April 18th, 2008 - FSRN writes: The recent assassination of two community radio reporters in Oaxaca’s Triqui region has triggered widespread international condemnation. Mexico has ranked as the deadliest country for journalists in this hemisphere for years. The two young reporters were from a self-declared “autonomous municipality” in an area characterized by decades of bitter violence. Community activists and the Mexican government’s National Human Rights Commission visited the area earlier this week on a fact-finding mission. Vladimir Flores has the Latest from Oaxaca.
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Archive for the “OIDHO” CategoryTO THE INDEPENDENT SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS The brutal, systematic repression of the Mexican State against the movements for social transformation keeps on happening throughout the country, and in our state the situation is extremely serious. The dominant classes and the big transnational interests maintain a mediocre political class and institutions that aim to do away with citizens’ rights, criminalizing all social protest. The exercise of constitutional rights in Mexico and in Oaxaca is now a crime. In order to grant even more privileges to a handful of economic interests, there are no holds barred on state terrorism.
TO THE NEWS MEDIA The misgovernments of Calderon in Mexico and Ulises Ruiz in Oaxaca are bent on maintaining their mechanisms of systematic repression and permanent violations of human rights and constitutional guarantees. They’ve proved this through processes of indiscriminate aggression against the community life of different indigenous peoples in Oaxaca and other parts of the country, and the situation is getting increasingly worse. Their power strongholds breed policies of robbery and plunder, as well as violence. In them, many public functionaries who are obedient to very particular political or economic interests maintain relationships with corrupt authorities, local power bosses, or sinister individuals; consequently, corruption continues to grow inside the institutions and government structures. Last February 6, at approximately 3:30 p.m., the ministerial police of the State of Oaxaca detained Pedro Sánchez Antonio, the indigenous representative of the Chinanteca community El Pípila of the municipality of San Juan Mazatlán, Oaxaca. Compañero Pedro is a member and a delegate of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI) of Oaxaca. He was charged with the offenses of plunder and abuse of authority, supposedly committed against the political boss Carmelo Pérez, who was expelled from the region by campesinos in 2005. On February 7, at 8:00 a.m. Dora Ávila Betancourt was arrested in Matías Romero, Oaxaca, by several heavily armed men. Dora was taking her daughter to school when they detained her, saying that they had an arrest order for damage to a highway that occurred in 2006, a charge that was previously dropped for lack of proof. Dora is 48 years old and has spent 20 years working in indigenous rural communities in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. She has been a member of UCIZONI, and is now a Human Rights Adviser for Rural Women. January 14, mobilizations begin in the city of Oaxaca for the freedom of Pedro Castillo Aragón and all the political prisoners and prisoners of conscience of Oaxaca and the country
The struggle for our political prisoners will continue until we stop State terrorism. To the news media As the years go by, it’s all the more clear that the Mexican State and its repressive misgovernments, like that of Ulises Ruiz in Oaxaca, are still determined to label all those who struggle for equality and justice as criminals. The coercive, repressive mechanisms implemented by the political powers-that-be have many names and many facets. People in the Zapotec community of Santiago Xanica in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca continue to struggle for their right to choose their municipal president in an assembly by means of traditional practices and customs and to gain the freedom of the first political prisoners of the Ulises Ruiz regime in the face of threats, harassment, and arrest warrants on the eve of the municipal elections of August 26.
He talks to the two of us, who were lucky enough to be riding up front, about the woods and the deer and possums and armadillos that live there. Then he says, “See those lights? They’re the lights of Xanica.” On our two-hour ride they look really distant, then closer, then even further away, but there they are, shining clearly through the mist, always visible in this part of the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca. Isaías answers our questions and tells about the state of siege in his town. Only later did I learn that he’s one of eight people from Xanica with warrants out for his arrest. (en español) To the national and international media.
We want you to know that: On Monday 16th of July there were actions organized against the commercialized version of the Guelaguetza [the traditional festival of giving and sharing celebrated by the peoples of Oaxaca dating back to the times of the Toltecs], that is being promoted by the tourism business and the bloodstained government of Ulises Ortiz Ruiz (URO). It consisted of a march and an alternative Guelaguetza, a peoples’ one. Regardless of the march having already taken place peacefully, the celebration and dances were brutally attacked by the police, which arrested 74 of those taking part in it and wounded more than 40 (according to APPO and other organizations involved in it). |
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INFORMATIONAL BULLETIN:
CODECI, OIDHO, UCIZONI write:
August 22nd, 2007 - Carolina writes: The road to Xanica climbs up from Huatulco through a beautiful forest. It’s rough and unpaved, but the driver of our wooden-railed pick-up knows all the ruts and curves, even in the rain. He’s lived there all his life. His name is Isaías. 
19 de julio de 2007 - Magonist Zapatista Alliance (AMZ) writes: We are writing this letter from Organizaciones Indias por los Derechos Humanos de Oaxaca (OIDHO, Oragnisation of indigenous peoples for Human Rights in Oaxaca), Comité por la Defensa de los Derechos Indígenas de Santiago Xanica (CODEDI-Xanica, Comitte for the defence of indigenous rights in Santiago Xanica), Colectivo Autónomo Magonista (CAMA, Autonomous Magonist Collective); women and men of the Alianza Magonista Zapatista (AMZ, Magonist Zapatista Alliance), to all our comrades, both in the country and internationally, we ask you to organize urgent actions to oppose fascism in the state of Oaxaca.
