Explosiones en México DF o la Propaganda por los Hechos

Jorge Lofredo
Rebelión


Un conjunto de idénticas acciones contra sucursales bancarias, tiendas de ropa y concesionarias se realizaron a lo largo de este mes y fueron reivindicadas por grupos anarquistas desconocidos hasta ahora. Si en realidad son lo que dicen ser, pues todavía falta información concluyente, se trataría de un fenómeno cuya comprensión demanda romper con una mirada exclusivamente mexicana, que no cuenta con antecedentes inmediatos y que expresa razones distintas de las organizaciones clandestinas marxistas.

Acciones de similares características se vienen desarrollando desde hace tiempo ya en otros países, con particular asiduidad en Chile. Reunidos en torno a colectivos, se activan en pequeñas células. Su organización interna es una red interconectada con algún nivel de autonomía, lo que no vuelve necesaria una vinculación profunda entre uno y otros grupos, aunque entre ellos existen similitudes evidentes que en parte ponen en entredicho sus pronunciamientos referidos a esa autonomía. La utilización de un mismo modus operandi, los elementos usados en los sabotajes, la proximidad de una y otra acción y los blancos elegidos no pueden ser explicados exclusivamente por la casualidad, lo que hace referencia a la actividad de un único mismo grupo o bien se trata de grupos distintos, pero con un nivel de conexión muy pronunciado. En este sentido, es altamente probable que provengan de un mismo espacio o espacios político-sociales, organizaciones, colectivos, etc.; y, básicamente, en sus textos también existe un mismo lenguaje.

Como señalaron en diferentes ocasiones a través de sus textos (que pueden consultarse en liberaciontotal.entodaspartes.net) sus sabotajes hablan por sí mismos como expresiones de “ira” y “rabia”. No van más allá sino que en la acción está alojado su contenido: es la propaganda por los hechos. Pero sus acciones también demuestran otra cuestión, que refiere a romper el marco de la invisibilidad, produciendo el salto desde internet –espacio vital para estos grupos– hacia la actividad real. Estos son los tiempos donde, sin abandonar esa presencia virtual con la denuncia y la protesta, han decidido comenzar a poblar el espacio del hecho político concreto. La propaganda (el sabotaje) es entonces el punto culminante de estos cambios, el paso de lo virtual a lo real, de la denuncia a la acción, del anonimato a la identidad.

Según el colectivo chileno ‘Claudia López’, la estructura orgánica “horizontal” y su “radicalidad” le otorgan identidad y a la vez una diferenciación con las formas tradicionales de las organizaciones políticas de izquierda, aún cuando los sectores radicales revolucionarios han obtenido mejores resultados cuando alcanzan puntos de actuación conjunta. Aún así, “la nueva juventud radical ya no quiere jefes ni comandantes, sino ser protagonista y sujeto. El colectivo ha sido una vuelta hacia adentro, una mirada hacia la base social en la población…”. (“Nuevas formas de radicalidad juvenil en los noventa: los encapuchados”, en lahaine.org, agosto 2003.)

Quizá sea posible encontrar alguna instancia anterior de actividad política en aquellos sectores que se desprendían de las manifestaciones masivas en las cuales participaron (10 de junio, 2 de octubre, etc.) para realizar pintas, arrojar piedras contra cristales de comercios y producir pequeños enfrentamientos con las corporaciones de seguridad. Si así fuere, las manifestaciones de protesta en Guadalajara, mayo-junio de 2004, y el desenlace represivo que tuvo resultarían el parteaguas para los anarquistas mexicanos.

A renglón seguido, las acciones contra la tienda Max Mara, coordinada internacionalmente, como así también Renault y Bancomer demuestra la invalidez de condicionar el análisis a la coyuntura local y el papel fundamental que juega la red para el desarrollo de las actividades de estos grupos. Hasta las propias denominaciones adoptadas por los grupos (liberación global, liberación animal, revolución inmediata, etc.) están lo suficientemente alejadas de cualquier ámbito con referencia nacional; ésta es, antes, territorial y sin fronteras.

El efecto demostrativo de los cristalazos –que no alcanza a explicar por sí mismos el carácter revolucionario que se le pretende imprimir– sumado a lo poco o nada que se sabe en torno al origen de estos grupos, abonaron el terreno para hipótesis, conjeturas y comparaciones desproporcionadas e insostenibles a simple vista. Desde una pretendida reivindicación por parte de un grupo derechista español se le han querido comparar con ETA, como así también establecer una línea de continuidad con los responsables de los hechos ocurridos en Michoacán hace un año y hasta equipararlos con el secuestrador del avión y el tirador del metro. Como así tampoco existe alguna razón o dato duro que pueda establecer algún punto de contacto con las guerrillas marxistas.

Tampoco debe descartarse el carácter político que se pronuncian con estas explosiones. El objetivo es incendiar los cajeros bancarios, casetas telefónicas, tiendas de ropa y comida, etc. No se produce robos en ellas y cada una de ellas se acompaña con pintas. Y aunque la reivindicación es a veces confusa y en muchos casos escasa, ésta existe y es una línea de análisis e investigación que no puede descartarse. Alcanzan con ellas alguna repercusión mediática, aunque ha generado más opinión contraria que divulgación de sus objetivos a través de los medios masivos. Con ello se vuelven vulnerables a la estigmatización y su rotulación como “terroristas”.

La capital mexicana es el escenario elegido para el desarrollo de esta “guerra social”, que se presenta a sí misma como prólogo del 2010. Esta vertiente insurreccional del anarquismo todavía debe demostrar su carácter revolucionario que con la exclusiva producción de nuevos sabotajes no alcanzará.

Pig and Turkey Farming in the Inner City: One Woman's Amazing Adventures in Taking Urban Farming Beyond the Garden Plot

By Twilight Greenaway

Culinate

Most urban farmers confine their agricultural efforts to vegetables, fruit, and the occasional egg-laying chicken. But on her small plot in Oakland, California, Novella Carpenter has raised bees, goats, rabbits, geese, and turkey, among other fauna.

A graduate of the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she studied with Michael Pollan, Carpenter now writes about urban farming and sustainable-food production for various publications, including her blog, Ghost Town Farm. Her memoir, Farm City, is came out this summer from Penguin Press.

Twilight Greenaway: Why did you want to start a farm in the city, rather than moving to a rural area?

Novella Carpenter: I think people have a lot of nostalgia and yearning for these pastoral places, but my parents did that -- they were back-to-the-land hippies in the 1970s -- and it quickly became clear to me that city people moving to the country is kind of a horrible idea. They don't usually have any skills, for one.

I grew up in Idaho till age six, then moved to Shelton, Washington, which had a population of only 7,000. It was isolated. So when people tell me they're planning to move to the country, I say, "You're going to have great food, but you're not going to have anyone to share it with."

TG: What percentage of the food that you eat comes from your farm?

NC: I'd say around 50 percent. This Thanksgiving, we raised our own turkey, so that was our contribution to the meal we ate with friends.

TG: What would have to happen for urban farming to really take off in the U.S.?

NC: They would have to drop a lot of the regulations and laws that exist to stop people from doing it. From what I understand, the dualism between the city and the farm has been created by laws, and often they're anti-immigrant laws.

During the Second World War and after, there were lots of immigrants who moved to cities to work in factories, and often they wanted to bring their animals with them. Italians would want to have rabbits, and people from the South would want to have chickens. So some laws would have to change to make it more possible for more people to keep animals.

It would be great to section off whole parts of cities for people who wanted to have small farms -- a kind of farm zone. Attitudes would have to change, too. People would have to stop seeing the "city" and the "country" in such a dualistic way. In Missoula, Montana, there's a battle going on right now between the people who want to have chickens in the city and those who are violently opposed to it.

People usually do more urban farming in times of economic depression, so who knows? Maybe things will get so bad that everyone will start farming in cities again.

TG: What are the biggest challenges you face in maintaining an urban farm?

NC: Learning to take care of animals is a challenge, but it's also where you learn the most. I've tried raising basically everything short of a cow; they need too much space.

You really have to be in a different zone to take care of animals; sometimes city life just isn't conducive. If your goat is giving birth, it's not like you can go to work. So there's a tradeoff, but I think it's an all an adjustment, and many people do figure it out.

When people ask how to begin, I always tell them to start slow: try bees, and then chickens. My recent acquisition was to get some goats, but I was thinking, "Wow, if I had gotten the goat, the rabbit, and the geese all at the same time, it would have been a total disaster."

TG: What was your goal in writing the memoir?

NC: The goal is just to tell the story of one urban farm and the characters that I encounter while farming. It's a portrait of a time. I also do a lot of describing processes; I think there's a real hunger for that kind of book. It's a little like 1,001 Things Your Grandpa Used To Do. Now I'm working on a proposal for a how-to book, because I think people want to know more details.

TG: Where is the line between stepping backwards, or returning to ways we did things in the past, versus moving forward and doing new things with food production?

NC: Some people see what I'm doing as a revival. And it's true, in a way; it is kind of like going backwards. The difference is, things are so much easier because of the Internet, in terms of knowledge. When I was trying to figure out how to kill my rabbits, I eventually found out some really great instructions on a website. I can order day-old chicks on the Internet and get them the next day in the mail. So it's not like I'm trying to live in the Stone Age.

There's also this huge waste stream that wasn't there when grandpa was alive. Now you can go to the dumpster at the organic grocery store, and it's just brimming with food to feed your chickens or rabbits.

It's not like I'm trying to become totally self-sufficient as a hobby; I think that's kind of a ridiculous goal. But I do believe in using what I have. For instance, I'm going to make soap with the tallow from my goat. And I have rabbits we kill for meat, so I have all these pelts, and I'm learning how to tan them, because throwing them in the compost would just be wrong. Living like this opens you up to the full cycle of life of the animal.

Seis Ideas Para Repensar la Guerra

SABINA BERMAN

Proceso

Todo debate termina cuando los primeros balazos se escuchan. Cuando las botas de los primeros batallones entran a una ciudad se asienta un silencio forzado entre los civiles. Un silencio temeroso y que entraña dos esperanzas:
La primera. Ojalá ganen los mejores la guerra y que sea rápido. La segunda. Gane quien gane, que sea rápido.

Este es un efecto universal de la guerra que puntualmente se cumplió en México hace tres años, cuando este gobierno sacó a las ciudades al Ejército Mexicano, y que se desprende de la misma definición de lo que es una guerra.
La guerra es un movimiento rápido e intenso de militares e implementos para la destrucción para lograr un rápido objetivo.

Pero en vista de los resultados (la escalada, y no la disminución, del robo, la extorsión y el secuestro a la población civil), otro efecto regular de la guerra está cumpliéndose:
Siendo el destino de la guerra un resultado rápido, si la guerra se prolonga más de tres años se descompone en otra cosa.

Típicamente la guerra se vuelve una carnicería diaria y confusa. Se instala como una forma de vida bárbara, donde la civilización ha perdido ya la jugada. Por eso, inevitable, otra regla que conlleva cualquier guerra:
Mientras más dura una guerra, más impopular se vuelve.

Pregúntele a la gente de Juárez, que recibió con júbilo al Ejército Mexicano, si ahora quiere que siga en sus calles. Pregúntele a la gente de Monterrey. Pregúntele a la gente de Morelia.

Ahora añoran el statu quo anterior, que era malo, porque éste es peor. La opinión es generalizada: Al mal de los cárteles enfrentados entre sí, ahora se añaden otros dos males. Los cárteles se han “deshumanizado”; es decir, que su violencia se ha vuelto ciega y el Ejército, supuesto agente de la vida civilizada, está violando los derechos humanos de los civiles y los criminales.

Es decir, la supuesta guerra se ha vuelto para millones de mexicanos una forma de vida en medio de una violencia extrema.

Un Estado que finca en el Ejército su poder debe saber que al no ganar la guerra se le declara impotente.

Así viene ocurriendo en las ciudades militarizadas: la persistencia del Ejército en las calles mientras la vida diaria empeora parece delatar la incapacidad del Estado y hunde en la desesperación a la gente. Ya no hay dónde mirar, dice la gente en Juárez; si falló el Ejército, ya nada puede arreglar esto.

Bueno, es falso. El Ejército Mexicano no ha fallado por falta de capacidad guerrera. Ha fallado por falta de estrategia para usar su superioridad militar.
Al Ejército Mexicano se le ha enviado a las ciudades sin objetivos amplios y seguros. Textualmente se le ha enviado “a ocupar las plazas”, y casi a nada más. Al contrario: se le ha enviado con la prohibición de emplear al máximo su capacidad guerrera.
Sus tanquetas estacionadas, sus bazukas acuarteladas, se les usa de pronto como una suerte de policía extraordinaria para misiones concretas, donde suelen tener éxito rápido. Pero luego se les regresa otra vez a “no hacer nada” en las calles. Sí: a simplemente ocuparlas.

En Juárez se les ve pasearse fútilmente sobre el asfalto espejeante de sol. Se les ve detener automovilistas, porque no llevan puestos cinturones de seguridad. Se les ha visto dar la vuelta en U sobre un camellón para escapar del enfrentamiento con un convoy de vehículos de narcos.

Una noche me tocó presenciar en Juárez cómo los soldados se resguardaban en un hotel, con órdenes expresas de hacerlo, mientras los narcos se tiroteaban en la calle.
¿Hasta cuándo los generales soportarán ser usados como policías emergentes por los políticos, que nada saben de la guerra? ¿Hasta cuándo soportarán el desgaste de su prestigio y de su propia confianza? ¿Hasta cuándo seguiremos en una guerra sin una estrategia?

Lo que trae a cuento una verdad de la guerra mil veces probada:
No es el grupo más numeroso y mejor armado el que necesariamente gana una guerra, sino el mejor articulado y más seguro de su objetivo.
Al tercer año de la guerra aún nadie sabe cuál es el objetivo de las fuerzas del Estado, ni siquiera el Ejército o el gobierno.
¿Eliminar los robos, los secuestros y la extorsión a la población civil? Un objetivo con el que todos los civiles parecemos estar de acuerdo.

¿Extirpar completo el tráfico de drogas? ¿Eliminar hasta el último criminal? Dos objetivos que parecen imposibles, dado el monto del negocio del narco: 40 mil millones de dólares anuales según la cifra recién publicada en los Estados Unidos, y la reserva enorme de gente que parece dispuesta a suplir a los muertos de las filas del narco. Dos objetivos que de hecho el gobierno estadunidense descarta en la práctica en su propio enfrentamiento con el narcotráfico, donde ataca más bien el narcomenudeo y los crímenes contra civiles.

¿O instaurar un nuevo equilibrio entre el crimen y el Estado, a favor del Estado, y un acotamiento de los crímenes (ya no secuestros y ya no extorsiones a los civiles)?
Un objetivo al que incluso el crimen organizado parece estar dispuesto, según se desprende de lo dicho por Servando Gómez, La Tuta, cabeza del cártel La Familia, en un llamado al diálogo por la paz, lanzado por la televisión de Morelia el pasado 15 de agosto.

Con gran hombría el secretario de Gobernación replicó ese mismo día: “El gobierno no pacta con el narco.” Ojalá con mayor respeto por lo viable y por la vida ajena lo hubiera consultado con los civiles de las ciudades militarizadas de México.

Six Ideas for Re-thinking the War in Mexico

The Security Situation has Worsened, and Mexicans are Desperate for Policy Change... Any Policy Change

by Sabina Berman

Proceso

NarcoNews



All debate ends when the first gunshots are fired. When the boots of the first battalion hit a city's streets, a forced silence falls over the civilians. A fearful silence that entails two hopes:

First: God willing, the best will win the war and it will be quick. Second: Whoever wins, let it be quick.

This is a universal effect of war that expectedly occurred in Mexico three years ago, when the current administration sent the Mexican Military to the cities, defying the very definition of war.

War is a rapid and intense movement of soldiers and tools of destruction in order to achieve a rapid objective.

But in light of the results (the escalation--rather than reduction--of robbery, extortion, and kidnapping of the civilian population), another normal effect of war is occurring:

Being that war's goal is a rapid result, if war is prolonged for more than three years it devolves into something else.

Typically, war devolves into a daily and confusing slaughter. It installs itself as a barbaric form of life where civilization has lost. Therefore, inevitably, another rule that every war entails:

The longer a war goes on, the more unpopular it becomes.

Ask the people of Juarez, who received the Mexican Military with jubilation, if they still want soldiers on their streets. Ask the people of Monterrey. Ask the people of Morelia.

Now they yearn for the old status quo, which was bad, because this is worse. The opinion is widespread: As bad as cartels fighting amongst themselves might be, it is now coupled with two other bad things. The cartels have been "dehumanized;" that is, their violence has become blind. And the Military, supposed agent of civilized life, is violating both civilians' and criminals' human rights.

In other words, for millions of Mexicans the so-called war has turned into a way of life amidst extreme violence.

A State that places all of its power in the Military ought to know that if it doesn't win the war, it will be declared impotent.

That's what's happening in the militarized cities: the Military's persistence in the streets while daily life is getting worse seems to demonstrate the State's incompetence, and the people become demoralized and drown in desperation. Now there's no one to turn to, say the people of Juarez. If the Military failed, nothing can fix this.

Well, that's not true. The Mexican Military has not failed because it lacks the capacity to fight wars. It has failed because it lacks a strategy to use its military superiority.

The Mexican Military has been sent to cities without broad and clear objectives. It has literally been sent to "occupy territory" and almost nothing else. In fact, it has been prohibited to use its maximum ability to fight wars.

With its tanks parked and its bazookas confined to barracks, the military is used as a kind of extraordinary police for concrete missions, where it tends to have rapid success. But later the soldiers are returned to "not doing anything" in the streets. Yes: to simply occupy them.

In Juarez they are seen futilely strolling down the sunny streets. They are seen pulling over drivers because they aren't wearing their seatbelts. They have been seen making a U-turn over a traffic island in order to avoid confrontation with a convoy of narco vehicles.

One night in Juarez, I saw how the soldiers took shelter in a hotel, with explicit orders to do so, while narcos were shooting at each other in the street.

For how much longer will the generals tolerate being used as emergency police by politicians who know nothing about war? For how much longer will they tolerate the strain on their prestige and trust? For how much longer will this war without strategy continue?

Which brings us to a fact of war that has been proven a thousand times:

It is not the most numerous and best-armed group that necessarily wins a war; rather, it is the group that is best articulated and most sure of its objective.

Even after three years of war, nobody knows what the State's objective is--not even the Military or the government knows.

Eliminate robbery, kidnapping, and extortion of the civilian population? That's an objective that all civilians appear to agree with.

Completely eradicate drug trafficking? Get rid of every single criminal? Those are two objectives that appear to be impossible given the drug trafficking industry's monetary value: $40 billion dollars annually according to a statistic recently published in the United States. Moreover, there is an enormous reserve of people who appear to be willing to take the place of the dead in the narcos' ranks. These are two objectives that even the US government rules out in practice in its own confrontation with drug trafficking, where instead it attacks drug dealers and crimes against civilians.

Or to find a new equilibrium between crime and the State, in favor of the State, and drawing the line on crimes (no more kidnappings and extortion of civilians)?

That's an objective that even organized crime seems to be willing to accept, according to what can be deduced from what Servando "La Tuta" Gomez, head of the La Familia cartel, said when he called for peace dialogues on television in Morelia this past August 15.

With great manliness, the Secretary of the Interior replied that same day: "The government does not make pacts with narcos." One would have hoped that, out of respect for what is viable and out of respect for other people's lives, he would have first consulted with residents of Mexico's militarized cities.



Translated by Kristin Bricker

A Punto de Operar un Gigantesco Saqueo Contra el Pueblo

Los Brigadistas-UNAM


Los mismos de siempre, los que se hacen llamar “servidores públicos” y se embolsan las arcas de los recursos del Estado, son los que hoy pretenden aprobar un atraco descomunal contra el pueblo. Carstens y Felipe Calderón metieron una iniciativa al Congreso, que una parte de la clase política asegura que “no permitirá”. Resulta curioso ver al PRI encabezando este “descontento”, cuando ha sido ese partido, el instrumentador de cantidad de saqueos, agresiones y represión. ¿Ahora de pronto son los que nos defienden? Nada de eso.

Pasada esta pantomima de debate, los legisladores aprobarán, seguramente no la propuesta calderonista con sus puntos y sus comas, pero sí un paquete tremendamente agresivo contra los de abajo y de protección a los beneficios de los de arriba. No cabe duda: se está cocinando un atraco de magnitudes históricas.
Apechugar la crisis, “responsabilidad de todos”.

Están en campaña los señores del dinero. Dicen que todos tenemos que apechugar y “aportar” para rescatar las finanzas de la nación, y más aún, que esta “aportación” será, en mayor medida, “para los pobres”. Si realmente ese 2% de impuesto general que proponen será redistribuido para apoyar a la parte más empobrecida de la población (lo cual tendríamos argumentos de sobra para poner en duda), no sería, como dicen, para “erradicar la pobreza”, sino para contener el descontento. No se trata de un programa estructural que vaya resolviendo la desigualdad y la miseria, sino de un cúmulo de recursos en manos del gobierno, que se usarán a discreción, sea para apagar focos rojos o para seguir enriqueciendo a los más ricos. Por lo demás, los pobres de los que habla el gobierno también van a ver disminuida la miserable ayuda que les den cuando les apliquen los nuevos impuestos al consumo.

Y desde ya, echaron a andar su plan. Por todos los medios a su alcance, Calderón y los suyos están poniendo un tapabocas reforzado a las posibles expresiones de repudio, adelantándose a lo que puede ser una ola de resistencia. Si no quieres apoyar a los pobres, pagar los nuevos impuestos, aceptar el aumento general de precios y los recortes, eres un egoísta, un ignorante, no comprendes la situación, estás llevando a la bancarrota al país.
La crisis no golpea igual a todos. Desde sus posiciones privilegiadas, los empresarios recortarán salarios a sus empleados y tal vez no puedan cambiar de coche este año. En cambio, para los de abajo viene lo peor, más pobreza, desempleo, migración y desesperanza.

En Guatemala, se decretó “estado de calamidad pública” por la duplicación de la hambruna y la muerte de hambre de 462 personas en la primera mitad del año. Según informes de la ONU (15 de septiembre pasado), casi la mitad de la población mundial está desnutrida (3 mil millones de habitantes), y mil millones sufren hambre, la cifra más alta de la historia. En México, la situación del hambre es “alarmante” dijo el relator especial para temas de alimentación. Y aun así, van los nuevos impuestos por todo, por comer, por leer y por sanar, por tener un salario, por depositar en el banco, por fumar, por beber, por hacer una llamada telefónica, por prender la tele, por entrar a internet, por comprar un cachito de lotería… Vaya, ni Santa Anna pudo imaginar tal variedad.

Paquete económico, como la leña al fuego

Para sacar al capitalismo del hoyo, muchos países actualmente devuelven impuestos, bajan precios, aumentan subsidios. Pero en México, cegados por el dogma neoliberal, los señores del gobierno hacen exactamente lo contrario, reprimir el consumo, limitarlo, quitarle más dinero a los trabajadores, despedir a miles de empleados del Estado, etc. En suma: menos dinero para el pueblo, menos consumo, y por tanto, menos producción y menos empleos, que al cabo nos llevarán a una todavía menor recaudación y un mayor “boquete fiscal”.
Para su derroche ¡Ni un peso más de nuestros bolsillos!

El gobierno se proclama austero, pero ya todos sabemos lo que en realidad es: un ladrón de los recursos público. Nos piden más dinero, cuando ya se llevaron la mayor parte de la riqueza producida por ríos enteros de sudor y sangre de nuestro pueblo. No sacian su sed y su avaricia. No podemos estar dispuestos, no podemos darles más. Según Calderón, los esfuerzos en austeridad que propone le permitirán obtener más de 180 mil millones de pesos, lo cual no significa nada, comparado con los 2 billones de pesos que este gobierno ha condonado a las grandes empresas por los regímenes tributarios especiales que les exenta de pago de impuestos.

Recortan el presupuesto a la educación, siendo particularmente perjudicada la educación superior, pero en cambio aumenta el gasto de operación del gobierno y su burocracia en 49 mil 578 millones de pesos. Los servicios personales a los “servidores” públicos, se incrementarán 6 mil 796 millones, quedando en 829 mil 125 millones para 2010, más del doble de los 300 mil millones de pesos que se tradujeron en el “shock” financiero que anunció Carstens el mes pasado.

Por todo esto es que el paquete económico de Calderón debe encontrar el más amplio repudio popular, no sólo de los partidos y los empresarios que hacen el teatro del “debate”, sino de todos nosotros, del pueblo, quienes seremos los realmente perjudicados por este paquetazo económico, a punto de aprobarse.

Nuestra voz debe ser unánime: ¡Ya basta!

Nada de aumento de IVA, ni recortes a educación, ni retiro de subsidios. Nada de incremento de los precios de los servicios, electricidad y gasolinas. Ningún impuesto más. ¿Cuáles son las preocupaciones del pueblo? ¿Llenar el boquete financiero de Carstens? ¿Darle más dinero a Calderón para su sueldo y el de todos los parásitos de la alta burocracia? No, el pueblo quiere que la riqueza que genera llegue a su mesa, que sus hijos puedan ir a la escuela, que su familia tenga acceso a clínicas y hospitales con medicinas gratuitas. El pueblo quiere trabajo y una vida mejor. Lo que Calderón propone, no tienen nada que ver con eso. Ellos quieren llenar el hoyo fiscal para seguir en las mismas, explotando al pueblo, seguir enriqueciéndose a costa del trabajo ajeno. En su propuesta no hay nada que nos haga pensar lo contrario, no hay impuestos a la especulación financiera, no hay recorte sustancial de sueldos a los políticos, ni reducción de sus gastos de servicios personales.

Dice Carstens que los recursos de su nuevo impuesto del 2% a todo, será para los pobres, que el gobierno lo certifica frente a quien sea. Y Calderón sale casi hasta por las coladeras diciéndonos que “seamos solidarios” con los pobres, que los apoyemos, que cada chicle que masquemos servirá para darle de comer a un pobre… ¡Qué canallada! Pedirle al pueblo que acepte este chantaje. Exigirle que ponga más cuando ya ha sido exprimido hasta el cansancio y ellos mantienen intactas sus fortunas. ¡No tienen vergüenza Calderón y su camarilla! Sí queremos erradicar la pobreza, pero no a costa de hacer más pobre a todo el pueblo, sino a costa de la riqueza de unos cuantos. A costa de acabar con este aberrante sistema económico.

Alimentación, educación, salud, vivienda y trabajo, pueden y deben ser derechos garantizados para todos. Por ello tenemos que dar una lucha sin tregua. En esa crisis, la pelea será por los recursos, los de arriba inventarán cualquier tipo de chantajes y mentiras para apropiárselos, y así resguardar sus privilegios; frente a ello, los de abajo debemos oponernos, repudiar el paquete económico de Calderon y movilizarnos para derrotarlo, contraponiendo un programa anticrisis que proteja al pueblo y anteponga, sobre cualquier otra cosa, sus derechos más esenciales. Sí hay dinero, está en el despilfarro y los gastos absurdos del gobierno, en los altos salarios de los funcionarios públicos, en la corrupción, el pago de la deuda externa, etc. Sí hay recursos, pero se destina a favorecer a los grandes empresarios de dentro y fuera del país.

Que el gobierno siga viendo al norte y rezando por la reactivación de la economía gringa; veamos nosotros al sur, a nuestros hermanos latinoamericanos que cada vez más avanzan en la construcción de una sociedad más humana, más justa, más igualitaria. En manos de los actuales gobernantes, los medios productivos generan desempleo y miseria; el bienestar sólo será posible si estos pasan a manos del pueblo.

La movilización del pueblo, es lo único que puede detener este monstruoso saqueo.

¡NO AL PAQUETE ECONÓMICO DE CALDERÓN!

"Our Fires Illuminate the Night"

Wave of Anarchist Bombings Strikes Mexico

By JOHN ROSS

CounterPunch

Mexico City

An unprecedented wave of anarchist bombings here and in provincial capitals has Mexican security forces on red alert. Beginning September 1st, bombs have gone off once or twice a week regularly as clockwork, taking out windows and ATMs at five banks, torching two auto showrooms and several U.S. fast-food franchises plus an upscale boutique in the chic Polanco district of this conflictive capital. In each case, the Anarchist "A" has been spray-painted on nearby walls along with slogans supporting animal liberation demands to stop prison construction, and calls for the demise of capitalism.

The serial bombings are the first to strike Mexico City since November 2006 when radicals took out a chunk of the nation's highest electoral tribunal, blew a foreign-owned bank, and scorched an auditorium in the scrupulously-guarded compound of the once and future ruling PRI party. The 2006 attacks came in the wake of a fraud-marred presidential election and federal police suppression of a popular uprising in the southern state of Oaxaca and were claimed by five armed groups, most prominently the Democratic Revolutionary Tendency, a split-off from the Marxist-Leninist Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) which itself bombed a Sears outlet in Oaxaca City in 2006 and PEMEX pipelines in central Mexico in 2007.

Anarchist cells that claim to have perpetrated the recent explosions take pains to distance themselves from the Marxist bombers.

In vindicating a September 25th blast at a Banamex branch in the rural Milpa Alta delegation (borough) of Mexico City during which the rebels claim a half million pesos were immolated, "The Subversive Alliance For The Liberation Of The Earth, The Animals, & The Humans" (in that order) charged that the U.S.-owned bank promoted "torture, destruction, and slavery. "Our motives are to stop these bastards and let them know that we are not playing games."

Bank video cameras captured the images of three hooded and black-clad young bombers. On October 1st, 22 year-old Ramses Villareal, a student activist, was arrested by federal police and charged with "terrorism" in connection with bombings at several of the banks. He was released the next day after violent protests by young anarchists in Mexico City.

The September 25th Banamex blast was not the first time the bank has been targeted by "terrorist" bombs. In August 2001, heavy duty fireworks broke out windows in a "cristalazo" at three southern Mexico City branches to protest the sale of Banamex, Mexico's oldest bank, to Citigroup, the New York-based banking group that has been so devastated by the financial melt-down that it recently put Banamex back up for sale.

The 2001 bombing was attributed to the little-known Armed Revolutionary Front of the People (FARP.) Three brothers, students at the UNAM, and the sons of EPR founder Francisco Cerezo (not his real name) were subsequently imprisoned on "terrorism" charges - the attacks took place just days before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington purportedly carried out by Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group. The Cerezo brothers were imprisoned for eight years and have only recently been released from federal lockup.

The September bombings and associated property damage also singled out Mexico City and Guadalajara offices of the European bio-tech titan Novartis that, along with Monsanto, bears responsibility for spreading genetically modified seed throughout Mexico's corn-growing belt and contaminating native species of maiz. Auto showrooms in the two cities were also on the business end of Molotov cocktails September 18th and 26th - seven luxury automobiles including a Hummer were torched at Auto Nova in Guadalajara.

An Internet page documenting the Guadalajara bombing included communiqués from Jeffrey Luers AKA "Free", who is serving ten years in Oregon for burning up 21 SUVs on a Portland lot. "Free" is accused by the FBI of being an associate of the Earth Liberation Front, eco-"terrorists" that the U.S. Justice Department has elevated to the top of the Terrorist Hit Parade, alongside Bin Laden. The initials "ELF" were reportedly spray-painted on the burnt-out showroom walls.

Messages from the bombers were posted to the Total Liberation website (www.liberaciontotal.entodaspartes.net) that is dedicated to "the dissolution of civilization" and serves as an international bulletin board for notices of similar sabotage by anarchist cells around the world such as the U.S. "Burn Down The Jails!", Latin American autonomous cells of the Animal Liberation Front - an ELF offshoot, and the Greek anarchist movement that ravaged Athens this summer.

"Our fire illuminates the night!" waxed poetic one anonymous Mexican anarchist interviewed on the Total Liberation site. "We have lost all fear of spending the rest of our days in prison", perhaps a reference to the Cerezo brothers and Ramsis Villareal. Groups claiming bombings and other successful acts of sabotage take fanciful names infused with poetry, bravado, and black humor: "Luddites Against the Domestication of Wildlife", "Espana Signus Francescos" (thought to be a reference to San Francisco of Assisi, the patron saint of animals), and "Autonomous Cells of the Immediate Revolution - Praxides G. Guerrero."

The historically obscure Guerrero was the first anarchist to fall in the landmark 1910-1919 Mexican revolution whose centennial will be marked in 2010. Praxides G. Guerrero was felled by a "bala ciega" (literally "blind bullet") during a guerrilla raid on Janus Chihuahua in May 1910, six months before Francisco Madero officially called for the overthrow of dictator Porfirio Diaz in November of that year to launch the Mexican revolution.

Only 28 years old on the day of his death, Guerrero was a young partisan of anarchist superstars Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magon. "Praxides translated the theory of anarchism into practical action," writes anarchist historian Dave Poole. In a recent e-mail, John Mason Hart, author of the definitive study "Anarchism & The Mexican Working Class", concluded that if Guerrero had survived, the Mexican revolution would have looked more like the contemporary neo-Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas than the fratricidal bucket of blood it became.

As a writer, Praxides G. Guerrero's prose has all the impact of an anarchist bomb. In "Blow!", the revolutionary imagines himself as the wind: "I steal into palaces and factories, I blow through prisons and caress the infancy prostituted by Justice, I force my way into army barracks and see in them an academy of assassination, I am the breath of the revolution…"

It hardly seems a coincidence that modern-day anarchists struck in September, "the patriotic month" when Mexicans celebrate the declaration of their independence from Spain in 1810, the bicentennial of which, along with the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, is on deck in 2010. President Felipe Calderon has budgeted billions of pesos to mark the twin centennials even as Mexico is mired in a bottomless recession that has driven millions of workers into the streets. Ironically, the Calderon government has reportedly contracted a Hollywood production outfit with the very anarchist brand-name "Autonomy" for $60,000,000 USD to mount centennial "spectaculars" - in 2008, "Autonomy" staged the spectacular pageant that opened the Beijing Olympics.

In invoking Praxides G. Guerrero's hallowed name, anarchist bombers appear to be celebrating the vital role their ideological forbearers played in the Mexican revolution, the first great uprising of the landless in the Americas and an immediate precursor of the Russian revolution.

Anarchism in Mexico dates back to the first days of the republic when in 1824, North American followers of the Welsh utopian socialist Robert Owen unsuccessfully sought to establish colonies along the border in Chihuahua. In the 1860s, anarchism doing business as "mutualism" (i.e. working class solidarity) took root in the burgeoning Mexican labor movement - mutualism's most significant representation was the House of The World Worker (Casa de Obrero Mundial") that flourished during the early days of the revolution.

As the Mexican revolution crested at the turn into the 20th century, anarchism gained an early foothold. Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magon's newspaper "Regeneracion" ("Regeneration") was passed from hand to hand and widely read by those who sought the dictator's overthrow. Repeatedly imprisoned by Porfirio Diaz, Ricardo and Enrique fled to the U.S. where they clandestinely continued to publish "Regeneracion." The anarchist duo was pursued by both Diaz's agents and U.S. immigration authorities and forced to flee from city to city (San Antonio, Los Angeles, S. Louis.) Imprisoned for violating the 1917 version of the Patriot Act, Ricardo Flores Magon died in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in 1922 under mysterious circumstances that suggest he was strangled by prison guards for flying a Mexican flag in his cell. A century after the Mexican revolution, a handful of campesino organizations in the Flores Magones' native state of Oaxaca continue to incorporate the brothers' names in their struggles.

During their ill-fated sojourn north of the border, the Magones forged links to U.S. anarchists. The IWW - the Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies - which preached anarchism on the street corners of the American west, are said to have been the organizing force behind the miners' strike in the great Cananea copper pit in Sonora during which a score of workers were massacred by the Arizona Rangers - Cananea is considered the seedbed of the Mexican labor movement. The celebrated Chicago anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre contributed to Regeneracion and raised bail money for the Flores Magones. In 1911, Joe Hill, the renowned Wobbly organizer and bard, rode with the Magonistas in a failed expedition to liberate Baja California.

Despite their margination from the revolutionary mainstream, Magonistas fought in the armies of Emiliano Zapata, Francisco Villa, and Venustiano Carranza although they were often singled out as troublemakers and executed by revolutionary firing squads.

The anarchist flame in Mexico would never have survived without the solidarity of Spanish exiles. Spanish anarchists played a critical role in the formation of the House of the World Worker and after the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) anarchist fighters and thinkers were offered sanctuary from Franco's fascist hordes in Mexico. Spanish anarchists founded the Social Reconstruction Library in downtown Mexico City, an invaluable repository of anarchist archives.

The Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas in 1994 signaled the second coming of Mexican anarchism. The EZLN's rejection of dependence on the "mal gobierno" (bad government) and its insistence on collective action and the creation of autonomous zones in the southeast of that highly-indigenous state inspired collectives of young anarchists, often clustered around the National Autonomous University or UNAM. Anarchist activists spurred the 1999-2000 strike against a tuition hike at the National University. Ski-masked, so-called "ultras" with tags like "El Mosh", "El Gato", and "The Devil" drove the student struggle to sectarian excess and a clampdown by the federal police that resulted in 700 arrests.

The uproar at the 1999 Seattle conclave of the World Trade Organization was the first explosion of the anti-globalization movement in which anarchists would play a pivotal role. Black clad youth basked in the media spotlight in Seattle but property damage against franchise chains like Niketown by the self-named "Black Bloc" purportedly animated by the writings of U.S. anarchist guru John Zerzan, offended mainstream anti-globalization groups like Global Exchange whose founder, Medea Benjamin called for their arrest. The Seattle uprising was first plotted at a 1996 anti-globalization forum staged by the Zapatistas on the fringes of the Lacandon jungle.

The death of Black Blocker Carlo Giuliani under the guns of the police at the 2001 Genoa Italy G-8 summit had deep scratch in the Zapatista zone where a clinic has been named for the anarchist martyr at Oventic, the rebels' most public outpost - the Giuliani family has contributed an ambulance.

Mexican black blockers went into action at the 2003 WTO fiasco in the luxury port of Cancun. Armed with Molotov cocktails, shopping carts filled with rocks, and home-made battering rams, the anarchos threatened to storm police barricades but spontaneous peace-making by indigenous women protestors helped avoid bloodshed and the black-clad militants decided to burn down a local pizza parlor instead.

Bloodshed was on the agenda at a 2004 Ibero-American summit in Guadalajara when then Governor Francisco Ramirez Acuna (now president of the lower house of the Mexican congress) unleashed his robocops on an anti-globalization rally. Young anarchists were beaten into the sidewalk like so many baby harp seals and dragged off to gaol where police torture continued for weeks. Several block blockers were held for nearly a year despite the outcry from the international human rights community.

Anarchist collectives in Mexico City are not universally unruly. La Karakola, a collective that swears allegiance to Zapatismo and non-violence, would just as soon dance as toss rocks at the cops. Anarcho "squats" take over abandoned buildings - the "okupas" modeled on those run by Barcelona activists pop up in unlikely neighborhoods such as the squat house under the towering Torre Mayor, an 88-story skyscraper on swanky Reforma boulevard.

Punky anarchist fashion - black clothes, studded leather jackets, piercings, exotic hairstyles, and a written language in which "k's" replace "c's", is popular with dissident big city youth and on display Saturday mornings at the Chopo Bazaar and evenings at the Alicia Forum where punk meets anarchism. But most anarcho "fashionistas" are not bombers - it's a struggle to slip a ski mask over a Mohawk.

2006 seems to be the year that anarcho fury at the destruction of the planet took wings - the earliest postings on the Total Liberation page date from then. The first actions were little publicized and dismissed by police and the media as vandalism - destruction of pay phones installed by Telmex, owned by tycoon Carlos Slim, the richest man in Latin America, is a popular sport. Sabotage peaked in 2008 when 129 actions were recorded, most of them non-violent such as the liberation of slaughter house-bound chickens and the reconfiguration of bull ring signage transforming the Toluca Plaza de Torros into a "Plaza of Torturers."

One exception was the torching of a leather expo in Leon Guanajuato, the shoe and boot capital of Mexico. On October 2nd, the 40th anniversary of the 1968 student massacre, fast food franchises were Molotov-ed in the capital's old quarter and 13 anarchists arrested. Fake bombs were subsequently planted at MacDonald's, KTC, and Burger King in ten provincial cities.

The September wave of bombings was a defiant step upwards but not by much - the "bombs" were primitively fashioned from butane tanks used by plumbers to solder pipes and detonated by bottle rockets. All bombings occurred during early morning hours to avoid human casualties although some stray dogs and cats may have been singed.

Despite the lack of lethal intent, the bombings have riveted the attentions of numerous security forces, particularly the CISEN, Mexico's lead intelligence agency which is reportedly spread thin trying to keep tabs on plans by clandestine guerrilla bands ranging from the Zapatistas to the EPR to foment armed uprising during the 100th birthday party of the Mexican revolution to which all Mexicans, regardless of ideological persuasion, have been invited.

John Ross' monstrous "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption In Mexico City" will hit the streets in November (to read raving reviews from the likes of Mike Davis and Jeremy Scahill go to www.nationbooks.org.) Ross will be traveling Gringolandia much of 2009-2010 with "El Monstruo" and his new Haymarket title "Iraqigirl", the diary of a teenager growing up under U.S. occupation. If you have a venue for presentations he would like to talk to you at johnross@igc.org

Recordando Tlatelolco

Marcos Roitman Rosenmann
El Correo del Orinoco


Un dos de octubre de 1968, a las 18.10 de la tarde, en medio de un mitin donde se concentraban 15.000 personas, la casi totalidad estudiantes y profesores universitarios se cometería uno de los crímenes de Estado mas profusamente elaborados del continente. La señal para comenzar la matanza, según los relatos, fue el lanzamiento de cuatro bengalas. El ejército apostado estratégicamente cubrió todos los flancos. El uso de ametralladoras y armas de grueso calibre fueron las armas elegidas para acometer la maniobra. El secretario de Defensa, general Gracia Barragán, supervisó, conjuntamente con el Secretario de gobernación, Luis Echeverría las escaramuzas En la acción, participaron un total de cinco mil soldados y su duración se extendió por un tiempo superior a las dos horas. Allí quedaron los cuerpos sin vida de cientos de jóvenes mexicanos.

Otros miles fueron detenidos y evacuados al Campo Militar Número Uno, donde serían vejados y torturados. La cruz Roja no dio abasto. Hasta hoy bailan las cifras de muertos pero del centenar no bajan. Así se reprimía un movimiento universitario que, por primera vez en la historia de México, se enfrentaba a un gobierno cuyo presidente Gustavo Díaz Ordaz había decidido acallar a toda costa. La comunidad universitaria le plantó. Elaboró un pliego de ocho puntos aprobado un 15 de agosto en sesión extraordinaria por el Consejo Universitario.

En medio de una huelga generalizada y con el apoyo masivo de la sociedad civil, aumentaba el respeto hacia los universitarios en huelga. Entre lo demandado sobresalían 1) El respeto irrestricto a la autonomía universitaria. 2) La no intervención del ejército y otras fuerzas de orden público en problemas que son competencia exclusiva de la universidad y los centros de enseñanza superior. 3) El respeto de las garantías sociales e individuales consagradas en la constitución. 4) Libertad de los estudiantes presos y 5) El deslindamiento de responsabilidades y la sanción a las autoridades que hubiesen participado en los actos represivos.

El poder hizo oídos sordos. Desde el sillón presidencial, Díaz Ordaz dio la orden para el exterminio. Así, la plaza de las Tres Culturas quedará unida para siempre a la historia de la infamia. Los nombres de los responsables no deben caer en el olvido. Por eso recordamos y se pide justicia.

Are Republicans Breaking US Law in Honduras?

GOP Delegation Violates the Logan Act

By BRENDAN COONEY

CounterPunch

As if the right needed to add to its anti-democratic pedigree, Republican leaders have flocked to Tegucigalpa to bolster the junta in Honduras.

Nine Congressional Republicans – including seven in the past week as the crisis heats up -- have now met with Roberto Micheletti, who took power after a military coup June 28.

This is a coup that has been denounced by everyone from the Organization of American States to the United Nations, which passed a resolution calling “categorically on all states to recognise no government other than that” of the elected president, Manuel Zelaya. No state has recognized Micheletti as president.

But U.S. Republicans have.

“He is the president of Honduras,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Monday. “Some people tell me 'de facto' government, but under the Constitution of the Republic I am seated here with the president of this country and it’s a great honor.”

Leading us further down the rabbit hole is South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, a member of the Foreign Relations committee, who visited Micheletti and his backers Oct. 2: “We saw a government working hard to follow the rule of law, uphold its constitution, and to protect democracy for the people of Honduras.”

Consistent with every other country, from Venezuela on the left to Colombia on the right, U.S. President Barack Obama’s policy has been to not recognize or meet with Micheletti.

Since contact with Micheletti is in direct conflict with stated U.S. interests, these nine Republicans, as well as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has aided them, seem to have broken U.S. law. The Logan Act says that anyone who without government authorization “directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Tomas Ayuso, a research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric affairs who spent the summer reporting on the crisis from Tegucigalpa, agrees. The members of Congress meeting with Micheletti “are in violation of the Logan Act,” he said.

There have been three Republican trips to Honduras to meet with Micheletti: a July trip by House members Connie Mack (R-Florida) and Brian Bilbray (R-California); last week’s trip by Senators Jim DeMint (R- South Carolina), Aaron Schock (R-Illinois), Peter Roskam (R-Illinois), and Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado); and Monday’s visit by House members Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Florida), and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Florida).

Though ignorance of the law is no defense, could it be that our representatives didn’t know about Obama’s policy of not meeting with Micheletti? No.

Mack’s report from his trip, for example, reads: “After ending the luncheon, the Ambassador re-emphasized the Obama Administration’s policy of no contact with Honduran President Micheletti. Congressman Mack nonetheless demanded that all sides should have their arguments heard, and therefore insisted on the meeting.”

How is that not a violation of the Logan Act?

Incidentally, Mack has called the Organization of American States “dangerous” for supporting Zelaya – an elected leader – and not Micheletti – a coup leader. By that logic, he finds every country in the world dangerous.

That Republicans would wage battle against democracy comes as no surprise. But how Democrats let them get away with sabotaging the stated interests of the United States is another matter.

Sen. John Kerry, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, tried to stop DeMint’s trip to Honduras, but when DeMint appealed to McConnell, he wound up riding to Honduras in a Pentagon airplane. How could Obama not have known that his own Defense Department was thwarting him? Why hasn’t the airplane matter been investigated?

Obama has been disturbingly blasé about the coup, perhaps because Zelaya had become a critic of the United States in the vein of Chavez. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even called Zelaya’s attempted return “reckless.” But Obama now has begun rescinding visas for backers of Micheletti, and he has cut off $30 million in aid to Honduras.

These moves come more than two months after the coup, and Obama’s hesitation has only girded Micheletti’s will. “[U.S. officials] are doing these piecemeal steps to see how the de facto regime responds,” said Vicki Gass of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. “And each time the de facto regime remains intransigent, they up the ante, but it takes them way too long.”

Opponents ousted democratically elected Manuel Zelaya for trying to hold a referendum on rewriting the constitution. They accuse him of wanting to get rid of the single-term limit, a charge he denies. In a pre-dawn raid, the military seized a pajama-clad Zelaya and sent him to Costa Rica. He snuck back into the country Sept. 21 and has been holed up in the Brazilian embassy, surrounded by Micheletti’s soldiers.

That hasn’t stopped Republicans from arguing that the United States should support a putsch that even one of its leaders has admitted is illegal.

In an interview with the Miami Herald, the Honduran military’s chief lawyer, Colonel Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, acknowledged that it was an illegal military-led coup: “In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there was a crime.”

Inestroza justified the move by saying that merely imprisoning Zelaya would have led to bloodshed, because his supporters would have demonstrated for his release. “We know there was a crime there,” he said. “[But] what was more beneficial, remove this gentleman from Honduras or present him to prosecutors and have a mob assault and burn and destroy and for us to have to shoot? If we had left him here, right now we would be burying a pile of people.”

As for the raft of U.S. Republicans backing the coup (and refusing to call it a coup), their fear is something else: socialism.

“This is about trying to stymie the Obama administration's efforts in Latin America and the Republicans’ obsession with Hugo Chavez and their concern about his expanding influence in the region,” Dan Erikson, a senior associate at the nonpartisan Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, told the Associated Press.

Whether or not the Republican trips are found to be illegal, they are surely helping Micheletti dig in his heels. The toxic soup is likely to boil over after the Nov. 29 election, whose results the United States and other countries have said they will not recognize because of the coup and crackdown on civil liberties.

Meanwhile Republicans blow on for freedom, somehow keeping their faces straight. “The way out of this problem is to respect the free and fair elections that the people of Honduras are going to have," said Ros-Lehtinen, whose sterling right-wing creds include cheerleading the U.S. invasion of Iraq and telling Israel after it bombed Syria: “We are a better world because you did that.”

“I will tell my colleagues (U.S. Congressmen) to come to Honduras, not to see the newspapers, CNN or any media, to come here to meet with the legitimate government to listen their aspiration of living in peace and democracy,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

This aspiration apparently includes shutting down two media outlets, banning freedom of assembly, and arresting over a thousand protesters. The crackdown has killed eleven people, according to the Committee for Families of the Disappeared and Detainees in Honduras, or Cofadeh. On Sept. 30, Micheletti rounded up the 55 farmers who had occupied the National Agrarian Institute to protest the coup, and a judge ordered 38 of them to be held on charges of sedition.

Joining Ros-Lehtinen in her Oct. 5 visit was Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his younger brother, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart. All three are Cuban exiles long driven by opposition to Fidel Castro. The Diaz-Balarts are sons of Rafael Diaz-Balart, minister of the interior under the U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, overthrown by another coup leader, Castro, in 1959.

The anti-democratic instincts of the right are not limited to politicians with such a personal kite in the sky.

The Wall Street Journal gave a platform to Micheletti on its op-ed page, on which amid all the rationalizations for the coup, he writes, “Regarding the decision to expel Mr. Zelaya from the country the evening of June 28 without a trial, reasonable people can believe the situation could have been handled differently.” And here’s how the fair-and-balanced Journal editors sugarcoat Micheletti: “Mr. Micheletti, previously the president of the Honduran Congress, became president of Honduras upon the departure of Manuel Zelaya. He is a member of the Liberal Party, the same party as Mr. Zelaya.”

Departure? The only departure here is from the world of reason, in which we can call a military seizure of a president a coup and not an act of freedom, and see it as something that needs to be resisted by other governments before there’s a lot more blood spilled.

Brendan Cooney is an anthropologist living in New York City. He can be reached at: itmighthavehappened@yahoo.com