El Enemigo Común

TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD
TO ALL THE WOMEN OF THE GREAT TRIQUI NATION
TO ALL THE COMPAÑERAS OF SOCIAL AND CIVIL ORGANIZATIONS
TO THE BRAVE WOMEN OF OAXACA
TO THE BROAD WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

We are the women of the red huipil who have always remained silent when the powerful has sent pain and death to our soil, those who have seen a son, a father, a brother, a comrade die without saying a word. This has been convenient for those interests who have turned our silence into a great business, filling their pockets with money, while our communities, in the midst of the 21st century, continue to be marginalized and forgotten with hundreds of women caring for their children by themselves because our men are murdered, persecuted or in the best of cases have to migrate in order to maintain their family.

We as women have decided to raise our voices and to become a part of this great autonomous project. Today, we are also in resistance, with much pain and hurt, and introduce ourselves to you in order to communicate to you that the first great action called for and coordinated by us, alone, as Triqui women has not been allowed to happen.

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by Scott Campbell

On Saturday, July 31, around 50 individuals from various collectives and organizations in the city of Oaxaca blockaded Calle Benito Juárez in front of the federal courthouse for two hours to protest the escalating aggression against the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala. Initial reports from the region indicated that 400 paramilitaries from the state-backed Union for the Well-Being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) have entered the autonomous municipality accompanied by 300 Oaxaca state police in an effort to crush the autonomous project underway in San Juan Copala, a municipality of 70 families who have been under siege by UBISORT and the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT) paramilitaries for seven months.

Protesters demanded an end to the siege, an end to state-backed paramilitary aggression, the immediate exit of paramilitary, police and military forces from San Juan Copala, implicated Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz as the one responsible for the violence, and expressed their support for the autonomous municipality. After two hours the blockade was lifted and a march made its way through town to the city’s central plaza.

Breaking: San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Under Paramilitary Control Following Police Raid

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Oaxaca de Magón, City of Resistance, July 30, 2010

To the peoples of Oaxaca
To the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca
To the people of Mexico
To the peoples of the world
To the general public

Today, July 30, 2010 at approximately 12:15, just after noon, a group of heavily armed UBISORT men accompanied by state police who were also heavily armed, went into San Juan Copala shooting into the air, striking the women comrades, and then violently occupying the Municipal Government Building.

As has been reported in a number of different news media, the acts of provocation against the autonomous municipality began on Monday, July 26, when UBISORT paramilitaries shot up the community space for two hours, wounding 35 year-old María Rosa Francisco, who has been disappeared since she went out for firewood that day. The paramilitaries shot everything that moved, including dozens of domestic animals.

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The Land is Not for Sale! A community in resistance to La Parota dam.

Following our last La Parota post on June 29, when Mexican media reported that the project was postponed until 2018, things were looking good for the indigenous and campesino peoples defending the Papagayo River from destruction and their own communities from dislocation. On September 13, 2009, the Mexican government indicated that the project had been canceled, not allocating any funding for it in the proposed 2010 budget. After a seven year struggle, in which more than six resisters had lost their lives, the dam looked dead in the water.

Less than eight months later, however, the government restarted its push to force through the dam. On April 5, Jorge Antonio Mijangos Borja, director of Mexico’s National Water Commission (CONAGUA) announced that “if necessary, the hydroelectric dam La Parota will be built to provide water and electricity to the port of Acapulco.” He also announced plans for five other dams, three on the coast and two in Tierra Caliente.

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Those attending this protest rally: collectives and individuals from the Other Campaign, anarchist and libertarian collectives and individuals, people committed to justice and therefore outraged at the injustice of this self-styled “leftist” government.

We call on the Head of Government Marcelo Ebrard to stop criminalizing youth who aspire to and struggle for a more just world; they are singled out just because of the way they think, dress and protest. We stand against this bad capital city government which holds hostages such as Víctor Herrera Govea, showing that it is not much different than the PRI or PAN governments when it jails youth who live in this city of “hope”; evicts poor vendors; grabs the lands of the last peasants remaining in the Federal District and of the residents of neighborhoods and towns where the government is carrying out its tourist projects, highways, and metro lines; and looks down on and represses sex workers.

We proclaim that in this “City of Hope” those at the bottom are not able to aspire to live, to work with dignity, to protect the earth, to commemorate struggles and to travel freely without being exploited, looked down on, repressed, evicted and – like Víctor – unjustly imprisoned.

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