http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/eventos/965/
(Del 28 de julio al 12 de agosto de 2008)
La ofensiva de los malos gobiernos federal, estatal y municipal en contra de las comunidades y pueblos zapatistas de Chiapas ha dado la voz de alerta a la solidaridad nacional e internacional. La irrupción, en junio pasado, de 200 soldados y fuerzas de las policías de los tres órdenes de gobierno en comunidades del Caracol de La Garrucha, así como una serie de provocaciones y agravios en contra de los compañeros y compañeras bases de apoyo zapatistas conforman esta ofensiva.
Por su parte, los y las bases de apoyo zapatistas, junto con los compañeros y compañeras del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), han cumplido a cabalidad su palabra depositada en 1994 de no ejercer acciones armadas, sino de construir un movimiento opositor civil y pacífico al régimen político mexicano y a sus instituciones.
El olor de la Guerra —del que nos advertía el olfato del Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos en diciembre de 2007, al decirnos: “Quienes hemos hecho la guerra sabemos reconocer los caminos por los que se prepara y acerca. Las señales de la guerra en el horizonte son claras. La guerra, como el miedo, también tiene olor. Y ahora se empieza ya a respirar su fétido olor en nuestras tierras”—, se siente más cerca que en otros momentos.
Los compañeros y compañeras zapatistas han cumplido su palabra con dignidad y coraje, ahora nos toca a las fuerzas de la sociedad civil nacional e internacional, a las organizaciones sociales y políticas, a los y las adherentes a la VI Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, movilizarnos y actuar con decisión y solidaridad en su apoyo.
En muchas partes de México y del mundo, se ha escuchado en los últimos días que “¡Los zapatistas no están solos!”. En Europa, los compañeros y compañeras de diversos países organizados en la Europa Zapatista realizaron el Encuentro Europeo en Defensa y en la Lucha de los Pueblos Zapatistas y la Otra Campaña de México los días 9, 10 y 11 de mayo pasado, en Atenas, Grecia, haciendo un llamado a la sociedad civil internacional de abajo a la izquierda y anticapitalista, para caminar juntos, todas y todos, para construir una “Campaña europea de Solidaridad por la Autonomía Zapatista y contra la Guerra en Chiapas”.
Por estas razones y en acuerdo con los compañeros y compañeras de la Comisión Sexta del EZLN emitimos la presente
Convocatoria
A todos los adherentes a la Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, a los individuos, familias, colectivos, organizaciones de la Otra Campaña de México, de la Otra del Otro Lado, de la Zezta Internazional y de la Europa Zapatista, a participar en la Caravana Nacional e Internacional de Observación y Solidaridad con las Comunidades Zapatistas de Chiapas, que se realizará en el territorio mexicano del Estado de Chiapas del 28 de julio al 12 de agosto del presente año.
Podrán participar todos los compañeros y compañeras miembros de la Otra Campaña, de la Otra del Otro Lado, de la Zezta Internazional y de los colectivos y organizaciones de la Europa Zapatista que se acrediten ante la comisión correspondiente en el DF y en San Cristóbal de las Casas.
Acreditación
La acreditación se realizará en la oficina central ubicada en Dr. Carmona y Valle No. 32, colonia de los Doctores, Delegación Cuauhtémoc, DF, CP-06720, teléfonos: 55780775 y 55784711. A una cuadra del metro Cuauhtémoc (línea 1 / color rosa). Y en las direcciones de Internet que se encuentran al final de esta convocatoria.
Para su acreditadión, los participantes deberán presentar:
1) Una carta aval y responsiva del colectivo, organización o espacio de coordinación de la Otra Campaña en México, de la Otra del Otro Lado, de la Zezta Internazional o de la Europa Zapatista
2) Una identificación con fotografía en original y copia
3) Llenar un formulario con sus datos generales
4) Sufragar sus gastos de transportación, alimentación y hospedaje
Para los compañeros y compañeras que, por así convenirles, deseen llegar directamente a San Cristóbal de Las Casas, su registro se hará en el CIDECI, ubicado en Antiguo Camino a San Juan Chamula, sin número, colonia Nueva Maravilla. En estos casos, deberán enviar previamente su solicitud por Internet o bien avisar por vía telefónica o carta a los organizadores, con los mismos requisitos.
Para efectos de organización y logística, la acreditación en México se inicia a partir de la fecha en que se publique esta convocatoria, y se cerrará el 23 de julio. No habrá prorrogas.
Todos l@s compañer@s que se registren están invitad@s para participar en una reunión de información y trabajo que será impartida por la Comisión Organizadora con información reciente de lo que está pasando en las comunidades.
Organización, Comisiones, Oficina
Para el mejor desarrollo de las tareas habrá varias comisiones de trabajo, las cuales estarán coordinadas en la oficina central. Hospedaje, alimentación, transporte, comunicación y todos los asuntos relacionados con el viaje serán atendidos por nuestros compañeros y compañeras de las distintas comisiones de las 10 hrs a las 21 hrs en las oficinas centrales en el DF.
Todos y cada uno de los participantes deberán respetar el reglamento de la Caravana y, en los territorios zapatistas, las reglas, indicaciones y costumbres de la comunidad, así como las indicaciones e instrucciones de los compañeros y compañeras de las Juntas de Buen Gobierno.
Acopio
Solicitamos a todos los compañeros y compañeras de la Otra Campaña acopio de sus comunidades, organizaciones y/o colectivos para llevarlos a las comunidades zapatistas de Chiapas. Se requieren útiles escolares, medicinas, materiales de trabajo, herramientas, manguera, botas de hule. Alimentos: granos, arroz, latería. NO SE RECIBIRÁ ROPA.
Programa
• La salida de la ciudad de México será el día 28 a las 22 hrs y se llegará a San Cristóbal al día siguiente en la mañana.
• El 29 en San Cristóbal se formarán las brigadas a los siguientes lugares: Caracol de La Garrucha, Reserva Ecológica de Huitepec y Caracol de Morelia; se realizará una reunión-taller de explicación de los trabajos de las brigadas, se informarán los horarios y el momento de salida. Puede haber cambios u otros lugares de visita, de acuerdo con el número de personas participantes de las brigadas o con algún pedido específico de las propias Juntas de Buen Gobierno.
• El 29 en la tarde recepción de los Caravaneros en Oventic, territorio zapatista.
• El regreso de las comunidades será el día 11 de agosto al CIDECI en San Cristóbal.
• El regreso al DF y a sus lugares de origen será el 12 de agosto en la noche; salida de San Cristóbal.
• Los compañeros y compañeras europeos, de otros países y mexicanos que hayan salido en camiones del DF con la Caravana, tienen que confirmar su regreso al DF en autobuses rentados o informar si van a otro lugar, o si permanecerán en la comunidad. Para ello deben contar con la autorización de las autoridades del lugar.
• Les pedimos a todos los compañeros y compañeras participantes de la caravana que notifiquen, a través de los correos y teléfonos de la comisión organizadora en el DF, cuando regresen con bien a sus lugares de origen.
• Los asuntos de coordinación con los compañeros y compañeras de la Europa Zapatista se verán directamente entre los organizadores.
Los casos de controversia serán resueltos por los organizadores.
Ciudad de México, a 7 de julio de 2008.
Fraternalmente,
La Comisión de Organización
Para cualquier asunto comunicarse a:
avaras@prodigy.net.mx// unopii@gmail.com // brigadaszapatistas@yahoo.com.mx o directamente en las oficinas y/o a los teléfonos en el DF
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7/28/08
Defensa del Maiz Nativo
Pronunciamiento contra los transgénicos en México, de la Red en Defensa del Maíz Nativo
Ecoportal.net
Reunidos ante las amenazas renovadas a nuestras semillas, alimentos, derechos y vida como pueblos, en la Red de Defensa del Maíz Nativo, y
Considerando
La intención del gobierno mexicano, en contubernio con las empresas transnacionales, de permitir el cultivo de maíz transgénico en varios campos experimentales, y que ésto necesariamente significará la contaminación de nuestros maices nativos y a la larga la pérdida de los mismos, atentando contra nuestra identidad, autonomía, economía y nuestra salud; destruyendo la madre tierra, la vida y contaminando la naturaleza.
Que para ello, pretende usar leyes y reglamentos que han sido aprobados ignorando a los pueblos y a favor de los intereses de las empresas, como la Ley de Bioseguridad y Organismos Genéticamente Modificados, mejor llamada “Ley Monsanto”, que permite la entrada e invasión de las transnacionales a nuestros territorios, campos de cultivo y semillas, que por derecho ancestral e histórico nos corresponden.
Que la “Ley Monsanto” forma parte de una serie de leyes destinadas al despojo y privatización de nuestros recursos y derechos, —la reforma al art. 27 Constitucional, la Ley Agraria, la reforma constitucional en materia indígena, la Ley de Aguas Nacionales, la Ley Forestal, la Ley Minera, la Ley Gral. De Vida Silvestre, la de Productos Orgánicos, la de Certificación de Semillas— entre otras que han sido aprobadas a nuestras espaldas y atentan contra nuestra palabra, nuestros derechos, nuestra historia, y nuestra cultura.
Que ahora, a través de la farsa legal titulada irónicamente “Régimen de Protección Especial del Maíz”, se pretende negar que todo el territorio mexicano es centro de origen y diversidad del maíz.
Que las instituciones gubernamentales ejecutan los proyectos e intereses de las empresas transnacionales, y que los programas agrarios y sociales – como ahora el PROMAF (Programa de Maíz y Fríjol), diseñado para que perdamos nuestras propias semillas– están destruyendo la vida comunitaria de los pueblos y nos inducen a depender de las empresas, y a la homogeneización de los pueblos, destruyendo nuestras diversas culturas y convirtiéndonos a todos en clientes de las empresas.
Que los bancos de germoplasma, formados con semillas recogidas de nuestros territorios y fruto de nuestros saberes, están siendo controlados por las grandes corporaciones, como Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Bayer, Basf, Dow, que se agrupan en la Asociación Mexicana de Semillas A. C. (AMSAC) como cártel para cabildear y defender sus intereses en el país, declarándose “protectores” de las semillas, cuando en realidad las están destruyendo. Que Empresas sin ninguna moral y grandes contaminadores de la naturaleza y destructores de la vida campesina como Monsanto, son miembros del “Comité de Honor y Justicia” de dicha asociación.
Que la AMSAC está exigiendo que se siembre sólamente semilla certificada, llamando a nuestras semillas originarias como “piratas”.
Que los pueblos, tribus y naciones indígenas somos los dueños y guardianes de las semillas y animales, bosques, selva, agua y plantas que existen en nuestro territorio; hacemos la siguiente
DECLARACIÓN
Los pueblos indígenas y los campesinos son los responsables y herederos de la perpetuidad de las diferentes clases de maíz que existen a lo largo y ancho de todo nuestro territorio mexicano y que todo México es centro de origen y diversidad del maíz.
Nos declaramos en contra de la liberación del maíz transgénico y de todos los organismos genéticamente modificados de manera experimental y comercial.
Los indígenas y campesinos son los verdaderos y más experimentados guardianes de los recursos naturales que existen en nuestro país.
Nos declaramos en contra de las leyes que están atentando contra nuestros derechos como pueblos y contra las empresas transnacionales que pretenden despojarnos de nuestras semillas, nuestras tierras, montes y aguas y demás riquezas naturales.
Denunciamos la injerencia que tienen dichas empresas en las políticas agroalimentarias, para que perdamos el derecho a producir nuestros propios alimentos libremente.
Declaramos a la AMSAC como una institución que atenta contra los derechos de los agricultores y su soberanía alimentaria.
Nos declaramos en contra de las estrategias que se implementan contra los pueblos desde instituciones y programas gubernamentales, para que cambiemos nuestras semillas propias por semillas híbridas y transgénicas.
Estamos en contra de los bancos de germoplasma ya que son centros de biopiratería que roban nuestras semillas y conocimientos ancestrales para favorecer los intereses de las empresas e investigadores ajenos a los intereses de los pueblos.
Estamos contra los proyectos biopiratas que Monsanto está haciendo con organizaciones agrícolas y académicas para robar maíces nativos y conocimientos a través del “Proyecto Maestro de Maíces Mexicanos” y el contrato con la Universidad de Guadalajara para recolectar maíces y teocintle, ancestro del maíz, de la sierra indígena nahua de Manantlán en Jalisco.
Nos oponemos a la certificación y registro de semillas y lo denunciamos como una manera más de privatizar las semillas para controlar a los pueblos.
Rechazamos la promoción, difusión, experimentación, cultivo, comercialización y consumo de las semillas transgénicas. Estas semillas atentan contra el medio ambiente y ponen en peligro la salud y la soberanía alimentaria de millones de mexicanos.
El cultivar, guardar, cuidar e intercambiar libremente semillas propias, nativas que no tenemos porque certificar ni registrar ante nadie porque las tenemos desde antes de que existiera el Estado mexicano, es un derecho inalienable que nadie nos va a quitar y seguiremos ejerciendo de manera autónoma. Estas semillas son la esperanza del futuro de todos.
EXIGIMOS
El respeto al derecho a la soberanía alimentaria que parte de nuestra autonomía, costumbres, culturas, tradiciones y prácticas agrícolas.
Que se detenga el cultivo, experimentación, investigación, comercialización y consumo de transgénicos en el territorio mexicano.
Rechazamos la certificación, registro o patente ningún tipo de semilla o ser vivo. Por el contrario exigimos que se respete el libre intercambio de nuestras semillas como lo hemos hecho desde tiempos inmemoriales sin necesidad de paquetes tecnológicos.
Que se detenga la criminalización a la forma de vida campesina que se esta llevando a cabo a través de legislación hecha a favor de los intereses empresariales.
Seguiremos defendiendo la autonomía de nuestros pueblos, la comunidad, las asambleas y su autogobierno, cuya base fundamental es el territorio y el cultivo del maíz nativo como parte de nuestra vida.
Estaremos alertas para denunciar públicamente los cultivos de liberación experimental de maíz transgénico en nuestro país, que es su lugar de origen, y llamamos al pueblo de México a informarse y organizarse para no permitir esta imposición.
Comunidades indígenas y campesinas. Pueblo Wixárika, Pueblo Rarámuri, Tribu Yaqui, Pueblo Mayo-Yoreme, Comunidades Pure’pecha, Comunidad Totonaca de la Sierra Norte de Puebla; Comunidades Campesinas de Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz; Comunidades Campesinas del sur y del norte de Veracruz; Comunidades Zapotecas de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca; Comunidad Tlapaneca, de Tlapa, Guerrero, comunidad mixteca de San Juan Mixtepec, Oaxaca, Comunidades campesinas del sur de Tamaulipas.
Organizaciones Indígenas y campesinas: Unión de Comunidades Campesinas del Norte de Guanajuato (UCANG), Organización de Agricultores Biológicos, AC, Oaxaca; Centro de Derechos Indígenas Flor y Canto AC, Oaxaca, Unión de Organizaciones de la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca, UNOSJO; Centro Regional para la Educación y la Organización (CREO), Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz; Radio Huayacocotla, Organizaciones de la sociedad civil: Centro Nacional de Apoyo a las Misiones Indígenas AC (CENAMI); Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano (CECCAM); Grupo de Acción sobre Erosión, Tecnología y Concentración (Grupo ETC); Centro de Análisis Social, Información y Formación Popular (CASIFOP); Colectivo por la Autonomía (Coa AC); Comité de Derechos Humanos Sierra Norte de Veracruz; Consultoría Técnica Comunitaria AC (CONTEC), Chihuahua; Grupo de Estudios Ambientales (GEA AC), Unidad de Apoyo a las Comunidades Indígenas (UACI-Universidad de Guadalajara), Jalisco; Centro de investigación y producción de tecnología ecológica para la vivienda (CIPTEV) Jalisco; Grupo Cultural Nivi Ñuu; GRAIN, Chile.
Ecoportal.net
Reunidos ante las amenazas renovadas a nuestras semillas, alimentos, derechos y vida como pueblos, en la Red de Defensa del Maíz Nativo, y
Considerando
La intención del gobierno mexicano, en contubernio con las empresas transnacionales, de permitir el cultivo de maíz transgénico en varios campos experimentales, y que ésto necesariamente significará la contaminación de nuestros maices nativos y a la larga la pérdida de los mismos, atentando contra nuestra identidad, autonomía, economía y nuestra salud; destruyendo la madre tierra, la vida y contaminando la naturaleza.
Que para ello, pretende usar leyes y reglamentos que han sido aprobados ignorando a los pueblos y a favor de los intereses de las empresas, como la Ley de Bioseguridad y Organismos Genéticamente Modificados, mejor llamada “Ley Monsanto”, que permite la entrada e invasión de las transnacionales a nuestros territorios, campos de cultivo y semillas, que por derecho ancestral e histórico nos corresponden.
Que la “Ley Monsanto” forma parte de una serie de leyes destinadas al despojo y privatización de nuestros recursos y derechos, —la reforma al art. 27 Constitucional, la Ley Agraria, la reforma constitucional en materia indígena, la Ley de Aguas Nacionales, la Ley Forestal, la Ley Minera, la Ley Gral. De Vida Silvestre, la de Productos Orgánicos, la de Certificación de Semillas— entre otras que han sido aprobadas a nuestras espaldas y atentan contra nuestra palabra, nuestros derechos, nuestra historia, y nuestra cultura.
Que ahora, a través de la farsa legal titulada irónicamente “Régimen de Protección Especial del Maíz”, se pretende negar que todo el territorio mexicano es centro de origen y diversidad del maíz.
Que las instituciones gubernamentales ejecutan los proyectos e intereses de las empresas transnacionales, y que los programas agrarios y sociales – como ahora el PROMAF (Programa de Maíz y Fríjol), diseñado para que perdamos nuestras propias semillas– están destruyendo la vida comunitaria de los pueblos y nos inducen a depender de las empresas, y a la homogeneización de los pueblos, destruyendo nuestras diversas culturas y convirtiéndonos a todos en clientes de las empresas.
Que los bancos de germoplasma, formados con semillas recogidas de nuestros territorios y fruto de nuestros saberes, están siendo controlados por las grandes corporaciones, como Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Bayer, Basf, Dow, que se agrupan en la Asociación Mexicana de Semillas A. C. (AMSAC) como cártel para cabildear y defender sus intereses en el país, declarándose “protectores” de las semillas, cuando en realidad las están destruyendo. Que Empresas sin ninguna moral y grandes contaminadores de la naturaleza y destructores de la vida campesina como Monsanto, son miembros del “Comité de Honor y Justicia” de dicha asociación.
Que la AMSAC está exigiendo que se siembre sólamente semilla certificada, llamando a nuestras semillas originarias como “piratas”.
Que los pueblos, tribus y naciones indígenas somos los dueños y guardianes de las semillas y animales, bosques, selva, agua y plantas que existen en nuestro territorio; hacemos la siguiente
DECLARACIÓN
Los pueblos indígenas y los campesinos son los responsables y herederos de la perpetuidad de las diferentes clases de maíz que existen a lo largo y ancho de todo nuestro territorio mexicano y que todo México es centro de origen y diversidad del maíz.
Nos declaramos en contra de la liberación del maíz transgénico y de todos los organismos genéticamente modificados de manera experimental y comercial.
Los indígenas y campesinos son los verdaderos y más experimentados guardianes de los recursos naturales que existen en nuestro país.
Nos declaramos en contra de las leyes que están atentando contra nuestros derechos como pueblos y contra las empresas transnacionales que pretenden despojarnos de nuestras semillas, nuestras tierras, montes y aguas y demás riquezas naturales.
Denunciamos la injerencia que tienen dichas empresas en las políticas agroalimentarias, para que perdamos el derecho a producir nuestros propios alimentos libremente.
Declaramos a la AMSAC como una institución que atenta contra los derechos de los agricultores y su soberanía alimentaria.
Nos declaramos en contra de las estrategias que se implementan contra los pueblos desde instituciones y programas gubernamentales, para que cambiemos nuestras semillas propias por semillas híbridas y transgénicas.
Estamos en contra de los bancos de germoplasma ya que son centros de biopiratería que roban nuestras semillas y conocimientos ancestrales para favorecer los intereses de las empresas e investigadores ajenos a los intereses de los pueblos.
Estamos contra los proyectos biopiratas que Monsanto está haciendo con organizaciones agrícolas y académicas para robar maíces nativos y conocimientos a través del “Proyecto Maestro de Maíces Mexicanos” y el contrato con la Universidad de Guadalajara para recolectar maíces y teocintle, ancestro del maíz, de la sierra indígena nahua de Manantlán en Jalisco.
Nos oponemos a la certificación y registro de semillas y lo denunciamos como una manera más de privatizar las semillas para controlar a los pueblos.
Rechazamos la promoción, difusión, experimentación, cultivo, comercialización y consumo de las semillas transgénicas. Estas semillas atentan contra el medio ambiente y ponen en peligro la salud y la soberanía alimentaria de millones de mexicanos.
El cultivar, guardar, cuidar e intercambiar libremente semillas propias, nativas que no tenemos porque certificar ni registrar ante nadie porque las tenemos desde antes de que existiera el Estado mexicano, es un derecho inalienable que nadie nos va a quitar y seguiremos ejerciendo de manera autónoma. Estas semillas son la esperanza del futuro de todos.
EXIGIMOS
El respeto al derecho a la soberanía alimentaria que parte de nuestra autonomía, costumbres, culturas, tradiciones y prácticas agrícolas.
Que se detenga el cultivo, experimentación, investigación, comercialización y consumo de transgénicos en el territorio mexicano.
Rechazamos la certificación, registro o patente ningún tipo de semilla o ser vivo. Por el contrario exigimos que se respete el libre intercambio de nuestras semillas como lo hemos hecho desde tiempos inmemoriales sin necesidad de paquetes tecnológicos.
Que se detenga la criminalización a la forma de vida campesina que se esta llevando a cabo a través de legislación hecha a favor de los intereses empresariales.
Seguiremos defendiendo la autonomía de nuestros pueblos, la comunidad, las asambleas y su autogobierno, cuya base fundamental es el territorio y el cultivo del maíz nativo como parte de nuestra vida.
Estaremos alertas para denunciar públicamente los cultivos de liberación experimental de maíz transgénico en nuestro país, que es su lugar de origen, y llamamos al pueblo de México a informarse y organizarse para no permitir esta imposición.
Comunidades indígenas y campesinas. Pueblo Wixárika, Pueblo Rarámuri, Tribu Yaqui, Pueblo Mayo-Yoreme, Comunidades Pure’pecha, Comunidad Totonaca de la Sierra Norte de Puebla; Comunidades Campesinas de Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz; Comunidades Campesinas del sur y del norte de Veracruz; Comunidades Zapotecas de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca; Comunidad Tlapaneca, de Tlapa, Guerrero, comunidad mixteca de San Juan Mixtepec, Oaxaca, Comunidades campesinas del sur de Tamaulipas.
Organizaciones Indígenas y campesinas: Unión de Comunidades Campesinas del Norte de Guanajuato (UCANG), Organización de Agricultores Biológicos, AC, Oaxaca; Centro de Derechos Indígenas Flor y Canto AC, Oaxaca, Unión de Organizaciones de la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca, UNOSJO; Centro Regional para la Educación y la Organización (CREO), Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz; Radio Huayacocotla, Organizaciones de la sociedad civil: Centro Nacional de Apoyo a las Misiones Indígenas AC (CENAMI); Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano (CECCAM); Grupo de Acción sobre Erosión, Tecnología y Concentración (Grupo ETC); Centro de Análisis Social, Información y Formación Popular (CASIFOP); Colectivo por la Autonomía (Coa AC); Comité de Derechos Humanos Sierra Norte de Veracruz; Consultoría Técnica Comunitaria AC (CONTEC), Chihuahua; Grupo de Estudios Ambientales (GEA AC), Unidad de Apoyo a las Comunidades Indígenas (UACI-Universidad de Guadalajara), Jalisco; Centro de investigación y producción de tecnología ecológica para la vivienda (CIPTEV) Jalisco; Grupo Cultural Nivi Ñuu; GRAIN, Chile.
Jesus Leon Santos 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize Winner
Native environmental hero: Jesus Leon Santos
© Indian Country Today July 25, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 25, 2008
by: Rick Kearns / Indian Country Today
Recipient of the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize for sustainable development
NOCHIXTLAN, Oaxaca - In one of the most barren regions in the world, an indigenous farmer using ancient Mixteca traditions helped to conserve more than 4,000 acres of farmland, prevent massive soil erosion, increase local farm productivity, create more economic growth and, among other things, plant 2 million trees.
For these efforts and others, Jesus Leon Santos of Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, Mexico, was awarded the $150,000 Goldman Environmental Prize for sustainable development for 2008.
The prize, awarded each year in April, was started in 1990 by philanthropists Richard N. and Rhoda H. Goldman to annually honor grass-roots environmental heroes from Africa, Asia, Europe, islands and island nations, North America, and South and Central America. It recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk. Each winner receives an award of $150,000, the largest award in the world for grass-roots environmentalists. Santos was this year's winner for North America.
''Jesus Leon Santos leads an unprecedented land renewal and economic development program that employs ancient indigenous agricultural practices to transform this barren, highly eroded area into rich, arable land,'' according to the Goldman Award press statement. ''With his organization, the Center for Integral Small Farmer Development in the Mixteca [CEDICAM], Leon has united the area's small farmers. Together, they have planted more than one million native-variety trees, built hundreds of miles of ditches to retain water and prevent soil eroding, and adapted traditional Mixteca indigenous practices to restore the regional ecosystem.''
In a series of presentations he has made in the U.S., Central America and the Caribbean since the award, Santos has recounted the circumstances leading to the environmental disaster of Mixteca - known as one of the most severely eroded areas on the planet, according to the United Nations - and how he and a group of Mixteca neighbors began the process that lead to this achievement.
''It was 25 years ago when we realized we were experiencing a severe ecological crisis that was causing poverty, malnutrition and migration,'' Santos recalled. ''We regret that our ancestors left our lands so deteriorated. The Mixteca region was severely damaged by the exploitation of our natural resources that came with the colonizers.''
According to natural history sources, Santos' home region looked very different before the Spaniards arrived.
The Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca - named for one of the indigenous peoples who live in that region - had originally been the home of oak forests and shrublands as well as large fields of corn, beans, squash, chiles, tomatoes, potatoes and various fruit trees. By the time Santos was born in 1966, much of the region had been damaged by huge goat farms, first introduced to the area by the Spanish colonizers, and, later, tequila processing plants, among other industries. This area, according to Santos, ''was a desert, with no water, nor plants, nor trees, nor anything.''
Further damage was done to the area by the adoption of modern farming procedures that required large amounts of chemical fertilizers. The growing of chemical-intensive varieties of corn in the 1980s depleted the soil even more and Mixteca farmers found their yields dropping as well. On top of these difficulties, the farmers suffered even more economic hardships as local maize prices fell as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. With cheaper corn coming from the north, their local prices were pushed down and the farmers could no longer afford the new fertilizer and pesticides that the new varieties demanded. The migration out of the area increased as well, along with the amount of land falling into disuse and more erosion. The loss of arable topsoil and other nutrients led, according to the Goldman press release, to erosion of about 83 percent of all the land in Mixteca, with 1.235 million acres considered severely eroded.
Meanwhile, government officials kept pushing the newer techniques. Santos however, knew enough to look back to his Mixteca ancestors for answers to questions about how to prevent the loss of soil and water, as well as how to detoxify the area and the diet of the community. He started with trees that have been grown in the area for centuries.
In the early 1980s, Santos and a group of local Mixtec farmers banded together to form CEDICAM, a democratic organization devoted to reforesting the area and stopping the erosion. They started with the planting of local varieties of trees, mainly the native ocote pines.
''The trees prevent erosion, aid water filtration into the ground, provide carbon capture and green areas, contribute organic material to the soil and provide more sustainable, cleaner-burning wood to residents who cook on open fires, '' stated the Goldman release.
As more farmers heard about their neighbor's successes with the trees, more orders came in and within a few years CEDICAM started a nursery. Not long afterwards, several community-run nurseries bloomed. A few decades later, by 2007, local farmers were planting up to 200,000 trees a year. CEDICAM is now also teaching communities more sustainable ways of using firewood and wood-saving stoves, helping to protect the local environment as well as reducing the workload of local women who had to travel some distance to collect firewood.
The tree plantings were part of the anti-erosion strategy, but Santos realized they needed to do more. He found ancient terraced agricultural systems in his area and saw another part of the answer. Santos and his allies helped communities rebuild these ancient terraces, which impede erosion and enhance production. Santos pioneered the building of contour ditches, retention walls and terraces to catch rainfall and prevent erosion.
Along with native trees and traditional farming methods, Santos has reintroduced local seed varieties and natural compost fertilizers to his neighbors. He is also involved in promoting local foods and a traditional indigenous diet.
In a brief phone interview with Indian Country Today, Santos said that with the Goldman Prize money CEDICAM will expand its tree-growing and rainwater retention programs for the 400 families now collaborating with his organization. Santos also explained that CEDICAM had just built a community school to help disseminate the information it has been gathering and will continue with its education outreach to many different regions in Mexico. He also noted that while the Mexican government has not provided any assistance to their projects, now it is sending experts to their region to look at what they are doing. At the end of the phone conversation, Santos wanted to send the following message to ICT's many American Indian readers.
''It gives me great pleasure to talk to you,'' he said. ''The indigenous people have so much to share with this planet. We are an important part of this earth. We have been the guardians, and it is an important role with which we must continue. ... We cannot let this responsibility fall into other hands. We must not let the corporations take these resources because this is the legacy for all people, not just a few.''
© Indian Country Today July 25, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 25, 2008
by: Rick Kearns / Indian Country Today
Recipient of the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize for sustainable development
NOCHIXTLAN, Oaxaca - In one of the most barren regions in the world, an indigenous farmer using ancient Mixteca traditions helped to conserve more than 4,000 acres of farmland, prevent massive soil erosion, increase local farm productivity, create more economic growth and, among other things, plant 2 million trees.
For these efforts and others, Jesus Leon Santos of Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, Mexico, was awarded the $150,000 Goldman Environmental Prize for sustainable development for 2008.
The prize, awarded each year in April, was started in 1990 by philanthropists Richard N. and Rhoda H. Goldman to annually honor grass-roots environmental heroes from Africa, Asia, Europe, islands and island nations, North America, and South and Central America. It recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk. Each winner receives an award of $150,000, the largest award in the world for grass-roots environmentalists. Santos was this year's winner for North America.
''Jesus Leon Santos leads an unprecedented land renewal and economic development program that employs ancient indigenous agricultural practices to transform this barren, highly eroded area into rich, arable land,'' according to the Goldman Award press statement. ''With his organization, the Center for Integral Small Farmer Development in the Mixteca [CEDICAM], Leon has united the area's small farmers. Together, they have planted more than one million native-variety trees, built hundreds of miles of ditches to retain water and prevent soil eroding, and adapted traditional Mixteca indigenous practices to restore the regional ecosystem.''
In a series of presentations he has made in the U.S., Central America and the Caribbean since the award, Santos has recounted the circumstances leading to the environmental disaster of Mixteca - known as one of the most severely eroded areas on the planet, according to the United Nations - and how he and a group of Mixteca neighbors began the process that lead to this achievement.
''It was 25 years ago when we realized we were experiencing a severe ecological crisis that was causing poverty, malnutrition and migration,'' Santos recalled. ''We regret that our ancestors left our lands so deteriorated. The Mixteca region was severely damaged by the exploitation of our natural resources that came with the colonizers.''
According to natural history sources, Santos' home region looked very different before the Spaniards arrived.
The Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca - named for one of the indigenous peoples who live in that region - had originally been the home of oak forests and shrublands as well as large fields of corn, beans, squash, chiles, tomatoes, potatoes and various fruit trees. By the time Santos was born in 1966, much of the region had been damaged by huge goat farms, first introduced to the area by the Spanish colonizers, and, later, tequila processing plants, among other industries. This area, according to Santos, ''was a desert, with no water, nor plants, nor trees, nor anything.''
Further damage was done to the area by the adoption of modern farming procedures that required large amounts of chemical fertilizers. The growing of chemical-intensive varieties of corn in the 1980s depleted the soil even more and Mixteca farmers found their yields dropping as well. On top of these difficulties, the farmers suffered even more economic hardships as local maize prices fell as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. With cheaper corn coming from the north, their local prices were pushed down and the farmers could no longer afford the new fertilizer and pesticides that the new varieties demanded. The migration out of the area increased as well, along with the amount of land falling into disuse and more erosion. The loss of arable topsoil and other nutrients led, according to the Goldman press release, to erosion of about 83 percent of all the land in Mixteca, with 1.235 million acres considered severely eroded.
Meanwhile, government officials kept pushing the newer techniques. Santos however, knew enough to look back to his Mixteca ancestors for answers to questions about how to prevent the loss of soil and water, as well as how to detoxify the area and the diet of the community. He started with trees that have been grown in the area for centuries.
In the early 1980s, Santos and a group of local Mixtec farmers banded together to form CEDICAM, a democratic organization devoted to reforesting the area and stopping the erosion. They started with the planting of local varieties of trees, mainly the native ocote pines.
''The trees prevent erosion, aid water filtration into the ground, provide carbon capture and green areas, contribute organic material to the soil and provide more sustainable, cleaner-burning wood to residents who cook on open fires, '' stated the Goldman release.
As more farmers heard about their neighbor's successes with the trees, more orders came in and within a few years CEDICAM started a nursery. Not long afterwards, several community-run nurseries bloomed. A few decades later, by 2007, local farmers were planting up to 200,000 trees a year. CEDICAM is now also teaching communities more sustainable ways of using firewood and wood-saving stoves, helping to protect the local environment as well as reducing the workload of local women who had to travel some distance to collect firewood.
The tree plantings were part of the anti-erosion strategy, but Santos realized they needed to do more. He found ancient terraced agricultural systems in his area and saw another part of the answer. Santos and his allies helped communities rebuild these ancient terraces, which impede erosion and enhance production. Santos pioneered the building of contour ditches, retention walls and terraces to catch rainfall and prevent erosion.
Along with native trees and traditional farming methods, Santos has reintroduced local seed varieties and natural compost fertilizers to his neighbors. He is also involved in promoting local foods and a traditional indigenous diet.
In a brief phone interview with Indian Country Today, Santos said that with the Goldman Prize money CEDICAM will expand its tree-growing and rainwater retention programs for the 400 families now collaborating with his organization. Santos also explained that CEDICAM had just built a community school to help disseminate the information it has been gathering and will continue with its education outreach to many different regions in Mexico. He also noted that while the Mexican government has not provided any assistance to their projects, now it is sending experts to their region to look at what they are doing. At the end of the phone conversation, Santos wanted to send the following message to ICT's many American Indian readers.
''It gives me great pleasure to talk to you,'' he said. ''The indigenous people have so much to share with this planet. We are an important part of this earth. We have been the guardians, and it is an important role with which we must continue. ... We cannot let this responsibility fall into other hands. We must not let the corporations take these resources because this is the legacy for all people, not just a few.''
1 Million Names on No Fly List
How Bush's No Fly List is Making Americans Unsafe
Airport Gestapo
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts07172008.html
The Bush Regime’s “terrorist” protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private organization that defends the US Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now one million names on the “terrorist” watch list.
One of them is that of former Assistant US Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are current. Every time Mr.Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally incompetent “terrorist” protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson, who served in the highest echelons of the US government, from a Muslim terrorist.
What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of differentiating an Assistant US Attorney General from a terrorist?
Mr. Robinson said: “If I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it, but I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list and find themselves inconvenienced.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people” on a watch list that they have no business being on?
Yes. “Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ‘suspicious characters,’ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
And this is America, not Nazi Germany?
How can Airport “Security” possibly protect anyone when the idiots cannot differentiate a high level American government official from a terrorist?
Do you really believe there are one million terrorists and nothing has blown up in the US since September 11, 2001 (assuming you believe the government’s account of that episode)?
How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in ruins. According to the Bush Regime’s line, it only took a handful of terrorists to destroy America’s tallest skyscrapers and a section of the Pentagon and to send the President of the United States scurrying to a hiding place.
One million terrorists could bring America to its knees, and they wouldn’t need to fly on airplanes to accomplish this.
What we are witnessing with the one million person “watch list” is bureaucracy run amok. One Million Terrorists makes the danger seem overwhelming. Such overwhelming danger rationalizes the aggressive behavior of the bullies and thugs attracted by the power of confiscating your toothpaste and bottled water and riffling your belongings in your luggage.
Show your ID.
Take off your shoes.
Take off your belt.
Take off your jacket.
Empty your pockets.
Don’t complain about being searched without a warrant or you will miss your flight. You might be arrested, handcuffed, kicked and otherwise abused--the fate of many American citizens.
The morons who comprise the US government call the “watch list” one of the government’s “most effective tools in the fight against terrorism.”
What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.
The “watch list” has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.
The ACLU says that “putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning.”
It is worse than that. What the “watch list” or “no-fly list” is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power. In the false name of “safety from terrorists,” Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
Airport Gestapo
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts07172008.html
The Bush Regime’s “terrorist” protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private organization that defends the US Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now one million names on the “terrorist” watch list.
One of them is that of former Assistant US Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are current. Every time Mr.Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally incompetent “terrorist” protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson, who served in the highest echelons of the US government, from a Muslim terrorist.
What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of differentiating an Assistant US Attorney General from a terrorist?
Mr. Robinson said: “If I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it, but I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list and find themselves inconvenienced.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people” on a watch list that they have no business being on?
Yes. “Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ‘suspicious characters,’ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
And this is America, not Nazi Germany?
How can Airport “Security” possibly protect anyone when the idiots cannot differentiate a high level American government official from a terrorist?
Do you really believe there are one million terrorists and nothing has blown up in the US since September 11, 2001 (assuming you believe the government’s account of that episode)?
How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in ruins. According to the Bush Regime’s line, it only took a handful of terrorists to destroy America’s tallest skyscrapers and a section of the Pentagon and to send the President of the United States scurrying to a hiding place.
One million terrorists could bring America to its knees, and they wouldn’t need to fly on airplanes to accomplish this.
What we are witnessing with the one million person “watch list” is bureaucracy run amok. One Million Terrorists makes the danger seem overwhelming. Such overwhelming danger rationalizes the aggressive behavior of the bullies and thugs attracted by the power of confiscating your toothpaste and bottled water and riffling your belongings in your luggage.
Show your ID.
Take off your shoes.
Take off your belt.
Take off your jacket.
Empty your pockets.
Don’t complain about being searched without a warrant or you will miss your flight. You might be arrested, handcuffed, kicked and otherwise abused--the fate of many American citizens.
The morons who comprise the US government call the “watch list” one of the government’s “most effective tools in the fight against terrorism.”
What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.
The “watch list” has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.
The ACLU says that “putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning.”
It is worse than that. What the “watch list” or “no-fly list” is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power. In the false name of “safety from terrorists,” Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
13 Nican Tlacah Nana's Challenge Vatican
Indigenous grandmas nearly kicked out of Vatican
© Indian Country Today July 18, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 18, 2008
by: Rob Capriccioso
ROME - They went to pray. They went to see Pope Benedict XVI on his home turf. They went to ask that he rescind historic church doctrine that played a role in the genocidal onslaught of millions of indigenous people worldwide.
For 13 indigenous grandmothers, accomplishing only one of their three goals wouldn't have been so bad - had they also not been harassed by several Vatican policemen who claimed the women were conducting ''anti-Catholic'' demonstrations.
The elders, formally known as the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, convened in the morning hours of July 9 at St. Peter's Square. After setting up an altar cloth, candles and sacred objects, including feathers and incense, they began holding a prayer and ceremony circle. Nine-year-old Davian Joell Stand-Gilpin, a direct descendant of Chief Dull Knife of the Lakota Nation, was brought along by one of the grandmothers to participate in traditional regalia.
Soon, however, four Vatican police officials asked the women to stop the prayer ceremony, claiming their prayers were in contradiction to the church's teachings - despite the two crosses on the alter cloth and some of the members being practitioners of the Catholic faith.
The officials told Carole Hart, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning producer and filmmaker traveling with the grandmas, that the group was in violation of Vatican policy. They said a permit Hart had obtained in order to document the prayer gathering was only relevant in terms of filming, but did not allow the women to pray, sing or burn incense.
The police said the actions of the grandmothers were ''idolatrous.''
Through the course of obtaining the permit, Hart had written to Vatican officials explaining that the grandmothers would be conducting a prayer ceremony at the site.
''We stuck to the fact that we were legitimately there with this permit,'' Hart said. ''The grandmas did not back down.''
Still, the police urged the grandmothers to move on; but Hart and the group appealed the decision to a higher authority. Finally, the police brought back a law official who assessed the situation. Upon seeing 13 indigenous elder women and hearing one of their songs, the official concluded there was no problem with the ceremony.
The official also ultimately invited the grandmothers to enter St. Peter's Basilica to rest and pray.
Despite their short-term success, the ultimate goal of the grandmothers - to hand-deliver a statement to Pope Benedict XVI, asking him to rescind several controversial papal bulls that played a part in the colonization of indigenous lands - was thwarted.
Documents from the 15th century, such as the papal bulls, show the papacy played a role in the genocidal onslaught that affected millions of indigenous people on the North American continent. In 1455, for instance, Pope Nicolas authorized Portugal ''to invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens and pagans'' along the west coast of Africa, enslave them and confiscate their property - which set the tone for European interaction with the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
Just a short time before the grandmothers left for their long-planned journey to Rome, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would be leaving the Vatican to rest at his summer home, called Castel Gandolfo, in preparation for a trip to Australia.
The pope had originally been scheduled to be in residence July 9. Laura Jackson, the grandmothers' publicist, described the pope's decision to leave the Vatican as a ''sudden cancellation'' and noted that the grandmas held tickets to a scheduled public audience he was to have held that day.
While Castel Gandolfo is less than 20 miles away from the Vatican, the grandmothers ultimately decided not to make the journey to the pope's summer getaway despite some in their inner circle encouraging them to pay an unexpected visit.
Hart believes the grandmothers chose to focus on St. Peter's Square because it's part of the Vatican and is a strong symbol of the pope.
''As women of prayer, I think they felt that bringing their prayer there, on the very ground on which the church as an institution stands, as close as they could get to the heart of the church, would have a great effect on what will happen next,'' Hart said. Additionally, the women had no guarantee that they would even be able to enter the grounds of the pope's summer residence.
Instead, the elders left a package with one of the pope's personal guards at the Vatican. The package contained a written statement the women had sent to the Vatican in 2005 decrying the papal bulls, to which the Vatican never responded. It also contained a new 632-word statement to the pope asking him to repeal three Christian-based doctrines of ''discovery'' and ''conquest'' that set a foundation for claiming lands occupied by indigenous people around the world.
''We carry this message for Pope Benedict XVI, traveling with the spirits of our ancestors,'' the women said in their new message. ''While praying at the Vatican for peace, we are praying for all peoples. We are here at the Vatican, humbly, not as representatives of indigenous nations, but as women of prayer.''
The package was given to the pope's guard via a traditional Lakota manner, by extending it to him three times with him then accepting it on the fourth attempt. The entire process was captured on film, and is expected to be made into a documentary by Hart in the coming year.
It is unknown whether the pope has yet personally received the package, but legal scholars and Native activists in the U.S. have nonetheless been paying close attention to the grandmothers' journey.
''I think the trip is very significant,'' said Steven Newcomb, co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute and author of the book, ''Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery,'' and an Indian Country Today columnist.
''These are women who are very much grounded in their own languages and traditions. They're able to raise visibility of the issue in ways that others are perhaps less effective.''
The grandmothers from the U.S. who sit on the women's council are Margaret Behan, of the Arapaho/Cheyenne of Montana; Agnes Baker Pilgrim, of the Takelma Siletz; Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance and Rita Long Visitor Holy Dance, both Oglala Lakota of Black Hills, S.D.; Mona Polacca, Havasupai/Hopi; and Rita Pitka Blumenstein, Yupik Eskimo.
All of the grandmothers are currently in private council in Assisi, Italy, and are expected to be returning home by early August.
© Indian Country Today July 18, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 18, 2008
by: Rob Capriccioso
ROME - They went to pray. They went to see Pope Benedict XVI on his home turf. They went to ask that he rescind historic church doctrine that played a role in the genocidal onslaught of millions of indigenous people worldwide.
For 13 indigenous grandmothers, accomplishing only one of their three goals wouldn't have been so bad - had they also not been harassed by several Vatican policemen who claimed the women were conducting ''anti-Catholic'' demonstrations.
The elders, formally known as the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, convened in the morning hours of July 9 at St. Peter's Square. After setting up an altar cloth, candles and sacred objects, including feathers and incense, they began holding a prayer and ceremony circle. Nine-year-old Davian Joell Stand-Gilpin, a direct descendant of Chief Dull Knife of the Lakota Nation, was brought along by one of the grandmothers to participate in traditional regalia.
Soon, however, four Vatican police officials asked the women to stop the prayer ceremony, claiming their prayers were in contradiction to the church's teachings - despite the two crosses on the alter cloth and some of the members being practitioners of the Catholic faith.
The officials told Carole Hart, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning producer and filmmaker traveling with the grandmas, that the group was in violation of Vatican policy. They said a permit Hart had obtained in order to document the prayer gathering was only relevant in terms of filming, but did not allow the women to pray, sing or burn incense.
The police said the actions of the grandmothers were ''idolatrous.''
Through the course of obtaining the permit, Hart had written to Vatican officials explaining that the grandmothers would be conducting a prayer ceremony at the site.
''We stuck to the fact that we were legitimately there with this permit,'' Hart said. ''The grandmas did not back down.''
Still, the police urged the grandmothers to move on; but Hart and the group appealed the decision to a higher authority. Finally, the police brought back a law official who assessed the situation. Upon seeing 13 indigenous elder women and hearing one of their songs, the official concluded there was no problem with the ceremony.
The official also ultimately invited the grandmothers to enter St. Peter's Basilica to rest and pray.
Despite their short-term success, the ultimate goal of the grandmothers - to hand-deliver a statement to Pope Benedict XVI, asking him to rescind several controversial papal bulls that played a part in the colonization of indigenous lands - was thwarted.
Documents from the 15th century, such as the papal bulls, show the papacy played a role in the genocidal onslaught that affected millions of indigenous people on the North American continent. In 1455, for instance, Pope Nicolas authorized Portugal ''to invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens and pagans'' along the west coast of Africa, enslave them and confiscate their property - which set the tone for European interaction with the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
Just a short time before the grandmothers left for their long-planned journey to Rome, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would be leaving the Vatican to rest at his summer home, called Castel Gandolfo, in preparation for a trip to Australia.
The pope had originally been scheduled to be in residence July 9. Laura Jackson, the grandmothers' publicist, described the pope's decision to leave the Vatican as a ''sudden cancellation'' and noted that the grandmas held tickets to a scheduled public audience he was to have held that day.
While Castel Gandolfo is less than 20 miles away from the Vatican, the grandmothers ultimately decided not to make the journey to the pope's summer getaway despite some in their inner circle encouraging them to pay an unexpected visit.
Hart believes the grandmothers chose to focus on St. Peter's Square because it's part of the Vatican and is a strong symbol of the pope.
''As women of prayer, I think they felt that bringing their prayer there, on the very ground on which the church as an institution stands, as close as they could get to the heart of the church, would have a great effect on what will happen next,'' Hart said. Additionally, the women had no guarantee that they would even be able to enter the grounds of the pope's summer residence.
Instead, the elders left a package with one of the pope's personal guards at the Vatican. The package contained a written statement the women had sent to the Vatican in 2005 decrying the papal bulls, to which the Vatican never responded. It also contained a new 632-word statement to the pope asking him to repeal three Christian-based doctrines of ''discovery'' and ''conquest'' that set a foundation for claiming lands occupied by indigenous people around the world.
''We carry this message for Pope Benedict XVI, traveling with the spirits of our ancestors,'' the women said in their new message. ''While praying at the Vatican for peace, we are praying for all peoples. We are here at the Vatican, humbly, not as representatives of indigenous nations, but as women of prayer.''
The package was given to the pope's guard via a traditional Lakota manner, by extending it to him three times with him then accepting it on the fourth attempt. The entire process was captured on film, and is expected to be made into a documentary by Hart in the coming year.
It is unknown whether the pope has yet personally received the package, but legal scholars and Native activists in the U.S. have nonetheless been paying close attention to the grandmothers' journey.
''I think the trip is very significant,'' said Steven Newcomb, co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute and author of the book, ''Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery,'' and an Indian Country Today columnist.
''These are women who are very much grounded in their own languages and traditions. They're able to raise visibility of the issue in ways that others are perhaps less effective.''
The grandmothers from the U.S. who sit on the women's council are Margaret Behan, of the Arapaho/Cheyenne of Montana; Agnes Baker Pilgrim, of the Takelma Siletz; Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance and Rita Long Visitor Holy Dance, both Oglala Lakota of Black Hills, S.D.; Mona Polacca, Havasupai/Hopi; and Rita Pitka Blumenstein, Yupik Eskimo.
All of the grandmothers are currently in private council in Assisi, Italy, and are expected to be returning home by early August.
Convocatoria Primer Encuentro Americano contra la Impunidad
20, 21, 22 y 23 de noviembre 2008
Convocatoria Primer Encuentro Americano contra la Impunidad
Rebelión
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=70606&titular=convocatoria-primer-encuentro-americano-contra-la-impunidad-
Porque no se puede silenciar la historia. Porque la memoria del horror está presente. Porque las grandes mayorías no saben que todo es posible. Porque debemos reintegrar a la memoria colectiva lo que, de olvidarse, retornaría. Porque debemos oponernos a la inercia del consenso, del borrón y cuenta nueva y el no te metas del discurso dominante que quisiera un pasado sepultado para siempre, víctimas y protagonistas de ayer y de hoy, familiares, luchadores sociales, juristas, intelectuales y colectivos humanitarios de distintas regiones de Nuestra América, queremos reunirnos para establecer un diálogo intergeneracional que, a la vez de denunciar, informar y analizar la realidad actual, sirva para crear nuevas herramientas de prevención y protección ante el ascenso de la violencia y la impunidad de los que mandan.
Los convocantes observamos que algunos hechos del pasado reciente reaparecen en muchas latitudes de Nuestra América, y hoy como ayer asoma el gesto inaugural del poder totalitario que define al enemigo, el judío, el subversivo, el pobre, el extranjero, el migrante como sinónimo de terrorista, con la intención de imponer una verdad única en la lógica del orden instituido y como estrategia de poder y prácticas rutinarias, con sus fachadas y sus limbos jurídicos que “legalizan” la impunidad a través de las fronteras nacionales, con sus cárceles clandestinas y el recurso de la tortura sistemática (incluida la sexual), las desapariciones sumarias y el horror que todo ello produce.
Pensamos que el silencio es aliado o cómplice del terror. Que la palabra engendra esclarecimiento. La resistencia a saber, individual y colectivamente, y el asco y el miedo que despiertan la cárcel, la tortura, las desapariciones, nos invitan a huir de esos temas. Por eso, a partir del testimonio de las víctimas, del esclarecimiento de la verdad y la recuperación de la memoria histórica, queremos comprender qué ocurrió y cómo ocurrió, porque documentarlo, sistematizarlo y compartirlo, nos permitirá saber qué está ocurriendo hoy, cuando la potencia hegemónica, con la complicidad de algunos estados nacionales, lleva a cabo de facto una reconfiguración del mapa geopolítico de nuestro hemisferio al servicios de las compañías multinacionales, con sus mega proyectos, como renovada forma de apropiación territorial y saqueo de nuestros recursos naturales en clave de contrainsurgencia, con sus nuevas bases militares, el regreso de su IV Flota, sus mercenarios encubiertos de contratistas privados y sus paramilitares, sus fumigaciones , sus Sucumbíos, , sus golpes de mano y el terrorismo mediático.
Pensamos, que conocer el origen y la naturaleza del dolor, los mecanismos del terrorismo de Estado y del discurso del poder que justifica la barbarie, implica quizás desarmar su lógica de manera preventiva, su vigencia hoy y su eficacia. Frente a la situación del terror renovado, lo que el sistema propone es huirle por asco y miedo. No hacerlo, exige vigilancia, requiere una alerta constante. El silencio y el olvido, la indiferencia y la impunidad favorecen la persistencia y reproducción de la violencia y el terrorismo de Estado. No es ningún ánimo vengativo, sino preventivo, el que anima a los que no podemos ni queremos olvidar.
Es en función de todo ello que, recogiendo el clamor justiciero de los pueblos de nuestro hemisferio, convocamos al Primer Encuentro Americano contra la Impunidad , que tendrá lugar en México los días 20, 21, 22 y 23 de noviembre próximos.
encuentro@contralaimpunidad.org
PRIMER ENCUENTRO AMERICANO
CONTRA LA IMPUNIDAD
( 20 AL 23 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2008 )
COMITÉ HONORARIO
HORTENSIA BUSSI DE ALLENDE, Chile
DANIELLE MITERRAND, Francia
FABIOLA LETELIER, Chile
MARIO BENEDETTI, Uruguay
JUAN GELMAN, Argentina
DANIEL VIGLIETTI, Uruguay
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Portugal
MARCOS ANA, España
PABLO GONZALEZ CASANOVA, México
ROSARIO IBARRA DE PIEDRA, México
JOAN GARCES, España
NOAM CHOMSKY, Estados Unidos
SAMUEL RUIZ GARCIA, México
JOAO PEDRO STÉDILE ( MST), Brasil
MARTIN ALMADA, Paraguay
Ciudad de México, 19 de julio de 2008
Convocatoria Primer Encuentro Americano contra la Impunidad
Rebelión
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=70606&titular=convocatoria-primer-encuentro-americano-contra-la-impunidad-
Porque no se puede silenciar la historia. Porque la memoria del horror está presente. Porque las grandes mayorías no saben que todo es posible. Porque debemos reintegrar a la memoria colectiva lo que, de olvidarse, retornaría. Porque debemos oponernos a la inercia del consenso, del borrón y cuenta nueva y el no te metas del discurso dominante que quisiera un pasado sepultado para siempre, víctimas y protagonistas de ayer y de hoy, familiares, luchadores sociales, juristas, intelectuales y colectivos humanitarios de distintas regiones de Nuestra América, queremos reunirnos para establecer un diálogo intergeneracional que, a la vez de denunciar, informar y analizar la realidad actual, sirva para crear nuevas herramientas de prevención y protección ante el ascenso de la violencia y la impunidad de los que mandan.
Los convocantes observamos que algunos hechos del pasado reciente reaparecen en muchas latitudes de Nuestra América, y hoy como ayer asoma el gesto inaugural del poder totalitario que define al enemigo, el judío, el subversivo, el pobre, el extranjero, el migrante como sinónimo de terrorista, con la intención de imponer una verdad única en la lógica del orden instituido y como estrategia de poder y prácticas rutinarias, con sus fachadas y sus limbos jurídicos que “legalizan” la impunidad a través de las fronteras nacionales, con sus cárceles clandestinas y el recurso de la tortura sistemática (incluida la sexual), las desapariciones sumarias y el horror que todo ello produce.
Pensamos que el silencio es aliado o cómplice del terror. Que la palabra engendra esclarecimiento. La resistencia a saber, individual y colectivamente, y el asco y el miedo que despiertan la cárcel, la tortura, las desapariciones, nos invitan a huir de esos temas. Por eso, a partir del testimonio de las víctimas, del esclarecimiento de la verdad y la recuperación de la memoria histórica, queremos comprender qué ocurrió y cómo ocurrió, porque documentarlo, sistematizarlo y compartirlo, nos permitirá saber qué está ocurriendo hoy, cuando la potencia hegemónica, con la complicidad de algunos estados nacionales, lleva a cabo de facto una reconfiguración del mapa geopolítico de nuestro hemisferio al servicios de las compañías multinacionales, con sus mega proyectos, como renovada forma de apropiación territorial y saqueo de nuestros recursos naturales en clave de contrainsurgencia, con sus nuevas bases militares, el regreso de su IV Flota, sus mercenarios encubiertos de contratistas privados y sus paramilitares, sus fumigaciones , sus Sucumbíos, , sus golpes de mano y el terrorismo mediático.
Pensamos, que conocer el origen y la naturaleza del dolor, los mecanismos del terrorismo de Estado y del discurso del poder que justifica la barbarie, implica quizás desarmar su lógica de manera preventiva, su vigencia hoy y su eficacia. Frente a la situación del terror renovado, lo que el sistema propone es huirle por asco y miedo. No hacerlo, exige vigilancia, requiere una alerta constante. El silencio y el olvido, la indiferencia y la impunidad favorecen la persistencia y reproducción de la violencia y el terrorismo de Estado. No es ningún ánimo vengativo, sino preventivo, el que anima a los que no podemos ni queremos olvidar.
Es en función de todo ello que, recogiendo el clamor justiciero de los pueblos de nuestro hemisferio, convocamos al Primer Encuentro Americano contra la Impunidad , que tendrá lugar en México los días 20, 21, 22 y 23 de noviembre próximos.
encuentro@contralaimpunidad.org
PRIMER ENCUENTRO AMERICANO
CONTRA LA IMPUNIDAD
( 20 AL 23 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2008 )
COMITÉ HONORARIO
HORTENSIA BUSSI DE ALLENDE, Chile
DANIELLE MITERRAND, Francia
FABIOLA LETELIER, Chile
MARIO BENEDETTI, Uruguay
JUAN GELMAN, Argentina
DANIEL VIGLIETTI, Uruguay
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Portugal
MARCOS ANA, España
PABLO GONZALEZ CASANOVA, México
ROSARIO IBARRA DE PIEDRA, México
JOAN GARCES, España
NOAM CHOMSKY, Estados Unidos
SAMUEL RUIZ GARCIA, México
JOAO PEDRO STÉDILE ( MST), Brasil
MARTIN ALMADA, Paraguay
Ciudad de México, 19 de julio de 2008
Borderlands: Death as a Way of Life
Esequiel Hernández, Jr. and the Making of the US-Mexico Borderlands
Death as a Way of Life
By JOSEPH NEVINS
http://www.counterpunch.com/nevins07262008.html
Esequiel Hernández Jr. was only 18-years-old when Clemente Manuel Banuelos, a U.S. Marine corporal, shot and killed him in Redford, Texas in May 1998. Hernández, a high school student, was the first civilian killed by U.S. troops within national territory since the Kent State massacre of May 1970.
Hernández’s and Banuelos’s paths crossed in the context of the “War on Drugs.” Banuelos was a member of four-person surveillance unit, part of the first armed U.S. military mission to the Mexican border region since 1914. The mission took place under the auspices of Joint Task Force Six (JTF-6), the inter-branch command unit that provided operational, training, and intelligence support from the Pentagon to federal, regional, state, and local law enforcement counter-drug efforts within the United States.(1)
Banuelos and his fellow Marines had been deployed to Redford, Hernández’s tiny hometown (with a population at the time of a little more than 100 people) to monitor individuals smuggling drugs from Mexico across the Rio Grande. No one in Redford, apart from Border Patrol agents in the area, knew that the Marines were there.
On May 19, 1997, Hernández, whose post-high-school plan was to join the Marines, took out his goats near his family home, which lay about 200 yards north of the U.S.-Mexico divide. He carried a .22 caliber rifle to ward off wild dogs. According to the soldiers, Hernández fired at them twice. Twenty minutes later, the young man was dead, Banuelos having fired a single shot.
The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández(2), a compelling documentary which aired throughout the United States on July 8 on PBS’ Point of View (POV), sheds important light on the tragedy. Employing interviews with members of the Hernández family, the three other marines who were members of the JTF-6 unit (Banuelos declined to be interviewed), law enforcement officials, lawyers involved in the case, and members of the Redford community, the film provides a comprehensive view of the murder.
It also makes a clear statement that Esequiel Hernández was the victim of a soldier who acted inappropriately and—most likely—criminally. Hernández, it seems, never threatened the Marine unit as Banuelos claimed. Because the soldiers were camouflaged and hiding amidst vegetation at a distance of more than 200 yards from where Hernández allegedly fired his rifle, it would have been impossible for him to see them, no less to know that they were Marines. More importantly, Banuelos and the unit he led pursued Hernández after the high school student fired his rifle, closing the gap between them and their alleged assailant to about 100 yards. If Hernández were a threat as Banuelos alleged, why pursue him—especially given that he was walking away from them and the soldiers’ rules of engagement limited pursuit to when necessary for self-defense? Moreover, while Banuelos fired upon Hernández, he said, because the 18-year-old was about to shoot Lance Corporal James Blood, one of the other members of the unit, Blood rejects the claim in the film. As Jane Kelly (among others), an FBI agent interviewed in the film points out, Banuelos’s bullet penetrated Hernández’s right side under his arm, a point of entry inconsistent for someone supposedly positioned to shoot at Blood; indeed, it appears that Hernández was facing away from the Marine unit when he was shot.(3)
While such matters were central to Hernández’s untimely demise, so, too was the effective criminalization of the impoverished farming town’s population. Redford, so went the intelligence JTF-6 and the Border Patrol provided to the Marines, was a center of drug traffickers: 70-75 percent of the population was allegedly involved in the illicit trade. As the notes of the staff sergeant who briefed the soldiers before they were deployed to the town read, “Redford is not a friendly town.” Through such cartoon-like depictions, Redford became an enemy locale—as have so many other places across the country and throughout the world in the ever-expanding and never-ending “war on drugs.” Given the information they received, Banuelos and his unit were fully expecting some “action,” but they did not observe any drug-trafficking-related activity, leading Ronald Wieler, one of the unit members, to conclude that “In a way, it was like we were there for nothing.”
The fact that the Marines were in Redford, and that the federal government had sent them there says a lot about how important segments of the ruling class perceive the border region and its residents. As Enrique Madrid, a local historian in Redford, asserts in the film, “Presidio County is one of the poorest in the State of Texas, one of the poorest in the nation, and South County is the poorest part of that poor county. And yet they send us Marines instead of educators. They send us Border Patrolmen instead of doctors.” Seen from Washington, the border region—Redford included—is first and foremost an area of existential threats to the larger national body, an area that needs to be secured—whether it’s against “illegal” migrants crossing the boundary to “steal” jobs, or against would-be terrorists.(4)
The shooting death in Redford is also just one of many tragic illustrations of the ludicrous lengths to which the drug war and the border war have been taken and how they continue independent of their effectiveness in combating the “threats” from without they purport to eliminate. In the case of the war on drugs, for example, the federal government has spent many hundreds of billions of dollars over the last three decades. Nonetheless, the street price of drugs has steadily declined during that period—an indication of just how little impact Washington’s “war” has had on transboundary smuggling.
In addition to the huge demand within the United States that fuels the drug trade, the sheer volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic crossing the divide make drug interdiction efforts largely futile—at least as they relate to the U.S.-Mexico boundary. As a Reuters journalist recently wrote while observing the scene at the San Ysidro (southern San Diego) port of entry through which an average of 150,000 people enter the United States on a daily basis, “Looking south out of a window at the busiest border crossing in the world, the phrase looking for needles in a haystack comes to mind, along with the realization that America's war on drugs cannot be won. Unless the laws of supply and demand are miraculously suspended.”(5) But such dispassionate analysis gets lost in the overheated rhetoric of the “law-and-order” crowd or dismissed by those with vested interests in furthering the enforcement regime given the institutional and political pay-offs.
This is especially true in regards to immigration and boundary policing. Despite massive growth in enforcement resources and personnel—especially since developments initiated in the mid-1990s under the Clinton administration—unauthorized migrants continue to enter the United States via its southern boundary. Research undertaken in 2005 found that, while it is now much more difficult to cross the U.S.-Mexico divide than in the early 1990s (about one-third get caught on any given trip) and that, as a result some in Mexico stay at home rather than even try, it also established that 92 to 97 percent of Mexican migrants continue to try to cross until they succeed, and that there has been no significant impact on the propensity of would-be migrants to attempt the journey. This does not mean that further intensification of enforcement could not have a significant impact on the number of unauthorized entrants.(6) (Plans are afoot to double the number of Border Patrol agents over the next decade and to build hundreds of miles of additional walls, fences, and vehicle barriers.) Indeed, in some (largely urbanized) locales where enforcement personnel and infrastructure are concentrated, there has been a marked decline in unsanctioned crossings. However, given the depth and scale of the transboundary ties, the power of the forces driving migration, and the resolve and resourcefulness of migrants, it is pure fantasy to think that U.S. authorities can fully “secure” and regulate the boundary. But from the perspective of the border/immigration enforcement complex, “failure” only serves as justification for more of the same.
As such, like the drug war, the border war and the war on unauthorized immigrants rely increasingly on various forms of violence, terror, and simple meanness. In San Diego, for instance, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have been setting up occasional checkpoints of late about 100 yards north of the boundary—pulling people out of Mexico-bound vans and buses and detaining “illegals” as they leave the United States.(7)
In Nashville, Tennessee and neighboring Davidson County, local authorities (like so many locales throughout the United States) are increasingly cooperating with the federal government in the policing of immigrants. In early July, police in a Nashville suburb arrested Juana Villegas after stopping her for a routine traffic violation for driving without a license—normally a misdemeanor for which citations are issued. (Since 2006, Tennessee bars unauthorized migrants from obtaining drivers licenses.) Nine-months-pregnant at the time, Villegas was forced to go through labor while a police officer guarded over her hospital bed to which one her feet was cuffed for most of the time. After her release from the hospital, officials kept her from her new-born son for two days, preventing her from nursing him and from even taking a breast pump into the jail.(8)
The ties that the “illegal” has to the community and loved ones (including U.S. citizens) in such cases are largely irrelevant from the perspective of federal authorities. For example, individuals married to U.S. citizens, but who have committed the “crime” of entering the United States without authorization after a previous removal are barred from having the legal ability to renter the country for ten years—even if they have U.S. citizen children.(9) So much for “family values.”
These present-day developments—like the JTF-6 effort to police Redford in 1997—are part and parcel of a larger project of nationalizing the U.S. portion of the borderlands, an ever-expanding space given the growing ties between places and peoples within and from the United States, and those within and from Mexico and beyond. Inside the United States, this involves a disciplining those of us who don’t think and act sufficiently in national terms.
As The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández makes clear, Redford was, in many ways, just as Mexican as American with townspeople crossing the Rio Grande regularly—and without government inspection—to visit family and friends on the other side of the river, or to engage in commercial transactions. According to Jake Brisbin, a Presidio County judge interviewed in the film, “On a map, the river is an international boundary. In reality, it is something you walk across to get something you need one way or another.”
And it is this reality that the border-immigration war seeks to change. In this regard, one cannot divorce Hernández’s killing—or the indignities suffered by Juana Villegas—from the larger history of conquest and pacification involved in the construction of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands (a point that the film does not touch upon).
The making of the U.S.-Mexico divide and the associated recasting of social relations has always involved violence. It was through conquest—and large-scale brutality—that the United States gained the territory that now comprises the borderlands and squelched large-scale resistance to its colonization project over the subsequent decades. Nonetheless, resistance continues through today—largely in the form of unauthorized migrants, individuals who refuse to see their livelihoods circumscribed by national boundaries, ones predicated on profound socio-economic injustices.
Esequial Hernández’s killing is just one of countless thousands of untimely and unjust fatalities related to the ongoing struggles in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It is conservatively estimated that over 5,000 migrants have lost their lives trying to traverse the U.S.-Mexico divide without authorization since 1995 alone. Given that this figure is based on actually recovered bodies, the true death is undoubtedly much higher.
The U.S.-Mexico boundary involves killing of people from both sides of the line (and it always has)— most especially low-income people of color given the inextricable ties between the making of the United States, and the production of a whole host of deeply unequal social relations along axes of race, class, nation, and gender within the United States and across the globe.
May we remember Esequial Hernández Jr. as one example of this territorially embodied injustice, and draw upon that memory to fuel a struggle against the divide, the violence it reflects and reproduces, and the associated practices and ideologies that underlie it.
Joseph Nevins is an associate professor of geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and the author of the just-released Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid (City Lights Books, 2008).
Notes
(1) In 2004, JTF-6 was reorganized and renamed. Now called JTF North, the command is, according to its website, “tasked to support our nation’s federal law enforcement agencies in the identification and interdiction of suspected transnational threats within and along the approaches to the continental United States.” Transnational threats are “those activities conducted by individuals or groups that involve international terrorism, narcotrafficking, alien smuggling, weapons of mass destruction, and includes the delivery systems for such weapons that threaten the national security of the United States.” Seehttp://www.jtfn.northcom.mil/default.htm
(2) See http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/ballad/index.html
(3) See Monte Paulsen, “Fatal Error: The Pentagon's War on Drugs Takes a Toll on the Innocent,” Austin Chronicle (Texas), December 25, 1998; available online at http://www.dpft.org/hernandez/paulsen.htm
(4) On the official website of U.S Customs and Border Protection, it states that the Border Patrol’s “priority mission” is to prevent “terrorists and terrorists' weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States.” See http://www.customs.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/
(5) Bernd Debusmann, “America’s Unwinnable War on Drugs,” San Diego Union-Tribune, July 3, 2008; available online at http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20080703-0700-column-usa-drugs.html
(6) See Wayne Cornelius, “Introduction: Does Border Enforcement Deter Unauthorized Immigration?” In Impacts of Border Enforcement on Mexican Migration: The View from Sending Communities, edited by Wayne A. Cornelius and Jessa M. Lewis, 1–15. La Jolla, Calif.: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2007; and Fuentes, Jezmin, Henry L’Esperance, Raúl Pérez, and Caitlin White. “Impacts of U.S. Immigration Policies on Migration Behavior.” In Impacts of Border Enforcement on Mexican Migration: The View from Sending Communities, edited by Wayne A. Cornelius and Jessa M. Lewis, 53–73. La Jolla, California: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2007.
For those trying to get to the United States from elsewhere, but via Mexico, it is certainly far tougher to reach their destination given the difficulties non-Mexican national have in entering and traversing Mexican territory. No doubt, the percentage of such migrants who eventually succeed in reaching the United States is lower than that of Mexican migrants. See N.C. Aizenman, “Meeting Danger Well South of the Border.” The Washington Post, July 8, 2006: A1; and Michael Flynn, “Dondé está la frontera?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 4, (July/August 2002): 24-35.
(7) Richard Marosi, “Border Busts Coming and Going,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2008; available online at http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-checkpoint7-2008may07,0,3517339.story
(8) Julia Preston, “Immigrant, Pregnant, Is Jailed under Pact,” The New York Times, Jul 20, 2008; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/
(9) Anna Gorman, “Immigration Law Means a Borderline Existence for U.S. Wife of Mexican,” Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2008; available online at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-greencard22-2008jul22,0,7458475.story
Death as a Way of Life
By JOSEPH NEVINS
http://www.counterpunch.com/nevins07262008.html
Esequiel Hernández Jr. was only 18-years-old when Clemente Manuel Banuelos, a U.S. Marine corporal, shot and killed him in Redford, Texas in May 1998. Hernández, a high school student, was the first civilian killed by U.S. troops within national territory since the Kent State massacre of May 1970.
Hernández’s and Banuelos’s paths crossed in the context of the “War on Drugs.” Banuelos was a member of four-person surveillance unit, part of the first armed U.S. military mission to the Mexican border region since 1914. The mission took place under the auspices of Joint Task Force Six (JTF-6), the inter-branch command unit that provided operational, training, and intelligence support from the Pentagon to federal, regional, state, and local law enforcement counter-drug efforts within the United States.(1)
Banuelos and his fellow Marines had been deployed to Redford, Hernández’s tiny hometown (with a population at the time of a little more than 100 people) to monitor individuals smuggling drugs from Mexico across the Rio Grande. No one in Redford, apart from Border Patrol agents in the area, knew that the Marines were there.
On May 19, 1997, Hernández, whose post-high-school plan was to join the Marines, took out his goats near his family home, which lay about 200 yards north of the U.S.-Mexico divide. He carried a .22 caliber rifle to ward off wild dogs. According to the soldiers, Hernández fired at them twice. Twenty minutes later, the young man was dead, Banuelos having fired a single shot.
The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández(2), a compelling documentary which aired throughout the United States on July 8 on PBS’ Point of View (POV), sheds important light on the tragedy. Employing interviews with members of the Hernández family, the three other marines who were members of the JTF-6 unit (Banuelos declined to be interviewed), law enforcement officials, lawyers involved in the case, and members of the Redford community, the film provides a comprehensive view of the murder.
It also makes a clear statement that Esequiel Hernández was the victim of a soldier who acted inappropriately and—most likely—criminally. Hernández, it seems, never threatened the Marine unit as Banuelos claimed. Because the soldiers were camouflaged and hiding amidst vegetation at a distance of more than 200 yards from where Hernández allegedly fired his rifle, it would have been impossible for him to see them, no less to know that they were Marines. More importantly, Banuelos and the unit he led pursued Hernández after the high school student fired his rifle, closing the gap between them and their alleged assailant to about 100 yards. If Hernández were a threat as Banuelos alleged, why pursue him—especially given that he was walking away from them and the soldiers’ rules of engagement limited pursuit to when necessary for self-defense? Moreover, while Banuelos fired upon Hernández, he said, because the 18-year-old was about to shoot Lance Corporal James Blood, one of the other members of the unit, Blood rejects the claim in the film. As Jane Kelly (among others), an FBI agent interviewed in the film points out, Banuelos’s bullet penetrated Hernández’s right side under his arm, a point of entry inconsistent for someone supposedly positioned to shoot at Blood; indeed, it appears that Hernández was facing away from the Marine unit when he was shot.(3)
While such matters were central to Hernández’s untimely demise, so, too was the effective criminalization of the impoverished farming town’s population. Redford, so went the intelligence JTF-6 and the Border Patrol provided to the Marines, was a center of drug traffickers: 70-75 percent of the population was allegedly involved in the illicit trade. As the notes of the staff sergeant who briefed the soldiers before they were deployed to the town read, “Redford is not a friendly town.” Through such cartoon-like depictions, Redford became an enemy locale—as have so many other places across the country and throughout the world in the ever-expanding and never-ending “war on drugs.” Given the information they received, Banuelos and his unit were fully expecting some “action,” but they did not observe any drug-trafficking-related activity, leading Ronald Wieler, one of the unit members, to conclude that “In a way, it was like we were there for nothing.”
The fact that the Marines were in Redford, and that the federal government had sent them there says a lot about how important segments of the ruling class perceive the border region and its residents. As Enrique Madrid, a local historian in Redford, asserts in the film, “Presidio County is one of the poorest in the State of Texas, one of the poorest in the nation, and South County is the poorest part of that poor county. And yet they send us Marines instead of educators. They send us Border Patrolmen instead of doctors.” Seen from Washington, the border region—Redford included—is first and foremost an area of existential threats to the larger national body, an area that needs to be secured—whether it’s against “illegal” migrants crossing the boundary to “steal” jobs, or against would-be terrorists.(4)
The shooting death in Redford is also just one of many tragic illustrations of the ludicrous lengths to which the drug war and the border war have been taken and how they continue independent of their effectiveness in combating the “threats” from without they purport to eliminate. In the case of the war on drugs, for example, the federal government has spent many hundreds of billions of dollars over the last three decades. Nonetheless, the street price of drugs has steadily declined during that period—an indication of just how little impact Washington’s “war” has had on transboundary smuggling.
In addition to the huge demand within the United States that fuels the drug trade, the sheer volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic crossing the divide make drug interdiction efforts largely futile—at least as they relate to the U.S.-Mexico boundary. As a Reuters journalist recently wrote while observing the scene at the San Ysidro (southern San Diego) port of entry through which an average of 150,000 people enter the United States on a daily basis, “Looking south out of a window at the busiest border crossing in the world, the phrase looking for needles in a haystack comes to mind, along with the realization that America's war on drugs cannot be won. Unless the laws of supply and demand are miraculously suspended.”(5) But such dispassionate analysis gets lost in the overheated rhetoric of the “law-and-order” crowd or dismissed by those with vested interests in furthering the enforcement regime given the institutional and political pay-offs.
This is especially true in regards to immigration and boundary policing. Despite massive growth in enforcement resources and personnel—especially since developments initiated in the mid-1990s under the Clinton administration—unauthorized migrants continue to enter the United States via its southern boundary. Research undertaken in 2005 found that, while it is now much more difficult to cross the U.S.-Mexico divide than in the early 1990s (about one-third get caught on any given trip) and that, as a result some in Mexico stay at home rather than even try, it also established that 92 to 97 percent of Mexican migrants continue to try to cross until they succeed, and that there has been no significant impact on the propensity of would-be migrants to attempt the journey. This does not mean that further intensification of enforcement could not have a significant impact on the number of unauthorized entrants.(6) (Plans are afoot to double the number of Border Patrol agents over the next decade and to build hundreds of miles of additional walls, fences, and vehicle barriers.) Indeed, in some (largely urbanized) locales where enforcement personnel and infrastructure are concentrated, there has been a marked decline in unsanctioned crossings. However, given the depth and scale of the transboundary ties, the power of the forces driving migration, and the resolve and resourcefulness of migrants, it is pure fantasy to think that U.S. authorities can fully “secure” and regulate the boundary. But from the perspective of the border/immigration enforcement complex, “failure” only serves as justification for more of the same.
As such, like the drug war, the border war and the war on unauthorized immigrants rely increasingly on various forms of violence, terror, and simple meanness. In San Diego, for instance, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have been setting up occasional checkpoints of late about 100 yards north of the boundary—pulling people out of Mexico-bound vans and buses and detaining “illegals” as they leave the United States.(7)
In Nashville, Tennessee and neighboring Davidson County, local authorities (like so many locales throughout the United States) are increasingly cooperating with the federal government in the policing of immigrants. In early July, police in a Nashville suburb arrested Juana Villegas after stopping her for a routine traffic violation for driving without a license—normally a misdemeanor for which citations are issued. (Since 2006, Tennessee bars unauthorized migrants from obtaining drivers licenses.) Nine-months-pregnant at the time, Villegas was forced to go through labor while a police officer guarded over her hospital bed to which one her feet was cuffed for most of the time. After her release from the hospital, officials kept her from her new-born son for two days, preventing her from nursing him and from even taking a breast pump into the jail.(8)
The ties that the “illegal” has to the community and loved ones (including U.S. citizens) in such cases are largely irrelevant from the perspective of federal authorities. For example, individuals married to U.S. citizens, but who have committed the “crime” of entering the United States without authorization after a previous removal are barred from having the legal ability to renter the country for ten years—even if they have U.S. citizen children.(9) So much for “family values.”
These present-day developments—like the JTF-6 effort to police Redford in 1997—are part and parcel of a larger project of nationalizing the U.S. portion of the borderlands, an ever-expanding space given the growing ties between places and peoples within and from the United States, and those within and from Mexico and beyond. Inside the United States, this involves a disciplining those of us who don’t think and act sufficiently in national terms.
As The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández makes clear, Redford was, in many ways, just as Mexican as American with townspeople crossing the Rio Grande regularly—and without government inspection—to visit family and friends on the other side of the river, or to engage in commercial transactions. According to Jake Brisbin, a Presidio County judge interviewed in the film, “On a map, the river is an international boundary. In reality, it is something you walk across to get something you need one way or another.”
And it is this reality that the border-immigration war seeks to change. In this regard, one cannot divorce Hernández’s killing—or the indignities suffered by Juana Villegas—from the larger history of conquest and pacification involved in the construction of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands (a point that the film does not touch upon).
The making of the U.S.-Mexico divide and the associated recasting of social relations has always involved violence. It was through conquest—and large-scale brutality—that the United States gained the territory that now comprises the borderlands and squelched large-scale resistance to its colonization project over the subsequent decades. Nonetheless, resistance continues through today—largely in the form of unauthorized migrants, individuals who refuse to see their livelihoods circumscribed by national boundaries, ones predicated on profound socio-economic injustices.
Esequial Hernández’s killing is just one of countless thousands of untimely and unjust fatalities related to the ongoing struggles in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It is conservatively estimated that over 5,000 migrants have lost their lives trying to traverse the U.S.-Mexico divide without authorization since 1995 alone. Given that this figure is based on actually recovered bodies, the true death is undoubtedly much higher.
The U.S.-Mexico boundary involves killing of people from both sides of the line (and it always has)— most especially low-income people of color given the inextricable ties between the making of the United States, and the production of a whole host of deeply unequal social relations along axes of race, class, nation, and gender within the United States and across the globe.
May we remember Esequial Hernández Jr. as one example of this territorially embodied injustice, and draw upon that memory to fuel a struggle against the divide, the violence it reflects and reproduces, and the associated practices and ideologies that underlie it.
Joseph Nevins is an associate professor of geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and the author of the just-released Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid (City Lights Books, 2008).
Notes
(1) In 2004, JTF-6 was reorganized and renamed. Now called JTF North, the command is, according to its website, “tasked to support our nation’s federal law enforcement agencies in the identification and interdiction of suspected transnational threats within and along the approaches to the continental United States.” Transnational threats are “those activities conducted by individuals or groups that involve international terrorism, narcotrafficking, alien smuggling, weapons of mass destruction, and includes the delivery systems for such weapons that threaten the national security of the United States.” Seehttp://www.jtfn.northcom.mil/default.htm
(2) See http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/ballad/index.html
(3) See Monte Paulsen, “Fatal Error: The Pentagon's War on Drugs Takes a Toll on the Innocent,” Austin Chronicle (Texas), December 25, 1998; available online at http://www.dpft.org/hernandez/paulsen.htm
(4) On the official website of U.S Customs and Border Protection, it states that the Border Patrol’s “priority mission” is to prevent “terrorists and terrorists' weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States.” See http://www.customs.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/
(5) Bernd Debusmann, “America’s Unwinnable War on Drugs,” San Diego Union-Tribune, July 3, 2008; available online at http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20080703-0700-column-usa-drugs.html
(6) See Wayne Cornelius, “Introduction: Does Border Enforcement Deter Unauthorized Immigration?” In Impacts of Border Enforcement on Mexican Migration: The View from Sending Communities, edited by Wayne A. Cornelius and Jessa M. Lewis, 1–15. La Jolla, Calif.: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2007; and Fuentes, Jezmin, Henry L’Esperance, Raúl Pérez, and Caitlin White. “Impacts of U.S. Immigration Policies on Migration Behavior.” In Impacts of Border Enforcement on Mexican Migration: The View from Sending Communities, edited by Wayne A. Cornelius and Jessa M. Lewis, 53–73. La Jolla, California: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2007.
For those trying to get to the United States from elsewhere, but via Mexico, it is certainly far tougher to reach their destination given the difficulties non-Mexican national have in entering and traversing Mexican territory. No doubt, the percentage of such migrants who eventually succeed in reaching the United States is lower than that of Mexican migrants. See N.C. Aizenman, “Meeting Danger Well South of the Border.” The Washington Post, July 8, 2006: A1; and Michael Flynn, “Dondé está la frontera?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 4, (July/August 2002): 24-35.
(7) Richard Marosi, “Border Busts Coming and Going,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2008; available online at http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-checkpoint7-2008may07,0,3517339.story
(8) Julia Preston, “Immigrant, Pregnant, Is Jailed under Pact,” The New York Times, Jul 20, 2008; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/
(9) Anna Gorman, “Immigration Law Means a Borderline Existence for U.S. Wife of Mexican,” Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2008; available online at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-greencard22-2008jul22,0,7458475.story
Mexican Beaten to Death in Pennsylvania
Friend of Mexican Immigrant Beaten to Death in Pennsylvania Gives Eyewitness Account of Attack
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/24/friend_of_mexican_immigrant_beaten_to
Luis Ramirez, a twenty-five-year-old Mexican immigrant, was beaten to death last week by a group of teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. He was walking home last Saturday night when six white high school students brutally beat him while yelling racial slurs. Despite eyewitness testimony, no charges have been filed. We speak with Arielle Garcia, a friend of Ramirez who witnessed the attack. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
Arielle Garcia, friend of Luis Ramirez. She witnessed the beating.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Shenandoah Valley in Pennsylvania. Luis Ramirez was a twenty-five-year-old Mexican immigrant who was beaten to death last week by a group of teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. He was walking home last Saturday night when six white high school students brutally beat him while yelling racial slurs. When one of Ramirez’s friends tried to stop the beating, one of the teenagers said, “Tell your Mexican friends to get out of town, or you’ll be laying next to him.” Despite eyewitness testimony, no charges have been filed as yet.
Ramirez came to the United States six years ago. He was the father of two children. He was engaged to Crystal Dillman, who grew up in Shenandoah.
We called the district attorney investigating the case, but he declined to join us on the program and said he had no comment.
I’m joined right now by Arielle Garcia, a friend of the couple who was an eyewitness to the attack on Luis Ramirez. She’s a high school senior in Shenandoah. We welcome you, Arielle, to Democracy Now!
ARIELLE GARCIA: Hi. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. How old are you?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I’m seventeen.
AMY GOODMAN: And what year are you in high school?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I’m a senior.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what happened, not this past Monday night, but the Monday before that? What happened to Luis Ramirez? Where were you?
ARIELLE GARCIA: He was at our house all day that afternoon. And it was around maybe 11:00, he asked us to take him uptown to drop him off, whatever, he was going to go home. So, we leave him at the Vine Street Park, and we drive away, Victor and I, and about two minutes later he called us and told us to come back, that people were beating him up. So we get back as fast as we could. And when we get there, he was—like the fight was over, like the boys were walking away, but they were still screaming like racial slurs, like “Go back to Mexico!”
And so, Victor and I ran up to Luis, and we said, “What happened?” But he was so mad, he wasn’t really talking to us. And those kids kept yelling stuff, and he went back, and the kids turned around, and the fight started again. So Victor, my husband, tried to like stop the fight. He tried to get the kids off of Luis, but kids were trying to fight my husband. So my husband got the kids off of him, and we couldn’t stop the fight between Luis and the—but next thing we know, Luis was on the floor. And so, me and Victor, we ran up to his side, and we were at his side. We were trying to wake him up, and the kids are still like kicking him and kicking him. And somebody—I don’t know who, but they kicked him like in the left side of his head so hard that that’s what killed him.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, where were you and your husband exactly as this part of the fight took place?
ARIELLE GARCIA: We were right by him on the floor. We were like kneeling by his side, trying to wake him up when they kicked him.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you know his attackers?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes, they’re in my class.
AMY GOODMAN: How many were there?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Six or seven.
AMY GOODMAN: You knew all of them?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you name them?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I don’t think I’m allowed to name them. I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you tell the police who they were?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did the police say? Did the police show up that night?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah, they showed up. First, the ambulance did, and they took our friend to the hospital. And about five minutes later, the police came, and I guess they were looking—I mean, we kept telling them where the kids ran, but they didn’t—they didn’t run towards there. I mean, they kind of stayed where it all happened. And I told them the names and everything.
AMY GOODMAN: And, well, this was more than a week ago. Have they been investigating since?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah. And like, still nothing.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did they say—when you showed them the direction that the kids had run, why did they not go after them at the time?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I don’t know. They told me that it wasn’t their priority right now.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, “their priority”?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Where was your friend at this point? Where was Luis Ramirez?
ARIELLE GARCIA: He was gone. He was in the—on his way to be [inaudible].
AMY GOODMAN: What was their priority? Did they say that to you?
ARIELLE GARCIA: No. They were pretty rude, some of them. Not all of them, but most of them were pretty rude to me.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean they were rude?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Like, I told them where the kids ran, and they wouldn’t go after them, and they told me that “Somebody said there was someone with a gun here, and we have to search your car.” And they searched Victor, like they put his hand behind his back, and like they put him against—
AMY GOODMAN: Victor is your husband?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: The boys ran off. Was it all boys?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Were they white? Were they Mexican?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah, they were all white.
AMY GOODMAN: All white, and you know them all?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Uh-huh.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you seen them in school? Or school is out, so you haven’t seen them since.
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah, no, I haven’t seen them. I mean, we’ve seen one of the kids. He was like playing—
AMY GOODMAN: If you could talk as loud as you can, Arielle, it’s a little hard to hear you because of the crackling of the phone.
ARIELLE GARCIA: Oh, OK.
AMY GOODMAN: Speak right into the phone.
ARIELLE GARCIA: OK. Yeah, we have seen one of the—like one of the guys recently. We saw him in the backyard of his house playing, as if, you know, like nothing happened. It is frustrating. Our friend is dead and these kids are living life. That kind of frustrates us, because our friend’s dead, and these kids are like living life. It just frustrates me, like they can live without feeling guilty or anything. I just hope that the correct charges are pressed against them.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you speak to any of these kids, since you knew them, in the midst of the fight or afterwards? Did they say anything to you?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes. After the fight, I ran after one of them, and I said, “Hey!” I said, “Why did you do this to my friend? You killed him.” And they said—he says, “No, no, I didn’t kill him. He’s still breathing.” And I said, well—and I smelled like—I smelled alcohol, and I said, “Oh, you’re drinking?” And he said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Don’t say our names. I’m out of here.” And he ran.
AMY GOODMAN: He said, “Don’t say our names”?
ARIELLE GARCIA: He said—yeah, he said that.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you know why they attacked Luis?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Do I know? No. I mean, Victor and I weren’t there when it all started. But like I said, when we got there, it was all racial. Everything.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, it was racial?
ARIELLE GARCIA: They were screaming racial, like “Get out of here, Mexican, whatever. Go back to where you came from.” I mean, they were saying bad stuff that I can’t say over the phone.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re showing pictures right now. For our radio listeners, you can go on our website at democracynow.org to see pictures of Crystal, Luis Ramirez’s fiancee, and pictures of Luis, as well, and their children.
So they were shouting racial epithets. They were—what is the atmosphere in Shenandoah? What is the attitude to Mexican immigrants?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I think it’s—most of the time, it’s OK. But there are times when there are racial slurs. I mean, with my husband, I’ve been with him four years, and like, I’m telling you, there are many times that I’ve heard people scream racial slurs to him. You know, like I was pregnant with my son, and they told me, “What’s that in your belly? Another person I’m going to have to pay for? Another Mexican on welfare?” Like stuff like that. It’s disgusting.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you want to see happen in this case? And how is Crystal? How is Crystal Dillman, Luis’s fiancee and mother of his kids?
ARIELLE GARCIA: She’s doing OK, but she’s pretty upset and she’s frustrated that nothing has been done yet. She wants justice for her family. And we do, too. We want justice for our friend. I feel like that wasn’t his time to die. I feel like those kids should be—they should be treated as adults in this case. They should be treated as adults that committed a homicide. I don’t understand why it’s being put off here.
AMY GOODMAN: Luis’s body has been sent back to Mexico?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: To his family?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: What has been his family’s reaction? And where does he come from in Mexico?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I don’t know the town. I don’t know. It begins with a “G”. But he—his body was sent back to his mother, and she was—when she found out, she was hysterical. I mean, Crystal told me that she was screaming on the phone, and she didn’t know—she didn’t understand, and she didn’t want to believe it. And he’s arriving there today, actually. He’ll be in Mexico City, and they will be sending him back to where his home city was.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Arielle, for joining us. Are you at all afraid of speaking out?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Am I afraid of what?
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking out.
ARIELLE GARCIA: No.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, thank you for joining us. We’ll continue to investigate and follow this case. Arielle Garcia is a friend of Luis Ramirez. She witnessed the beating two Monday nights ago that led to his death. Arielle Garcia knows the people who killed Luis Ramirez. They’re her classmates in high school.
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/24/friend_of_mexican_immigrant_beaten_to
Luis Ramirez, a twenty-five-year-old Mexican immigrant, was beaten to death last week by a group of teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. He was walking home last Saturday night when six white high school students brutally beat him while yelling racial slurs. Despite eyewitness testimony, no charges have been filed. We speak with Arielle Garcia, a friend of Ramirez who witnessed the attack. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
Arielle Garcia, friend of Luis Ramirez. She witnessed the beating.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Shenandoah Valley in Pennsylvania. Luis Ramirez was a twenty-five-year-old Mexican immigrant who was beaten to death last week by a group of teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. He was walking home last Saturday night when six white high school students brutally beat him while yelling racial slurs. When one of Ramirez’s friends tried to stop the beating, one of the teenagers said, “Tell your Mexican friends to get out of town, or you’ll be laying next to him.” Despite eyewitness testimony, no charges have been filed as yet.
Ramirez came to the United States six years ago. He was the father of two children. He was engaged to Crystal Dillman, who grew up in Shenandoah.
We called the district attorney investigating the case, but he declined to join us on the program and said he had no comment.
I’m joined right now by Arielle Garcia, a friend of the couple who was an eyewitness to the attack on Luis Ramirez. She’s a high school senior in Shenandoah. We welcome you, Arielle, to Democracy Now!
ARIELLE GARCIA: Hi. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. How old are you?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I’m seventeen.
AMY GOODMAN: And what year are you in high school?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I’m a senior.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what happened, not this past Monday night, but the Monday before that? What happened to Luis Ramirez? Where were you?
ARIELLE GARCIA: He was at our house all day that afternoon. And it was around maybe 11:00, he asked us to take him uptown to drop him off, whatever, he was going to go home. So, we leave him at the Vine Street Park, and we drive away, Victor and I, and about two minutes later he called us and told us to come back, that people were beating him up. So we get back as fast as we could. And when we get there, he was—like the fight was over, like the boys were walking away, but they were still screaming like racial slurs, like “Go back to Mexico!”
And so, Victor and I ran up to Luis, and we said, “What happened?” But he was so mad, he wasn’t really talking to us. And those kids kept yelling stuff, and he went back, and the kids turned around, and the fight started again. So Victor, my husband, tried to like stop the fight. He tried to get the kids off of Luis, but kids were trying to fight my husband. So my husband got the kids off of him, and we couldn’t stop the fight between Luis and the—but next thing we know, Luis was on the floor. And so, me and Victor, we ran up to his side, and we were at his side. We were trying to wake him up, and the kids are still like kicking him and kicking him. And somebody—I don’t know who, but they kicked him like in the left side of his head so hard that that’s what killed him.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, where were you and your husband exactly as this part of the fight took place?
ARIELLE GARCIA: We were right by him on the floor. We were like kneeling by his side, trying to wake him up when they kicked him.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you know his attackers?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes, they’re in my class.
AMY GOODMAN: How many were there?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Six or seven.
AMY GOODMAN: You knew all of them?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you name them?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I don’t think I’m allowed to name them. I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you tell the police who they were?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did the police say? Did the police show up that night?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah, they showed up. First, the ambulance did, and they took our friend to the hospital. And about five minutes later, the police came, and I guess they were looking—I mean, we kept telling them where the kids ran, but they didn’t—they didn’t run towards there. I mean, they kind of stayed where it all happened. And I told them the names and everything.
AMY GOODMAN: And, well, this was more than a week ago. Have they been investigating since?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah. And like, still nothing.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did they say—when you showed them the direction that the kids had run, why did they not go after them at the time?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I don’t know. They told me that it wasn’t their priority right now.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, “their priority”?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Where was your friend at this point? Where was Luis Ramirez?
ARIELLE GARCIA: He was gone. He was in the—on his way to be [inaudible].
AMY GOODMAN: What was their priority? Did they say that to you?
ARIELLE GARCIA: No. They were pretty rude, some of them. Not all of them, but most of them were pretty rude to me.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean they were rude?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Like, I told them where the kids ran, and they wouldn’t go after them, and they told me that “Somebody said there was someone with a gun here, and we have to search your car.” And they searched Victor, like they put his hand behind his back, and like they put him against—
AMY GOODMAN: Victor is your husband?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: The boys ran off. Was it all boys?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Were they white? Were they Mexican?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah, they were all white.
AMY GOODMAN: All white, and you know them all?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Uh-huh.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you seen them in school? Or school is out, so you haven’t seen them since.
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yeah, no, I haven’t seen them. I mean, we’ve seen one of the kids. He was like playing—
AMY GOODMAN: If you could talk as loud as you can, Arielle, it’s a little hard to hear you because of the crackling of the phone.
ARIELLE GARCIA: Oh, OK.
AMY GOODMAN: Speak right into the phone.
ARIELLE GARCIA: OK. Yeah, we have seen one of the—like one of the guys recently. We saw him in the backyard of his house playing, as if, you know, like nothing happened. It is frustrating. Our friend is dead and these kids are living life. That kind of frustrates us, because our friend’s dead, and these kids are like living life. It just frustrates me, like they can live without feeling guilty or anything. I just hope that the correct charges are pressed against them.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you speak to any of these kids, since you knew them, in the midst of the fight or afterwards? Did they say anything to you?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes. After the fight, I ran after one of them, and I said, “Hey!” I said, “Why did you do this to my friend? You killed him.” And they said—he says, “No, no, I didn’t kill him. He’s still breathing.” And I said, well—and I smelled like—I smelled alcohol, and I said, “Oh, you’re drinking?” And he said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Don’t say our names. I’m out of here.” And he ran.
AMY GOODMAN: He said, “Don’t say our names”?
ARIELLE GARCIA: He said—yeah, he said that.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you know why they attacked Luis?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Do I know? No. I mean, Victor and I weren’t there when it all started. But like I said, when we got there, it was all racial. Everything.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, it was racial?
ARIELLE GARCIA: They were screaming racial, like “Get out of here, Mexican, whatever. Go back to where you came from.” I mean, they were saying bad stuff that I can’t say over the phone.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re showing pictures right now. For our radio listeners, you can go on our website at democracynow.org to see pictures of Crystal, Luis Ramirez’s fiancee, and pictures of Luis, as well, and their children.
So they were shouting racial epithets. They were—what is the atmosphere in Shenandoah? What is the attitude to Mexican immigrants?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I think it’s—most of the time, it’s OK. But there are times when there are racial slurs. I mean, with my husband, I’ve been with him four years, and like, I’m telling you, there are many times that I’ve heard people scream racial slurs to him. You know, like I was pregnant with my son, and they told me, “What’s that in your belly? Another person I’m going to have to pay for? Another Mexican on welfare?” Like stuff like that. It’s disgusting.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you want to see happen in this case? And how is Crystal? How is Crystal Dillman, Luis’s fiancee and mother of his kids?
ARIELLE GARCIA: She’s doing OK, but she’s pretty upset and she’s frustrated that nothing has been done yet. She wants justice for her family. And we do, too. We want justice for our friend. I feel like that wasn’t his time to die. I feel like those kids should be—they should be treated as adults in this case. They should be treated as adults that committed a homicide. I don’t understand why it’s being put off here.
AMY GOODMAN: Luis’s body has been sent back to Mexico?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: To his family?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: What has been his family’s reaction? And where does he come from in Mexico?
ARIELLE GARCIA: I don’t know the town. I don’t know. It begins with a “G”. But he—his body was sent back to his mother, and she was—when she found out, she was hysterical. I mean, Crystal told me that she was screaming on the phone, and she didn’t know—she didn’t understand, and she didn’t want to believe it. And he’s arriving there today, actually. He’ll be in Mexico City, and they will be sending him back to where his home city was.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Arielle, for joining us. Are you at all afraid of speaking out?
ARIELLE GARCIA: Am I afraid of what?
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking out.
ARIELLE GARCIA: No.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, thank you for joining us. We’ll continue to investigate and follow this case. Arielle Garcia is a friend of Luis Ramirez. She witnessed the beating two Monday nights ago that led to his death. Arielle Garcia knows the people who killed Luis Ramirez. They’re her classmates in high school.
“Para detener la siembra de tanta muerte”
Congreso Nacional Indígena
“Para detener la siembra de tanta muerte”
Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
La Jornada
Representantes de los pueblos wixárika, nahua, purhépecha, zoque, cuicateco, mixteco, triqui, yaqui y yoreme, reunidos en la combativa Sierra Huichola del norte de Jalisco, hicieron un llamado al resto de los pueblos indios “a no creerse del mal gobierno y a continuar su lucha por el ejercicio de la autonomía y sus derechos por la vía de los hechos”.
En el marco de la vigésimo primera reunión ampliada de la Región Centro Pacífico del Congreso Nacional Indígena ( cni ), los 94 delegados advirtieron que en los últimos meses y días el gobierno “ha recrudecido la guerra de exterminio en contra de nuestros pueblos, tribus y naciones a través de la aplicación de diversos proyectos y políticas neoliberales que tienen como finalidad despojar nuestras tierras y territorios, robar y destruir nuestra cultura y provocar la migración y explotación despiadadas de nuestras comunidades”.
El CNI es un espacio de reflexión creado por los pueblos indios de México en octubre de 1996, durante la visita de la comandanta Ramona, representante del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), a la ciudad de México. En noviembre de ese mismo año, durante su primera asamblea nacional, los pueblos indígenas acordaron no “reproducir las formas de dominación o de control con que durante tantos años nos han oprimido los grupos de poder en el país, sino por el contrario, establecer nuevas formas de vivir la democracia”, basados en los siguientes principios: servir y no servirse; construir y no destruir; obedecer y no mandar; proponer y no imponer; convencer y no vencer; bajar y no subir; y enlazar y no aislar. Siete lineamientos que fueron recordados durante esta reunión celebrada en la comunidad wixárika de Mesa del Tirador.
Las aulas de la escuela primaria de la comunidad abrieron sus puertas a las cuatro mesas de trabajo en las que se vertieron demandas, propuestas, luchas y resistencias de los pueblos indios de México, quienes advirtieron que en contra de la salvaje destrucción que el capitalismo neoliberal impone a toda la humanidad, ellos, los pueblos, tribus y naciones “sueñan, proponen y construyen un mundo distinto sobre las bases del respeto y la protección de la madre tierra y la continuidad de la vida, la preservación de nuestra identidad y el fortalecimiento de nuestra organización comunal opuesta a la organización capitalista de la sociedad que mercantiliza la vida”. Nuestra lucha, señalaron, “es para detener la siembra de tanta muerte”.
Las reflexiones de los días 5 y 6 de julio giraron alrededor de cuatro ejes temáticos: el impacto de las políticas gubernamentales en los pueblos indígenas, el fortalecimiento de la autonomía indígena por la vía de los hechos, la resistencia de la identidad indígena frente a la dominación de la cultura occidental y, al final de la jornada, el fortalecimiento del CNI. Se habló también de las actuales embestidas neoliberales dirigidas a despojar de sus recursos a las comunidades indígenas del país, de las resistencias concretas que hay como respuesta y de la represión ejercida por el Estado.
En concreto se habló del proyecto de la carretera Amatitán-Huejuquilla el Alto, actualmente paralizado por la lucha y la movilización de la comunidad wixárika de Tuapurie. Este proyecto, afirmaron, tiene como finalidad “fragmentar y privatizar el territorio wixárika con el propósito de propiciar el despojo de la madre tierra en la región occidental del país”. Los delegados apoyaron las demandas de la comunidad de Tuapurie, “en el sentido de cancelar la ejecución del proyecto carretero”.
El CNI se solidarizó también con la demanda wixárika de recuperar el territorio de la comunidad de Waut+a (San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán), actualmente invadida por ganaderos de los ejidos Puente de Camotlán y Huajimic, ambos del municipio de la Yesca, Nayarit. Se demandó también la salida de los ganaderos del paraje Cañón de Tlaxcala y se pronunciaron contra la contaminación del río Camotlán, que atraviesa su territorio. En el mismo sentido, se exigió “el reconocimiento legal a favor de la comunidad autónoma wixárika de Bancos de San Hipólito, Durango, sobre la superficie de 10 720 hectáreas correspondientes a las tierras comunales de su propiedad y posesión inmemorial, mismas que fueron ilegalmente tituladas a favor de la comunidad mestiza de San Lucas de Jalpa”.
Con la presencia de representantes yaquis y yoreme, de Sonora, el cni rechazó los megaproyectos conocidos como Mar de Cortés o Escalera Náutica, Fiderco y Plan Puebla Panamá, y exigió la restitución de los derechos territoriales y de agua de la tribu yaqui, la cancelación de los proyectos carreteros en el territorio de las tribus yaqui y mayo, en el estado de Sonora, en los territorios wixárika, cora y tepehuano de Jalisco, Durango y Nayarit, y en los territorios nahua y purhépecha de Michoacán. Se rechazó también el nuevo intento gubernamental de construir el aeropuerto internacional de la ciudad de México en la región de San Salvador Atenco; se pronunciaron por la cancelación de las concesiones mineras otorgadas en las regiones indígenas del sur de Jalisco, Costa de Michoacán, Guerrero y Oaxaca.
Nacido como fruto del Foro Nacional Indígena convocado por el EZLN en enero de 1996, en esta XXI reunión el CNI, como siempre, mantuvo presente a las comunidades indígenas zapatistas, actualmente asediadas por el ejército y grupos paramilitares: “Condenamos las provocaciones y amenazas en contra de la comunidad zapatista de La Garrucha y la reserva comunitaria zapatista El Huitepec, en Chiapas, por parte del gobierno de Felipe Calderón, el gobierno estatal de Juan Sabines y los gobiernos municipales involucrados, a quienes responsabilizamos de cualquier agresión o inicio de violencia en contra de nuestros hermanos zapatistas, haciendo nuestra su palabra y su denuncia y exigiendo la desmilitarización inmediata de los territorios zapatistas”.
Además de exigir la liberación inmediata de todos los presos políticos, indígenas y no indígenas, el CNI ratificó su carácter anticapitalista y su adhesión a la Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, así como su participación en La Otra Campaña.
Voces de la resistencia
Los partidos políticos cuando llegan a nuestras comunidades llegan partidos y también nos parten a nosotros, se van y nos dejan divididos. Cada día que pasa, los diputados y senadores tienen una ley lista que irá contra nuestras comunidades y la naturaleza, y por el lado de la comercialización. (Salvador Campanur, purhépecha de Cherán, Michoacán)
El turismo se está apoderando hasta de las zonas federales, las está reduciendo y privatizando, sólo a los extranjeros permiten entrar, a quienes tienen dólares. Donde yo vivo hay tres lagunas y el empresario extranjero las tiene privatizadas. Toda la agricultura se ha ido abajo. (Antonio Altamirano, comunidad en resistencia La Yerbabuena, Colima)
La resistencia no sólo debe ser por los hidrocarburos, sino además defender a todo México, en especial a nuestros pueblos indígenas. (Ztlalxochitzin, nahua de la Mixteca poblana)
La propiedad es un robo, es un invento legal. La propiedad verdadera es nuestro pensamiento, el mar, el aire y las plantas. Así como el cuerpo, sus obligaciones son tomar el aire o el néctar, sus derechos son el oír, hablar y testificar la palabra. Existe un solar, el cual es México, y es nuestro. No nos tienen que dar un escrito, nosotros somos los legítimos, y está escrito con la sangre de nuestros padres. Mi legitimidad está en mi sangre, desde la creación del primer indio, repito, nosotros como tribus somos las letras, no necesitamos de papel. El que se dice presidente de México, sólo recibe órdenes de otros organismos. Cuando llegan al poder, quieren con armas y fuego moldear el país, y cuando no pueden, siguen con el dinero, tratando de comprar voluntades. Cada tribu tiene su derecho de gobernarse por sí misma. (Alfredo Osuna Valenzuela, tribu yoreme, Sonora)
Las grandes estructuras del gobierno nos engañan con los certificados sobre la tierra, lo que provoca que se pueda vender como mercancía. También pasa con el agua, la quieren privatizar, quieren caer en ese error. Hasta la fecha nosotros tenemos el modo de vida comunal (Crisológo Calleja Hernández, cuicateco del Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca, cipo )
Mientras que los pueblos, naciones y tribus no pierdan su autonomía, su territorio, su libre determinación, sus culturas sus derechos, conocimientos, recursos y su identidad como sujetos de derecho, seguiremos existiendo. La tierra es la madre y no se vende. La tierra de la comunidad es de la comunidad. (Juan Chávez, purhépecha de Nurío, Michoacán)
Allá en nuestro pueblo tenemos graves problemas de integración, ahora tenemos la división en dos pueblos que ha originado una dualidad de poderes. La tribu yaqui esta conformada por ocho pueblos, pero actualmente tenemos problemas en Vícam y en Pótam. Esta problemática tiene mas de diez años, ha originando confusión en lo político y rebota en otros sectores como en los culturales, sociales y hasta en lo económico. (Juan Domingo Molina Valencia, tribu yaqui de Vícam, Sonora)
Ahora también sabemos que se atenta contra nuestra tierra, rentándola para su explotación con productos ajenos, como el caso del aguacate que en un plazo de veinte años deja la tierra pobre y deja de ser productiva. Ésta es la estrategia que hace el gobierno federal, estatal y municipal, para que las comunidades dejen sus tierras y con esto provocar la división para luego poder vender la tierra. Esta política es clara, así como la del Procede, la cual divide mucho a cambio de unos cuantos pesos que ofrece, pero los resultados del despojo no se pueden ocultar. (María de Jesús Patricio, nahua, Tuxpan, región Sur, Jalisco)
Con el levantamiento zapatista, en 1994, en Nurío se aceptan sus preceptos y desde entonces no se reconoce al municipio de Paracho y ahora ya no votamos más. Ellos dijeron que estamos locos y que el municipio no nos iba a dar nada, pero aún así impedimos las elecciones, y al siguiente año reclamamos nuestro derecho como pueblo y comunidad. Nosotros vemos que esto es un logro, aquí es el pueblo el que decide y no sólo unos dirigentes. Nosotros fuimos apoyados por otras comunidades, pero hoy ellos nos han traicionado y hoy sus dirigentes son parte del gobierno. (Agustín González, purhépecha, Nurío, Michoacán)
Espero que los que estamos aquí hagamos el análisis necesario sobre lo que hacen los partidos políticos contra nuestras comunidades y que aquí mismo debatamos las resoluciones para luchar en contra de estas acciones. (José Guadalupe Taizan Hernández, wixárika, Mesa del Tirador, Jalisco)
Oaxaca es el estado donde no ha entrado tan fuerte el Procede, es por ello que han aplicado estas acciones de represión. Nosotros no pedimos limosnas, sino justicia y que nos respeten como pueblo indígena, pero el gobierno se ha hecho de oídos sordos. (Pedro Bautista Rojas, mixteco del Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca, CIPO)
Nosotros desconfiamos del comisariato ejidal de nuestro ejido, pues él fue designado por el presidente municipal para que haga lo que él le ordene. Esto es muy malo, pues ellos sólo ven cómo sacar dinero y a nosotros nos tienen olvidados. (Ynocencio Jacobo, nahua, Lagunillas, Ayotitlán, Jalisco)
Con los yaquis nosotros nombramos a un comité, pero no es de ningún partido y ellos gestionan lo que se necesita. En todos lados se cuecen habas y allá también hemos detectado irregularidades, pero los sancionamos cuando descubrimos que se quieren meter cosas de partidos. (Fernando Jiménez, tribu yaqui, Sonora)
Recopilación: Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
“Para detener la siembra de tanta muerte”
Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
La Jornada
Representantes de los pueblos wixárika, nahua, purhépecha, zoque, cuicateco, mixteco, triqui, yaqui y yoreme, reunidos en la combativa Sierra Huichola del norte de Jalisco, hicieron un llamado al resto de los pueblos indios “a no creerse del mal gobierno y a continuar su lucha por el ejercicio de la autonomía y sus derechos por la vía de los hechos”.
En el marco de la vigésimo primera reunión ampliada de la Región Centro Pacífico del Congreso Nacional Indígena ( cni ), los 94 delegados advirtieron que en los últimos meses y días el gobierno “ha recrudecido la guerra de exterminio en contra de nuestros pueblos, tribus y naciones a través de la aplicación de diversos proyectos y políticas neoliberales que tienen como finalidad despojar nuestras tierras y territorios, robar y destruir nuestra cultura y provocar la migración y explotación despiadadas de nuestras comunidades”.
El CNI es un espacio de reflexión creado por los pueblos indios de México en octubre de 1996, durante la visita de la comandanta Ramona, representante del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), a la ciudad de México. En noviembre de ese mismo año, durante su primera asamblea nacional, los pueblos indígenas acordaron no “reproducir las formas de dominación o de control con que durante tantos años nos han oprimido los grupos de poder en el país, sino por el contrario, establecer nuevas formas de vivir la democracia”, basados en los siguientes principios: servir y no servirse; construir y no destruir; obedecer y no mandar; proponer y no imponer; convencer y no vencer; bajar y no subir; y enlazar y no aislar. Siete lineamientos que fueron recordados durante esta reunión celebrada en la comunidad wixárika de Mesa del Tirador.
Las aulas de la escuela primaria de la comunidad abrieron sus puertas a las cuatro mesas de trabajo en las que se vertieron demandas, propuestas, luchas y resistencias de los pueblos indios de México, quienes advirtieron que en contra de la salvaje destrucción que el capitalismo neoliberal impone a toda la humanidad, ellos, los pueblos, tribus y naciones “sueñan, proponen y construyen un mundo distinto sobre las bases del respeto y la protección de la madre tierra y la continuidad de la vida, la preservación de nuestra identidad y el fortalecimiento de nuestra organización comunal opuesta a la organización capitalista de la sociedad que mercantiliza la vida”. Nuestra lucha, señalaron, “es para detener la siembra de tanta muerte”.
Las reflexiones de los días 5 y 6 de julio giraron alrededor de cuatro ejes temáticos: el impacto de las políticas gubernamentales en los pueblos indígenas, el fortalecimiento de la autonomía indígena por la vía de los hechos, la resistencia de la identidad indígena frente a la dominación de la cultura occidental y, al final de la jornada, el fortalecimiento del CNI. Se habló también de las actuales embestidas neoliberales dirigidas a despojar de sus recursos a las comunidades indígenas del país, de las resistencias concretas que hay como respuesta y de la represión ejercida por el Estado.
En concreto se habló del proyecto de la carretera Amatitán-Huejuquilla el Alto, actualmente paralizado por la lucha y la movilización de la comunidad wixárika de Tuapurie. Este proyecto, afirmaron, tiene como finalidad “fragmentar y privatizar el territorio wixárika con el propósito de propiciar el despojo de la madre tierra en la región occidental del país”. Los delegados apoyaron las demandas de la comunidad de Tuapurie, “en el sentido de cancelar la ejecución del proyecto carretero”.
El CNI se solidarizó también con la demanda wixárika de recuperar el territorio de la comunidad de Waut+a (San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán), actualmente invadida por ganaderos de los ejidos Puente de Camotlán y Huajimic, ambos del municipio de la Yesca, Nayarit. Se demandó también la salida de los ganaderos del paraje Cañón de Tlaxcala y se pronunciaron contra la contaminación del río Camotlán, que atraviesa su territorio. En el mismo sentido, se exigió “el reconocimiento legal a favor de la comunidad autónoma wixárika de Bancos de San Hipólito, Durango, sobre la superficie de 10 720 hectáreas correspondientes a las tierras comunales de su propiedad y posesión inmemorial, mismas que fueron ilegalmente tituladas a favor de la comunidad mestiza de San Lucas de Jalpa”.
Con la presencia de representantes yaquis y yoreme, de Sonora, el cni rechazó los megaproyectos conocidos como Mar de Cortés o Escalera Náutica, Fiderco y Plan Puebla Panamá, y exigió la restitución de los derechos territoriales y de agua de la tribu yaqui, la cancelación de los proyectos carreteros en el territorio de las tribus yaqui y mayo, en el estado de Sonora, en los territorios wixárika, cora y tepehuano de Jalisco, Durango y Nayarit, y en los territorios nahua y purhépecha de Michoacán. Se rechazó también el nuevo intento gubernamental de construir el aeropuerto internacional de la ciudad de México en la región de San Salvador Atenco; se pronunciaron por la cancelación de las concesiones mineras otorgadas en las regiones indígenas del sur de Jalisco, Costa de Michoacán, Guerrero y Oaxaca.
Nacido como fruto del Foro Nacional Indígena convocado por el EZLN en enero de 1996, en esta XXI reunión el CNI, como siempre, mantuvo presente a las comunidades indígenas zapatistas, actualmente asediadas por el ejército y grupos paramilitares: “Condenamos las provocaciones y amenazas en contra de la comunidad zapatista de La Garrucha y la reserva comunitaria zapatista El Huitepec, en Chiapas, por parte del gobierno de Felipe Calderón, el gobierno estatal de Juan Sabines y los gobiernos municipales involucrados, a quienes responsabilizamos de cualquier agresión o inicio de violencia en contra de nuestros hermanos zapatistas, haciendo nuestra su palabra y su denuncia y exigiendo la desmilitarización inmediata de los territorios zapatistas”.
Además de exigir la liberación inmediata de todos los presos políticos, indígenas y no indígenas, el CNI ratificó su carácter anticapitalista y su adhesión a la Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, así como su participación en La Otra Campaña.
Voces de la resistencia
Los partidos políticos cuando llegan a nuestras comunidades llegan partidos y también nos parten a nosotros, se van y nos dejan divididos. Cada día que pasa, los diputados y senadores tienen una ley lista que irá contra nuestras comunidades y la naturaleza, y por el lado de la comercialización. (Salvador Campanur, purhépecha de Cherán, Michoacán)
El turismo se está apoderando hasta de las zonas federales, las está reduciendo y privatizando, sólo a los extranjeros permiten entrar, a quienes tienen dólares. Donde yo vivo hay tres lagunas y el empresario extranjero las tiene privatizadas. Toda la agricultura se ha ido abajo. (Antonio Altamirano, comunidad en resistencia La Yerbabuena, Colima)
La resistencia no sólo debe ser por los hidrocarburos, sino además defender a todo México, en especial a nuestros pueblos indígenas. (Ztlalxochitzin, nahua de la Mixteca poblana)
La propiedad es un robo, es un invento legal. La propiedad verdadera es nuestro pensamiento, el mar, el aire y las plantas. Así como el cuerpo, sus obligaciones son tomar el aire o el néctar, sus derechos son el oír, hablar y testificar la palabra. Existe un solar, el cual es México, y es nuestro. No nos tienen que dar un escrito, nosotros somos los legítimos, y está escrito con la sangre de nuestros padres. Mi legitimidad está en mi sangre, desde la creación del primer indio, repito, nosotros como tribus somos las letras, no necesitamos de papel. El que se dice presidente de México, sólo recibe órdenes de otros organismos. Cuando llegan al poder, quieren con armas y fuego moldear el país, y cuando no pueden, siguen con el dinero, tratando de comprar voluntades. Cada tribu tiene su derecho de gobernarse por sí misma. (Alfredo Osuna Valenzuela, tribu yoreme, Sonora)
Las grandes estructuras del gobierno nos engañan con los certificados sobre la tierra, lo que provoca que se pueda vender como mercancía. También pasa con el agua, la quieren privatizar, quieren caer en ese error. Hasta la fecha nosotros tenemos el modo de vida comunal (Crisológo Calleja Hernández, cuicateco del Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca, cipo )
Mientras que los pueblos, naciones y tribus no pierdan su autonomía, su territorio, su libre determinación, sus culturas sus derechos, conocimientos, recursos y su identidad como sujetos de derecho, seguiremos existiendo. La tierra es la madre y no se vende. La tierra de la comunidad es de la comunidad. (Juan Chávez, purhépecha de Nurío, Michoacán)
Allá en nuestro pueblo tenemos graves problemas de integración, ahora tenemos la división en dos pueblos que ha originado una dualidad de poderes. La tribu yaqui esta conformada por ocho pueblos, pero actualmente tenemos problemas en Vícam y en Pótam. Esta problemática tiene mas de diez años, ha originando confusión en lo político y rebota en otros sectores como en los culturales, sociales y hasta en lo económico. (Juan Domingo Molina Valencia, tribu yaqui de Vícam, Sonora)
Ahora también sabemos que se atenta contra nuestra tierra, rentándola para su explotación con productos ajenos, como el caso del aguacate que en un plazo de veinte años deja la tierra pobre y deja de ser productiva. Ésta es la estrategia que hace el gobierno federal, estatal y municipal, para que las comunidades dejen sus tierras y con esto provocar la división para luego poder vender la tierra. Esta política es clara, así como la del Procede, la cual divide mucho a cambio de unos cuantos pesos que ofrece, pero los resultados del despojo no se pueden ocultar. (María de Jesús Patricio, nahua, Tuxpan, región Sur, Jalisco)
Con el levantamiento zapatista, en 1994, en Nurío se aceptan sus preceptos y desde entonces no se reconoce al municipio de Paracho y ahora ya no votamos más. Ellos dijeron que estamos locos y que el municipio no nos iba a dar nada, pero aún así impedimos las elecciones, y al siguiente año reclamamos nuestro derecho como pueblo y comunidad. Nosotros vemos que esto es un logro, aquí es el pueblo el que decide y no sólo unos dirigentes. Nosotros fuimos apoyados por otras comunidades, pero hoy ellos nos han traicionado y hoy sus dirigentes son parte del gobierno. (Agustín González, purhépecha, Nurío, Michoacán)
Espero que los que estamos aquí hagamos el análisis necesario sobre lo que hacen los partidos políticos contra nuestras comunidades y que aquí mismo debatamos las resoluciones para luchar en contra de estas acciones. (José Guadalupe Taizan Hernández, wixárika, Mesa del Tirador, Jalisco)
Oaxaca es el estado donde no ha entrado tan fuerte el Procede, es por ello que han aplicado estas acciones de represión. Nosotros no pedimos limosnas, sino justicia y que nos respeten como pueblo indígena, pero el gobierno se ha hecho de oídos sordos. (Pedro Bautista Rojas, mixteco del Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca, CIPO)
Nosotros desconfiamos del comisariato ejidal de nuestro ejido, pues él fue designado por el presidente municipal para que haga lo que él le ordene. Esto es muy malo, pues ellos sólo ven cómo sacar dinero y a nosotros nos tienen olvidados. (Ynocencio Jacobo, nahua, Lagunillas, Ayotitlán, Jalisco)
Con los yaquis nosotros nombramos a un comité, pero no es de ningún partido y ellos gestionan lo que se necesita. En todos lados se cuecen habas y allá también hemos detectado irregularidades, pero los sancionamos cuando descubrimos que se quieren meter cosas de partidos. (Fernando Jiménez, tribu yaqui, Sonora)
Recopilación: Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
The Eagle and the Condor
Reunion prophecy drives Peace and Dignity Journey runners.
© Indian Country Today July 28, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 28, 2008
By Philip Burnham -- Today correspondent
WOUNDED KNEE, S.D. - They started in May, running along the highways of western Canada, each of them a messenger with a sacred staff held high.
They have been moving south ever since, driven by a prophecy about reuniting the Native peoples of Turtle Island.
Through sun, wind and rain, they follow the plains and valleys of America - all of America: once an indigenous whole, now divided into nations with passports, armies, borders and walls.
In early May, the runners passed through Wounded Knee. Richard Iron Cloud, Oglala Lakota and a representative of the American Friends Service Committee, welcomed them by singing an Honor Song before leading the runners up the hill to the mass grave where the victims of the notorious 1890 massacre are interred.
For these runners, Wounded Knee was a fitting stop. Every four years, Peace and Dignity Journeys, a volunteer Native organization sponsored by the Phoenix-based nonprofit Tonatierra Community Development Institute, organizes a run for Native solidarity in fulfillment of indigenous prophecies. The theme of this year's run is ''Honoring our Sacred Sites.''
The runners for the 2008 event come from all over the continent.
Sean, a young Cree man, learned about the group when they passed through his home in the Onion Lake First Nation Reserve in Saskatchewan.
''I had one day to make up my mind what I would do with the next seven months of my life,'' he said. And he wasn't shy about what being a runner on this trip meant to him. ''It's going to change my life.''
Ymoat, a young Native woman from Zacatecas, Mexico, was resting by the side of the road after running a stage on a hot July afternoon. She smiled broadly when asked who could join in the journey.
''Peace is about everyone,'' she said. Both Natives and non-Natives are participating, ranging in age from young children to elders.
The original group of runners started in Arctic Village, Alaska, but others have taken up the cause along the way and are running parallel routes, stretching southward. In November, they will end their trek in Panama, where North and South America meet.
Those who run carry sacred staffs with eagle feathers, the gift of Native communities from across the continent.
Jose Malvido, Yaqui/Tohono O'odham from Arizona, said the runners as a group do 70 to 100 miles a day. They take turns running relays of a few miles, followed by vehicles that pick them up and ferry them to the next stage. They're fed and boarded in Native communities overnight and are happy to accept donations along the way.
''It's not political,'' Malvido said of their ultimate purpose. ''It's a ceremonial run.''
As the eagle flies, it's a trip of several thousand miles, a community trek long enough to make a marathon seem like a short sprint.
In Panama, the group will meet up with runners who began in Tierra del Fuego, at Argentina's southern edge - a mirror-image journey that will cross all of South America. The two teams will symbolically draw together a hemisphere that has been split by geography, culture, language and politics - but united by the bedrock of indigenous peoples.
When, on July 7, the runners finally descended the hill from the Wounded Knee memorial, they still had work to do. Their next destination was Oglala, 30 miles to the west. It was already late afternoon.
They geared up for the next stage, piling into their vans - all of them except one.
A lone runner took up a sacred staff while starting down a stretch of highway toward Pine Ridge, passed by a rushing car or two whose journey, no doubt, would be much shorter than their own.
© Indian Country Today July 28, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 28, 2008
By Philip Burnham -- Today correspondent
WOUNDED KNEE, S.D. - They started in May, running along the highways of western Canada, each of them a messenger with a sacred staff held high.
They have been moving south ever since, driven by a prophecy about reuniting the Native peoples of Turtle Island.
Through sun, wind and rain, they follow the plains and valleys of America - all of America: once an indigenous whole, now divided into nations with passports, armies, borders and walls.
In early May, the runners passed through Wounded Knee. Richard Iron Cloud, Oglala Lakota and a representative of the American Friends Service Committee, welcomed them by singing an Honor Song before leading the runners up the hill to the mass grave where the victims of the notorious 1890 massacre are interred.
For these runners, Wounded Knee was a fitting stop. Every four years, Peace and Dignity Journeys, a volunteer Native organization sponsored by the Phoenix-based nonprofit Tonatierra Community Development Institute, organizes a run for Native solidarity in fulfillment of indigenous prophecies. The theme of this year's run is ''Honoring our Sacred Sites.''
The runners for the 2008 event come from all over the continent.
Sean, a young Cree man, learned about the group when they passed through his home in the Onion Lake First Nation Reserve in Saskatchewan.
''I had one day to make up my mind what I would do with the next seven months of my life,'' he said. And he wasn't shy about what being a runner on this trip meant to him. ''It's going to change my life.''
Ymoat, a young Native woman from Zacatecas, Mexico, was resting by the side of the road after running a stage on a hot July afternoon. She smiled broadly when asked who could join in the journey.
''Peace is about everyone,'' she said. Both Natives and non-Natives are participating, ranging in age from young children to elders.
The original group of runners started in Arctic Village, Alaska, but others have taken up the cause along the way and are running parallel routes, stretching southward. In November, they will end their trek in Panama, where North and South America meet.
Those who run carry sacred staffs with eagle feathers, the gift of Native communities from across the continent.
Jose Malvido, Yaqui/Tohono O'odham from Arizona, said the runners as a group do 70 to 100 miles a day. They take turns running relays of a few miles, followed by vehicles that pick them up and ferry them to the next stage. They're fed and boarded in Native communities overnight and are happy to accept donations along the way.
''It's not political,'' Malvido said of their ultimate purpose. ''It's a ceremonial run.''
As the eagle flies, it's a trip of several thousand miles, a community trek long enough to make a marathon seem like a short sprint.
In Panama, the group will meet up with runners who began in Tierra del Fuego, at Argentina's southern edge - a mirror-image journey that will cross all of South America. The two teams will symbolically draw together a hemisphere that has been split by geography, culture, language and politics - but united by the bedrock of indigenous peoples.
When, on July 7, the runners finally descended the hill from the Wounded Knee memorial, they still had work to do. Their next destination was Oglala, 30 miles to the west. It was already late afternoon.
They geared up for the next stage, piling into their vans - all of them except one.
A lone runner took up a sacred staff while starting down a stretch of highway toward Pine Ridge, passed by a rushing car or two whose journey, no doubt, would be much shorter than their own.
Chicago Police Torture Black Men
How Scores of Black Men Were Tortured Into Giving False Confessions by Chicago Police
By Jessica Pupovac, AlterNet
Posted on July 23, 2008, Printed on July 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/92374/
Michael Tillman was 20, with a 3-year-old daughter and an infant son, when he was brought into the Area 2 police station on Chicago's South Side for questioning. His mother, Jean Tillman, says that although he had gotten into some trouble with the law as a youngster, he had been on the straight-and-narrow, working as a janitor and paying his bills, since he and his girlfriend had their first child. That was July 22, 1986.
He hasn't been home since.
Tillman is one of at least 24 African-American men that the People's Law Office in Chicago claims are still serving sentences for crimes they say they confessed to only after enduring hours of torture at the hands of Chicago police officers under Commander Jon Burge between 1972 and 1992. Although 10 of Burge's victims have been pardoned or given new trials after their illegally obtained confessions were exposed, the vast majority of the 100-plus cases have yet to be reviewed by the state of Illinois. Those men have either served out their sentences, died in custody or, like Tillman, continue to live their lives behind bars, hoping that one day they will have a fair trial.
According to Tillman's 1986 trial testimony, when he arrived at the Area 2 police station in the predawn hours of July 21, 1986, Detectives Ronald Boffo and Peter Dignan took him to a second-floor interrogation room and pressed him for information about the murder of 42-year-old Betty Howard, whose body was found the day prior in the apartment building Tillman oversaw. When he told the detectives that he knew nothing about the murder, he says that Boffo and Dignan, along with three other officers, became abusive. Without ever reading him his Miranda rights, he says they handcuffed him to the wall, hit him in the face and punched him in the stomach until he vomited blood. During the course of what appeared to be three days, rotating pairs of officers brought him to the railroad tracks behind the station and held a gun to his head, suffocated him repeatedly with thick plastic bags, poured soda up his nose and forced him into Dumpsters outside of the apartment building, ordering him to search through the rubbish for a murder weapon until, according to Detective John Yucaitis, Tillman confessed to the crime.
According to Tillman's mother, she, her husband and an attorney they called for counsel were all denied access to her son during his three days of interrogation.
A Brutal Crime and a Corrupt Investigation
According to the police investigation, Howard and her 2-year-old son were on their way to meet relatives for a birthday celebration when they were forced into a vacant apartment on the seventh floor of the South Side building. The boy was locked in the bathroom while his mother was bound to a radiator, raped, stabbed and killed with one bullet to the head. Her car and other valuables were stolen. Her son was found days later by detectives. He was still in the bathroom.
Three weeks after Tillman's arrest, police found two men driving Howard's stolen car, with the knife used to stab her still in the vehicle. Those men led the officers to 27-year-old Clarence Trotter, who had Howard's camera and stereo in his apartment. His fingerprints were found on a soda can at the murder scene, and evidence linked him to the gun used in her murder.
Police found no physical evidence tying Tillman to the scene, or to Trotter. Years later, in 1999, Trotter wrote a letter to People's Law Office attorney Flint Taylor. While he did not admit guilt in that letter, he did write that Tillman was "beat … into confessing a crime (he) did not commit."
Tillman's mother says that, given the evidence found linking Trotter to the crime, and the lack of physical evidence implicating her son, she thought for sure the judge would let him go. "We thought he was going to get out," she said. "Even his lawyer said that would probably happen. … But it wasn't that way."
Michael Tillman's lawyer presented physical evidence of abuse in court, including the blue jeans that Tillman wore during his interrogation, which hadn't been washed since and were still stained with blood. He also showed scars on his wrists from where the handcuffs pulled while he was being beaten. Despite this, and despite the fact that there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene, the jury did not believe him. On Dec. 18, 1986, Michael Tillman was found guilty of murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, and aggravated kidnapping. He was sentenced to life in prison. The Chicago Tribune wrote the next day that "Tillman, 20, put his hand over his face and shook his head when he was found guilty."
Weeks later, after Tillman's case file was sealed, Trotter was also given a life sentence in a separate trial.
Tillman appealed the decision in 1999 and lost. The judge wrote in his decision that "a nexus was never established between defendant and either Trotter or the two individuals apprehended in possession of the victim's car." He also wrote that, even though the corroborating evidence may only be circumstantial, it "need only tend to confirm and inspire belief in the confession." "The accused's identity need not be corroborated by evidence apart from his own extrajudicial statements," he wrote. "(His) self-described involvement to police is sufficient to establish his participation in the victim's attack."
His mother says that they had a series of public defenders and lawyers they couldn't afford, and that he no longer has legal representation.
A Conspiracy of Silence
Tillman's story is not unique, nor is it particularly shocking.
By 1999, it was "common knowledge," according to U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur, "that in the early to mid-1980s, (Jon Burge) and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions. Both internal police accounts and numerous lawsuits and appeals brought by suspects alleging such abuse substantiate that those beatings and other means of torture occurred as an established practice, not just on an isolated basis."
The massive scandal began to unravel in 1989, when convicted cop killer Andrew Wilson launched a very public federal civil rights suit against the Chicago Police Department. Seven years before, Wilson had been beaten, shocked in the testicles and burned on the face, chest and thigh by Area 2 detectives working under Burge. What caught the eye of Chief Medical Examiner of Cermak Medical Services John Raba, however, were the small markings on his ears that he couldn't explain away. Wilson told him the markings were from alligator clips used to electrocute him, and Raba believed him. He notified then-Superintendent of Police Richard Brzeczek, who wrote a letter to then-State's Attorney Richard M. Daley, "seeking direction" on how to proceed. Daley, who is now Chicago's mayor, never responded.
Wilson was later granted a new trial and sentenced to natural life, without his illegally obtained confession. His case, however, set off a chain of events that would eventually expose the widespread, systematic use of torture within certain South Side units of the Chicago Police Department.
In 1990, a CPD Office of Professional Standards investigation, prompted by Wilson's story and the physical evidence backing it up, found that abuse at Areas 2 and 3 "was not limited to the usual beatings, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture." "Particular command members were aware of the systematic abuse and perpetuated it, either by actively participating in some or failing to take any action to bring it to an end," the report concluded. Subsequent OPS investigations found Detectives John Byrne, Peter Dignan and John Yucaitis, all involved in Michael Tillman's interrogation, to be "players" repeatedly named as abusers in Area 2 and 3 torture allegations.
During Wilson's civil trial, his attorneys at the People's Law Office began receiving anonymous letters tipping them off to other victims of police torture. Eventually, PLO lawyers compiled testimony in 107 Burge-connected torture cases, Tillman's among them.
Nevertheless, almost 20 years later, not a single police officer has been made to face charges in the massive scandal. They were all let off the hook, first by a succession of judges and legal professionals who looked the other way, and later by a statute of limitations that expired before the Illinois state attorney considered filing charges. According to Taylor, there is no state or federal law criminalizing torture by law enforcement officers. While possible offenses for torture can include attempted murder, aggravated battery, battery, assault, assault with a dangerous weapon or hate crimes, the statute on these crimes is generally five years for federal prosecution and three years in the state of Illinois.
In fact, the only officer who has thus far suffered any consequence for his actions has been Burge himself -- and his could hardly be called punishment. In 1993, the Police Board removed him from his command and forced him into early retirement. He currently lives in Apollo Beach, Fla., on a $3,400-a-month pension, where he is known to enjoy rides on his boat, the Vigilante. Other officers involved have since advanced in the ranks, as have the assistant state's attorneys who prosecuted the cases, at times burying or ignoring clear evidence of how the confessions were obtained.
Many of the co-conspirators who helped conceal the abuse are today Chicago's political elite. They include prominent Cook County and Illinois Appellate Court judges (including one of the prosecutors in Tillman's case), Illinois State's Attorney Richard Devine and Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was the state's attorney when many of the cases were tried and would have been responsible for bringing official charges against the abusive officers, but chose instead to look the other way. Devine was Daley's first assistant when he served as a "tough-on-crime" state's attorney from 1980 to 1989, a period that saw 55 allegations of confessions elicited through torture. He later went into private practice (before assuming his current role of state's attorney), where he was paid more than $1 million by the City of Chicago for defending Burge and the other officers involved in Wilson's civil suit. He then represented Burge in proceedings before the Police Board. Later, as state's attorney of Cook County, Devine discouraged investigations of Area 2 torture and continued to uphold confessions obtained by that means. Because of this conflict of interest, in 2002, at the request of a coalition of civil rights attorneys and activists, Circuit Judge Paul Biebel transferred jurisdiction over all torture-related cases to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. They have sat idle on her desk ever since.
The 10 cases that have been resolved have been done in spite of, rather than with the help of, Madigan or Devine.
Gov. George Ryan: "The Category of Horrors Was Hard to Believe"
In 2003, after years of campaigning by Chicago-area police accountability activists, then-Gov. George Ryan pardoned four Burge victims -- Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange -- who at the time were on death row. "The category of horrors was hard to believe," Ryan said. "If I hadn't reviewed the cases myself, I wouldn't believe it. We have evidence from four men, who did not know each other, all getting beaten and tortured and convicted on the basis of the confessions they allegedly provided. They are perfect examples of what is so terribly broken about our system."
Because of the mounting criticism of the Cook County justice system, because the four men were on death row, and because their attorneys had filed for clemency, Hobley, Patterson, Howard and Orange were pardoned. But dozens of others stayed behind, out of the limelight. "These weren't death penalty cases, so they're not nearly as sexy," explained attorney Scott Schutte, who recently represented another Burge torture victim, James Andrews, in a civil suit. "These are run-of-the-mill homicides."
Andrews is one of the few additional torture victims granted new trials or evidentiary hearings. Schutte filed a post-conviction petition in Andrews' case last year, claiming that new evidence had arisen in his case. In October, Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Sumner vacated his 1984 conviction and in February of this year, the attorney general's office declined to file new charges. His case, then, became the first to be thrown out in Cook County on the basis of torture. Andrews was set free, after spending 24 years in jail for a murder he insisted he didn't commit. "All along, he knew he was going to ultimately prevail," said Schutte.
However, he added that while the attorney general's office did not prohibit Andrews from going free, it didn't help. The attorney general requested bail, which Sumner set at $300,000. "In the larger scheme of things, it's inconsequential," said Schutte. "But the family had to ... bail him out. They cashed out 401(k)s, savings, everything. They did everything they could collectively."
Only one other Burge-related case has moved on the basis of torture and still awaits conclusion: that of Cortez Brown, who has been in jail since 1990. Earlier this year, an appeals court ordered evidentiary hearing in his case after reconsidering his torture allegations. In all, of the 100-plus identified victims of police torture in Chicago, few have been acknowledged and dealt with accordingly. According to Julien Ball of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, that's because of a lack of "political will" in Chicago to try these cases. "We have people at the highest levels of public office who have built their careers on torture," said Ball. "The state of Illinois doesn't care about you if you're black and you're poor. That's what these cases show."
Joey Mogul, an attorney with the People's Law Office, says some of the lawyers are also to blame. "I think it's an accumulation of racism and classism, as well as a massive cover-up that has led many people to not get fair hearings," she said. "Their lawyers didn't believe them and didn't even request hearings."
Schutte took on Andrews' case pro bono, but Tillman hasn't been so lucky. He currently lacks representation, and despite two appeals, remains in jail for life. "It's just pretty outrageous because all of the physical evidence points to someone else," said Catherine Crawford, a Northwestern University professor and attorney who was on a team of lawyers representing Leroy Orange and has researched Tillman's case and attempted to find him legal counsel. "But they had gotten a confession out of him before they found the stolen car. I think it's just one of those situations where the police said, 'Well, we don't want to throw out this confession so we're just going to pursue this case based on our original theory.'"
Robyn Ziegler, spokesperson for the attorney general's office, told AlterNet that all Burge-related cases are "in various stages of the post-conviction process," and that, "Ethically, the attorney general is obligated to handle each case individually based on the facts and history of the case. No two cases are the same."
But advocates for victims of police torture contend that it shouldn't matter. "In each case, the same thing needs to happen," said Ball. "Madigan needs to order evidentiary hearings so torture victims can present evidence of torture on the way to winning new trials. Regardless of the differences in individual cases, every single torture victim deserves a new trial where 'confessions' that were electroshocked, beaten and suffocated out of them are not used against them." Zeigler claimed that the attorney general does not have the authority or power to initiate new hearings.
But on July 10, 2007, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution urging Madigan to do just that.
On July 18 of this year, members of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, lawyers from the People's Law Office, religious and community leaders and relatives of the wrongfully imprisoned rallied in front of Madigan's office.
"Every day Lisa Madigan sits and does nothing is a day she is furthering a cover-up," said Marlene Martin, national director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "We're here to ask her to have guts."
The group, which had been there twice already this year, delivered a letter with more than 400 signatures from organizations, religious institutions and concerned citizens, asking Madigan to take action on the cases of the Burge victims who remain behind bars. They are also seeking reparations, in the form of psychological treatment and financial compensation, particularly since the vast majority of the Burge victims and their families have little if any financial resources to assist them in their legal battles and recovery process.
Michael Tillman is currently being held at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois, about a six-hour drive from Chicago. His mother, Jean, says she used to go down and visit him twice a month, but "with gas prices the way it is, I haven't been able to get down there." Since Tillman went to jail 24 years ago, his girlfriend, Princess, left Chicago with their two children and stopped keeping in touch with the family. "After all of this happened we stayed together for a while and then we all separated," she said. "I can't tell you why." She says the kids, who are grown now, haven't been to visit him for "about ten years."
"He's missed out on everything -- his kids, his family, just life," she said. "He was just snatched away from us. It's a dreadful experience to go through."
Jessica Pupovac is an adult educator and independent journalist living in Chicago.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/92374/
By Jessica Pupovac, AlterNet
Posted on July 23, 2008, Printed on July 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/92374/
Michael Tillman was 20, with a 3-year-old daughter and an infant son, when he was brought into the Area 2 police station on Chicago's South Side for questioning. His mother, Jean Tillman, says that although he had gotten into some trouble with the law as a youngster, he had been on the straight-and-narrow, working as a janitor and paying his bills, since he and his girlfriend had their first child. That was July 22, 1986.
He hasn't been home since.
Tillman is one of at least 24 African-American men that the People's Law Office in Chicago claims are still serving sentences for crimes they say they confessed to only after enduring hours of torture at the hands of Chicago police officers under Commander Jon Burge between 1972 and 1992. Although 10 of Burge's victims have been pardoned or given new trials after their illegally obtained confessions were exposed, the vast majority of the 100-plus cases have yet to be reviewed by the state of Illinois. Those men have either served out their sentences, died in custody or, like Tillman, continue to live their lives behind bars, hoping that one day they will have a fair trial.
According to Tillman's 1986 trial testimony, when he arrived at the Area 2 police station in the predawn hours of July 21, 1986, Detectives Ronald Boffo and Peter Dignan took him to a second-floor interrogation room and pressed him for information about the murder of 42-year-old Betty Howard, whose body was found the day prior in the apartment building Tillman oversaw. When he told the detectives that he knew nothing about the murder, he says that Boffo and Dignan, along with three other officers, became abusive. Without ever reading him his Miranda rights, he says they handcuffed him to the wall, hit him in the face and punched him in the stomach until he vomited blood. During the course of what appeared to be three days, rotating pairs of officers brought him to the railroad tracks behind the station and held a gun to his head, suffocated him repeatedly with thick plastic bags, poured soda up his nose and forced him into Dumpsters outside of the apartment building, ordering him to search through the rubbish for a murder weapon until, according to Detective John Yucaitis, Tillman confessed to the crime.
According to Tillman's mother, she, her husband and an attorney they called for counsel were all denied access to her son during his three days of interrogation.
A Brutal Crime and a Corrupt Investigation
According to the police investigation, Howard and her 2-year-old son were on their way to meet relatives for a birthday celebration when they were forced into a vacant apartment on the seventh floor of the South Side building. The boy was locked in the bathroom while his mother was bound to a radiator, raped, stabbed and killed with one bullet to the head. Her car and other valuables were stolen. Her son was found days later by detectives. He was still in the bathroom.
Three weeks after Tillman's arrest, police found two men driving Howard's stolen car, with the knife used to stab her still in the vehicle. Those men led the officers to 27-year-old Clarence Trotter, who had Howard's camera and stereo in his apartment. His fingerprints were found on a soda can at the murder scene, and evidence linked him to the gun used in her murder.
Police found no physical evidence tying Tillman to the scene, or to Trotter. Years later, in 1999, Trotter wrote a letter to People's Law Office attorney Flint Taylor. While he did not admit guilt in that letter, he did write that Tillman was "beat … into confessing a crime (he) did not commit."
Tillman's mother says that, given the evidence found linking Trotter to the crime, and the lack of physical evidence implicating her son, she thought for sure the judge would let him go. "We thought he was going to get out," she said. "Even his lawyer said that would probably happen. … But it wasn't that way."
Michael Tillman's lawyer presented physical evidence of abuse in court, including the blue jeans that Tillman wore during his interrogation, which hadn't been washed since and were still stained with blood. He also showed scars on his wrists from where the handcuffs pulled while he was being beaten. Despite this, and despite the fact that there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene, the jury did not believe him. On Dec. 18, 1986, Michael Tillman was found guilty of murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, and aggravated kidnapping. He was sentenced to life in prison. The Chicago Tribune wrote the next day that "Tillman, 20, put his hand over his face and shook his head when he was found guilty."
Weeks later, after Tillman's case file was sealed, Trotter was also given a life sentence in a separate trial.
Tillman appealed the decision in 1999 and lost. The judge wrote in his decision that "a nexus was never established between defendant and either Trotter or the two individuals apprehended in possession of the victim's car." He also wrote that, even though the corroborating evidence may only be circumstantial, it "need only tend to confirm and inspire belief in the confession." "The accused's identity need not be corroborated by evidence apart from his own extrajudicial statements," he wrote. "(His) self-described involvement to police is sufficient to establish his participation in the victim's attack."
His mother says that they had a series of public defenders and lawyers they couldn't afford, and that he no longer has legal representation.
A Conspiracy of Silence
Tillman's story is not unique, nor is it particularly shocking.
By 1999, it was "common knowledge," according to U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur, "that in the early to mid-1980s, (Jon Burge) and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions. Both internal police accounts and numerous lawsuits and appeals brought by suspects alleging such abuse substantiate that those beatings and other means of torture occurred as an established practice, not just on an isolated basis."
The massive scandal began to unravel in 1989, when convicted cop killer Andrew Wilson launched a very public federal civil rights suit against the Chicago Police Department. Seven years before, Wilson had been beaten, shocked in the testicles and burned on the face, chest and thigh by Area 2 detectives working under Burge. What caught the eye of Chief Medical Examiner of Cermak Medical Services John Raba, however, were the small markings on his ears that he couldn't explain away. Wilson told him the markings were from alligator clips used to electrocute him, and Raba believed him. He notified then-Superintendent of Police Richard Brzeczek, who wrote a letter to then-State's Attorney Richard M. Daley, "seeking direction" on how to proceed. Daley, who is now Chicago's mayor, never responded.
Wilson was later granted a new trial and sentenced to natural life, without his illegally obtained confession. His case, however, set off a chain of events that would eventually expose the widespread, systematic use of torture within certain South Side units of the Chicago Police Department.
In 1990, a CPD Office of Professional Standards investigation, prompted by Wilson's story and the physical evidence backing it up, found that abuse at Areas 2 and 3 "was not limited to the usual beatings, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture." "Particular command members were aware of the systematic abuse and perpetuated it, either by actively participating in some or failing to take any action to bring it to an end," the report concluded. Subsequent OPS investigations found Detectives John Byrne, Peter Dignan and John Yucaitis, all involved in Michael Tillman's interrogation, to be "players" repeatedly named as abusers in Area 2 and 3 torture allegations.
During Wilson's civil trial, his attorneys at the People's Law Office began receiving anonymous letters tipping them off to other victims of police torture. Eventually, PLO lawyers compiled testimony in 107 Burge-connected torture cases, Tillman's among them.
Nevertheless, almost 20 years later, not a single police officer has been made to face charges in the massive scandal. They were all let off the hook, first by a succession of judges and legal professionals who looked the other way, and later by a statute of limitations that expired before the Illinois state attorney considered filing charges. According to Taylor, there is no state or federal law criminalizing torture by law enforcement officers. While possible offenses for torture can include attempted murder, aggravated battery, battery, assault, assault with a dangerous weapon or hate crimes, the statute on these crimes is generally five years for federal prosecution and three years in the state of Illinois.
In fact, the only officer who has thus far suffered any consequence for his actions has been Burge himself -- and his could hardly be called punishment. In 1993, the Police Board removed him from his command and forced him into early retirement. He currently lives in Apollo Beach, Fla., on a $3,400-a-month pension, where he is known to enjoy rides on his boat, the Vigilante. Other officers involved have since advanced in the ranks, as have the assistant state's attorneys who prosecuted the cases, at times burying or ignoring clear evidence of how the confessions were obtained.
Many of the co-conspirators who helped conceal the abuse are today Chicago's political elite. They include prominent Cook County and Illinois Appellate Court judges (including one of the prosecutors in Tillman's case), Illinois State's Attorney Richard Devine and Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was the state's attorney when many of the cases were tried and would have been responsible for bringing official charges against the abusive officers, but chose instead to look the other way. Devine was Daley's first assistant when he served as a "tough-on-crime" state's attorney from 1980 to 1989, a period that saw 55 allegations of confessions elicited through torture. He later went into private practice (before assuming his current role of state's attorney), where he was paid more than $1 million by the City of Chicago for defending Burge and the other officers involved in Wilson's civil suit. He then represented Burge in proceedings before the Police Board. Later, as state's attorney of Cook County, Devine discouraged investigations of Area 2 torture and continued to uphold confessions obtained by that means. Because of this conflict of interest, in 2002, at the request of a coalition of civil rights attorneys and activists, Circuit Judge Paul Biebel transferred jurisdiction over all torture-related cases to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. They have sat idle on her desk ever since.
The 10 cases that have been resolved have been done in spite of, rather than with the help of, Madigan or Devine.
Gov. George Ryan: "The Category of Horrors Was Hard to Believe"
In 2003, after years of campaigning by Chicago-area police accountability activists, then-Gov. George Ryan pardoned four Burge victims -- Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange -- who at the time were on death row. "The category of horrors was hard to believe," Ryan said. "If I hadn't reviewed the cases myself, I wouldn't believe it. We have evidence from four men, who did not know each other, all getting beaten and tortured and convicted on the basis of the confessions they allegedly provided. They are perfect examples of what is so terribly broken about our system."
Because of the mounting criticism of the Cook County justice system, because the four men were on death row, and because their attorneys had filed for clemency, Hobley, Patterson, Howard and Orange were pardoned. But dozens of others stayed behind, out of the limelight. "These weren't death penalty cases, so they're not nearly as sexy," explained attorney Scott Schutte, who recently represented another Burge torture victim, James Andrews, in a civil suit. "These are run-of-the-mill homicides."
Andrews is one of the few additional torture victims granted new trials or evidentiary hearings. Schutte filed a post-conviction petition in Andrews' case last year, claiming that new evidence had arisen in his case. In October, Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Sumner vacated his 1984 conviction and in February of this year, the attorney general's office declined to file new charges. His case, then, became the first to be thrown out in Cook County on the basis of torture. Andrews was set free, after spending 24 years in jail for a murder he insisted he didn't commit. "All along, he knew he was going to ultimately prevail," said Schutte.
However, he added that while the attorney general's office did not prohibit Andrews from going free, it didn't help. The attorney general requested bail, which Sumner set at $300,000. "In the larger scheme of things, it's inconsequential," said Schutte. "But the family had to ... bail him out. They cashed out 401(k)s, savings, everything. They did everything they could collectively."
Only one other Burge-related case has moved on the basis of torture and still awaits conclusion: that of Cortez Brown, who has been in jail since 1990. Earlier this year, an appeals court ordered evidentiary hearing in his case after reconsidering his torture allegations. In all, of the 100-plus identified victims of police torture in Chicago, few have been acknowledged and dealt with accordingly. According to Julien Ball of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, that's because of a lack of "political will" in Chicago to try these cases. "We have people at the highest levels of public office who have built their careers on torture," said Ball. "The state of Illinois doesn't care about you if you're black and you're poor. That's what these cases show."
Joey Mogul, an attorney with the People's Law Office, says some of the lawyers are also to blame. "I think it's an accumulation of racism and classism, as well as a massive cover-up that has led many people to not get fair hearings," she said. "Their lawyers didn't believe them and didn't even request hearings."
Schutte took on Andrews' case pro bono, but Tillman hasn't been so lucky. He currently lacks representation, and despite two appeals, remains in jail for life. "It's just pretty outrageous because all of the physical evidence points to someone else," said Catherine Crawford, a Northwestern University professor and attorney who was on a team of lawyers representing Leroy Orange and has researched Tillman's case and attempted to find him legal counsel. "But they had gotten a confession out of him before they found the stolen car. I think it's just one of those situations where the police said, 'Well, we don't want to throw out this confession so we're just going to pursue this case based on our original theory.'"
Robyn Ziegler, spokesperson for the attorney general's office, told AlterNet that all Burge-related cases are "in various stages of the post-conviction process," and that, "Ethically, the attorney general is obligated to handle each case individually based on the facts and history of the case. No two cases are the same."
But advocates for victims of police torture contend that it shouldn't matter. "In each case, the same thing needs to happen," said Ball. "Madigan needs to order evidentiary hearings so torture victims can present evidence of torture on the way to winning new trials. Regardless of the differences in individual cases, every single torture victim deserves a new trial where 'confessions' that were electroshocked, beaten and suffocated out of them are not used against them." Zeigler claimed that the attorney general does not have the authority or power to initiate new hearings.
But on July 10, 2007, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution urging Madigan to do just that.
On July 18 of this year, members of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, lawyers from the People's Law Office, religious and community leaders and relatives of the wrongfully imprisoned rallied in front of Madigan's office.
"Every day Lisa Madigan sits and does nothing is a day she is furthering a cover-up," said Marlene Martin, national director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "We're here to ask her to have guts."
The group, which had been there twice already this year, delivered a letter with more than 400 signatures from organizations, religious institutions and concerned citizens, asking Madigan to take action on the cases of the Burge victims who remain behind bars. They are also seeking reparations, in the form of psychological treatment and financial compensation, particularly since the vast majority of the Burge victims and their families have little if any financial resources to assist them in their legal battles and recovery process.
Michael Tillman is currently being held at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois, about a six-hour drive from Chicago. His mother, Jean, says she used to go down and visit him twice a month, but "with gas prices the way it is, I haven't been able to get down there." Since Tillman went to jail 24 years ago, his girlfriend, Princess, left Chicago with their two children and stopped keeping in touch with the family. "After all of this happened we stayed together for a while and then we all separated," she said. "I can't tell you why." She says the kids, who are grown now, haven't been to visit him for "about ten years."
"He's missed out on everything -- his kids, his family, just life," she said. "He was just snatched away from us. It's a dreadful experience to go through."
Jessica Pupovac is an adult educator and independent journalist living in Chicago.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/92374/
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