Archive for the “San Juan Copala” Category

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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x carolina

Six buses, several cars and vans, and a trailer truck packed with 35 tons of food, medical supplies, etc. left the Mexico City Zócalo for San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, at 9:20 the night of Monday, June 12. The name of the Caravana, “Beti Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola”, is in honor of a strong, much loved human rights defender who worked tirelessly for the unification of the Triqui people, and of a comrade from Finland who worked with the VOCAL organization on food sovereignty and climate change projects, also much loved and appreciated for his stance of solidarity. The two were murdered by the UBISORT paramilitary group led by Rufino Juárez on April 27 of this year for daring to participate in the first humanitarian caravan to the Autonomous Municipality. Their motive? Breaking through a paramilitary siege that has forced 700 families to live without light, water, school, medical attention and with very little food ever since last November 27.

Now the aim of the second caravan is the same, to break the siege. To get into the Autonomous Municipality to deliver the supplies, participate in an informational program on this dignified Triqui community’s experience with self-government, to record testimonies of human rights violations in a town where you can get shot any time you step outside your door. A town where dozens of people have been killed in recent months, including last May 20, when a commando of men described as “non-indigenous” shot down Tleriberta Castro Aguilar and her husband Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez, the natural leader and prime mover of autonomy in San Juan Copala.

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Monitoring the Humanitarian Convoy Bety Cariño and Jyri Jakkola

Second Report.

The human rights convoy is about to go into the community of Agua Fria, a community belonging to the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, and the Oaxaca State Attorney General, Maria de la Luz Candelaria Chiñas, has announced she wants to establish negotiations between the coordinator of the PRD, Alejandro Encinas Rodriguez, however the decision is not partisan.

The brigade also confirms that since yesterday the UBISORT was recruiting PRI supporters to block the entrance into Juxtlahuaca to stop the humanitarian convoy from entering. UBISORT created a paramilitary fence that does not let the 70 families living under this paramilitary siege to live in peace, until now colluding authorities have done nothing.

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