Category: Prisoners

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Prisoners

Torture, Tears, and Desperation in Mexico’s Migrant Jails

By Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano
Translated by Scott Campbell

“‘You’re going to die! Sign your deportation and go back to your country!’ was what I heard as I struggled to recover from the asthma attack I suffered in the migrant detention center. I felt cornered by the guard and considered doing it, but remembering the problems that led me to leave my country, I dropped the idea.”

Lizzi is one of 51,607 people detained in Mexico by the National Migration Institute (INM) during the first four months of 2019. She was detained for 45 days, during which time she says she suffered physical and psychological torture. “We felt like we were in a jail, it was horrible! I had two asthma attacks inside. When we came back from the doctor, another guard asked me, “And you want to ask for refuge? Do you know you’ll be locked up for three to six months?”

A few meters from Pakal’ Ná park, near the train tracks in Palenque where hundreds of migrants meet to share their stories, the young, twenty-year-old mother recalls her painful experience. She left Honduras because she had problems with her son’s father, who belonged to one of the gangs. After years of abuse and threats, one day she decided to flee with her son to the United States to start a new life.

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Prisoners Solidarity

Nationwide Strike Targets U.S. Prisons

by carolina saldaña

 The Nationwide Prison Strike throughout the United States began on August 21, 2018, the anniversary of the assassination of George Jackson in San Quentin Prison in California and ended on September 9th, 47 years after the rebellion in Attica prison, NY. Two historic dates in the revolutionary movement inside the country’s prisons.

On July 17th of this year, the artist, analyst and organizer Kevin ‘Rashid’ Johnson, of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, wrote an article that places this strike in the context of several years of resistance in the prisons of Texas, Georgia, Alabama, California and Florida as of 2010. Rashid argues that a new movement is on the rise against slavery and the inhuman conditions in prisons, which is eroding the structures of isolation imposed almost half a century ago to put an end to the prison movement that existed in the 60s and 70s.

During the Nationwide Prison Strike of 2018, there were actions in at least 36 institutions in 17 states.

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Indigenous Prisoners Repression

CODEDI Demands Justice for Assassination of Abraham Hernández Gonzales

TO THE PEOPLES OF OAXACA

TO THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS

TO HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

TO INDEPENDENT AND COMMERCIAL NEWS MEDIA

Today Tuesday 17th of July at 11:30 AM, a group of armed men with ski masks dressed in military style uniforms broke into Abraham Hernández Gonzales’ home in Salchi, Pochutla, and they violently took the compañero from his home. They later transported him in a gray pick-up truck with license plate number RH-70-92 along with motorcycles which escorted the truck.

Immediately after Hernandez Gonzales was picked up several police agencies were notified and none of them made any effort to find the compañero, who after five hour was found dead near the same community.

Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat is directly responsible for this kidnapping and assassination of our compañero Abraham Hernández, who carried out the important job of local coordinator for the community of Los Ciruelos. The government’s lack of interest in solving cases like this one demonstrates its complicity with criminal organizations that operate in the region and the state. Allowing these organizations to operate freely at all hours of the day without being detained by anyone illustrates the farce that is the government operation “Safe Beach”; in reality these are the places with the greatest degree of insecurity, and even more so with the return of the PRI to Oaxaca’s state government, whom we know are connected to narcotics trafficking.

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Prisoners Solidarity

Urgent Support Needed for Mexican Anarchist Prisoner Fernando Bárcenas

Fernando Bárcenas is an anarchist political prisoner in Mexico. Earlier this week, he learned he must pay a 35,500 peso (1,950 USD) fine imposed during his sentencing by Friday, June 9 or have his imprisonment extended for 550 days. Let’s ensure he doesn’t spend one more day locked up.

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Prisoners Solidarity

Podcast on Anarchist Organizing and Solidarity Inside and Outside of Mexican Prisons

Originally published to It’s Going Down
Translated by Scott Campbell
Download and Listen Here

This is a special IGDCAST with Sofi, an anarchist compañera from Mexico City who is deeply involved in a variety of solidarity and organizing efforts with anarchist prisoners in Mexico. The audio interview is in Spanish, while below is an English transcription, along with two song MP3s you can download separately. If you want to see more in depth reporting on what is happening in Mexico, be sure to support our Mexico trip fundraiser.

We start off this episode with a recorded greeting from the Cimarrón Collective in North Prison in Mexico City. Then Sofi discusses the persecution and repression facing the anarchist movement in Mexico City as well as a review of the situation of four anarchist prisoners currently being held by the Mexican state. We look at the corruption, exploitation and neglect that occurs in Mexican prisons and what compañeros on the inside are doing to fight back. In particular, there is a focus on the Cimarrón Collective, a formation started by anarchist prisoner Fernando Bárcenas that has autonomously reclaimed space inside the North Prison and self-manages a variety of initiatives. For listeners, perhaps the most intriguing one will be their punk band, Commando Cimarrón. A couple of their songs are included in the podcast.

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