{"id":12293,"date":"2016-03-29T21:07:07","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T04:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elenemigocomun.net\/?p=12293"},"modified":"2016-10-06T20:44:38","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T03:44:38","slug":"okupache-defending-autonomous-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elenemigocomun.net\/2016\/03\/okupache-defending-autonomous-space\/","title":{"rendered":"La OkupaChe: Defending an autonomous space"},"content":{"rendered":"

x carolina<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a liberated territory on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico – UNAM). It\u2019s called the Che Guevara Auditorium. Known as the Justo Sierra Auditorium half a century ago, its name was changed by students in the 1968 strike, and three decades later, it was taken over in the 1999-2000 student strike. Briefly lost when 2,500 federal militarized police invaded the campus on February 6, 2000, the auditorium was recovered a few months later. Since then, several different groups have taken responsibility for maintaining the space at different times.<\/p>\n

The auditorium now named the OkupaChe defines itself as an autonomous space for self-organized work, a space for the people, one that is made up of different collectives and individuals.<\/p>\n

Here you can enjoy a delicious vegetarian meal, find something interesting to read in the zine\/fanzine library, listen to the latest news on Radio Desobediencia, watch a play put on by the Ollin Company, learn about alternative medicine, debate a socially relevant issue, help paint one of the murals that adorn the walls, grow organic vegetables, take part in an assembly, go to a good concert, or sign up for workshops on free software, dance, drumming, independent media, graphic design, street theater, crafts, or languages, among many other options. Here libertarian and anarchist activities are organized, as well as events in support of the struggles of indigenous peoples, Zapatismo, political prisoners, student struggles and autonomous projects.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What you WON\u2019T find at the OkupaChe is training to be an executive of a transnational company, or an investigative or intelligence officer, or a senator, representative, judge or head of a rotten political party. Here you\u2019ll find education for living in a world that\u2019s reeling, or in other words, the world of today.<\/p>\n

The presence of the OkupaChe has long been the worst nightmare of the UNAM authorities, especially former Rector Jos\u00e9 Narro Robles, who promised to throw out the \u201cthugs\u201d and make the auditorium a \u201cdecent\u201d place for people of \u201chigh moral and intellectual character\u201d once again. The current Rector, Enrique Luis Graue Wiechers, is following in his footsteps by launching a new offensive to evict those who are now occupying the space. Graue has recently been skewered by EZLN commanders Galeano y Mois\u00e9s, as a sorry bureaucrat who\u2019s \u201cspent his life trying to be a successful cop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just one example of the high moral character of the two rectors is noted in an article published in the Contral\u00ednea<\/em> magazine last December. They were caught covering up corruption in the university, including \u201csiphoning off money, overpricing, unlicensed operations, and expenditures of millions of pesos with no bids placed or contracts awarded\u2026. in the organization of the 2014 National Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most recent onslaught against the OkupaChe began with the kidnapping and jailing of one of their activists \u2013the artisan and cook Jorge Emilio Esquivel Mu\u00f1oz, \u201cel Yorch\u201d. \u00a0He was snatched off the street at gunpoint on February 24 at 9:45 pm, by 10 or 15 armed plainclothes agents, who never identified themselves as such. They tackled Yorch, beat him and threw him into a white van with no plates, while the woman he was with and other people tried to keep them from taking him away. The illegal detention happened only minutes after Yorch had left an event underway in the Che Guevara Auditorium in support of political prisoners and disappeared people.<\/p>\n

\"okupache-001\"After a frantic search, he was finally located four hours later in the Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office in the Cuauht\u00e9moc District, where officials planted a backpack on him with 50 bags of crack cocaine, 26 pills of clonazepam and 300 grams of marijuana, and charged him with street sales. He wasn\u2019t presented in public until noon the next day, in violation of his right to due process.<\/p>\n

After declaring the facts of his arrest, Yorch was transferred to the federal Attorney General\u2019s Office in Azcapotzalco, where activists demonstrated in his support. His comrades insisted that it was crucial to get the videos recorded by the surveillance cameras, which will show that Jorge was not carrying a backpack or any kind of bag when he was picked up.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the commercial news media have functioned as mouthpieces for the AG\u2019s Office, as if they\u2019d never heard of \u201cthe presumption of innocence.\u201d Several newspapers, like La Raz\u00f3n<\/em> and Excelsior<\/em>, parroted the State version of the arrest, not of an \u201calleged<\/strong> dealer<\/em>\u201d, but of \u201ca dealer<\/em>\u201d already found guilty before his trial even began. The main headline in El Financiero<\/em> was \u201c’El Yorch’ was an ‘activist’, but trafficked in coke and marijuana,\u201d as if his guilt had already been established.<\/p>\n

While expressing no concern whatsoever over the police terror displayed in Yorch\u2019s arrest or over a possible forced disappearance, the mainstream media had a field day over the news that the young activists of the squat had set fire to garbage bins, tires, tree branches and a surveillance vehicle as a way of protesting Yorch\u2019s kidnapping. \u00a0\u00a0At the same time, they applauded Mexico City Mayor Miguel \u00c1ngel Mancera, when he announced his plans to tighten surveillance around the university campus.<\/p>\n

Without being held for the constitutionally established 48-hour time period for establishing probable cause or releasing a person, much less for the possible 96-hour period in this type of offense, Yorch was immediately flown to CEFERESO 11, a maximum security prison in Hermosillo, Sonora.<\/p>\n

He spent 15 days in the cruel conditions of the Hermosillo prison based on the United States model imported to Mexico, and finally got out on bail on March 9, for lack of evidence or testimonies indicating drug sales. Graue is furious, say the Zapatista commanders, \u201cbecause the police haven\u2019t done a good job of fabricating guilty parties.\u201d Even so, at a time when the legalization of marijuana in the country is a subject of hot debate, the activist still faces charges of possession of weed and other drugs.<\/p>\n

In a press conference held in the Che Guevara Auditorium on March 17, in keeping with a resolution passed by the Assembly of Students and Professors that met last March 12 in the School of Humanities, several members of the OkupaChe denounced Yorch\u2019s arrest and demanded his release. They spoke about the criminalization of the social struggle and the importance of defending the autonomous space.<\/p>\n

They recognized that some differences of opinion have surfaced regarding the current situation in the space. Nevertheless, they stressed that the students and professors \u201cagree that there should be no interference by the authorities in the auditorium. And in any case, if it\u2019s necessary to reorganize the work in the Che, it won\u2019t be through a dialogue or agreement with the authorities, but instead with student and social groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"okupache-004\"At the press conference, several repressive acts were condemned, including the climate of harassment experienced after Yorch\u2019s arrest by the activists in the squat, several of whom have been followed or threatened in calls to their cell phones.<\/p>\n

The police\/legal\/media attack on Yorch was followed by an attempt to abduct another comrade, who left the auditorium at 11 pm on the night of March 20, and was walking down Avenida Universidad towards the subway. In a statement not published<\/strong> in the mainstream media, the OkupaChe collective reported: \u201cA yellow sports car with no plates pulled up beside our comrade and stopped. Two men got out, who were nearly six feet tall with military-style haircuts, dressed in white t-shirts and blue jeans. \u00a0They knocked him down, beat him and tried to pull him into the car, when a woman saw the skirmish and began to yell, \u201cThey\u2019re trying to take him away!\u201d People began to gather around, which caused the aggressors to desist and flee towards the Miguel \u00c1ngel de Quevedo subway station\u201d.<\/p>\n

And if that woman hadn\u2019t screamed, what would have happened? A forced disappearance? The arrest and imprisonment of yet another OkupaChe activist and further criminalization?<\/p>\n

Graue is now building support for an eviction. He insists that he will seek dialogue before requesting military or police intervention, but he has not proposed a dialogue. Even so, he has garnered support from several entities: The UNAM General Council, the Technical Council of the School of Humanities; and the Senate of Mexico, promised by PRD Coordinator Miguel Barbosa Huerta and the President of the Political Coordination Committee Emilio Gamboa Patr\u00f3n. The Rector has also received support from a group of Law students who have called for a rally outside the Administration Building on Friday, April 1, to push for an eviction. \u201cWe believe that (Graue) was right in saying that he is going to exhaust the possibilities for dialogue and that if nothing is achieved, he will resort to public force,\u201d said one of the students.<\/p>\n

The criminalization in the news media has extended to other activists who have participated in the OkupaChe recently or in the past, and also to several persons who have never participated. Photos and information published in El Universal<\/em>, Reforma<\/em>, La Jornada<\/em>, Milenio<\/em>, La Raz\u00f3n<\/em>, 24-Horas<\/em>, Radio F\u00f3rmula<\/em>, Excelsio<\/em>r and other media, portray more than a dozen activists as criminals, dope dealers and vandals, who have taken over the \u201cJusto Sierra Auditorium\u201d illegally. In this smear campaign they don\u2019t even question the information put out by the university administration and the Attorney General\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

Most of the photos are the very same ones released in 2013 and 2014, when it was reported that the AG had opened preliminary investigations in the cases of 19 \u201cdelinquents.\u201d Half of the people criminalized in the supposed investigations have already been unjustly punished for participating in struggles against the privatization of education. In 2009, one activist spent more than a year in prison for marching for free, public education in the annual October 2 march that commemorates the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. Another spent more than a year in prison, accused of attacks against the public peace in the October 2 march in 2013, even though he was arrested before<\/strong> he ever got to the march. Four other comrades were arrested at the same time under the same charges. Two and a half years later, several of them, charged with a crime declared unconstitutional last February, have to report and sign in every week.<\/p>\n

The list of \u201cdelinquents\u201d also includes an expert in alternative medicine and a master of theater and dance, who not only puts on stage productions, but also carries his works to the streets and plazas of both urban and rural communities in solidarity with local struggles. And to top it off, the latest version of the list broadcast by Ciro Gomez Leyva on Radio F\u00f3rmula<\/em>, includes the mother of an activist killed four years ago; she is accused of the terrible crime of demanding answers regarding the death of her son.<\/p>\n

When liberal journalists like San Juana Mart\u00ednez express alarm about the threat presented by the OkupaChe to the (non-existent) \u201crule of law\u201d in M\u00e9xico, an image comes to mind of Brozo the clown, tearing out his hair over the same threat supposedly presented by the Peoples\u2019 Front in Defense of the Land in Atenco one blood-stained day in May of 2006: Oh my God! Look at the way those troublemakers are beating that cop! The rule of law is at stake! What do we do? Just stand by and do nothing? The rule of law! The rule of law! What do we do? What do we do?<\/p>\n

Well how about sending thousands of state and federal police to beat, torture and kill righteous campesinos defending their land, you miserable clown. You called for it. \u00a0.<\/p>\n

The current attacks on the occupied Che Guevara Auditorium are nothing new. In 2008, Rector Jos\u00e9 Narro stated his intention to evacuate the auditorium, and that year the main tactic consisted of using porros<\/em> (organized paramilitary gangs) to try to do so. Although most student spaces were defenseless in the face of such violence, the OkupaChe put up resistance several times, including during an attack waged on September 12. The porros<\/em> didn\u2019t fare too well that day.<\/p>\n

\"okupache-019\"All during Narro\u2019s regime, however, countless death threats and cases of media defamation were aimed at the squat. On March 3, 2014, a violent attack was instigated by groups seeking to control the auditorium, with the result that three people standing guard were brutally tortured and beaten, with the pretext that they were \u201cdirty drug addicts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight months later, on November 15, several members of the OkupaChe pointed out four agents sitting in a Sentra, who were taking pictures of the space in an alleged investigation of the theft of a cell phone. The illegal presence on campus of a secretary of the Public Prosecutor, an Investigatory Officer and two forensic experts of the Mexico City Attorney General\u2019s Office, made the activists angry. As the verbal conflict heated up, the investigatory officer Luis Javier Agui\u00f1aga Saavedra fired his pistol at a comrade, wounding him in the thigh. Later the aggressors complained that the shooter had suffered a head wound and that the Sentra was burned. \u00a0As many as 500 riot police who arrived illegally to \u201crestore order\u201d were repelled with rocks and bottles by at least 100 youth. The wounded comrade filed charges against Agui\u00f1aga, and as a result has been followed around and threatened by plainclothes agents.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the collectives making up the OkupaChe have insisted that they will resist a possible eviction and that each attack against them will be met with a response. They say that they will not leave the space of their own accord, and that if the rector is stupid enough to rely on military-police forces to get them out of there, the occupations will multiply. As an important form of resistance, they are simply carrying on with their daily work, organizing more and more events, including a day of international solidarity with Yorch on April 23.<\/p>\n

Voices from the OkupaChe<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the face of criminalization, and the danger of being picked up off the street, disappeared, jailed, or shot, what moves the collectives and individuals of the OkupaChe to defend this autonomous space? What do they see as the most important aspect of their work? What do they like most about being there? Here I have a few answers:<\/p>\n