The Governor Wants To Be President; We Want Justice

The Governor of the State of Mexico wants to be President.
His campaign is in full swing.
His image is promoted on TV and the people foot the bill.

To win the business vote (the one that counts), he has to show that Fox couldn’t grab the lands of the people of Atenco, but that he can.
Dispossessing poor people of their lands and resources to hand them over to the richest of the rich (preferably the foreign monopolies) is the first requirement for being the Manager…excuse me, the President, accepted by the owners of capital and global wealth.

The Governor ordered the ASE attack against the people of Atenco and called in the PFP. He was satisfied with the brutality used to comply with his order. He’s proved this is true by guaranteeing impunity for the criminals.

There’s no doubt that an iron fist policy and the payment of political debts with impunity are also requirements for being a presidential candidate.

The Governor has complied with another requirement: violating laws without being punished, subordinating the executive and legislative branches to the executive and to political interests. All this in the name of the State of Law.

The Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico has exonerated him of all criminal responsibility for the deaths of a child and a young man, the mass rape of women, torture, warrantless house searches, property damage, and other crimes, all committed during the repression he ordered. Needless to say, he was also exonerated of intellectual authorship, complicity, cover-up, and all other possible ways of participating in these crimes.

To qualify as a presidential candidate, it’s not necessary to govern by respecting the law and complying with it. All you have to do is impose terror at gunpoint, jail people, persecute them. This is what’s called authority.

The sexually tortured women were jailed or expelled from the country.
The police and those in command never set foot in jail.

An ASE agent fired his weapon at a 14 year old boy.
The boy died and the police has never even been indicted.

No police was punished for firing a tear gas canister directly at Alexis’ head, mortally wounding him.
8 minors (including one young woman) were beaten and tortured for several days in the juvenile detention center.
206 people were tortured and unjustly imprisoned.
Several social activists were pursued, and three years later they’re still being pursued.

The criminals are free.
The campesinos and social activists are in jail.

Two campesinos from Atenco and a law student have been locked up in maximum security prison for three years with sentences of from 67 to 112 years. This reveals that peaceful, social struggle is more heavily penalized than kidnapping or drug trafficking, especially if the struggle gets in the way of a politician who wants to be president or in the way of a party that wants to recover the presidency.

América, Nacho del Valle’s daughter, was studying pedagogy when her father and brother were jailed and the family home searched and wrecked.
She is now a politically pursued person.
For her, being pursued means losing three years in her studies. Not being able to visit her father in prison. Not being able to live with her mother or her brothers. Not seeing her people. Not being able to use her own name. Being pursued wears a person out. Being pursued means being forced to live in semi-clandestinity.
The persecutors bet on debilitation, the persecuted learn to resist, to draw strength from impotence.

The Atenco political prisoners are not delinquents.
They are social activists who’ve been unjustly held in prison for three years.
Politicians and governors are mistaken in their calculations for the future.
The more offenses they commit, and the more serious they are, the more rebelliousness they produce.
Mockery and impunity generate anger.
Atenco’s wound is our own, and their struggle, too.

Nacho, thank you for being invincible, for your letters from prison, for the freedom, encouragement, and force that you transmit.

Felipe and Héctor, thank you for resisting in one of the worst places in the country.

Italia, Norma, Mariana, Valentina, Cristina, thank you for your courage, your dignity, your perseverance.

Magdalena, thank you for your example.

América, thank you for your light, your integrity, and your courage in spite of the political persecution you are withstanding.

Atenco, thank you for your tremendous solidarity with our struggles.

Political prisoners in Molino de Flores, ex prisoners, persecuted people, to all who lived and live in Atenco, thank you for your example.

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ATENCO

May 3, 2009
Gloria Arenas Agis
Ecatepec Prison