches for any press releases posted in the ICE’s website and found NONE regarding this significant seizure. I also searched the Yuma Sun newspaper, which normally reports any significant marijuana seizures and found none. This leads me to believe that JAY CREED’s supervisor KEVIN JETER and his other two group supervisors MICHAEL STROM and KEVIN EVANS and the Arizona SAC, who at the time was ALONZO PENA knew of the illegal entry of the warehouse and decided not to issue a press release.

As a former Resident Agent in Charge for an Office of Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs Service, I knew that certain managers and supervisors at the Arizona Legacy U.S. Customs Service’s Offices of Investigations and Internal Affairs condoned corruption. See Bill Conroy’s three related Narco News stories regarding corruption at the Legacy U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) at

http://www.narconews.com/Issue32/article927.html; http://www.narconews.com/Issue33/article952.html; http://www.narconews.com/Issue32/article912.html.

It is possible that CREED assumed that it was OK to violate criminal law since his former supervisors MIKE STROM and retired Yuma’s Customs Resident Agent in Charge STEVE ARIZAGA invaded my privacy rights when they trespassed into my residence in 2002 and no disciplinary action was taken against them by Customs. In this case, I filed a police report with the Yuma Police Department (YPD). However, the YPD declined prosecution in lieu of Customs taking action against ARIZAGA and STROM.  Besides, ARIZAGA and STROM were former YPD police officers and ARIZAGA maintained a good relationship with the YPD’s chief of police.

Another factor that may have influenced CREED is that he probably knew that KEVIN JETER had been the subject of several complaints of discrimination while assigned to the Phoenix, AZ Customs office, and he received no disciplinary action. In fact, one particular discrimination complaint resulted in an out-of-court settlement where ICE ended up paying a large undetermined amount of tax-payers money to an ICE special agent and a victim of JETER’s discriminatory practices. ICE instead of disciplining JETER, decided to promote him to a GS-1811-15, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Yuma, AZ where he continues to discriminate against certain employees at will.

As a trained internal affairs manager, supervisor and investigator, I know that corruption induces more corruption if undetected or condoned. Corruption must be stopped and removed; otherwise it widespread like cancer.

We are fully aware that the process to obtain a federal search warrant is not a simple one. While individual agents have wide latitude to look further into any tips they receive, and must go through their supervisor to open a case, a request for a search warrant still has to pass through several steps.

Based on my years of conducting and managing federal corruption investigations, JAY CREED, et al committed several criminal violations in this particular incident. Some Federal Criminal Statutes that Apply to the JAY CREED’s case:

18 USC 371 – Conspiracy

18 USC 1001 – False Statements

18 USC 1512 - Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant

18 USC 1513 - Retaliating against a witness, victim, or an informant

18 USC 1621 – Perjury

18 USC 1622 - Subornation of perjury

18 USC 2235 - Search warrant procured maliciously

An agent must take his suspicions to a supervisor in a written affidavit. The supervisor has to find there is reasonable suspicion of criminal activity for a case to be opened. After the case has been reviewed, it then moves to the United States Attorney’s Office where it is further inspected by an Assistant U.S. Attorney to find probable cause to justify a warrant.

Once the AUSA agrees there is probable cause, the case is presented to a United States District Judge, who then decides whether there is enough merit to the case to proceed and issue a search warrant.

The process to obtain a search warrant is a lengthy one designed to protect the rights of those subject to the search. The Fourth Amendment says you have to show probable cause and a specific time and place. It’s not a fishing expedition to see what (an agent) can find. Further, federal criminal investigators are to be held at a very high standard. When we allow our federal law enforcement officers break the law in order to obtain information for the application of a search warrant can bring some very severe consequences to our federal law enforcement system, and an embarrassing to our U.S. government.

Luckily, there were no arrests made in this case. There is a difference between obtaining a search warrant and proving guilt in court. The burden of proof that the government has to show for a warrant is nowhere near the burden of proof in a criminal trial, where the government must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. I have no questions in my mind that JAY CREED and his agents would have committed perjury on the stand if this case would have resulted in a criminal court trial.

CREED has been assigned to assist in the investigation of high profile corruption cases against San Luis, AZ border inspectors, both as a working special agent and as a group supervisor. This should be a grave concern to the Yuma area federal law enforcement community that has utilized CREED in their investigations. Numerous criminal cases where defendants have been convicted on state or federal drug charges can be subjected to appeals.

It is well known that Assistant Special Agent in Charge ("ASAC") KEVIN JETER, has a history of discriminating and retaliating his subordinate employees such as retired ICE special agent Mike Suba.  Agent Suba transferred from the Internal Revenue Service where he was a senior special agent and an expert in conducting complex federal money laundering drug conspiracy investigations.  Agent Suba was also involved as an officer with the Yuma Area Law Enforcement (YALE).  I learned that JETER submitted his son's name for consideration to receive a scholarship award from YALE.  However, because JETER's son at the time was not a resident of Yuma, Arizona, but of another state, agent Suba and the rest of the YALE's board denied JETER's son scholarship.  According to agent Suba, after that incident, JETER started retaliating against him and harassing him.  Subsequently, agent Suba was charged with administrative misconduct that could have resulted with just an oral admonishment or a letter of reprimand.  Instead, agent Suba received a suspension without pay.  The retaliation and harassment continued and agent Suba retired.

Another case, involve retired ICE special agent Larry Hamm who wrote a letter to the Arizona's Special Agent in Charge ("SAC") complaining about mismanagement and abuse of authority by JETER and certain other supervisors.  I spoke several times with agent Larry Hamm during this time.  I remember one time when he stated that agents needed some night vision goggles to conduct surveillance at night but that one of the supervisors had taken the only set "hunting" (for the supervisor's personal use).  After the letter was received by the SAC, JETER was suddenly detailed to a remote post of duty in Arizona for a short period.  However, when he returned, JETER made agent Hamm's life miserable with a hostile working environment and harassment.  Agent Hamm who was/is a devoted Mormon, requested to have Sundays off from the agent's duty roster in order to attend his church.  Instead, agent Hamm received extra duty days, including Sundays and was given insignificant job assignments.  Agent Hamm confided that the retaliation and harassment became unbearable and subsequently retired.

Of importance to note is the fact that recently at least five (4) ICE special agents assigned to JETER's office have resigned and are now working for ICE's OPR, or the U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the Office of Internal Affairs.  Sources have advised that the morale at the Yuma ICE office is very low.  I know this to be true because I have been there.   

Now, let's go back to the illegal entry of the warehouse - I contacted the ICE’s Public Affairs Officer to confirm that a search warrant had been executed resulting with the seizure of 600 pounds of marijuana. I was told that I needed to submit a Freedom of Information (“FOIA”) request. This was a rather unusual request because this information is always available for members of the media.

If ICE’s headquarters, ICE’s Arizona management officials, including MATTHEW C. ALLEN, KEVIN JETER, JAY CREED, MIKE STROM and KEVIN EVANS attempt to harass this writer for reporting criminal activity, they can be subjected to a public corruption investigation and possibly charged with several federal crimes to include:

18 USC 1512 - Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant

18 USC 1513 - Retaliating against a witness, victim, or an informant

The Assistant US Attorney who reviewed the affidavit for the search warrant was Mr. Tim Andrews, who now works as an Assistant Yuma City Attorney, Yuma, AZ.

As a licensed Arizona Private Investigator I am required to report any and all criminal violations against the United States.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been apprised of the above referenced in case the DHS or ICE decides to send their OIG or OPR agents to this writer’s residence to intimidate or harass him and/or his sources, instead of investigating the culprits in this matter.

 

 

 

Dear readers,

The lines below are a translation of an article written by Jose Melendez, from San Jose, CR. It was published in El Universal (Mexico City) on Sunday, July 20, 2008. It appears linked in this notebook.

Narco Submerges to Elude Radars
Traffic Along Colombia - Mexico Route Using Submarines
by Jose Melendez, correspondent for El Universal
translation by Marc Van Riper

A small submersible attempted to cross the Panama canal, tied to the propellers of a ship, to carry 35 kilos of cocaine to Europe, during May of this year. Two other small submarines were detected in front of the coasts of Guatemala and Costa Rica, in the Pacific Ocean, in 2006 and 2007, with 8 (metric) tonnes of cocaine on board.

The police conclusion is to be on alert. The Mexican and Colombian narco traffic cartels made a technological jump with 'narco submarines' to elude radars, travel at low speed (12 to 20 km per hour) self-reload fuel and traffic drugs along a maritime corridor from Colombia to Mexico along a vulnerable Pacific route.

"Like Colombia says, it can be calculated that the narco maffias place 65 submersibles at sea, every year", said captain Ruben Samudio, from the Maritime Service of Panama. "It is new technology with requirements of conventional submarines. The Colombian narco guerrilla can contract engineers and specialists and pay to build these vessels", he declared to El Universal.

Built with fiberglass, they do not submerge completely. "They sail flush with the surface of the ocean and elude radars" and sometimes are supplied by merchant ships, he added. Despite the fact they can be discovered by helicopter patrols, bad weather and other factors help them escape.

A police surprise was recorded last May, when a submersible with three Cypriots on board was found with chains tied to the propellers of a ship that was preparing to cross the Panama Canal, from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

A vessel 14 meters long and 2 meters wide, with fuel tanks and 3,000 kilos of cocaine, detected at the end of 2006, in front of the Pacific coast of Cosa Rica, and a 'semisubmersible' with 5 metric tonnes of cocaine, located in front of (the coastline of) Guatemala, activated the police alarms of the isthmus (of Central America). The narco submarine(s) sail the waters of the area at least since the year 2000, according to sources.

A link to the original of this article in Spanish is offered below.

Original article in Spansih - El Universal: http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/161077.html

Note: 65 vessels x 5 tonnes (payload) = 325 metric tonnes (per year). This is only a rough estimate, probably on the low side. Probably most of this freight is moving towards the US. This is freight originating from Colombia only. The (current) demand for such freight inside the US appears to warrant such logistical activities.

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- Congratulations to the thirty winners of Native American Music Awards at the 10th annual celebration on the Seneca Nation in New York Saturday night. The sounds and performances revealed the pursuit of excellence from traditional sounds to rock, reggae, folk and hip hop. The award ceremony was broadcast live on the web, with a rapid fire chat room.
Two of the top winners, each capturing double awards, Blackfire and Native Roots, also deserve an award in the "keeping it real" category for their enduring efforts for international human rights, Indigenous sovereignty and the preservation of Native cultures.
Blackfire's Klee, Clayson and Jeneda Benally, with their father Jones Benally, have upheld the standard of no compromise in the fight for dignity and human rights for Indigenous Peoples around the world. From their home in Flagstaff, Arizona, with the foundation of their father's homeland in Big Mountain on the Navajo Nation, Blackfire has established a new standard for Native American youths and resistance to colonization. Blackfire's "(Silence) is a Weapon" captured the Best Record Award for 2008 and the Native Heart Award, with recognition for producer Ed Stasium.
Native Roots, awarded Group of the Year and Best World Recording is based in Albuquerque. Native Roots has carried this unique reggae, traditional and folk mix of sounds from the Pueblos in New Mexico to the Maori in New Zealand, always inspiring hope and celebrating the beauty of Indigenous cultures.
Both Native Roots and Blackfire have always put others needs above their own, sealing their place in history not only as award-winning Native musicians, but music makers who have fine-tooled sound and lyrics as a vehicle for social change and building a better world.
Jim Boyd's selection as Artist of the Year will be celebrated by all those who remember his sound with the empowering XIT, among the best Native American bands of all time, which fueled the birth of the Red Power movement in the 70s. Boyd's 11th release, "Blues to Bluegrass," on Thunderwolf Records, includes an American Indian mix of rock, bluegrass, blues and folk with reflections on Coyote the trickster.
Congratulations to 10th Annual NAMMY Award Winners 2008:

Lifetime Achievement Award: Johnny Curtis
Best World Music: Native Roots
Best Blues Recording: "Deep Downtown" Jimmy Wolf
Best Compilation Recording Old Style Round Dance: Various Artists
Best Country Recording: "No Lies" Tracy Bone
Debut Artist of the Year: Cheryl Bear
Debut Group of the Year: Injunuity
Best Female Artist: Nicole
Best Folk Recording: "Where the Green Grass Grows," The Crow Girls
Flutist of the Year: Jan Michael Looking Wolf
Best Gospel Inspirational: "Precious Memories," Cherokee National Youth Choir
Group of the Year: Native Roots
Best Historical Recording: "Chief Seattle Speaks 1854," Red Hawk
Best Instrumental Recording: "Mirror Lake," Golana
Best Male Artist: Edmund Bull
Best Native American Church Recording: "New Beginning," Janelle Turtle
Best New Age Recording "Homeland Security," Medicine Crow
Best Pop Recording: "Phoenix," Fara Palmer
Best Pow Wow Recording: "Hear the Beat," Blackfoot Confederacy
Best Producer: Adrian Brown, Tim Sampson, Jonathan Joss, "Still No Good"
Best Rap Hip Hop Recording: "Native American Hustle," Dago Braves
Record of the Year: "(Silence) is a Weapon," Blackfire
Best Rock Recording: "The Sun & the Earth," Stevie Salas
Song Single of the Year: "Broken Dreams," Nightshield
Songwriter of the Year: Star Nayea
Best Spoken Recording: "The Story Tellers," Ken Quiet
Best Traditional Recording: "Traditional Navajo Shoe Songs," Gilbert Begay, Sr.
Best Short Form Music Video: "The Enlightened Time," JANA
Best Long Form Video: "Live at Mount Rushmore: Concert for Reconciliation of Cultures," Brule & Airo
Best World Music Recording: "Celebrate," Native Roots
Native Heart: Ed Stasium producer for "(Silence) is a Weapon"
The Native American Music Awards 10th anniversary celebration, was held at the Seneca Niagara Hotel & Casino.
Along with the winners, those inducted into the NAMMY Hall of Fame were: Rickey Medlocke of Blackfoot, selling over 5 million records with his hits "Train Train" and "Highway Song;" Pat Vegas of Redbone which reached the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 1974 with the song, "Come and Get Your Love;" Janice-Marie Johnson of A Taste of Honey, with multi-platinum smash hit "Boogie Oogie Oogie;" and Felipe Rose of the Village People.
NAMMY presenters and performers included Joanne Shenandoah and Robert Tree Cody, Chucki Begay, Navajo, from Tucson, Blues recording artist CornBred, Canada's Edmund Bull, New Mexico's Native Roots, South Dakota's Rap Hip/Hop artists Nightshield and Maniac The Siouxpernatural, female power vocalists Star Nayea & Pura Fe', The Cherokee National Youth Choir, Iroquois Dancers, Trevor Jones & Young Gunz plus Indian Country's preeminent comedian and ventriloquist, Buddy Big Mountain, and more.
The Great grandson of Geronimo, Houston Geronimo and Lance White Magpie, a direct descendant of Crazy Horse served as special guest presenters.

Photos and links at: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Listen to those award winning sounds at: http://www.votenative.com

Special thanks to Single Feather Media for the live web broadcast, making it possible for people around the world to watch the show live and talk it over in the chat room:

Single Feather Media (www.singlefeathermedia.com)

 

They were attacked by state and federal police, according to an ejido representative. Ten wounded and thirty detained reported.

by Elio Henriquez, correspondent for La Jornada
translation and update by Kristin Bricker

Miguel Hidalgo Ejido, Chiapas. State and federal police shot and murdered six peasants from this ejido [communally owned land] in La Trinitaria county, which for almost a month has controlled the Chinkultic archaeological ruins, located three kilometers from the ejido.

Jose Velazquez, one of the ejido representatives, stated to the press that the incidents that occurred in the ejido late Friday night resulted in over ten wounded and more than thirty people detained who are recovering in a hospital in the city of Comitan.

Blood trails, scatted spent high-caliber casings, and bullet holes could be seen in the streets and in some houses.

"It seemed like the police were on drugs because they indiscriminately beat children, women, and elderly people, and that's not right," said Velazquez.

When the first four cadavers arrived Saturday morning, the families of the dead demanded justice "or we'll take it into our own hands."

The names of the dead peasants are reported to be Ricardo Ramírez Hernández, Ignacio Hernández López, Rigoberto López Vázquez, Alfredo Hernández Ramírez, Miguel Antonio Martínez, and Agustín Alfaro Calvo.

Velazquez said that when faced with the "aggression," the residents detained and disarmed 77 police who had entered the community presumably to detain the local authorities. Six thousand people live in the community.

The community still has the police weapons in its possession.

"They came to attack us without cause, because they were already in discussions to try to resolve the ruins problem" which are located nine kilometers from the Lakes of Montebello, he said.

He noted that the residents of Miguel Hidalgo took over the ruins because the government "has left them abandoned and because it's only right that the resources that come from the operation of the ruins stay with us."

On Saturday there were at least eight police vehicles which were damaged by the peasants who, enraged by the death of their compañeros, went after the agents who fired their weapons, and the agents were later rescued by other officers Friday night.

******************************************************

Update: Notimex reports that the Chiapas Ministry of Justice has ordered about 200 police who participated in the Chinkultic operation to present themselves for toxicology and ballistics tests and tests on their clothing and hands to see if they've recently fired guns. They will also give depositions.

Notimex also reports that of the 22 wounded, 16 of them are police. It reports one disappearance but does not specify if the disappeared person is a police officer or a peasant.

The Ministry of Justice claims that when the townspeople disarmed the police, they then poured gasoline on the police and threatened to light them on fire. It also claims some of the peasants were drunk.

While the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organzation (OCEZ) has a strong presence in the area, the peasants who took over the Chinkultic ruins and the ticket booth at the entrance to the ruins do not seem to belong to any of the numerous Chiapan indigenous peasant organizations.

Dear readers,

Here are some numbers concerning the two subjects covered by this web site. I will try to keep the numbers somewhat updated. The perspective is largely on democracy/political evolution with brief notes on articles, including links to original aritcles in either Spanish or English.

READ HERE

Venezuela federal law concerning illegal commerce and consumption of drugs

Venezuela has a federal law concerning illegal commerce and consumption of drugs. A link to the official pdf file to this law is offered below. The law appears in Spanish.

http://www.ona.gob.ve/Pdf/Ley_drogas2006.pdf

Mexico: small amounts of controlled substances may become decriminalized

The Administration of President Calderon (MX) has submitted a bill to the Senado , with a view to de-criminalize the possession of small amounts of certain controlled substances. The reasons are mostly administrative reasons pertaining to the Mexican judiciary branch.

A link to the source article is offered below.

http://www.cnnexpansion.com/actualidad/2008/10/02/la-posesion-de-poca-droga-no-sera-delito

On a separate point, the Alternativa party introduced a bill to the Camara de Diputados (MX House of Representatives) to de-criminalize the use of marihuana for mediccal and scientific purposes. A link to the source article is offered below.

http://www.cnnexpansion.com/actualidad/2008/05/03/alternativa-pide-despenalizar-marihuana

5 planes seized by the MX Army

A short communique from the MX Army, via a presidential web site, states brief details of an investigation which was live as of October 3, 2008. 5 stolen airplanes were located and seized by the MX Army. A link is offered below. The value of the aircraft has not been posted, yet.

http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/prensa/?contenido=39160

2.5 tonnes of drugs seized - Venezuela

The ONA (the National Anti Drug Office) of Venezuela, has made a recent statement. 2.5 tonnes of drugs were seized. A link to the article is offered below. The article was dated 3/10/08, which in American English is rendered October 3, 2008.

http://www.mpprij.gob.ve/spip.php?article5750

USD 196 mn (estimate) Narco Submarine Sunk

A narco-sub was recently sunk. Before sinking it, the value of the drug load it hauled was estimated at USD 196 million. This was reported originally by the Seattle-Times, and picked up by El Universal (Mexico City). A link to the article in El Universal is offered below.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/162504.html

Background on narco subs

El Universal (Mexico City) published a background article on narco subs, a few months ago. A link to the article is offered below. An English translation can be read here.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/161077.html

SIEDO receives info

SIEDO received information from the Colombian government concerning the crew of one narco sub. This particular vessel was seized by the Mexican navy a few months ago. SIEDO is the acronym for a MX law enforcement organization, translated loosely as Office of the Assistant Attorney General for Specialized Investigations on Organized Crime. It should not be confused with AFI, which is the MX counterpart of the US FBI.

A link to the article in El Universal is offered below.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/161067.html

Links of Interest:

* Inter-Parliamentary Union

* Organization of American States

* INTERPOL

* IICA - Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture

* PAHO - Pan American Health Organization

* WHO - World Health Organization

Tohono O'odham Nation transports O'odham home from pilgrimage, as drug violence and threats escalate

By Brenda Norrell

Updated: Oct. 3, 2008 12:10 am

SELLS, Arizona -- The Tohono O'odham Nation sent vans to Sonora, Mexico, on Thursday, offering an option to O'odham on pilgrimage to return home. As violence and threats of violence increased from competing drug cartels in the region, Tohono O'odham Chairman Ned Norris issued a statement and discouraged O'odham from attending an annual festival in Magdalena de Kino this weekend.

"We strongly advise members of the nation to not travel in Mexico," Chairman Norris said.

On Thursday evening, an emergency worker with the Tohono O'odham Nation said it is unknown whether Tohono O'odham were killed as they walked on pilgrimage from the US border to Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico, for the San Francisco Xavier Festival. Some O'odham returned home from the 60-mile pilgrimage, while others remain on pilgrimage or unaccounted for.

The Tohono O'odham Nation radio station, KOHN-FM in Sells, Arizona, reported tonight that some O'odham were arriving home and medical attention was available. Tohono O'odham family members can call 520-383-8867 for information on loved ones.

Earlier today, Tohono O'odham already in Magdalena for the festival called friends and relatives back home in Sells and reported deaths on the pilgrimage route, from the drug cartels crossfire. However, reports now indicate that those killed in the gunfire at Santa Ana were non-O'odham. However, fears increased with reports of bomb threats for a Magdalena church.

O'odham, Yaqui and thousands of others attend the annual gathering, the San Francisco Xavier Festival, each year.

Reporting from the border, Michel Marizco, publisher of Border Reporter, reported late Thursday that there was gunfire by narco traffickers at Santa Ana, on the pilgrimage route between the border and Magdalena.

Marizco writes, "... local drug dealing gang, Los Jabalíes, got into a gunfight with another crew early this morning in Santa Ana ..."

While some O'odham returned home, others remained in Magdalena and the state of Sonora.

Related: Mexico deadly for journalists
Special Report from the Committee to Protect Journalists
"Mexico is already one of the world's deadliest nations for journalists, with 21 killed since 2000, at least seven in direct reprisal for their work."

This article was produced for the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network for a meeting to be held at the Anarchist Bookfair in London on October 18th 2008.

We are others, the other. If this world does not have a place for us, then another world must be made. With no tool other than our rage, no material other than our dignity. We still must encounter each other more, know each other better. What is missing is yet to come...

The Zapatista communities in resistance, with their autonomous schools, clinics and decision-making structures, have been an inspiration to the anti-capitalist movement. Now Zapatista villages and lands are sustaining increasingly violent attacks by the state and paramilitaries.

Military harassment – the danger of confrontation.

Mexico today is taking advantage of the proliferation of organised crime and drug cartels to provide a justification for ever-increasing numbers of military or armed police operations, involving blatant human rights violations, paramilitaries, and the use of torture. These brutal nationwide operations are more and more often driven by the priorities and interests of the US government. At the same time Mexican law enforcement officials are regularly shown to be the perpetrators of the crime, drug, kidnap, and assassination offences they are supposed to combat.

It is in this context that the Mexican army is intensifying the systematic strategy of low intensity warfare (i.e. civilian targeted warfare) that it operates within the Zapatista zone. Many regions are now, in effect, militarised territory, where the army operates daily patrols, surrounding, intimidating, and making incursions into isolated indigenous communities, using military vehicles carrying soldiers bearing high-calibre weapons, while helicopters fly overhead.

Mexican Army soldiers entered into communities in at least 4 regions of Chiapas. One of these was San Jeronimo Tulija, where they entered in a convoy of eleven trucks, accompanied by 300 Mexican Federal Agency of Investigation agents and state Preventative Police, while helicopters flew overhead.[i] This harassment and aggression represents a deliberate provocation, to which, so far, the Zapatistas have been able to respond by organising and improving their vigilance and their unarmed resistance.

Capise is a San Cristobal-based NGO which monitors military and paramilitary activity in Chiapas. It reports that within the 56 permanent large military camps in the indigenous zone, 90% of the military troops are now composed of elite special forces, supported by and supporting 6 paramilitary groups sponsored by Juan Sabines, governor of Chiapas. Capise point out that this tactical and military deployment is violating the free zones, the spaces for free movement that should exist in times of truce and peace. They believe it represents “a comprehensive project against indigenous self-determination”.[ii]

“The Zapatistas don’t have problems with ‘internal security’. .. The communities know how to resolve conflicts fairly and calmly. But the people live under a continuous ‘external’ threat: military and police harassment and the belligerence of paramilitaries. The government authorities themselves are the security problem for the Zapatista villages.”[iii]

Paramilitary activity

The government of Chiapas has re-activated and armed paramilitary groups, which masquerade as rural indigenous rights organisations, e.g. the Organisation for the Defence of Indigenous and Peasant Peoples (OPDDIC). These armed groups invade communities, attack women and children, burn houses, steal animals and building materials, destroy corn crops, threaten to return to evict the community often giving a date, and generally physically and psychologically harass and frighten the members of the community. When the paramilitaries come, they are often accompanied by the police and helicopters.

On August 31st 2008, the Zapatista Good Government Junta in Morelia issued a denuncia regarding a series of attacks by OPDDIC members on Zapatistas of K’an Akil community (Olga Isabel autonomous municipality), in the northern zone of Chiapas. One Zapatista suffered a gunshot wound in his abdomen. The Junta reported that some of the armed attackers wore “military type” uniforms.[iv]

Because these paramilitaries are also indigenous, the impression is given of inter-community conflicts. In addition to the armed threats, Zapatistas report that members of paramilitary groups enter and infiltrate communities dressed as civilians to find out how the Zapatistas are organising, and who the most influential individuals are, in order to target them for death threats, kidnap and torture.[v] In February 2008 two Zapatista support bases from Betel Yochip, a community dominated by OPDDIC, were detained by state highway place and two other armed men, taken to jail and tortured for nine hours.[vi]

The land, basis of everything

In 1994, in many areas, the Zapatistas ‘recuperated’, and became collective owners of, the fields they once worked as slaves, and which they now work together for themselves. Those in power plan to once again drive the indigenous from their lands. “Without land we have no meaning and no livelihood, because without land we have no roots”.[vii]

The government is now giving titles to these reclaimed lands to groups of indigenous people who belong to different political organisations, and arming them as paramilitaries, with the direct aim of provoking conflict. Capise calculate that 917 families, living on 13,234 hectares, are at direct risk of dispossession and eviction.[viii] The caracoles of Morelia and La Garrucha are the most affected, having the most ‘recuperated’ land.

The JBG of Oventic issued a statement in March 2008 “We are being pressurised in many different ways to abandon our resistance....The bad government wants to strip us of our right to live and enjoy what mother earth gives us...It fills the paramilitaries with hatred so they will snatch away our right to our land”[ix]

The intention is clearly to deprive the movement of its base, roots and meaning by evicting the grassroots communities from their land, with the intention of destroying their autonomy. Along with the privatisation of oil, electricity, and what few natural resources remain, everything in Mexico is up for sale. Now the only un-privatised land is indigenous territory and these are the lands which have the most natural resources, and so are potentially the most ‘profitable’.[x]

Use of social programmes for counterinsurgency

Other incentives offered to indigenous communities to encourage them to attack Zapatista ones, and to Zapatistas to try to make them abandon their resistance, are government aid programmes, and handouts such as cement, corrugated roofing, and solar panels. There are both federal and state programmes, designed to coerce or co-opt people into submission. In many communities there are both Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas, so this is another way of promoting confrontations and clashes. People are given animals, which they then put on Zapatista land. The aim of these programmes is to buy support for the government from the civilian population as part of the offensive against the autonomous communities.[xi]

Conflicts are also promoted over supplies of water and electricity, with Zapatistas being denied the use of these services. In February 2008, the Federal Electricity Commission, at the instigation of paramilitaries, cut the electricity supply to several Zapatista communities. In May 2008 the headquarters of the Caracol of Morelia was attacked by 300 police and PRI authorities who imprisoned people in their houses, beat them with sticks, stones and machetes, broke doors and windows, and cut the electricity supply to some of the houses, causing a serious state of alarm.[xii]

The Zapatistas refuse all government aid, and they refuse, at all costs, to leave their land. “We spilled our blood for the land, not for a government handout”.[xiii] They also refuse to respond violently, and try to resolve the land problems by sharing the land.

The struggle for water

Nothing makes more difference to the health and well-being of the communities, in particular the work-load, status and suffering of the women, the survival of children under five, and the ability of female children to go to school, than a secure supply of safe, clean water. A group of Zapatista communities in the Zinacantan area have been aggressively deprived of the use of their only spring since 2002, and still have to bring in water, with great difficulty, over the mountain, from elsewhere. A demonstration against this deprivation was fired on and several suffered bullet wounds.

An area of 120 hectares on top of Huitepec, ‘the Hill of Water’, was declared a ‘Zapatista community ecological reserve’ in March 2007. As the source of water for San Cristobal, Zinacantan, dozens of rebel communities, and the nearby Coca-Cola plant, the hill is revered by the highland Maya as a sacred site, and besieged by national and transnational capital seeking to suck the Hill of Water dry.[xiv]

In 2008, the area’s new mayor promised to evict the Zapatistas, and further promised roads to local communities who would help him. He seems to have been motivated by the prospect of building luxury properties on the slopes of the hill. One well was apparently poisoned at this time.

The European caravan of Observation and Solidarity visited Huitepec in August 2008 and, noting a proliferation of barbed wire, reported: “ Here Coca-Cola is taking water sources from the indigenous, depriving them of water and selling the land to multi-nationals so they can use it for tourist developments”.[xv]

The Plan Puebla Panama: privatisation and infrastructure.

The Plan Puebla Panama is a development of territorial domination in Southern Mexico and Central America, focussing on infrastructure megaprojects. It is designed to attract private national and transnational investment to the area and aimed at transforming a peasant economy into a neoliberal capitalist system.[xvi]

In Chiapas one of the aims of the PPP is to wipe out the Zapatista movement; another is to privatise and exploit the rich natural resources of the area under the smokescreen of environmental protection. This includes the damming of rivers for hydro-electric schemes (destroying communities in the process), and the construction of mega-highways. By paving the roads into the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve the government both opened the area to capitalist exploitation and facilitated the quick movement of troops into Zapatista areas, increasing the military siege of this zone.

The community of Nueva Revolucion is threatened with destruction by the building of a hydroelectric dam, while 8 de marzo would be destroyed by the roads built to a planned new eco-tourism complex. If a planned fish farm is built, the dam will flood the community of Francisco Villa.[xvii]

Much of central Chiapas is also threatened by mining concessions for a variety of precious metals. Speaking of the presence of Canadian mining companies, representatives of a Tzeltal community said in July 2008 “We know that mining brings contamination to our lands, our streams and our rivers. It causes much illness and death to our people. It provokes division among the poor, violation of our human rights and our dignity as indigenous peoples, consuming thousands of litres of water and great quantities of electricity”.[xviii] One example is Cruzton, a pro-Zapatista community of 44 families, where in April 500 Chiapas police kicked in doors and broke into houses, detaining and taking away six men. This police harassment has continued and the community have not been allowed to farm their cornfields; the aim appears to be to enable gold exploration in the area by Canadian mining companies.[xix]

The other side of ecotourism

One of the main areas of conflict between paramilitary groups and Zapatista base communities has been in the area of the planned ‘tourist corridor’ known as ‘the Palenque-Agua Azul integrally planned centre’. This development involves the construction of the San Cristobal-Palenque highway, a new airport at Palenque, and the construction of a vast ‘eco-archaeological’ tourist resort with rooms for over 7000 tourists, commercial zones, a golf course and a ‘nature theme park’. This theme park lies largely within EZLN recuperated territory, where the Zapatistas are trying to protect the natural environment.

Maderas del Pueblo (Woods of the People) recently wrote to the Chiapas government denouncing this latest outbreak of aggression and harassment towards indigenous communities in the area of the famous waterfalls at Agua Azul: “We cannot fail to link these paramilitary-style actions to the ambitions of powerful national and transnational interests to seize control of indigenous territory, rich in strategic natural resources (biodiversity, water and forest cover), with the intention of privatising them for multimillion private profit disguised as environmental services. In this case the dispute is over booty consisting of the water and the beautiful natural scenery of this unspoiled area, which under the disguise of a false ‘ecotourism’ (in reality an elite adventure tourism) is at the root of these unpunished aggressions”.[xx]

OPDDIC wishes to control the income from tourism in this area. Their most recent attacks and threats of displacement and death towards the community of San Sebastian Bachajon and the Jesuit mission there, have been over the control of the hut where tourists pay for entry to the area around the falls.[xxi] Other communities in the area, such as Bolon Ajaw, are under continual attack from paramilitary groups, and civil society organisations have urged tourists to boycott the Agua Azul waterfalls until these attacks stop. (see ‘protest at airports’ later)

La Jornada recently reported “dozens of indigenous communities located between San Cristobal de las Casas and Palenque are challenging construction of a toll highway that would connect the two tourist centres. The proposed 100 mile highway, which would impact hundreds of indigenous communities, is supported by hotel owners and tourist agencies in both cities. Indigenous communities are opposed to giving up land for the benefit of tourist operations”.[xxii]

The same comments could apply to the current evictions in the area of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. A report published in June[xxiii] tells of forced evictions, aggressions, and the disappearance of whole communities. In August 2008, two communities in the reserve were told, at gunpoint, by state and federal officials and police that they would have to accept re-location or be evicted by force.[xxiv]

The ‘war on drugs’

It is well-known that the Zapatistas do not allow the cultivation, use or possession of drugs or alcohol in their territory. However, the government is taking advantage of the current situation in Mexico (este Mexico que agoniza - this dying country[xxv] ) to send the army into Zapatista territory, on the pretext of looking for drugs, to harass, intimidate and provoke. In June 2008, a convoy of 200 Mexican army troops in tanks and trucks, accompanied by local and state police, attempted to enter the Caracol of La Garrucha and two neighbouring communities, saying they were ‘looking for drugs’. In each community the residents came out and turned them away.[xxvi]

La Garrucha is a particularly sensitive area for the Zapatistas, as it is the area where some members of the comandancia are said to live, and they interpreted this invasion as serious provocation. European observers have confirmed that there were no drugs growing in the region.[xxvii] These aggressions form part of a government campaign to take advantage of the current national resentment against narco-trafficking and organised crime, as a way to reduce public support for the Zapatistas by linking them to these activities.[xxviii] They are one example of the repressive use of the war on drugs by Mexico’s security forces. Zapatista base communities also report military personnel entering their territory and spreading marijuana seeds. [xxix]

Similarities to Colombia : the threat from the United States

This year the United States government, under the Merida Initiative, (better known as Plan Mexico), authorised $1.6 billion for funding the Mexican military over the next four years, to ‘fight drug traffic, combat terrorism and enforce US security concerns’. Like Plan Colombia, this merges the anti-drug mission with the US so-called ‘war on terror’, provides for hunting down ‘terrorists’ within Mexico, and means the Mexican military are now driven by the needs of the US government.[xxx]

In Colombia, equipment and training for fighting drugs have long been used to suppress social activists and attack insurgent groups. The Colombian government and army have very close ties with paramilitary groups, supplying them with arms and training funded by the United States. Now in Mexico they are trying to include the EZLN in this category of terrorists and drug-traffickers.

Media silence

It seems the Mexican government have initiated a media campaign to deceive and confuse public opinion. With the exception of La Jornada, there has been virtual silence in the Mexican media concerning the militarisation and constant attacks on Zapatista communities. The Zapatistas say “we are out of fashion” (pasamos de la moda)[xxxi]. They lost a lot of popular support by taking a principled stand against supporting an electoral candidate, in accordance with their belief in autonomy and not taking power. They have also lost support among civil society groups, many of whom put all their efforts into the recent campaign to release political prisoners. It is this isolation which now makes the movement so vulnerable.

“At this time, the state government of Chiapas and the federal government are waging a campaign against the Zapatista communities. ‘Official’ evictions, paramilitary attacks, invasions sponsored by officials, persecutions and threats, have become once again part of the surroundings of the indigenous communities who have set upon constructing their own destiny and improving their living conditions, always without losing their indigenous identity.... Just like in the worst times .... the government is attacking the poor and needy, while catering to and benefiting the powerful. ... In contrast to other occasions, these aggressions have been met by the silence of those voices that before rose to protest and demand justice.... We will do what we have to do,resist.”[xxxii]

Active non-violence

The aim of the creation of paramilitary groups, the land evictions and the social programmes is to destroy Zapatista autonomy by creating an artificial social conflict, so that the government forces can come in to ‘restore peace’, and crush forever the EZLN and all it represents.[xxxiii] So far, the movement has had twelve days of Fire, and nearly fifteen years of the Word. While the Zapatistas have never given up their arms, they have not responded to attacks with violence, they have respected the ceasefire treaty, and they have taken preventive measures, involving surveillance and unarmed resistance. “The Zapatistas have been heroic in seeking a democracy that has no room for violence or repression”.[xxxiv] As part of their belief in a world where all worlds fit, they have constantly sought the peaceful way, and this is one aspect of the inspiration so many people have gained from Zapatismo.

However, the greater the repression and aggression, the greater the risk they face. As Gustavo Esteva wrote in a recent article “This is an extreme situation: the attacks on Zapatista communities, which have not ceased since 1994, are reaching the point where there seems to be no alternative but armed resistance.... It should be clear to everyone that the Zapatistas cannot be displaced from their lands and territories, and that under no circumstances will they surrender.... The war that is taking place does not just target the Zapatistas. But various factors and circumstances put them back into the centre of confrontation and link their destiny with that of the country would be suicidal not to take them into account.”[xxxv]

Vulnerability and isolation

The Zapatistas remain strong in their autonomy and their principled resistance, but they are now more vulnerable than they have ever been, faced with “an imposed government which represses and dispossesses with scandalous impunity”, [xxxvi]combined with an unprecedented isolation and silence from both the media and civil society. They say the situation is like fifteen years ago, but in reverse. In 1993 the Zapatistas were preparing to attack without people or media behind them; this time it is the government who are preparing the attack.[xxxvii]

The Other Campaign

In 2005 the Zapatistas released the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle,[xxxviii] in which they explained their view of the world and how they intended to reach out to the Other, to join with, listen to and learn from all the persecuted groups ‘from below and to the left’ who did not belong to any political party, and to see how all could work together to find ‘another way of doing politics’. This was to be done on a national and international basis. It was all about listening, respect for difference, and changing the world. This truly radical proposal was not something the forces of power and money could allow to happen, and from the beginning it met with vicious repression, directed at all groups who had ‘adhered’ to the Other Campaign. Since Calderon took power in 2006 this repression has intensified, now more than ever, while the government sees social fighters as criminals and opposes all those who defend human rights. [xxxix]

The original plan was for Zapatistas to travel throughout Mexico to meet and listen to the stories of ‘the simple and humble people who struggle’. This plan was had to be put on hold following the appalling acts of repression perpetrated in Atenco in May 2006[xl]. Starting again in October 2006, it had to be suspended once more in September 2007, as a result of the evictions, attacks, invasions, persecutions and threats suffered by the Zapatista communities.[xli] Capise and others believe that the greater militarisation and increase in attacks on Zapatista communities is the government’s response to the organisation of the Other Campaign throughout Mexico, and that they are doing everything possible to destroy it.

In December 2007, the EZLN announced a period of silence and withdrawal from outside events. “This is the last time, at least for a while, that we will be able to come out (of our lands). Our communities, our companer@s, are being attacked in a way that hasn’t happened for a long time. It has happened before, that’s true, but it is the first time since that early morning in January 1994 that the social, national, and international response has been insignificant or null. In contrast to other occasions, these aggressions have been met by the silence of those voices that before rose to protest and to demand justice, and that now fall silent..... Those of us who have made war know how to recognize the paths by which it is prepared and brought near. The signs of war on the horizon are clear. War, like fear, also has a smell. And now we are starting to breathe its foul stench in our lands."[xlii]

What is missing is yet to come

In July and August 2008, when the European Solidarity Caravan visited Zapatista communities, Marcos and Moises spoke to them in La Garrucha, speaking of their history and their autonomy. They also spoke of their dreams: “We want a place here, our own, where they will leave us in peace, where they will ask nothing of us. That is what freedom means: where we decide what we want to do” and of their responsibilities: “we have a moral duty to our companer@s. We want the day to come when we can say three things to our dead: we did not give in, we did not sell out, we did not surrender.”[xliii]

The next steps: dignity and rage

In September 2008, the EZLN broke their silence, calling for a renewal of the campaign for liberty and justice for Atenco, in particular for the political prisoners who had just received cruel sentences. Then they announced the ‘first global festival of dignity and rage: another world, another path, below and to the left’, to be held to mark their 25th anniversary, and that of fifteen years of the ‘war against oblivion’, during which time “it has been our goal to be a bridge on which the many rebellions of the world can walk back and forth”.

“Here below, we are left with nothing. Except rage. And dignity...We must listen to each other then, learn to know each other... So that our dignity takes root again and births another world”. [xliv]

A lesson for humanity

The Zapatista movement, a unique example of autonomy and principled resistance, of collective decision-making, of respect for difference, has been an inspiration to indigenous people and to campesinos throughout the world, to the wretched, forgotten and excluded of the earth, to the anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movement, and to all who struggle for democracy, liberty and justice. In a greedy and competitive world, with its emphasis on war and consumption and the plundering and devastation of the planet, the Zapatistas offer a rare light of hope, that there is another way. “If the catastrophe that is coming can be avoided and humanity is to have another opportunity, it will because these others, below and to the left, not only resist, but are already drawing the profile of something else (otra cosa).[xlv]

At a recent Europe-wide demonstration a spokesperson from the Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Group said “The Zapatistas’ autonomous communities in resistance are an inspiring example of how people can control their own lives and share resources in an egalitarian way. They show people the world over that we don’t need the bad governments or profit-hungry corporations”.

It is essential that we join together to find ways to stop this campaign to destroy the Zapatista communities. They continue to resist; they have always said they will never surrender, never give up. Experienced observers are stressing that the need for action now is urgent, that we cannot let the movement be destroyed. As Jorge Alonso pleaded in his recent article, predicting an imminent massacre. “And we have to hurry, because time is running out”.[xlvi]

 

On 22 August groups involved in the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network organised protests at Edinburgh and Bournemouth airports in solidarity with the Zapatista communities - we want to be able to organise actions on a much wider scale, could you and your group/friends discuss if you could participate in such actions in future ? If interested contact us via Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group edinchiapas@yahoo.co.uk

(Please note all communities mentioned in this article are either Zapatista base communities, or supporters of the Other Campaign.)
For more information in English:

UK Zapatista Solidarity Network. http://ukzapatistas.wordpress.com

Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Group. http://www.edinchiapas.org.uk

http://chiapas.mediodindependientes.org

http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx

Send messages of protest to:

THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO
Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa
Presidente de la República
Residencia Oficial de los Pinos Casa Miguel Alemán
Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, C.P. 11850, DISTRITO FEDERAL, México
Telephone: +52 (55) 27891100 Fax: +52 (55) 52772376
E-Mail: felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx

THE GOVERNOR OF CHIAPAS Lic. Juan José Sabines Guerrero
Gobernador Constitucional del Estado de Chiapas
Palacio de Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas
Av. Central y Primera Oriente, Colonia Centro, C.P.29009
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, México
secparticular@chiapas.gob.mx
Fax: +52 961 6188088 Telephone + 52 961 6188056

THE MEXICAN AMBASSADOR IN THE UK
Juan José Bremer de Martino Ambassador of Mexico in the UK
Mexican Embass16 St. George StreeLondon W1S 1FD
Tel: 020 7499 8586E mail - Go to http://www.sre.gob.mx/reinounido

 

 

REFERENCES

 

Unless stated otherwise, all articles from La Jornada are by Hermann Bellinghausen

[i] Enlace Zapatista

[ii] Capise, SEDENA, the Winds of War

[iii] Gustavo Esteva, where is the front?, Anarkismo.net

[iv] Enlace Zapatista

[v] European Caravan of Observation and Solidarity, report. Aug 2008

[vi] Enlace Zapatista

[vii] Cucapa nation, 2006

[viii] Capise, ibid.

[ix] Enlace Zapatista

[x] SCI Marcos, Corte de Caja, Mexico, 2008

[xi] Frayba, 2008

[xii] Enlace Zapatista

[xiii] John Gibler, May 2008

[xiv] John Ross

[xv] European Caravan

[xvi] CIEPAC report, Japhy Wilson, 2008

[xvii] European Caravan

[xviii] La Jornada 13/07/2008

[xix] La Jornada

[xx] La Jornada 03/08/2008

[xxi] La Jornada 08/2008

[xxii] La Jornada 21/09/2008

[xxiii] Frayba 06/2008

[xxiv] La Jornada 08/2008

[xxv] EZLN communiqué, 09/2008

[xxvi] Enlace Zapatista 06/2008

[xxvii] European Caravan

[xxviii] Luis Hernandez Navarro

[xxix] Eurpean Caravan

[xxx] Abigail Andrews

[xxxi] Corte de Caja

[xxxii] EZLN communiqué 09/2008

[xxxiii] SCI Marcos, Corte de Caja

[xxxiv] Luis Villoro

[xxxv] ‘Zapatistas’, La Jornada

[xxxvi] Jorge Alonso

[xxxvii] Corte de Caja

[xxxviii] Enlace Zapatista

[xxxix] Frayba

[xl] Narco News 05/2006

[xli] Enlace Zapatista

[xlii] SCI Marcos, Feeling the Red 12/2007

[xliii] Enlace Zapatista

[xliv] EZLN communiqué 09/2008

[xlv] ibid

[xlvi] R Envio, summer 2008

 

 

Over the years I have learned to hear things not said when someone speaks or prays.

Having been fucked over a time or ten thousand I also notice facial expressions and posture that lead to that fucking. The arrogant wink. Speaking with the hands, pursing of the lips, the arched eye-brow. I see wheels turning behind the mask.

That is one of many reasons I know we just got fucked (George Carlin once stated; don’t trust anyone that won’t say fuck).

I’m not saying we don’t have it coming. We do. The culture of doing nothing and expecting everything is about to die on the vine for all but a chosen few Americans.

We have been told this latest bailout plan had to be imposed to save Average American Joe. That life as we knew it was about to come to a grinding halt.

What you weren’t told is that life as we knew it is coming to an end anyway.

It must.

And they don't give a shit about Average American Joe.

The multinational rulers of the world decided they’re tired of feeding people that consume 25% of what the world produces (that’d be us) and decided to eat us for lunch instead. We’re not longer necessary, or relevant.

The people that tried to save us from this fate: the Ron Pauls, Mike Gravels, and Dennis Kuciniches, true American patriots, were branded as crazy simpletons or worse by the intellectual elite.

Yeah, I watched the presidential debates. The hearings in the House of Representatives. The presidential speeches. I saw the winks, funny faces, haughty, arrogant glances. McCain. Romney. Clinton. Bernanke. Cheney. (Obama wasn’t quite experienced enough to figure out that he is the next pawn. Bush probably still doesn’t know. How they found someone with his head that far up his ass, I don’t know).

The plan is simple.

Tell them what they want to hear and then proceed with the plan.

There isn’t enough of the good stuff for all of us to live an extravagant lifestyle.

The plan devises ways for less and less of us to get gas and food and other necessary life-sustaining resources so the dwindling number of chosen few can get their share and yours too.

The plan is so ingenious that’ll you’ll actually vote to see this accomplished to and on you.

Many ways and tactics will be employed to pull this off; we could argue for hours which tools and methods will be employed but the end result will be the same.

Globalization will lead to a time when nearly all countries resemble the third world country of your choice today.

The test plot in the western hemisphere was Juarez, Mexico, documented by Charles Bowden and a group of Mexican photojournalists (Noam Chomsky contributed an introduction, Eduardo Galeano an afterward worth reading. Their work continues. Last I heard the murder toll in Juarez stood at 800 for the year but the number is dated by at least a month).

Charles Bowden, taken from a review of this book at Amazon.com: "Politicians and economists speculate about a global economy fueled by free trade. Their speculations are not necessary. In Juárez the future is over thirty years old, and there are no questions about its nature that cannot be answered in this city."

Here is what I expect to see:

The relative price of commodities to earning power will increase. Arguments over deflation or inflation don’t really matter. It’s the ratio of cost to wages and earnings that determines whether you get your share or not.

Jobs will be destroyed.

Violence will increase. People are going to be pissed off when the stream of goods and services dries up and they realize that they have been dropped from the ranks of the protected.

In the midst of this, walled-in enclaves will protect an ever-diminishing number of wealthy elite, those whose dominion is the multinational jet set. Here you will find exotic foods and luxury items gathered from the farthest reaches of the planet.

Police will guard these enclaves, both the citizens within, their property, and the supply routes necessary to keep the shelves stocked and the power on.

Outside the walls will be free-for-all war-zones. Those lucky enough to have the factory job that barely pays enough to eat will navigate a world of predators: murderers, rapists, dope dealers, con artists, robbers, whores and rogue cops supplementing less than adequate paychecks.

Factory farms will replace small farmers—those farmers that don’t sign on the line will be unable to receive subsidized fuel and or cash subsidies. Without these, their products will cost more to raise. Prohibitively so. A gallon of diesel contains one hell of a lot of man-hour-equivalents of energy, especially when run through the latest machines (like tractors steered by satellite, believe it or not).

Most if not all of this stuff is already in place, but it will continue to grow at what I expect to be an accelerated pace as the dire situation this world is in becomes clearer to those running the show.

Basically, we’re fucked.

That doesn’t mean all is lost (unfortunately, a fucking doesn't necessarily kill you).

Read Frankl’s Man's Search for Meaning if you need a little inspiration or a model for how to resist.

By Brenda Norrell

LOS ANGELES -- Made in L.A. tells the story of three women, and of all women, who sacrifice for their children, and struggle against all odds. But it also tells the story of courage, the courage of all people who are called on to give more than they think they can. Ultimately, Made in L.A. is the story of America, of the United States, and the blindsightedness and denial that keeps Americans shopping for low prices without regard for the consequences to others.

Made in L.A. is the story of sweatshops, the story of sweatshops in the United States, where migrant women are exploited for cheap labor, women working 12 hours a day, with children at home. These are women working surrounded by rats and roaches, in inhumane conditions, then fired without pay.

The profiles of three women reveal the broken hearts and broken dreams of the women who come to this country seeking education and opportunity, only to find that the United States is neither as kind, or alive in spirit, as the countries they leave behind. The documentary film reveals the heartbreak of the women who must come to this country to labor, and leave their precious children behind in their home countries, because there is no way to provide food for them.

It also reveals the long hours and struggle of single mothers and the long path endured for justice.
After three years of protests and court battles against Forever 21 clothing factories in L.A., these women and their coworkers gained justice and dignity through community organizing and perseverance. The film is a testament to the strength of women and a reminder that the colonized United States, established by immigrants, has become a world leader in human rights abuses, racism and xenophobia toward migrants.

Made in L.A., produced by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, received an Emmy in September. The film, which premiered on PBS, received an Emmy at the 29th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, in the category of Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story-Long Form at the ceremony in New York.

It is an Emmy that is a testament to the courage of women.

Lupe Hernandez, described by the filmmakers as "a five-foot tall dynamo," learned survival skills at an early age in Mexico. She has been working in Los Angeles garment factories for over 15 years since she left Mexico City at age 17.

In a moving portrait that reveals the lives of so many migrant women, Maura Colorado describes how she was forced to leave her three children in the care of relatives in El Salvador while she sought work in L.A. to support them. She was deprived her of seeing her children for over eighteen years.

Revealing the struggle of single women everywhere is María Pineda. Maria came to Southern California from Mexico in hopes of a better life at 18, with an equally young husband. Maria describes domestic abuse and her own fight for dignity.

These women found a haven at the Garment Worker Center. It was during a three year struggle, with protests, boycotts and court action, that the women took a stand, and their place in history, for all migrants, and all women.

Lupe rises from factory work to organizer. She remembers how she tried to kill herself with pills after her mother died and she slaved away to care for her brothers and an abusive father in Mexico.

Later, Lupe traveled to Hong Kong to protest the international trade that enslaves the desperate.

Reflecting on her long journey, she says, "The more I learn, the lonelier I feel. Ignorance somehow protects you. But then I say, I've come this far, and nothing can take that away from me."

The filmmakers are currently engaged in a two-year long outreach campaign and have recently launched a new "Host A Screening" initiative (http://www.madeinla.com/get/host) ">http://www.madeinla.com/get/host) that enables grassroots groups and others to host screenings. The goal is to engage communities and spark dialogue about low wage work, women's empowerment, consumer awareness and the everyday struggles of immigrant workers.

This is part three in a series that analyzes the recently released spending plan for the Merída Initiative, also known as Plan Mexico.  Part one analyzed Plan Mexico's funds for Mexico, and part two discussed Plan Mexico in Central America.

Narco News has made the entire Merída Initiative spending plan available.

In February 2004, Haitian paramilitaries left their bases in the Dominican Republic and marched towards Haiti with the goal of ousting democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide for the second time.  When they arrived in Haiti, many were wearing Dominican Republic National Police uniforms.

The paramilitary forces were well prepared.  For two years prior to the 2004 coup, about 200 US Special Forces members had trained them in the Dominican Republic with funds from the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Republican Institute.  They trained on Dominican federal government property with the knowledge and permission of the Dominican Republic’s then-president Hipolito Mejia.  In order to avoid suspicion, the Haitian militiamen dressed in Dominican Republic National Police uniforms.  During this two-year training period, the Haitian paramilitaries ran frequent cross-border raids into Haiti to attack Aristide supporters, always retreating back into their Dominican bases afterwards.

After the coup leaders took control of the Haitian government as a US-backed “transitional government,” chaos reigned in the streets of Haiti.  The World Bank estimated that by March 2004 about 1,000 people had died as a direct or indirect consequence of coup-related violence. 

Supporters of President Aristide and his Lavalas party quickly mobilized in the streets to defend democracy. In one such action on April 27, 2005, Lavalas supporters rallied near the United Nations Mission headquarters in Bourdon, Port-au-Prince.  According to Amnesty International, the Haitian National Police severely repressed the peaceful demonstration.  Police fired into the crowd of demonstrators, killing nine people and injuring many others, including bystanders.

On August 20, 2005, at a US Agency for International Development-funded soccer match, masked Haitian National Police accompanied paramilitaries armed with machetes and hatchets in carrying out a massacre in the stadium.  Police and the paramilitaries entered the stadium, ordered all in attendance to lie on the ground, and then selectively killed suspected Lavalas supporters.  Anyone who attempted to escape was shot or hacked to death.  By the end of the massacre, police and paramilitaries had murdered fifty people in front of 5,000 soccer fans.

In an attempt to bring the post-coup violence under control, the Brazil-led United States Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) arrived on the scene on June 1, 2004. Its official mandate was “to assist with the restoration and maintenance of the rule of law, public safety and public order in Haiti….” According to MINUSTAH’s website, it was in Haiti “in support of the Transitional Government, to ensure a secure and stable environment within which the constitutional and political process in Haiti can take place.”  MINUSTAH got right to work supporting the transitional government by gathering intelligence on activists at protests.


In an effort to “stabilize” the tense political situation in Haiti, MINUSTAH carried out two military operations in Cite Soleil, the poorest neighborhood in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and a bastion of Aristide support.  According to the Haiti Information Project:

In the early morning hours of July 6, 2005, more than 350 UN troops stormed the seaside shantytown of Cite Soleil in a military operation with the stated purpose of halting violence in Haiti. When the shooting stopped seven hours later, more than 26 people, the majority of them unarmed civilians lie dead with scores more wounded…. An ‘After Action Report’ submitted to the US Embassy by the UN states that the UN attack on the crumbling civilian neighborhood was intense, prolonged, and carried out with heavy artillery and weaponry that UN officials knew could cause extensive collateral damage and the death of innocent victims.”

The July 6 bloodbath apparently did not succeed in “stabilizing” Haiti, so MINUSTAH carried out a second raid in Cite Soleil on December 22, 2006:

According to the After action report, ‘...the firefight lasted over seven hours during which time [UN] forces expended over 22,000 rounds of ammunition... [An official] with MINUSTAH acknowledged that, given the flimsy construction of homes in Cite Soleil and the large quantity of ammunition expended, it is likely that rounds penetrated many buildings, striking unintended targets.’… Although many were likely killed behind thin walls, the video evidence of the disproportionate number of victims felled by single shots to the head from high-powered rifles lends credence to the testimony of survivors following the deadly raid.

The Haiti Information Project has extensive photographic evidence of extrajudicial executions carried out during the July 6 MINUSTAH raid (warning: some photos are extremely graphic).


Plan Mexico: More of the Same in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Plan Mexico’s $5 million in anti-narcotics funds to Haiti and the Dominican Republic hardly constitutes a significant change or expansion of US hegemony in either country.  Rather, it should be considered a continuation of existing US foreign policy in the region. 

For decades, the US government has armed, trained, and funded the police forces that will receive resources under Plan Mexico.  It’s no surprise, then, that with the exception of the Haitian Coast Guard, all of Plan Mexico’s law enforcement recipients in the Caribbean willingly played important and deadly roles in repressing democratic resistance to the US-supported 2004 coup in Haiti.

It’s not clear that the US government made new funds available for either country as a result of Plan Mexico.  It appears to have simply moved around existing funds so that the Dominican Republic and Haiti are included under the Plan Mexico rubric. 

Haiti’s $2.5 million in anti-narcotics funding under Plan Mexico constitutes only 22% of the country’s overall International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) funding for 2008.  What’s more, Haiti’s 2008 INCLE funding constitutes a 23% decrease from 2007’s funding levels. 

While the Dominican Republic’s $2.5 million in Plan Mexico anti-narcotics funds marks the first year that the country will receive INCLE money, it is not the first time the recipient, the Dominican National Police, will receive US support.  The Dominican National Police’s predecessor, the Dominican National Guard, was created in 1918 as a US initiative following a US Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic.  According to William Blum in Killing Hope, “The US placed [the National Guard] under the control of a young officer it had trained named Rafael Trujillo,” who later became the most notorious and brutal dictator the Dominican Republic has ever seen.  Trujillo was so brutal that the US found it necessary to plan and participate in his assassination in order to prevent a leftist revolution such as the one that occurred in Cuba.

When the Dominican National Guard was disbanded and turned into the Dominican National Police, it was the US that stepped up to support the transition to a civilian police force.  Rather that including any new initiatives for the Dominican National Police, the Plan Mexico spending plan states, “The Merída Initiative funding will be used to continue supporting the transformation of the Dominican National Police into a professional civilian law enforcement agency.”  It will do this though “technical assistance, capacity building and equipping the National Police to support transition in areas of basic police training reform, strategic planning, internal affairs, and communications systems.”

The Haitian National Police, despite its numerous outstanding cases of human rights abuses such as the massacres it carried out during the coup, will continue to receive US aid under Plan Mexico.  The resources provided under Plan Mexico, which include intelligence training and equipment and the construction of a new pier, hardly constitute the most insidious US aid to the Haitian National Police.   In recent years the US government has given or sold millions of dollars in arms to the Haitian National Police.

Plan Mexico will allow the US to continue to leverage control over the Haitian National Police. According to the spending plan, “The Merída Initiative funding will be used to continue supporting the transformation of the Haitian National Police into a professional civilian law enforcement agency through expanded communications and intelligence capabilities; to increase the number of successful prosecutions of major criminals; to enhance Haiti’s capability to monitor, detect, and interdict illegal shipments of narcotics, firearms, and human smuggling in priority areas; and to improve cooperation between Dominican Republic and Haitian public security and judicial authorities.”

The US has supported “the transformation of the Haitian National Police into a professional civilian law enforcement agency” since its creation.  President Aristide created the Haitian National Police in 1995 after disbanding the military in an attempt dismantle its political control.  The goal of creating the Haitian National Police was to bring public security under civilian control, but high-ranking members of the military have consistently controlled it.

Being the poorest country in the hemisphere, Haiti lacked the resources necessary to train the new police force in civilian policing techniques.  So, despite the US role in the 1991-94 coup that temporarily ousted Aristide, Haiti turned to the US Department of Justice’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) to train the National Police.  ICITAP training for the Haitian police included crowd control, the operation of firearms, and the use of force.  The results of this training were apparent in the Haitian National Police’s actions during the 2004 coup.

Plan Mexico will also give the Haitian Ministry of Justice more control over law enforcement by funding the installation of “a secure Ministry of Justice-controlled network which will interconnect rule of law activities, specifically law enforcement operations, investigations, prosecution case management, records and case activities of the Judiciary, and inmate/detention management.”  The Ministry of Justice’s actions following the 1991-1994 coup demonstrate its lack of commitment to the rule of law.  According to an article by Diego Hausfather and Nikolas Barry-Shaw on Znet,  “The Ministry of Justice has organized sham trials for ex-army officers like FRAPH [Front for the Advancement of Haiti’s Progress] leader Louis Jodel Chamblain accused of carrying out massacres or assassination [sic] during the 1991-94 coup. The defendants have unanimously been acquitted in proceedings described as ‘an insult to justice’ and a ‘mockery’ by Amnesty International.”  FRAPH leaders may have enjoyed such leniency because some of them were on the CIA payroll during the coup.

Plan Mexico will also support the work of MINUSTAH, again, despite numerous allegations of human rights abuses and massacres carried out by MINUSTAH soldiers.   One of MINUSTAH’s mandates in Haiti is to improve security on the Dominican Republic/Haiti border, so Plan Mexico will provide Dominican and Haitian security forces with joint trainings.


Missing the Mark

Haitian and Dominican residents will most likely not notice any change in their day-to-day lives and interactions with security forces as a result of Plan Mexico.  Plan Mexico is a drop in the bucket compared to existing US aid to the region, both qualitatively and quantitatively. 

Plan Mexico represents a continuance of twisted US priorities in the region.  Death and violence in Haiti will continue as long as its government is at the mercy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.  Thus far, any attempts to free Haiti from the international financial institutions’ grips have resulted in coups.  The 1991-94 coup was a period of privatization frenzy in Haiti from which the nation never recovered. 

The US government would be most successful at reducing violence and death in the region by providing real economic development to Haiti in the form of reparations for its support of the Duvalier regime and its role in two recent coups.  Reparations combined with debt forgiveness might allow Haiti to recover from the environmental damage wrought by decades of clear-cutting its rich mahogany forests to pay its illegitimate external debts.  Clear-cutting has resulted in soil erosion to the point where much of Haiti’s land is agriculturally useless.  Furthermore, clear-cutting has caused mudslides that, combined with poor Haitian residents’ flimsy housing, have led to much higher storm death tolls than in the neighboring Dominican Republic. 

While Plan Mexico does not currently represent a significant policy change in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, activists should keep it on their radar, because Washington is obviously keeping the two Caribbean nations on its radar.  Washington has made a conscious effort to draw the Caribbean into the Plan Mexico zone.  Given that the US government has moved from promoting Plan Mexico as a defined amount of aid over a set number of years to a potentially limitless amount of aid without an end date, there is always room for the expansion of the Caribbean’s role within Plan Mexico.

Ecuadorians went to the polls yesterday to decide on a new constitutional referendum; exit polls indicate that about 65% voted in favor of the new constitution. Unlike similar referendums passed in Bolivar and Venezuela the new constitution does not nationalize the nation’s resources, telecommunications, or electricity, but instead gives the executive branch increased powers to regulate the economy; though some opposed to the changes fear that the new centralized economic powers could potentially threaten private property rights in the future.

Besides opposition from elements within the business sector the Catholic Church has been critical of potential social changes, which could occur under the new constitution, fearing it will allow for new legislation legalizing abortion, gay marriage, and increased reproductive rights for women.

Though the majority of those who voted in favor of the referendum did so in hope of a better life with free education, increased health care, low interest loans, materials for first time homeowners, and free seed for farmers, which are some of the provisions included in the 444 new articles of the constitution. 1

The results of the referendum can be viewed at Ecuador’s TSE online site: Select “Resultados referéndum 2008” to view results. As of 2:20pm CST with 92% of the votes counted 64% are in favor, 28% opposed, and another 8% voting Null or leaving ballots blank.

1. The Guardian and Aljazeera.

Lea más en español: El Universo Guayaquil, Ecuador

Last night Mexican police transferred Omar Yoguez Singu, 32, to the Oaxacan attorney general's custody for murdering 20-year-old Marcella "Sally" Grace Eiler.  The AP reports that he claims he had consensual sex with Sally, then killed her with a machete during an argument.

Yoguez Singu was captured thanks to the quick action of Oaxacan activists who publicized her murder internationally.

Yoguez Singu raised his friends' suspicions when he returned to Mexico City from a recent trip to San Jose del Pacifico, were locals discovered Sally's decaying and mutilated body in a cabin.  They noticed that he was injured and that his two dogs were missing, so they asked him what happened.  Yoguez Singu reportedly told them that one of his d