El Enemigo Común

by Simón Sedillo

I was asked to write a piece about people of color organizing to attend the 2009 SOA Watch vigil and about our plans for 2010. I believe everything happens for a reason.

I am writing this from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.

I find it serendipitous simply because when we talk about people of color organizing, I think it is always important to remind ourselves about painful pasts, in order to remove any blinders we are wearing in the present. Haskell University was originally a U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs Native American “Boarding School.” Secretary of War John C. Calhoun set up the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824, which became the War Department’s main agency for dealing with Native Americans until 1849 when it was transferred to the Department of the Interior.

The Boarding School program was developed by a U.S. Army Captain by the name of Richard Henry Pratt In 1879. At the time, the Army was concluding that assimilation into white settler society by most Native Americans was impossible, because they simply would not “give up their traditions and ways of life.” So Richard Pratt developed a strategy he called “kill the Indian, save the man.” The idea was probably stolen from the various Christian boarding school programs developed during the Spanish occupation of the Americas. The main idea behind Pratt’s program was that Native families would be forced to send their children to live in these so-called “boarding schools.”

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The spirit of Bety Cariño prevails

by Emily Posner

June 7-8, 2010

Yesterday four activists delivered a letter to Jorge Sanchez Cataño, the Deputy Consul at the Mexican Consulate in Detroit, Michigan. The activists met with Mr. Sanchez to express their support of the humanitarian caravan that left the morning of June 8th from Huajuapan de León, Mexico for the San Juan Copala municipality.

The group expressed their hopes that the Mexican Government would ensure the safety of the caravan in order to avoid repetition of the violent attack on April 27th where Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola were assassinated. The four also asked that the Mexican Government immediately bring criminal charges against those responsible for the two’s murder, as well as those responsible for the murders of Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez and Cleriberta Castro.

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Countrywide Day of Action in Solidarity with Oaxaca

On June 8, anti-authoritarians and human rights activists are trying to break the paramilitary blockade of the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala in Oaxaca. We need to support them to help avoid another massacre.

In 2006, Oaxaca was the site of one of the most inspiring, important social rebellions of the decade. Between the brutal crackdown of the Mexican state and the constant harassment by paramilitaries, dozens of people have been killed and the rebellion was largely crushed, but parts of Oaxaca are still organizing their autonomy.

For five months, the Triqui village of San Juan Copala has faced severe paramilitary repression for declaring itself autonomous from the Mexican state and the neocolonial capitalist policies it enforces.

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Minnesotans urge the Mexican consulate to investigate ongoing paramilitary violence in Oaxaca San Juan Copala, Mexico after the assassination of indigenous leader, wife.

May 21st, St Paul, MN — A group of Minnesota activists delivered a letter to the Mexican consulate in the wake of yesterday’s assassination of community leader Alejandro Ramirez and his wife Cleriberta Castro in their home in San Juan Copala.

“We are here to condemn continued paramilitary attacks on women, children, and movement leaders in Oaxaca San Juan Copala, Mexico,” shouted one protester. “We demand an immediate investigation into these calculated murders and campaign of intimidation by the Mexican government!”

Activists hung a banner over I-35 on Monday, and urged friends and family to call into the consulate all week leading up to today’s protest.

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Paramilitary repression and police brutality continue unabated on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border three years after the assassinations of Lorenzo Sampablo Cervantes in Oaxaca, Mexico and Fong Lee in Minneapolis, MN

By Steven Renderos & Sylvia González
November 1, 2009

Two different people – different stories, different places, – separated by nearly 2,000 miles, were connected three years ago when their lives were cut short by gunfire. Fong Lee and Lorenzo Sampablo Cervantes suffered a death inflicted by the gunshots of police and paramilitary officials. For Cervantes, it was one gunshot wound to the chest; for Lee, three gunshot wounds in his back, and five more to the front. Cervantes died seeking justice during the popular movement in 2006 in Oaxaca, Mexico, while Fong Lee died as a result of deeply rooted racism and police brutality in communities of color across the United States.

The stories of Lorenzo and Fong tell the tales of paramilitary repression during the popular movement of 2006 in Oaxaca, Mexico and police brutality and racism in the Hmong community in Minneapolis- and how they play out in different sociopolitical contexts. While their lives ended tragically, their stories continue as their family and community members are fighting back, building unity, and defining “justice” and “dignity” on their own terms and based on their own experiences.

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