Archive | Atenco

San Salvador Atenco, Mexico: Victory Celebration

x carolina

––When did you find out you were getting out of prison, don Ignacio?

––We’ve always known we’d get out, from the very first moment.

––Was that due to your trust in the people to free you?

––It had more to do with our rage. A rage we’ve stored up inside us. Maybe at first we felt fear. Anguish, along with troubles, uncertainty, rage, impotence. All that transcends pain. It overcomes suffering. We were never sorry, never repentant. This kind of anger knows no human limits. It builds up inside you and, in a way, helps you avoid physical pain… The rage I’m talking about is recent and has also been with us during years, during centuries, of latent suffering… On the question of whether or not we were going to get out, we knew we would because the struggle was not going to let up. It may have fallen back a little bit out of fear, anxiety. But even though we were separated, with people on the run or in jail, we all thought the same way. We had one thing in mind to begin with. Not to give up. Because our pain was overcome by our rage, our unrest, and the confirmation of what we, as people from the bottom of the heap, have always known.”

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Letter from America del Valle, seeking political asylum in Venezuelan Embassy

To the people of Mexico:
To the peoples at the edge of the water, Atenco:
To my mother, father and brothers:
To all the organizations and people struggling for freedom and justice in our country:

Four years have gone by since that vicious attack by the federal and state governments against our honorable, rebellious people in San Salvador Atenco. Since those savage beatings of men, women and children; the search and destroy of our homes; the murders of Alexis Benhumea and Javier Cortés; the imprisonment of more than 200 comrades; the humiliation and rape of dozens of our women comrades on the way to prison; the deportation from the country of our Chilean, German and Spanish friends who witnessed and suffered the repression. All this at the hands of state, federal and municipal police. All ordered, directed and personally supervised from a spot just a few feet away by State of Mexico governor Enrique Peña Nieto. All this set in motion by the President of the country to make us pay for the affront of having stopped him from grabbing our lands to close the biggest business deal of his regime: the inauguration of a new airport with a deluxe commercial corridor extending for several miles.

related: No Confidence that Mexico’s Supreme Court Will Do Justice in Atenco Case

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Message for Atenco from The Other New York

To our sisters and brothers from the People’s Front in Defense of the Land:
To our sisters and brothers Zapatistas:
To our compañer@s from The Other Campaign:
To our compañer@s from the Zezta Internazional:
To our compañer@s adherents to the International Campaign in Defense of El Barrio and our allies from all over the world:

Accept this greeting in solidarity from the women, men and children, the socially marginalized who belong to The Other Campaign New York, Movement for Justice in El Barrio, in zapatista East Harlem.

Today, May 3rd 2010, on the fourth anniversary of the repression, murders, arrests, rapes, torture, and house raids committed by the military police in Atenco, Movement for Justice in El Barrio reaffirms our commitment to the struggle for justice for the dignified people of San Salvador Atenco, Mexico.

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Gloria Arenas demands freedom for Atenco prisoners at the Molino de Flores Otro Plantón

Gloria Arenas visited the Otro Plantón at Molino de Flores and voiced her commitment to speak in all possible places for the freedom of the 12 political prisoners of Atenco now that the case is in the hands of the Supreme Court. She and others present also participated in an act of protest outside the prison, denouncing prison conditions such as a lack of water for more than three days, telephones that haven’t worked for more than three days, and the total lack of attention to dormitory classification. People who are not senior citizens or disabled or mentally ill are placed in areas reserved for them, resulting in violence among the prisoners and worse conditions for those who have a special condition.

Gloria also received a phone call from Inés Rodolfo Cuellar who has become the spokesperson for the imprisoned comrades. Several other individual prisoners sent out letters to Gloria and Jacobo, which Gloria gladly promised to answer.

FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!

STOP THE ATTACKS ON THE ZAPATISTA COMMUNITIES!

NO MORE DISPOSSESSION!

THE OTHER CAMPAIGN GOES ON!

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