La gobernadora de Río Grande do Sul Yeda Crusius acierta en lo que ve y alcanza lo que antes no podía mirar
Bruno Lima Rocha
Barómetro Internacional
La tarde de jueves, día 29 de octubre de 2009, marcó la historia reciente de la política del Rio Grande del Sur (estado más sureño de Brasil y lindero de Uruguay y Argentina). Este día, la sede de la Federación Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG) en Porto Alegre fue el blanco de un procedimiento de la Policía Civil (la policía judiciaria estadual), que llevando un mandato de la Justicia (estadual, por supuesto), se hizo efectivo para entrar en esta dirección. El motivo, una acusación por calumnia y difamación por parte de la propia gobernadora de estado, la economista Yeda Rorato Crusius (PSDB). Las páginas que siguen expresan lo ocurrido desde el punto de vista de los atacados y presenta una de las interpretaciones pasibles de ser aceptas para explicar el por qué del procedimiento discrecional. El centro es la batalla por los derechos políticos de un colectivo, contra el resguardo de la imagen personal, blanco primario de las batallas político-mediáticas de la contemporaneidad. Por supuesto, la libertad de expresión y la política como herramienta de movilización están en juego también. El neoliberalismo salvaje que viene invadiendo las entrañas del aparato de Estado en Río Grande necesita de un Ejecutivo fuerte y autoritario.
Lo ocurrido
En aquella tarde fue lanzada la ejecución por la Policía Civil del Río Grande del Sur de dos mandatos judiciales de búsqueda y aprensión, en dos lugares simultáneos. Un equipo de la Civil fue contra la sede pública de la FAG (en la Ciudad Baja, barrio bohemio próximo al Centro de Porto Alegre) y, otro partió rumbo a la dirección de hospedaje del portal vermelhoenegro.org (donde se agregan las federaciones y grupos estaduales aliados en el Foro del Anarquismo Organizado, FAO) localizado en la ciudad de Gravataí, Región Metropolitana de la capital gaucha. En tales órdenes judiciales constaba la autorización del Poder Judicial Estadual de captura de material impreso de propaganda, ordenadores (CPU), memorias (back up) y demasiados objetos relacionados a la queja criminal. Se resalta que la queja judicial, fue de la propia gobernadora como persona física.
El motivo, según la orden judicial, fue la campaña de carteles pegados en las calles del estado del Río Grande del Sur (RS) y de difusión electrónica a través de un portal de Internet, derivados del asesinato del colono sin-tierra Eltom Brum de Silva. Yeda se sintió herida en su imagen, porque se le atribuía el término de "asesina", haciéndola responsable política por la violencia promovida por la Peleada Militar (BM, policía militar del Río Grande del Sur) cuando en la mañana de 21 de agosto, un sin-tierra fue ultimado con tiros de balines por la espalda. El procedimiento sería entonces para conseguir pruebas materiales, corroborando la queja, y justificando así el proceso contra los responsables de dicha campaña. Como ya dije arriba, en la era de la política mediática, un arte final de cartel tiene un peso considerable.
De acuerdo con testimonio de vecinos de la calle, los agentes del Estado inicialmente intentaron derrumbar el portón, ya que la sede estaba cerrada en aquel momento. Después de la entrada en el local, mediante la lectura del mandato, iniciaron la búsqueda en el interior del inmueble de carteles, boletines informativos y otros documentos, al tiempo que desconectaron el teléfono, alegando que durante aquella ejecución no se podía usar tal medio. Uno de los hechos es que además del cartel requerido por la orden judicial, habrían sido llevados los archivos de otras producciones impresas de opinión política e información, así como un archivo de otros carteles. Uno de ellos reivindicaba la salida de la gobernadora, cuyo mandato está atravesado por casos de denuncias de corrupción y situaciones límite, como la de la muerte de su ex-representante en Brasilia, Marcelo Cavalcante. A la vez, el impreso asociaba la imagen y gestión de la economista neoclásica (neoliberal y neoinstitucionalista por complemento) denunciándola por entreguista, debido a la injerencia del Banco Mundial en su proyecto político.
Así, si el problema fuera buscar pruebas de campañas injuriosas contra el gobierno constituido a través de un margen de votos de cerca de 5% en el segundo turno de 2006, la captura de impresos ya bastaría. Pero, conforme fue ampliamente divulgado por los medios alternativos del sur del Brasil, el operativo se llevó, además de material de gráfica y serigrafía, también documentos internos de la FAG, actas de reuniones y documentación en general de la vida interna de la Federación. Además de aquello que constaba en el mandato, fueron incautados otros documentos no relacionados al hecho, así como discos de archivo de backup y del propio CPU. Preguntaban por armas y drogas, en una tentativa de criminalización. Ni la basurera escapó. Habrían inquirido a los militantes allí presentes, sobre quienes toma las decisiones, quienes son los responsables, como funciona la FAG, si tiene registro jurídico formal como asociación o entidad. Para una acción de daños morales, la operación parece más de policía política, aunque (de momento) de intimidación y no de represión física.
Simultáneamente buscaron también, con un segundo mandato semejante, la dirección y el responsable por la página de Internet. Parece evidente que la pieza jurídica intentaba criminalizar al encargado técnico de la página, un trabajador autónomo que simplemente presta servicios para el colectivo gestor de la página. Como el mismo no fue localizado, fue llevado a la 17ª comisaría de la capital (la comisaría que se está especializando en actuar como policía política) el titular de la dirección del portal. Este tampoco es miembro activo de la Federación, pero aun así fue incautado en este local en Gravataí también el CPU de su ordenador y un palm-top de uso personal. Y, tal y como en Porto Alegre, la policía judicial incautó archivos de documentos históricos de la FAG, que permanecían allá guardados al largo de los años, tales como carteles, revistas e informativos diversos. ¿Cuál es el móvil? ¿Un procedimiento de rutina o la determinación superior de conseguir datos y control interno de una organización política que juega por fuera de la disputa parlamentaria?
Después de las diligencias y aprensiones fueron entonces identificadas y llevadas cuatro personas para interrogatorio a la 17ª comisaría de Policía Civil en Porto Alegre. Otros testimonios aún quedaron de comparecer de modo que el delegado titular del interrogatorio pueda concluirlo en corto tiempo. Por lógica, algunos individuos pueden llegar a ser acusados. Resta saber la dimensión y la caracterización jurídica del proceso. El resultado político es multiplicado, esto porque el reo en un caso de esos, al contrario de buena parte del secretariado y de los ocupantes de puestos de 1º, 2º y 3º escalón que pasó por el Palacio Piratini (sede del Ejecutivo estadual) en este gobierno y en el anterior, no se trata de reo por corrupción y sí por expresar una opinión política. Con toda certeza, si esto llega a ocurrir, Yeda habrá fomentado una campaña de tipo solidaridad militante sin precedentes en la historia contemporánea del estado gaucho.
Yeda tiró al que vio y acertó en donde no podía mirar
Una vez que la gobernadora se liberó del rol de enjuiciada en el proceso de investigación federal de la Operación Rodin (corrupción del Departamento de Tránsito en el Río Grande do Sul), consiguió mantener la mayoría para suspender el proceso de impedimento (impeachment) y tornar vacía la Comisión Parlamentaria de Investigación (CPI) de la Corrupción, se vio sin frenos y apta para la contra-ofensiva. Se zafó a si misma en la Justicia Federal y usó de la mayoría parlamentaria para atropellar a la oposición estadual (que es gobierno con Lula) en la valerosa Asamblea Legislativa de RS. Llegó la hora de contra golpear, pensó el gobierno. Un buen comienzo sería atacar una organización política menos mediática, de tipo no parlamentario, y con menos visibilidad por no contar con puestos de gobierno o representación, fruto de su línea ideológica y opción estratégica. Bien, una organización de ese tipo en RS es la FAG. Es el blanco perfecto, considerando inclusive aspectos históricos de división en el pensamiento socialista que remontan a la 1ª Internacional de los Trabajadores (AIT, reivindicada por los anarquistas).
El posible error de cálculo de parte de ella y su asesoría (al menos aquellos que consiguen aconsejarla) fue presuponer que el tamaño y la opción ideológica de esta organización implicaran aislamiento y pocos vínculos. Justo se dio al revés. Fruto de la inserción social y de una política no sectaria, aunque radical e intolerante con la intermediación parlamentaria, sobró solidaridad para con la FAG. Entidades de punta como el sindicato de trabajadores de la educación estadual (Cpers-sindicato) y el Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales Sin-tierra (MST), además de la Asociación Gaucha de Radiodifusión Comunitaria (Abraço-RS), pasando por la página de oposición y de alternativa mediática más leída del estado (RSurgente.org) inmediatamente comenzaron a moverse, a articular apoyos jurídicos, llegando hasta a desplazar gente al local bajo diligencia. Tal fue el caso de la presidenta y vice del Cpers, que se dirigieron a la sede de la Federación (próxima al Centro de Porto Alegre) e inmediatamente después acompañaron a los militantes anarquistas a la 17ª comisaría. No se trata de poca monta, considerando que el Cpers tiene más de 90 mil afiliados y es el mayor sindicato del Río Grande.
El mayor movimiento popular de la América Latina también se movió. El MST divulgó una nota oficial de repudio al atropello y de solidaridad, y puso su aparato jurídico a disposición (así como también la banca de abogados que atiende el sindicato de educación fue accionada). Las radios comunitarias accionaron su difusión en Porto Alegre, y, en el caso de RS Urgente, su editor entró en contacto telefónico con una de las acusadas y publicó en su página la nota de sobre organización atacada. Ese fue sólo el comienzo, siendo enviadas decenas de notas de solidaridad y gestos de apoyo, inclusive de otros países, como en el vecino Uruguay y la Argentina, donde organizaciones afines en la línea política tomaron las conducciones de la red de solidaridad e hicieron circular información y accionar otros apoyos. Del exterior, el acto más ágil y notorio ocurrió en España, donde la Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) luego un día después, realizó un breve acto de protesta frente a la embajada del Brasil en Madrid. Una semana, la lista de solidaridad creció en forma espiral, alcanzando a países de la América Latina, Europa, Australia y EUA. Definitivamente, Yeda erró el blanco.
La lógica invertida -la acusadora pasa a perseguir políticamente- el argumento es la calumnia
Entiendo que el caso caracteriza una amenaza directa de cercar la libertad de expresión del periodismo en su tono más político y del empleo de la comunicación alternativa, que va del muralismo, pasando por la agitación y propaganda, hasta llegar a la Internet. Al cercar la circulación de información por fuera de los canales oficiosos (los medios corporativos, palangristas, como dicen los venezolanos), Yeda cree forzar un consenso construido en la base de la espiral del silencio y de silenciar a la oposición con la represión policial y de cierta complicidad de los poderes no elegidos mediante la urna de la democracia representativa. Así, sin cierto grado de domesticación de la Justicia estadual y del Ministerio Público del RS, jamás habría tamaña saña y auto-confianza en el acto de reprimir. Su gobierno, sus asesores y aliados políticos están marcados como blancos de investigación de tipo policial por robo de recursos públicos a través del control de partes del aparato de Estado. La típica Patria Contratista como afirma los brillantes periodistas de investigación argentinos. Se invierte la lógica, como lo fue en el caso del banquero bandido, Daniel Dantas. El perseguido pasa a ser al perseguidor, el jacobino idealista que pensó poder cambiar la sociedad brasileña a través del Estado que la oprime. Dio en el que dio.
En el caso de la avanzada neoliberal salvaje en el Río Grande, tengo la certeza de que esta campaña pública deflagrada por la FAG dentro del contexto de movilización sindical y popular amplia que viene desarrollándose por lo menos desde hace un año en este estado, irrita profundamente la gobernadora Yeda Crusius (PSDB). Tanto ella como su perímetro de apoyo directo operan -literalmente- como brazo político-económico-mediático del capital financiero, son ejecutores de un acuerdo entreguista y rifan los destinos de los trabajadores del servicio público de RS a los abusos y las prácticas poco o nada republicanas de las "consultorías" contratadas para ejecutar este mismo contrato. Todo eso viene denunciando la organización reprimida, la FAG, públicamente por todos los medios que le son posibles, incluyendo la pegatina, la pegatina de carteles en las calles de la capital Porto Alegre y de algunas ciudades-polo del estado. En la era de la política mediatizada, era casi "natural" la reacción del Ejecutivo con aires discrecionales. Tardó, pero llegó.
Se alega, de parte de la gobernadora, que la acción de queja criminal y la consecuente intervención policial, fueron motivadas por la defensa de su honor. Levanto otra hipótesis. La meta era responsabilizar a un colectivo o algunos individuos organizados en la Federación. Después de la entrada en la sede y la aprensión de material, tanto el interrogatorio y posterior proceso judicial son contra los individuos identificados y responsabilizados por la referida campaña pública de difusión de opinión en nombre de la FAG, sobre el hecho del colono sin-tierra Eltom Brum de Silva siendo asesinado por operadores de la Peleada Militar, en agosto en la hacienda Southall en São Gabriel, en la Frontera Oeste. En este caso, hay una sospecha inicial y hasta hoy apenas explicada. Según lo denunciado por el movimiento de radios comunitarias, recae sobre un oficial de alta graduación la posible autoría de los disparos. Esa desconfianza, la de que el soldado que confesó no es el verdadero autor de los disparos, es una hipótesis reforzada por la carta del Grupo Tortura Nunca Más de São Paulo. Si la acción solidaria consigue reabrir el interrogatorio o federalizar la investigación, entonces el efecto contrario será total.
Otro tema complementario es la responsabilización política. Una acción de la envergadura del despejo del MST en la Hacienda Southall no es de rutina y pasa por un equipo de acompañamiento y gestión de crisis al servicio del Ejecutivo. Todo acto represivo de dimensión política tiene un nivel de responsabilización política. Si los agentes de policía estadual actúan bajo la orientación del gobierno de turno, la jefe del Ejecutivo es, por tanto, la responsable política de lo que venga a ocurrir por acciones derivadas de sus comandados. Este razonamiento, expuesto en la forma de slogan de campaña política, aunque bastante aplicado en los países hermanos, no tiene esa costumbre en el Brasil. Por fuera de la cultura política brasileña, que es cómplice con la corrupción endémica y estructural, pero no con las palabras duras del juego real, fue más fácil para Yeda conseguir la orden judicial para el operativo. La acusación de asesina era demasiado fuerte. Pasó a merecer la pena reprimir. Y fue lo que aconteció.
Los poderes estaduales temen la lucha política de los anarquistas
El proceso por parte de la gobernadora Yeda Crusius contra la FAG tiene su origen por tanto en el contenido de materiales de comunicación visual, o mejor, de opinión y propaganda, los cuales ella considera calumniosos. Específicamente el término "asesina". En este caso se trata de carteles, panfletos y contenido de la Web de la Internet narrando los hechos políticos y opinando sobre una realidad específica, la política de este gobierno de turno en Río Grande del Sur, sus consecuencias y la responsabilización de estas, conforme a las propias reglas jurídicas vigentes del Estado.
Lo que puede haberla dejado inquieta es saber que una fuerza política extra-parlamentaria, consigue apuntar con precisión a los mandantes y responsables de los crímenes contra el pueblo y su propaganda tiene efectos superiores a la de los de grupos radicalizados, pero aislados socialmente. Específicamente el episodio del asesinato del sin-tierra Eltom Brum de Silva y los análisis divulgados por la FAG sobre los hechos motivaron la queja de injuria, calumnia y difamación, de la cual se desarrolló el mandato judicial de búsqueda y aprensión en la sede publica de la FAG referente a los carteles entonces producidos y divulgados la semana siguiente al 21 de Agosto de 2009. ¿De qué ella nos acusa? De defender con ideas y trabajo de base la memoria y el sentido del martirio de un sin-tierra. Esta vez el muerto fue en el estado donde el agro-negocio responde por casi 40% del PIB, tiene presión de medios favorable, bancada parlamentaria propia y consigue extraer fondo del dinero público estadual sin mayores dificultades. Una de las micro regiones donde el conflicto de tierras es más fuerte es justamente en la Frontera Oeste, donde se localiza el municipio de San Gabriel. Además del embate histórico contra el latifundio, el agro-negocio se coloca al servicio de la industria verde, como la de la caña de azúcar transgénica en el norte del Río Grande, o del Desierto Verde (plantaciones de eucalipto en escala absurdamente grande).
Cuando una fuerza política que actúa por fuera del juego electoral de tipo democrático-burgués consigue formar parte de las pautas generalizabais en el estado, ya demuestra el tamaño suficiente que justifique su represión. El mote fue la supuesta calumnia, y el hecho estructural fue el posicionamiento acerca del futuro del Río Grande, la soberanía popular y su Bioma Pampa. Y, para recobrar la causa, en el sur del país, el trabajador rural fue cobardemente muerto con un tiro de calibre 12 por la espalda, habiendo inclusive relatos discordantes en cuanto al responsable directo por el asesinato.
En el tope de la cadena jerárquica están los gobernadores de los estados brasileños, los jefes máximos de las policías, tanto la ostensiva (militar) como la judicial (civil). Por lo tanto la responsable es la gobernadora Yeda en el Río Grande del Sur, así como sería su gobernador en otro estado del país. Pero hay aún otras consideraciones importantes. Temas de polémica y conflicto de proyectos estructurales están en juego. Las políticas públicas implementadas por los gobiernos son también responsabilidad de quien las define y ejecuta, más de una vez representado en su jefe, el gobernador. Entonces, tenemos más hechos. Además del asesinato de un sin-tierra, caracterizado por los propios medios tradicionales (corporativos y comerciales) como político, pero también las consecuencias de las políticas para la educación y salud públicas, de la criminalización de la pobreza y de la violencia policial ejercida sobre los pobres en las periferias urbanas y en el campo, así como sobre los movimientos sociales y sindicatos, son banderas legítimas que varios sectores del pueblo organizado vienen levantando a lo largo de varios meses contra este gobierno.
La mitología política retro alimenta la contestación contemporánea. El Río Grande que nació de la República Comunera Guaraní, hoy vive bajo un gobierno infiltrado por reos en procesos federales. No es sólo un gobierno más de tipo burgués y neoliberal. Es un gobierno burgués y neoliberal sin límites. Para este analista, es tan devastador para la población gaucha como lo fueron los gobiernos Menem (Argentina, 1989-1998) y Bush Jr. (EUA, 2000-2008). Y las propuestas y decisiones son además de la propia Yeda. Vale recordar que el banco estadual (el Banrisul) fue dilapidado con la venta del 47% de sus acciones preferenciales. Ya el parlamento estadual en esta legislatura, donde el Ejecutivo tiene mayoría, aprobó, firmando de forma unánime, el contrato entreguista del Banco Mundial sin siquiera leerlo. Para cualquier organización de izquierda mínimamente responsable esto ya bastaría para convocar una Pueblada de aquellas. En el caso específico de los anarquistas políticamente organizados en la FAG, tamaña entrega de la soberanía popular sonó como intolerable. Viene de ahí la motivación para la agresiva propaganda pública y el refuerzo -a través de frentes sociales- de la amplia movilización conocida como ¡Fuera Yeda!
Tal vez lo que falta para la lucha popular brasileña es una tradición venida de México, donde se prevé que tenemos el derecho a luchar contra un mal gobierno. En este caso, entiendo que la vía más consecuente sería que la contestación ampliada fuera acompañada de una mayor democracia interna en los movimientos populares y sindicales, y a partir de ese nuevo caldo de cultura, modificar el modelo de acumulación de fuerzas en la sociedad brasileña. Esto pasa por un nuevo pacto de la izquierda, donde el deber común sería construir una democracia participativa. Donde la igualdad social y económica sea la base de las libertades políticas y de la participación directa del pueblo en sus decisiones fundamentales. Es decir lo que la FAG ayuda a hacer desde que fue fundada el 18 de noviembre de 1995. Es decir lo que Yeda teme. Por eso esa señora, su ex-marido, sus secretarios de estado y la gente que la acompaña intentan criminalizar a los militantes anarquistas.
Las luchas contemporáneas del pueblo organizado en el estado más al sur del Brasil
En el Río Grande del Sur, desde el mes de marzo de 2008 no existen hechos aislados. Lo que hay es una acumulación de tentativas de criminalizar la lucha popular y una represión brutal a todos los sectores organizados de las clases oprimidas. Como por ejemplo en la huelga de los bancarios y de los profesores estaduales en 2008, que resultó en la tentativa de criminalización del Cpers (Sindicato de los Trabajadores de Educación Pública), hoy uno de los mayores sindicatos de la América Latina, con más de 90 mil afiliados. No basta con imponer al pueblo gaucho una secretaría de educación autoritaria y ofensiva a la comunidad escolar; cuya forma de gestión es claramente privatizadora, agotando los recursos de la educación y entregando el presupuesto para ser complementado por las fundaciones educacionales, verdaderas lavanderías de dinero y de desvío de impuestos. Tampoco puedo omitir el proceso político deflagrado junto al ministerio público estadual contra el MST, con la clara intención de criminalizar a este movimiento. Esta es la conspiración oficial que dio origen al asesinato de Eltom Brum y que ahora intenta incriminar a la FAG.
El silencio de los medios corporativos también es cómplice. Lo que está fuera de la pauta de las luchas y del monopolio de los medios gauchos, capitaneados por el Grupo RBS (blanco de denuncia del Ministerio Público Federal de Canoas), son los efectos a corto, medio y largo plazo del préstamo con el Banco Mundial. En este contrato absurdo y vende patria, endosado por el gobierno de Lula, consta, por ejemplo, el régimen de caja y la ingerencia de consultores extranjeros en el presupuesto público de RS. Otro intento de vender al Río Grande es en la liquidación del Bioma Pampa entregando las tierras más fértiles del país para plantar eucaliptos y producir carpeta de celulosa ¡destinada a fabricar papel higiénico en Europa! La misma relación desigual se da en el tema de la producción de alimentos, cuando el Estado interviene para favorecer el latifundio en la forma de "agro negocio" y relega la agricultura campesina y familiar a la penuria y la pobreza. Ya los capitales de la industria, liderados por la gigante Gerdau (varias veces beneficiada con subsidios estatales y estaduales) tienen su plan estratégico en RS, impacientes por terminar con los derechos adquiridos por los trabajadores y públicamente divulgados en la llamada Agenda 2020.
En este breve análisis no se puede desconsiderar el papel de las élites dirigentes ni de la clase de intermediarios políticos tradicionales, como agentes importantes en las decisiones políticas y su influencia en el juego de intereses que caracteriza cualquier gobierno de cualquier Estado. Aquí en RS, hoy están fundidos los intereses de los latifundistas y del agro negocio y toda su cadena de depredación, con la industria de la celulosa, el desierto verde, la explotación de las reservas de agua, la tentativa de criminalización del MST, el cierre de las escuelas itinerantes de los asentamientos, etc..
También están en juego los intereses de aquellos que viven del robo sistemático contra el pueblo, de la corrupción institucionalizada, de la banca -compuesta por estafadores y criminales de traje y corbata- de la vieja orden de tomar ventaja con el patrimonio colectivo, de despreciar el pueblo y fundamentalmente sus derechos y su capacidad de rebelarse. Finalmente son incontables las denuncias y evidencias de corrupción escandalosa así como fueron muchas las tentativas de descalificar e impedir a los sindicatos y movimientos sociales manifestar su repudio, su opinión.
En lo que concierne a los trabajadores del servicio público, la situación es muy grave. El gerencialismo es una de las marcas de ese gobierno que mandó a la Policía Civil invadir la sede de la FAG. La política de quitar derechos a los trabajadores, muchos de ellos conquistas históricas y orgullosamente iniciadas en las luchas de los sindicatos de resistencia hace más de cien años, no es exclusiva del gobierno Lula. En RS el gobierno Yeda Crusius tomó y viene tomando varias medidas para cercar, ejecutar represión y criminalización contra los profesores estaduales y su el sindicato (CPERS), así como contra sus dirigentes. Los liceos y escuelas públicas estaduales pasaron a ser un negocio entre el gobierno y las organizaciones privadas, las OSCIPS (organizaciones sociales de interés público; en la práctica empresas privadas sustituyendo el Estado), con su lógica de gestión y sus intereses, donde quién gana son los de siempre y quien pierde es el pueblo. Las conquistas de décadas de luchas de las categorías de los trabajadores de la educación vienen siendo combatidas arduamente por la actual política para la educación en el gobierno estadual, antes también personificado en la figura de Mariza Abreu, ex-secretaria de educación, luego también responsable por sus consecuencias. La meta esta casi por ser aprobada. Rebajar el salario base e implantar la remuneración por "productividad"; medida esta que permite enfrentar a los trabajadores unos contra los otros y enflaquece aún más la representación sindical.
Es esta la coyuntura que marca la represión contra la Federación Anarquista Gaucha.
El contra-ataque: acto público en la esquina democrática, marcha por la Borges y acto político en el Quilombo de las Artes. ¿Y ahora?
En medio del interrogatorio y los días frenéticos que siguieron, se dieron situaciones interesantes. Analizo que el movimiento de solidaridad para con la FAG ultrapasa el repudio que las entidades del movimiento popular y la izquierda en general han dado al gobierno neoliberal acusado de corrupción, y opera como un reconocimiento al trabajo de esta organización. Tanto en el sentido de la inserción como forma de empoderamiento de los sujetos sociales organizados (retirando así poder de los intermediarios profesionales) como en la efectiva política de unidad en lucha y no sectarismo estéril.
Esto se hizo ver el 3 de noviembre, cuando a las 18 horas, después de un temporal, casi un centenar de personas de distinguidas agrupaciones más a la izquierda, se encontraron en la Esquina Democrática, centro de Porto Alegre, para, bajo una lluvia fina pero incesante, participar de un acto político de desagravio contra la represión sufrida por la FAG. En la secuencia del acto, hube una breve marcha por la Borges rumbo al Quilombo de las Artes, espacio cultural de la Comunidad Autónoma Utopía y Lucha, donde se realizó el acto político. Al no cambiar el estilo de trabajo, se demuestra a los poderes del Estado que la intimidación oficial no dio resultado. Si por un lado el titular de la 17ª DP aún no concluyó el interrogatorio, lo que deja margen para hipótesis en el campo jurídico, por otro, en lo que es estrictamente político, la campaña de solidaridad está fortalecida e intentando reabrir el interrogatorio policial de la investigación del asesinato del colono sin-tierra Eltom Brum. Con certeza, aumentó la legitimidad de la FAG y la organización sale fortalecida del episodio. ¿Y ahora?
Concluyo apuntando algunas variables. ¿Si los activistas de derechos humanos consiguen reabrir el interrogatorio del asesinato de Eltom, como queda la cúpula de la seguridad pública en RS? ¿Qué hará el gobierno de Yeda Crusius? ¿Ella va redoblar la apuesta? ¿Va a apuntar a otro blanco, tal vez no político específico, pero sí social, y por su naturaleza, de mayor envergadura? La única certeza es de que esta Otra Campaña, por temas estratégicos y de largo plazo, como la defensa del Bioma Pampa y frenar la venta del Rio Grande para el Banco Mundial, no va a cesar ni durante la carrera electoral de 2010. Parte de eso es mérito político de la FAG, reconocido inclusive por la operadora neoliberal, cuando ésta decide reprimir la organización. Como dije arriba, acierta en el que ve y alcanza aquello que antes no podría mirar.
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11/13/09
How the U.S. Funds the Taliban
By Aram Roston
The Nation
On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban's rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime's ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat's right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.
But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.
Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal's cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals' private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan's enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.
Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.
In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.
Understanding how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads. The first is the insider dealing that determines who wins and who loses in Afghan business, and the second is the troubling mechanism by which "private security" ensures that the US supply convoys traveling these ancient trade routes aren't ambushed by insurgents.
A good place to pick up the first thread is with a small firm awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars: NCL Holdings. Like the Popals' Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in Afghanistan.
What NCL Holdings is most notorious for in Kabul contracting circles, though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak. He is the young American son of Afghanistan's current defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahedeen against the Soviets. Hamed Wardak has plunged into business as well as policy. He was raised and schooled in the United States, graduating as valedictorian from Georgetown University in 1997. He earned a Rhodes scholarship and interned at the neoconservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. That internship was to play an important role in his life, for it was at AEI that he forged alliances with some of the premier figures in American conservative foreign policy circles, such as the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.
Wardak incorporated NCL in the United States early in 2007, although the firm may have operated in Afghanistan before then. It made sense to set up shop in Washington, because of Wardak's connections there. On NCL's advisory board, for example, is Milton Bearden, a well-known former CIA officer. Bearden is an important voice on Afghanistan issues; in October he was a witness before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Senator John Kerry, the chair, introduced him as "a legendary former CIA case officer and a clearheaded thinker and writer." It is not every defense contracting company that has such an influential adviser.
But the biggest deal that NCL got--the contract that brought it into Afghanistan's major leagues--was Host Nation Trucking. Earlier this year the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named one of the six companies that would handle the bulk of US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote outposts scattered across the country.
At first the contract was large but not gargantuan. And then that suddenly changed, like an immense garden coming into bloom. Over the summer, citing the coming "surge" and a new doctrine, "Money as a Weapons System," the US military expanded the contract 600 percent for NCL and the five other companies. The contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not spent: "service members will not get food, water, equipment, and ammunition they require." Each of the military's six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360 million, or a total of nearly $2.2 billion. Put it in this perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and truckers was worth 10 percent of the annual Afghan gross domestic product. NCL, the firm run by the defense minister's well-connected son, had struck pure contracting gold.
Host Nation Trucking does indeed keep the US military efforts alive in Afghanistan. "We supply everything the army needs to survive here," one American trucking executive told me. "We bring them their toilet paper, their water, their fuel, their guns, their vehicles." The epicenter is Bagram Air Base, just an hour north of Kabul, from which virtually everything in Afghanistan is trucked to the outer reaches of what the Army calls "the Battlespace"--that is, the entire country. Parked near Entry Control Point 3, the trucks line up, shifting gears and sending up clouds of dust as they prepare for their various missions across the country.
The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is ensuring security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: "The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money." That is something everyone seems to agree on.
Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the Host Nation Trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: "You are paying the people in the local areas--some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force--to move your trucks through."
Hanna explained that the prices charged are different, depending on the route: "We're basically being extorted. Where you don't pay, you're going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to." Sometimes, he says, the extortion fee is high, and sometimes it is low. "Moving ten trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It's based on the number of trucks and what you're carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they're not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying MRAPs or Humvees, they are going to charge you more."
Hanna says it is just a necessary evil. "If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially."
Whereas in Iraq the private security industry has been dominated by US and global firms like Blackwater, operating as de facto arms of the US government, in Afghanistan there are lots of local players as well. As a result, the industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. "Every warlord has his security company," is the way one executive explained it to me.
In theory, private security companies in Kabul are heavily regulated, although the reality is different. Thirty-nine companies had licenses until September, when another dozen were granted licenses. Many licensed companies are politically connected: just as NCL is owned by the son of the defense minister and Watan Risk Management is run by President Karzai's cousins, the Asia Security Group is controlled by Hashmat Karzai, another relative of the president. The company has blocked off an entire street in the expensive Sherpur District. Another security firm is controlled by the parliamentary speaker's son, sources say. And so on.
In the same way, the Afghan trucking industry, key to logistics operations, is often tied to important figures and tribal leaders. One major hauler in Afghanistan, Afghan International Trucking (AIT), paid $20,000 a month in kickbacks to a US Army contracting official, according to the official's plea agreement in US court in August. AIT is a very well-connected firm: it is run by the 25-year-old nephew of Gen. Baba Jan, a former Northern Alliance commander and later a Kabul police chief. In an interview, Baba Jan, a cheerful and charismatic leader, insisted he had nothing to do with his nephew's corporate enterprise.
But the heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them. By definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the southern parts of Afghanistan. The security firms don't really protect convoys of American military goods here, because they simply can't; they need the Taliban's cooperation.
One of the big problems for the companies that ship American military supplies across the country is that they are banned from arming themselves with any weapon heavier than a rifle. That makes them ineffective for battling Taliban attacks on a convoy. "They are shooting the drivers from 3,000 feet away with PKMs," a trucking company executive in Kabul told me. "They are using RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] that will blow up an up-armed vehicle. So the security companies are tied up. Because of the rules, security companies can only carry AK-47s, and that's just a joke. I carry an AK--and that's just to shoot myself if I have to!"
The rules are there for a good reason: to guard against devastating collateral damage by private security forces. Still, as Hanna of Afghan American Army Services points out, "An AK-47 versus a rocket-propelled grenade--you are going to lose!" That said, at least one of the Host Nation Trucking companies has tried to do battle instead of paying off insurgents and warlords. It is a US-owned firm called Four Horsemen International. Instead of providing payments, it has tried to fight off attackers. And it has paid the price in lives, with horrendous casualties. FHI, like many other firms, refused to talk publicly; but I've been told by insiders in the security industry that FHI's convoys are attacked on virtually every mission.
For the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive. A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, "What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat." He's an Army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he's not happy about what's being done. He says that at a minimum American military forces should try to learn more about who is getting paid off.
"Most escorting is done by the Taliban," an Afghan private security official told me. He's a Pashto and former mujahedeen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. "Now the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying the Taliban."
To Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry about. One woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a trucking business in this male-dominated field. She told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with Taliban leaders in the south. Paying the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they just needed two armed Taliban vehicles. "Two Taliban is enough," she told me. "One in the front and one in the back." She shrugged. "You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible."
Which leads us back to the case of Watan Risk, the firm run by Ahmad Rateb Popal and Rashid Popal, the Karzai family relatives and former drug dealers. Watan is known to control one key stretch of road that all the truckers use: the strategic route to Kandahar called Highway 1. Think of it as the road to the war--to the south and to the west. If the Army wants to get supplies down to Helmand, for example, the trucks must make their way through Kandahar.
Watan Risk, according to seven different security and trucking company officials, is the sole provider of security along this route. The reason is simple: Watan is allied with the local warlord who controls the road. Watan's company website is quite impressive, and claims its personnel "are diligently screened to weed out all ex-militia members, supporters of the Taliban, or individuals with loyalty to warlords, drug barons, or any other group opposed to international support of the democratic process." Whatever screening methods it uses, Watan's secret weapon to protect American supplies heading through Kandahar is a man named Commander Ruhullah. Said to be a handsome man in his 40s, Ruhullah has an oddly high-pitched voice. He wears traditional salwar kameez and a Rolex watch. He rarely, if ever, associates with Westerners. He commands a large group of irregular fighters with no known government affiliation, and his name, security officials tell me, inspires obedience or fear in villages along the road.
It is a dangerous business, of course: until last spring Ruhullah had competition--a one-legged warlord named Commander Abdul Khaliq. He was killed in an ambush.
So Ruhullah is the surviving road warrior for that stretch of highway. According to witnesses, he works like this: he waits until there are hundreds of trucks ready to convoy south down the highway. Then he gets his men together, setting them up in 4x4s and pickups. Witnesses say he does not limit his arsenal to AK-47s but uses any weapons he can get. His chief weapon is his reputation. And for that, Watan is paid royally, collecting a fee for each truck that passes through his corridor. The American trucking official told me that Ruhullah "charges $1,500 per truck to go to Kandahar. Just 300 kilometers."
It's hard to pinpoint what this is, exactly--security, extortion or a form of "insurance." Then there is the question, Does Ruhullah have ties to the Taliban? That's impossible to know. As an American private security veteran familiar with the route said, "He works both sides... whatever is most profitable. He's the main commander. He's got to be involved with the Taliban. How much, no one knows."
Even NCL, the company owned by Hamed Wardak, pays. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me that NCL sends its portion of US logistics goods in Watan's and Ruhullah's convoys. Sources say NCL is billed $500,000 per month for Watan's services. To underline the point: NCL, operating on a $360 million contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister's son, is paying millions per year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai's cousins, for protection.
Hamed Wardak wouldn't return my phone calls. Milt Bearden, the former CIA officer affiliated with the company, wouldn't speak with me either. There's nothing wrong with Bearden engaging in business in Afghanistan, but disclosure of his business interests might have been expected when testifying on US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After all, NCL stands to make or lose hundreds of millions based on the whims of US policy-makers.
It is certainly worth asking why NCL, a company with no known trucking experience, and little security experience to speak of, would win a contract worth $360 million. Plenty of Afghan insiders are asking questions. "Why would the US government give him a contract if he is the son of the minister of defense?" That's what Mahmoud Karzai asked me. He is the brother of President Karzai, and he himself has been treated in the press as a poster boy for access to government officials. The New York Times even profiled him in a highly critical piece. In his defense, Karzai emphasized that he, at least, has refrained from US government or Afghan government contracting. He pointed out, as others have, that Hamed Wardak had little security or trucking background before his company received security and trucking contracts from the Defense Department. "That's a questionable business practice," he said. "They shouldn't give it to him. How come that's not questioned?"
I did get the opportunity to ask General Wardak, Hamed's father, about it. He is quite dapper, although he is no longer the debonair "Gucci commander" Bearden once described. I asked Wardak about his son and NCL. "I've tried to be straightforward and correct and fight corruption all my life," the defense minister said. "This has been something people have tried to use against me, so it has been painful."
Wardak would speak only briefly about NCL. The issue seems to have produced a rift with his son. "I was against it from the beginning, and that's why we have not talked for a long time. I have never tried to support him or to use my power or influence that he should benefit."
When I told Wardak that his son's company had a US contract worth as much as $360 million, he did a double take. "This is impossible," he said. "I do not believe this."
I believed the general when he said he really didn't know what his son was up to. But cleaning up what look like insider deals may be easier than the next step: shutting down the money pipeline going from DoD contracts to potential insurgents.
Two years ago, a top Afghan security official told me, Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, had alerted the American military to the problem. The NDS delivered what I'm told are "very detailed" reports to the Americans explaining how the Taliban are profiting from protecting convoys of US supplies.
The Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the United States were to take the tens of millions paid to security contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy support unit to guard its logistics lines? The suggestion went nowhere.
The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban's protection is not a secret. I asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents? "The American soldier in me is repulsed by it," he said in an interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province. "But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, 'Hey, don't hassle me.' I don't like it, but it is what it is."
As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, "We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20 percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics."
In a statement to The Nation about Host Nation Trucking, Col. Wayne Shanks, the chief public affairs officer for the international forces in Afghanistan, said that military officials are "aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring." He added that, despite oversight, "the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent."
In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that--as with so much in Afghanistan--the United States doesn't seem to know how to fix it.
Aram Roston is an Emmy Award-winning investigative producer at NBC News and the author of The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi (Nation Books), from which this article is adapted.
The Nation
On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban's rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime's ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat's right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.
But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.
Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal's cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals' private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan's enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.
Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.
In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.
Understanding how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads. The first is the insider dealing that determines who wins and who loses in Afghan business, and the second is the troubling mechanism by which "private security" ensures that the US supply convoys traveling these ancient trade routes aren't ambushed by insurgents.
A good place to pick up the first thread is with a small firm awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars: NCL Holdings. Like the Popals' Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in Afghanistan.
What NCL Holdings is most notorious for in Kabul contracting circles, though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak. He is the young American son of Afghanistan's current defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahedeen against the Soviets. Hamed Wardak has plunged into business as well as policy. He was raised and schooled in the United States, graduating as valedictorian from Georgetown University in 1997. He earned a Rhodes scholarship and interned at the neoconservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. That internship was to play an important role in his life, for it was at AEI that he forged alliances with some of the premier figures in American conservative foreign policy circles, such as the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.
Wardak incorporated NCL in the United States early in 2007, although the firm may have operated in Afghanistan before then. It made sense to set up shop in Washington, because of Wardak's connections there. On NCL's advisory board, for example, is Milton Bearden, a well-known former CIA officer. Bearden is an important voice on Afghanistan issues; in October he was a witness before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Senator John Kerry, the chair, introduced him as "a legendary former CIA case officer and a clearheaded thinker and writer." It is not every defense contracting company that has such an influential adviser.
But the biggest deal that NCL got--the contract that brought it into Afghanistan's major leagues--was Host Nation Trucking. Earlier this year the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named one of the six companies that would handle the bulk of US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote outposts scattered across the country.
At first the contract was large but not gargantuan. And then that suddenly changed, like an immense garden coming into bloom. Over the summer, citing the coming "surge" and a new doctrine, "Money as a Weapons System," the US military expanded the contract 600 percent for NCL and the five other companies. The contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not spent: "service members will not get food, water, equipment, and ammunition they require." Each of the military's six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360 million, or a total of nearly $2.2 billion. Put it in this perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and truckers was worth 10 percent of the annual Afghan gross domestic product. NCL, the firm run by the defense minister's well-connected son, had struck pure contracting gold.
Host Nation Trucking does indeed keep the US military efforts alive in Afghanistan. "We supply everything the army needs to survive here," one American trucking executive told me. "We bring them their toilet paper, their water, their fuel, their guns, their vehicles." The epicenter is Bagram Air Base, just an hour north of Kabul, from which virtually everything in Afghanistan is trucked to the outer reaches of what the Army calls "the Battlespace"--that is, the entire country. Parked near Entry Control Point 3, the trucks line up, shifting gears and sending up clouds of dust as they prepare for their various missions across the country.
The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is ensuring security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: "The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money." That is something everyone seems to agree on.
Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the Host Nation Trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: "You are paying the people in the local areas--some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force--to move your trucks through."
Hanna explained that the prices charged are different, depending on the route: "We're basically being extorted. Where you don't pay, you're going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to." Sometimes, he says, the extortion fee is high, and sometimes it is low. "Moving ten trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It's based on the number of trucks and what you're carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they're not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying MRAPs or Humvees, they are going to charge you more."
Hanna says it is just a necessary evil. "If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially."
Whereas in Iraq the private security industry has been dominated by US and global firms like Blackwater, operating as de facto arms of the US government, in Afghanistan there are lots of local players as well. As a result, the industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. "Every warlord has his security company," is the way one executive explained it to me.
In theory, private security companies in Kabul are heavily regulated, although the reality is different. Thirty-nine companies had licenses until September, when another dozen were granted licenses. Many licensed companies are politically connected: just as NCL is owned by the son of the defense minister and Watan Risk Management is run by President Karzai's cousins, the Asia Security Group is controlled by Hashmat Karzai, another relative of the president. The company has blocked off an entire street in the expensive Sherpur District. Another security firm is controlled by the parliamentary speaker's son, sources say. And so on.
In the same way, the Afghan trucking industry, key to logistics operations, is often tied to important figures and tribal leaders. One major hauler in Afghanistan, Afghan International Trucking (AIT), paid $20,000 a month in kickbacks to a US Army contracting official, according to the official's plea agreement in US court in August. AIT is a very well-connected firm: it is run by the 25-year-old nephew of Gen. Baba Jan, a former Northern Alliance commander and later a Kabul police chief. In an interview, Baba Jan, a cheerful and charismatic leader, insisted he had nothing to do with his nephew's corporate enterprise.
But the heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them. By definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the southern parts of Afghanistan. The security firms don't really protect convoys of American military goods here, because they simply can't; they need the Taliban's cooperation.
One of the big problems for the companies that ship American military supplies across the country is that they are banned from arming themselves with any weapon heavier than a rifle. That makes them ineffective for battling Taliban attacks on a convoy. "They are shooting the drivers from 3,000 feet away with PKMs," a trucking company executive in Kabul told me. "They are using RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] that will blow up an up-armed vehicle. So the security companies are tied up. Because of the rules, security companies can only carry AK-47s, and that's just a joke. I carry an AK--and that's just to shoot myself if I have to!"
The rules are there for a good reason: to guard against devastating collateral damage by private security forces. Still, as Hanna of Afghan American Army Services points out, "An AK-47 versus a rocket-propelled grenade--you are going to lose!" That said, at least one of the Host Nation Trucking companies has tried to do battle instead of paying off insurgents and warlords. It is a US-owned firm called Four Horsemen International. Instead of providing payments, it has tried to fight off attackers. And it has paid the price in lives, with horrendous casualties. FHI, like many other firms, refused to talk publicly; but I've been told by insiders in the security industry that FHI's convoys are attacked on virtually every mission.
For the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive. A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, "What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat." He's an Army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he's not happy about what's being done. He says that at a minimum American military forces should try to learn more about who is getting paid off.
"Most escorting is done by the Taliban," an Afghan private security official told me. He's a Pashto and former mujahedeen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. "Now the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying the Taliban."
To Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry about. One woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a trucking business in this male-dominated field. She told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with Taliban leaders in the south. Paying the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they just needed two armed Taliban vehicles. "Two Taliban is enough," she told me. "One in the front and one in the back." She shrugged. "You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible."
Which leads us back to the case of Watan Risk, the firm run by Ahmad Rateb Popal and Rashid Popal, the Karzai family relatives and former drug dealers. Watan is known to control one key stretch of road that all the truckers use: the strategic route to Kandahar called Highway 1. Think of it as the road to the war--to the south and to the west. If the Army wants to get supplies down to Helmand, for example, the trucks must make their way through Kandahar.
Watan Risk, according to seven different security and trucking company officials, is the sole provider of security along this route. The reason is simple: Watan is allied with the local warlord who controls the road. Watan's company website is quite impressive, and claims its personnel "are diligently screened to weed out all ex-militia members, supporters of the Taliban, or individuals with loyalty to warlords, drug barons, or any other group opposed to international support of the democratic process." Whatever screening methods it uses, Watan's secret weapon to protect American supplies heading through Kandahar is a man named Commander Ruhullah. Said to be a handsome man in his 40s, Ruhullah has an oddly high-pitched voice. He wears traditional salwar kameez and a Rolex watch. He rarely, if ever, associates with Westerners. He commands a large group of irregular fighters with no known government affiliation, and his name, security officials tell me, inspires obedience or fear in villages along the road.
It is a dangerous business, of course: until last spring Ruhullah had competition--a one-legged warlord named Commander Abdul Khaliq. He was killed in an ambush.
So Ruhullah is the surviving road warrior for that stretch of highway. According to witnesses, he works like this: he waits until there are hundreds of trucks ready to convoy south down the highway. Then he gets his men together, setting them up in 4x4s and pickups. Witnesses say he does not limit his arsenal to AK-47s but uses any weapons he can get. His chief weapon is his reputation. And for that, Watan is paid royally, collecting a fee for each truck that passes through his corridor. The American trucking official told me that Ruhullah "charges $1,500 per truck to go to Kandahar. Just 300 kilometers."
It's hard to pinpoint what this is, exactly--security, extortion or a form of "insurance." Then there is the question, Does Ruhullah have ties to the Taliban? That's impossible to know. As an American private security veteran familiar with the route said, "He works both sides... whatever is most profitable. He's the main commander. He's got to be involved with the Taliban. How much, no one knows."
Even NCL, the company owned by Hamed Wardak, pays. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me that NCL sends its portion of US logistics goods in Watan's and Ruhullah's convoys. Sources say NCL is billed $500,000 per month for Watan's services. To underline the point: NCL, operating on a $360 million contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister's son, is paying millions per year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai's cousins, for protection.
Hamed Wardak wouldn't return my phone calls. Milt Bearden, the former CIA officer affiliated with the company, wouldn't speak with me either. There's nothing wrong with Bearden engaging in business in Afghanistan, but disclosure of his business interests might have been expected when testifying on US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After all, NCL stands to make or lose hundreds of millions based on the whims of US policy-makers.
It is certainly worth asking why NCL, a company with no known trucking experience, and little security experience to speak of, would win a contract worth $360 million. Plenty of Afghan insiders are asking questions. "Why would the US government give him a contract if he is the son of the minister of defense?" That's what Mahmoud Karzai asked me. He is the brother of President Karzai, and he himself has been treated in the press as a poster boy for access to government officials. The New York Times even profiled him in a highly critical piece. In his defense, Karzai emphasized that he, at least, has refrained from US government or Afghan government contracting. He pointed out, as others have, that Hamed Wardak had little security or trucking background before his company received security and trucking contracts from the Defense Department. "That's a questionable business practice," he said. "They shouldn't give it to him. How come that's not questioned?"
I did get the opportunity to ask General Wardak, Hamed's father, about it. He is quite dapper, although he is no longer the debonair "Gucci commander" Bearden once described. I asked Wardak about his son and NCL. "I've tried to be straightforward and correct and fight corruption all my life," the defense minister said. "This has been something people have tried to use against me, so it has been painful."
Wardak would speak only briefly about NCL. The issue seems to have produced a rift with his son. "I was against it from the beginning, and that's why we have not talked for a long time. I have never tried to support him or to use my power or influence that he should benefit."
When I told Wardak that his son's company had a US contract worth as much as $360 million, he did a double take. "This is impossible," he said. "I do not believe this."
I believed the general when he said he really didn't know what his son was up to. But cleaning up what look like insider deals may be easier than the next step: shutting down the money pipeline going from DoD contracts to potential insurgents.
Two years ago, a top Afghan security official told me, Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, had alerted the American military to the problem. The NDS delivered what I'm told are "very detailed" reports to the Americans explaining how the Taliban are profiting from protecting convoys of US supplies.
The Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the United States were to take the tens of millions paid to security contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy support unit to guard its logistics lines? The suggestion went nowhere.
The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban's protection is not a secret. I asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents? "The American soldier in me is repulsed by it," he said in an interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province. "But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, 'Hey, don't hassle me.' I don't like it, but it is what it is."
As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, "We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20 percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics."
In a statement to The Nation about Host Nation Trucking, Col. Wayne Shanks, the chief public affairs officer for the international forces in Afghanistan, said that military officials are "aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring." He added that, despite oversight, "the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent."
In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that--as with so much in Afghanistan--the United States doesn't seem to know how to fix it.
Aram Roston is an Emmy Award-winning investigative producer at NBC News and the author of The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi (Nation Books), from which this article is adapted.
Tambores Feministas Suenan en Protesta por la Sociedad Machista
Marta Escurra
SEMlac
San Bernardino, Paraguay, octubre (Especial de SEMlac).- Tambores y gritos del grupo afroparaguayo Camba Cuá -que significa en lengua guaraní: lugar donde habitan los negros- cerraron ayer, domingo 25, los tres días de encuentro feminista denominado "IV Aty Guasú Kuña Rekó Reheguá", Cuarto Encuentro Feminista del Paraguay, en guaraní.
Mujeres venidas de todos los rincones del país se reunieron bajo una carpa blanca, donde reanudaron el compromiso de luchar por sus derechos y lanzaron un manifiesto entre cuyas intenciones se encuentra la erradicación de una "opresiva sociedad machista".
Este multitudinario encuentro, realizado en una plaza a escasas cuadras del Lago Ypacarai, reunió a indígenas, lesbianas, trabajadoras domésticas, del sexo, travestis, transgéneros y líderes feministas, quienes durante los tres días (23, 24 y 25 de octubre) insistieron en la necesidad fundamental de llamar la atención sobre la necesidad de una ley de salud sexual y reproductiva.
Una ley que no se promulga
El tratamiento del Proyecto de Ley de Salud Sexual y Reproductiva en el Parlamento Paraguayo ha generado controversia en los sectores conservadores de la sociedad paraguaya, en especial de la iglesia Católica, por considerarse que "abre la puerta para la legalización del aborto y la unión legal de parejas de homosexuales".
Sin embargo la "Ley Filizzola" -llamada así por haber sido presentada por el senador Carlos Filizzola, hace ya tres años- plantea establecer mecanismos para el acceso libre de las mujeres a información de métodos anticonceptivos en hospitales públicos. En ningún lugar del proyecto se mencionan los casamientos entre gays o el tema del aborto, que en Paraguay tiene pena carcelaria.
"Queremos que se promulgue esa ley... que pertenece a todas las mujeres, en especial a las campesinas, que no tenemos los servicios de salud adecuados; vivimos en una zona donde, por desconocimiento, tuvimos casos de niñas de entre nueve y 11 años de edad que resultaron embarazadas, pedimos al gobierno que haga algo", dijo a SEMlac Gloria Olmedo, dirigente campesina del Departamento de San Pedro, distante a casi 150 kilómetros de Asunción, la capital del país.
En respuesta a Olmedo, la ministra de la Mujer, Gloria Rubín, expresó a SEMlac que "el tema de la ley no está en la cancha del Poder Ejecutivo, sino en las comisiones de salud de las cámaras de Diputados y Senadores. Hasta el momento, se hace lo que se puede, pero todos los sectores, en especial las feministas organizadas, debiéramos tomar acciones concretas para que se trate la ley en el período 2010".
Reivindicación del trabajo doméstico
Otro punto sobre el cual se enfocó la atención durante el Aty Guasú fue la reivindicación de las empleadas del servicio doméstico. "Este encuentro es una gran oportunidad para nosotras de visualizar el problema que existe con las domésticas", comentó Solana Meza, de la Asociación de Empleadas Domésticas del Paraguay.
Dicha situación consiste en la baja remuneración por este tipo de trabajo, que en promedio llega a 400.000 guaraníes al mes -unos 97 dólares estadounidenses, monto con el cual difícilmente pueda mantenerse una familia. La meta es llegar por lo menos a que los empleadores paguen el salario mínimo vigente en Paraguay, de casi un millón 500.000 guaraníes, equivalentes a cerca de 300 dólares estadounidenses.
Un aspecto positivo, reconoce Meza, es la inclusión de las domésticas de todo el país en el seguro social estatal del IPS (Instituto de Previsión Social). Este derecho ya existía en los papeles desde 1945, pero solo era para quienes trabajaban en la capital; ahora ya se extendió a todo el país.
Las indígenas: una larga sequía
Para Negra Esquivel, una indígena Sanapaná del Chaco Paraguayo, el encuentro no tuvo eco positivo. "A las indígenas no nos dieron espacio suficiente. Tenemos muchos problemas que no fueron escuchados. Especialmente el de la posesión legal de tierras", expresó a SEMlac Negra, esposa del cacique de la comunidad, asentada a 490 kilómetros de Asunción.
"Hace 13 años nos prometieron chapas de zinc para levantar nuestras casas, y hasta hoy, a pesar de mucho intentar, no conseguimos nada. No tenemos servicios de salud. Si alguien se enferma nos vemos obligadas a caminar 90 kilómetros con nuestros enfermos a cuestas para llegar a la comunidad más cercana (Loma Plata), y si tenemos suerte nos atienden", refirió una sentida Negra, quien en ese tipo de circunstancias perdió hace dos meses a su hija Elba, de 24 años de edad.
La comunidad Sanapaná se dedica mayormente a la agricultura; sin embargo, con una sequía de nueve meses, no pueden cosechar producción alguna. "Solíamos tener cultivos de sandías, pero como no llueve todos nuestros cultivos se secaron. Ahora no vivimos, sobrevivimos", lamentó Negra, quien grabadora en mano tomaba registro del encuentro para retransmitirlo y traducirlo a su comunidad.
El manifiesto
Rosa Posa, una de las organizadoras del Aty Guasú, refirió en una publicación al Diario ABC Color que su deseo es mostrar que "las mujeres somos tan diversas, somos tan diferentes, pero tenemos algo en común, que vivimos en una sociedad machista, violenta, que oprime y reprime".
En el cierre de la jornada, el domingo 25, sonaron inicialmente tambores africanos del grupo Camba Cuá, que dieron paso a la lectura del manifiesto feminista que expresa su rotundo repudio a la violencia hacia las mujeres en todas sus formas y un pedido expreso de declarar emergencia sanitaria ante la persistencia de los altos índices de mortalidad materna.
"No es posible que las autoridades y la población sigan cruzándose de brazos ante la persistencia de la violencia hacia las mujeres, ni que se siga hablando de crímenes pasionales ante los asesinatos de las mujeres, ni que se normalice el tráfico de la trata de mujeres, niñas y niños con fines de explotación sexual", reza parte de documento.
También reclama al gobierno de Fernando Lugo que cumpla sus promesas con los pueblos indígenas y se hagan realidad los derechos de todas las mujeres indígenas. Critica además la alarmante baja participación de mujeres en órganos de decisión y en las esferas políticas y públicas.
"La paridad es solo cuestión de voluntad política. Queremos 50 por ciento de mujeres en los cargos electivos, al frente de los ministerios y en los tres primeros niveles de la administración pública", expresa el manifiesto.
Finalmente, el documento del IV Encuentro Feminista del Paraguay reclama la aprobación de los proyectos de Ley Contra Toda Forma de Discriminación y de Salud Sexual y Reproductiva, actualmente en estudio en el Parlamento Nacional, como pasos fundamentales hacia la vigencia de todos los derechos de todas las mujeres.
Dicho esto, el acto culminó en un gran baile con ritmos afro que unió a mujeres de diversas procedencias culturales, políticas y religiosas. Negra, Solana, Gloria y muchas otras como ellas regresaron a sus casas con la esperanza de que todos estos deseos por fin se cumplan.
SEMlac
San Bernardino, Paraguay, octubre (Especial de SEMlac).- Tambores y gritos del grupo afroparaguayo Camba Cuá -que significa en lengua guaraní: lugar donde habitan los negros- cerraron ayer, domingo 25, los tres días de encuentro feminista denominado "IV Aty Guasú Kuña Rekó Reheguá", Cuarto Encuentro Feminista del Paraguay, en guaraní.
Mujeres venidas de todos los rincones del país se reunieron bajo una carpa blanca, donde reanudaron el compromiso de luchar por sus derechos y lanzaron un manifiesto entre cuyas intenciones se encuentra la erradicación de una "opresiva sociedad machista".
Este multitudinario encuentro, realizado en una plaza a escasas cuadras del Lago Ypacarai, reunió a indígenas, lesbianas, trabajadoras domésticas, del sexo, travestis, transgéneros y líderes feministas, quienes durante los tres días (23, 24 y 25 de octubre) insistieron en la necesidad fundamental de llamar la atención sobre la necesidad de una ley de salud sexual y reproductiva.
Una ley que no se promulga
El tratamiento del Proyecto de Ley de Salud Sexual y Reproductiva en el Parlamento Paraguayo ha generado controversia en los sectores conservadores de la sociedad paraguaya, en especial de la iglesia Católica, por considerarse que "abre la puerta para la legalización del aborto y la unión legal de parejas de homosexuales".
Sin embargo la "Ley Filizzola" -llamada así por haber sido presentada por el senador Carlos Filizzola, hace ya tres años- plantea establecer mecanismos para el acceso libre de las mujeres a información de métodos anticonceptivos en hospitales públicos. En ningún lugar del proyecto se mencionan los casamientos entre gays o el tema del aborto, que en Paraguay tiene pena carcelaria.
"Queremos que se promulgue esa ley... que pertenece a todas las mujeres, en especial a las campesinas, que no tenemos los servicios de salud adecuados; vivimos en una zona donde, por desconocimiento, tuvimos casos de niñas de entre nueve y 11 años de edad que resultaron embarazadas, pedimos al gobierno que haga algo", dijo a SEMlac Gloria Olmedo, dirigente campesina del Departamento de San Pedro, distante a casi 150 kilómetros de Asunción, la capital del país.
En respuesta a Olmedo, la ministra de la Mujer, Gloria Rubín, expresó a SEMlac que "el tema de la ley no está en la cancha del Poder Ejecutivo, sino en las comisiones de salud de las cámaras de Diputados y Senadores. Hasta el momento, se hace lo que se puede, pero todos los sectores, en especial las feministas organizadas, debiéramos tomar acciones concretas para que se trate la ley en el período 2010".
Reivindicación del trabajo doméstico
Otro punto sobre el cual se enfocó la atención durante el Aty Guasú fue la reivindicación de las empleadas del servicio doméstico. "Este encuentro es una gran oportunidad para nosotras de visualizar el problema que existe con las domésticas", comentó Solana Meza, de la Asociación de Empleadas Domésticas del Paraguay.
Dicha situación consiste en la baja remuneración por este tipo de trabajo, que en promedio llega a 400.000 guaraníes al mes -unos 97 dólares estadounidenses, monto con el cual difícilmente pueda mantenerse una familia. La meta es llegar por lo menos a que los empleadores paguen el salario mínimo vigente en Paraguay, de casi un millón 500.000 guaraníes, equivalentes a cerca de 300 dólares estadounidenses.
Un aspecto positivo, reconoce Meza, es la inclusión de las domésticas de todo el país en el seguro social estatal del IPS (Instituto de Previsión Social). Este derecho ya existía en los papeles desde 1945, pero solo era para quienes trabajaban en la capital; ahora ya se extendió a todo el país.
Las indígenas: una larga sequía
Para Negra Esquivel, una indígena Sanapaná del Chaco Paraguayo, el encuentro no tuvo eco positivo. "A las indígenas no nos dieron espacio suficiente. Tenemos muchos problemas que no fueron escuchados. Especialmente el de la posesión legal de tierras", expresó a SEMlac Negra, esposa del cacique de la comunidad, asentada a 490 kilómetros de Asunción.
"Hace 13 años nos prometieron chapas de zinc para levantar nuestras casas, y hasta hoy, a pesar de mucho intentar, no conseguimos nada. No tenemos servicios de salud. Si alguien se enferma nos vemos obligadas a caminar 90 kilómetros con nuestros enfermos a cuestas para llegar a la comunidad más cercana (Loma Plata), y si tenemos suerte nos atienden", refirió una sentida Negra, quien en ese tipo de circunstancias perdió hace dos meses a su hija Elba, de 24 años de edad.
La comunidad Sanapaná se dedica mayormente a la agricultura; sin embargo, con una sequía de nueve meses, no pueden cosechar producción alguna. "Solíamos tener cultivos de sandías, pero como no llueve todos nuestros cultivos se secaron. Ahora no vivimos, sobrevivimos", lamentó Negra, quien grabadora en mano tomaba registro del encuentro para retransmitirlo y traducirlo a su comunidad.
El manifiesto
Rosa Posa, una de las organizadoras del Aty Guasú, refirió en una publicación al Diario ABC Color que su deseo es mostrar que "las mujeres somos tan diversas, somos tan diferentes, pero tenemos algo en común, que vivimos en una sociedad machista, violenta, que oprime y reprime".
En el cierre de la jornada, el domingo 25, sonaron inicialmente tambores africanos del grupo Camba Cuá, que dieron paso a la lectura del manifiesto feminista que expresa su rotundo repudio a la violencia hacia las mujeres en todas sus formas y un pedido expreso de declarar emergencia sanitaria ante la persistencia de los altos índices de mortalidad materna.
"No es posible que las autoridades y la población sigan cruzándose de brazos ante la persistencia de la violencia hacia las mujeres, ni que se siga hablando de crímenes pasionales ante los asesinatos de las mujeres, ni que se normalice el tráfico de la trata de mujeres, niñas y niños con fines de explotación sexual", reza parte de documento.
También reclama al gobierno de Fernando Lugo que cumpla sus promesas con los pueblos indígenas y se hagan realidad los derechos de todas las mujeres indígenas. Critica además la alarmante baja participación de mujeres en órganos de decisión y en las esferas políticas y públicas.
"La paridad es solo cuestión de voluntad política. Queremos 50 por ciento de mujeres en los cargos electivos, al frente de los ministerios y en los tres primeros niveles de la administración pública", expresa el manifiesto.
Finalmente, el documento del IV Encuentro Feminista del Paraguay reclama la aprobación de los proyectos de Ley Contra Toda Forma de Discriminación y de Salud Sexual y Reproductiva, actualmente en estudio en el Parlamento Nacional, como pasos fundamentales hacia la vigencia de todos los derechos de todas las mujeres.
Dicho esto, el acto culminó en un gran baile con ritmos afro que unió a mujeres de diversas procedencias culturales, políticas y religiosas. Negra, Solana, Gloria y muchas otras como ellas regresaron a sus casas con la esperanza de que todos estos deseos por fin se cumplan.
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico
Just Another Massacre?
By STUART EASTERLING
CounterPunch
On October 30, fifteen people were killed in a single massacre in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. It was, sadly, not even the largest mass killing this year, thanks to the “drug war” raging along the border with the United States.
This massacre was different in one important sense, however: its principal target was Margarito Montes, the leader of the General Worker, Peasant and Popular Union (UGOCP), a peasant organization based largely in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. Montes was killed, along with his wife, his children (of 4, 7 and 9 years of age), and a number of people in his entourage as they drove along a rural highway.
Many in the press quickly blamed the affair on “the narcos,” members of Mexico’s powerful drug organizations. The peasant leader Montes must have somehow been tied up in the drug trade, it was implied.
Another recent event, also widely reported in the Mexican press, had seemingly nothing to do with the October 30th murders. This was the public announcement by a mayor in the northern state of Nuevo León, Mauricio Fernández, that he was forming a private paramilitary organization. It would be composed of “rudos” – tough guys – recruited from the military and police. They would operate outside the law in collecting intelligence and fighting crime. They would be given tasks of “limpieza especial” – special cleansing.
The problem, mayor Fernández says, is the narcos.
* * *
Certainly no one can underestimate the power of the narcos in Mexico, and of organized crime more generally. They own large numbers of local police and government officials, particularly in the north. Public figures that do not cooperate are routinely assassinated, their quartered bodies often dumped in the street. Far more unknown individuals are also killed, often young men in their 20s, their bodies dumped en masse and frequently displaying signs of torture.
Indeed, more Mexicans died due to the “drug war” in 2008 than all Americans killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan since both those wars began. The drug war was of course escalated by Mexico’s conservative President Felipe Calderón, who has vowed to somehow defeat the organizations that serve the world’s largest market for illegal drugs: the United States.
Meanwhile, organized crime in Mexico has also increasingly entered into the lucrative business of kidnapping in recent years. It’s historically been the wealthy and near-wealthy that are targeted for kidnapping. But now it’s not just the rich any more. Migrants from Mexico and Central America trying to reach the US are now seized by kidnappers posing as coyotes, the people who facilitate border crossings. Relatives of migrants already in the north are forced give up what little they have to free their loved ones.
Some of the stories of kidnapping are truly horrific. One woman, recently rescued three years after having been seized, had given birth to two children in captivity, due to her having been sexually assaulted on so many occasions. In another case, a captured migrant was tortured with acid until he gave up the phone numbers of his relatives in the US.
Given stories like this, law-and-order policies will resonate with many people. In fact, 76 percent of Mexicans currently support introducing the death penalty in Mexico. Moreover, given the low level of confidence in the police and courts, many people will also look to taking the law into their own hands. Recently, in a town near Mexico City, an attempted kidnapping of a local business owner led to protests and riots by roughly 3,000 people. They blockaded roads, burned cars and set fire to the police station because the authorities would not hand over four would-be kidnappers to be lynched on the spot.
* * *
The elite in Mexico have also stoked and manipulated this fear of crime and violence for their own interests. Narcos and professional criminals have become a super-scapegoat: everything can be blamed on them – including the killing of a peasant leader.
They can be denounced in the press as corrupt noveau-riches that exploit the common people, while little is said about the far more numerous corrupt noveau-riches in Mexico that exploit the common people completely legally. They can be denounced by the government as being at the root of Mexico’s public insecurity, while completely ignoring the country’s growing levels of economic insecurity.
Moreover, the recent spread of illegal violence provides an opening for perfecting the use of legal violence. The various weapons the state develops to ostensibly fight organized crime can and increasingly will be employed against their critics and the left.
And this is where Mayor Fernández comes in. The spread of illegal violence also provides an opening for the rich to engage in their own. The community Fernández represents is one of the wealthiest in Mexico. In recent years, so its fearful residents claim, it has gone downhill. The poor that have always lived in and around town have increasingly turned to the drug trade. Rich narcos now drive around town in fancy cars.
And so it’s time to turn to “special cleansing.” One conspicuous narco, who liked to show off his yellow Lamborghini, was recently rubbed out in Mexico City. The mayor was somehow able to announce his elimination before even the police knew about it.
Privately-funded “special cleansing” groups funded by the rich and upper middle class are already known to exist in various parts of the country. They typically exterminate the sorts of petty criminals – like car thieves – that harass those with money. But it’s also likely that these groups will start expanding their definition of pests that need to be cleansed, if they haven’t already.
One such category of pests are journalists, for example. The Mexican north has already become a dangerous place for reporters asking pesky questions. Eight of them have been murdered in Mexico in the last six months. So: kill a journalist, or a political figure, one who has never been a friend of the local rich. Dump the body in the street. Pin a sign on it signed by one of the cartels. Blame the narcos, and don’t bother to investigate the crime.
If this isn’t happening already, Mayor Fernández’s “rudos” will ensure it does.
Put differently, it’s hard to imagine paramilitary and intelligence organizations, formed directly at the behest of Mexico’s wealthiest people, not acting as an instrument to protect their interests as a social class. And doing so by taking a page out of the narcos’ book.
And it is easy to imagine that such organizations would also come to be used against people like Margarito Montes.
* * *
Perhaps Montes was killed because he was involved with narcos – it’s not unthinkable. Time will hopefully tell. But he had certainly angered plenty of other powerful people over the years.
Montes was a Trotskyist many years ago, a founding member of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (PRT) in Mexico in the 1970s. He first started organizing in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca in the 1980s, a place with a long history of agrarian violence. Take the response to just one land invasion organized by Montes in 1991 – local ranchers assembled several hundred armed men to expel the invaders, killing 39 people.
And so Montes quickly became very tough customer, as one has to be to take land from rich people and give it poor people. Two political bosses who lost their land to peasants led by Montes were later found dead and buried, with their ears cut off, on that very same land. In 2005 Montes was linked (but never charged) with the murder of César Toimil Robert and four others. They were members of a notorious armed organization that defended the interests of ranchers and landowners around Tuxtepec, and had fought bitterly with the UGOCP.
Montes had also been accused of collaborating with Mexico’s authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) since the late 1980s. Critics say he focused many of his land invasions on the PRI’s political enemies, and particularly those of the “Salinas clan,” the corrupt family of ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The Yaqui people of Sonora, for example, accuse Montes of working repeatedly with the PRI and Salinas to invade lands they claimed as their own. The latest contested land invasion was on the very month Montes was killed.
The UGOCP and other local and national peasant organizations have argued that Montes was killed by a group resembling mayor Fernández’s “rudos” – a death squad assembled by the angry rich. They are demanding a thorough investigation into his death and that of his companions. They are asking how such a large number of assassins could have slipped away after killing 15 people traveling in multiple vehicles on a highway in broad daylight. They suspect the state government had a hand in the massacre, or at least looked the other way.
It’s true that perhaps the best time to commit a political massacre is when massacres over things like drugs are far too common. But whether the government will bother to seriously investigate Montes’ death is an open question.
Better to just blame it all on the narcos.
Stuart Easterling writes for the Socialist Worker, where a shorter version of this piece originally appeared. He can be reached at: stuart.easterling@gmail.com
By STUART EASTERLING
CounterPunch
On October 30, fifteen people were killed in a single massacre in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. It was, sadly, not even the largest mass killing this year, thanks to the “drug war” raging along the border with the United States.
This massacre was different in one important sense, however: its principal target was Margarito Montes, the leader of the General Worker, Peasant and Popular Union (UGOCP), a peasant organization based largely in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. Montes was killed, along with his wife, his children (of 4, 7 and 9 years of age), and a number of people in his entourage as they drove along a rural highway.
Many in the press quickly blamed the affair on “the narcos,” members of Mexico’s powerful drug organizations. The peasant leader Montes must have somehow been tied up in the drug trade, it was implied.
Another recent event, also widely reported in the Mexican press, had seemingly nothing to do with the October 30th murders. This was the public announcement by a mayor in the northern state of Nuevo León, Mauricio Fernández, that he was forming a private paramilitary organization. It would be composed of “rudos” – tough guys – recruited from the military and police. They would operate outside the law in collecting intelligence and fighting crime. They would be given tasks of “limpieza especial” – special cleansing.
The problem, mayor Fernández says, is the narcos.
* * *
Certainly no one can underestimate the power of the narcos in Mexico, and of organized crime more generally. They own large numbers of local police and government officials, particularly in the north. Public figures that do not cooperate are routinely assassinated, their quartered bodies often dumped in the street. Far more unknown individuals are also killed, often young men in their 20s, their bodies dumped en masse and frequently displaying signs of torture.
Indeed, more Mexicans died due to the “drug war” in 2008 than all Americans killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan since both those wars began. The drug war was of course escalated by Mexico’s conservative President Felipe Calderón, who has vowed to somehow defeat the organizations that serve the world’s largest market for illegal drugs: the United States.
Meanwhile, organized crime in Mexico has also increasingly entered into the lucrative business of kidnapping in recent years. It’s historically been the wealthy and near-wealthy that are targeted for kidnapping. But now it’s not just the rich any more. Migrants from Mexico and Central America trying to reach the US are now seized by kidnappers posing as coyotes, the people who facilitate border crossings. Relatives of migrants already in the north are forced give up what little they have to free their loved ones.
Some of the stories of kidnapping are truly horrific. One woman, recently rescued three years after having been seized, had given birth to two children in captivity, due to her having been sexually assaulted on so many occasions. In another case, a captured migrant was tortured with acid until he gave up the phone numbers of his relatives in the US.
Given stories like this, law-and-order policies will resonate with many people. In fact, 76 percent of Mexicans currently support introducing the death penalty in Mexico. Moreover, given the low level of confidence in the police and courts, many people will also look to taking the law into their own hands. Recently, in a town near Mexico City, an attempted kidnapping of a local business owner led to protests and riots by roughly 3,000 people. They blockaded roads, burned cars and set fire to the police station because the authorities would not hand over four would-be kidnappers to be lynched on the spot.
* * *
The elite in Mexico have also stoked and manipulated this fear of crime and violence for their own interests. Narcos and professional criminals have become a super-scapegoat: everything can be blamed on them – including the killing of a peasant leader.
They can be denounced in the press as corrupt noveau-riches that exploit the common people, while little is said about the far more numerous corrupt noveau-riches in Mexico that exploit the common people completely legally. They can be denounced by the government as being at the root of Mexico’s public insecurity, while completely ignoring the country’s growing levels of economic insecurity.
Moreover, the recent spread of illegal violence provides an opening for perfecting the use of legal violence. The various weapons the state develops to ostensibly fight organized crime can and increasingly will be employed against their critics and the left.
And this is where Mayor Fernández comes in. The spread of illegal violence also provides an opening for the rich to engage in their own. The community Fernández represents is one of the wealthiest in Mexico. In recent years, so its fearful residents claim, it has gone downhill. The poor that have always lived in and around town have increasingly turned to the drug trade. Rich narcos now drive around town in fancy cars.
And so it’s time to turn to “special cleansing.” One conspicuous narco, who liked to show off his yellow Lamborghini, was recently rubbed out in Mexico City. The mayor was somehow able to announce his elimination before even the police knew about it.
Privately-funded “special cleansing” groups funded by the rich and upper middle class are already known to exist in various parts of the country. They typically exterminate the sorts of petty criminals – like car thieves – that harass those with money. But it’s also likely that these groups will start expanding their definition of pests that need to be cleansed, if they haven’t already.
One such category of pests are journalists, for example. The Mexican north has already become a dangerous place for reporters asking pesky questions. Eight of them have been murdered in Mexico in the last six months. So: kill a journalist, or a political figure, one who has never been a friend of the local rich. Dump the body in the street. Pin a sign on it signed by one of the cartels. Blame the narcos, and don’t bother to investigate the crime.
If this isn’t happening already, Mayor Fernández’s “rudos” will ensure it does.
Put differently, it’s hard to imagine paramilitary and intelligence organizations, formed directly at the behest of Mexico’s wealthiest people, not acting as an instrument to protect their interests as a social class. And doing so by taking a page out of the narcos’ book.
And it is easy to imagine that such organizations would also come to be used against people like Margarito Montes.
* * *
Perhaps Montes was killed because he was involved with narcos – it’s not unthinkable. Time will hopefully tell. But he had certainly angered plenty of other powerful people over the years.
Montes was a Trotskyist many years ago, a founding member of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (PRT) in Mexico in the 1970s. He first started organizing in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca in the 1980s, a place with a long history of agrarian violence. Take the response to just one land invasion organized by Montes in 1991 – local ranchers assembled several hundred armed men to expel the invaders, killing 39 people.
And so Montes quickly became very tough customer, as one has to be to take land from rich people and give it poor people. Two political bosses who lost their land to peasants led by Montes were later found dead and buried, with their ears cut off, on that very same land. In 2005 Montes was linked (but never charged) with the murder of César Toimil Robert and four others. They were members of a notorious armed organization that defended the interests of ranchers and landowners around Tuxtepec, and had fought bitterly with the UGOCP.
Montes had also been accused of collaborating with Mexico’s authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) since the late 1980s. Critics say he focused many of his land invasions on the PRI’s political enemies, and particularly those of the “Salinas clan,” the corrupt family of ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The Yaqui people of Sonora, for example, accuse Montes of working repeatedly with the PRI and Salinas to invade lands they claimed as their own. The latest contested land invasion was on the very month Montes was killed.
The UGOCP and other local and national peasant organizations have argued that Montes was killed by a group resembling mayor Fernández’s “rudos” – a death squad assembled by the angry rich. They are demanding a thorough investigation into his death and that of his companions. They are asking how such a large number of assassins could have slipped away after killing 15 people traveling in multiple vehicles on a highway in broad daylight. They suspect the state government had a hand in the massacre, or at least looked the other way.
It’s true that perhaps the best time to commit a political massacre is when massacres over things like drugs are far too common. But whether the government will bother to seriously investigate Montes’ death is an open question.
Better to just blame it all on the narcos.
Stuart Easterling writes for the Socialist Worker, where a shorter version of this piece originally appeared. He can be reached at: stuart.easterling@gmail.com
11/12/09
Mujeres Negras en Busca del Hogar Perdido
Inés Acosta
IPS
Luego de un proceso continuo de desalojos y discriminaciones, las familias negras fueron desplazadas a lo largo de las últimas décadas desde los barrios Sur, Palermo y Cordón hacia la periferia de Montevideo, invisibilizadas, lejos de los servicios y de sus raíces.
La fuerte lucha del colectivo afrodescendiente y las señales positivas del primer gobierno de izquierda del país, liderado por Tabaré Vázquez, permitieron hace cuatro años comenzar a transitar un camino hacia la reparación que les permita a los afro-uruguayos volver a los barrios donde se asentaron mayoritariamente y donde aún suenan los tambores.
Algunas de las experiencias más importantes en este sentido surgen de la necesidad que tienen las mujeres negras, jefas de hogares, de brindar una vivienda digna a sus familias
"Siempre fuimos discriminadas por tres motivos: por ser mujeres, afrodescendientes y pobres. En su mayoría somos todas jefas de familia, porque históricamente en nuestro colectivo se dio el matriarcado", contó a IPS Alicia García, referente de la Organizaciones Mundo Afro (OMA), creado en 1988 y que reúne a la comunidad negra de Uruguay
"Una de las grandes carencias que tenemos es que nos cuesta muchísimo brindarle a nuestra familia una vivienda digna", añadió.
Para atender esta problemática, un grupo de mujeres decidió impulsar la creación de cooperativas de viviendas, con ayuda de OMA, en los barrios donde históricamente vivieron y desarrollaron su cultura los afrodescendientes, que son Barrio Sur, Palermo y Cordón, en el sur de Montevideo.
La población originaria de estos barrios estaba formada por trabajadores inmigrantes y libertos negros, que alquilaban viviendas y se ubicaban en "conventillos", como les llamaban en Buenos Aires y Montevideo a las casas colectivas, de uno o más pisos con varias habitaciones, una para cada familia.
En esas grandes casonas se gestó la cultura afro-uruguaya y se desarrolló el candombe, típica música urbana de este país que lo identifica en el mundo. Casi siete por ciento de los 3,3 millones de habitantes de este país son descendientes de africanos.
La situación persistió con pocos cambios hasta pasados los años 70, cuando muchas de las familias negras comenzaron a ser desalojadas para apropiarse de los predios, ya de alto valor al estar en una zona céntrica y de desarrollo urbanístico de la ciudad. Este proceso se acentuó en la dictadura cívico-militar (1973-1985).
"Para nosotros lo que sucedió en esos años fue un genocidio y una acción totalmente racista. Los barrios donde estábamos ubicados tenían viviendas de muchos años de construcción. En ese entonces, el gobierno de facto emitió un comunicado informando que se les repararía las viviendas deterioradas a quienes denunciaran el mal estado edilicio de éstas", cuenta García, quien tenía entonces 12 años.
"La gente fue con sus denuncias para que les repararan las viviendas, pero se trató de un engaño, ya que los militares gobernantes juntaron todas esas denuncias y declararon al lugar en estado ruinoso y comenzaron los desalojos aduciendo esa causa. Fue una decepción terrible para todos", agregó.
Del desalojo compulsivo al digno regreso
García, por vivir muy cerca y tener a toda su familia en ese lugar, resalta el caso dramático del conventillo Ansina, ubicado en el barrio Palermo y que toma su nombre del apodo de Joaquín Lenzina, negro esclavo en su juventud, poeta y conocido en especial en la historia uruguaya como asistente del héroe mayor del país, José Artigas, hasta su muerte en el exilio paraguayo.
"A fin de año, cuando la gente estaba esperando las fiestas y todo eso, empiezan a llegar las notificaciones de desalojo. Todos lloraban y algunos murieron antes de irse porque no resistieron que lo desarraigaran de algo que era parte de su vida", narra.
"Fue terrible ver cómo los empezaban a sacar en camiones. Pasé mucho tiempo separada de mi familia y de mis amigos, quedé allí en el barrio, pero ya no había nadie", comentó.
Según cuenta García, fue un barrio donde "la solidaridad y la humildad estaban a flor de piel y todo se compartía". "Existían más de 300 familias y todas eran muy numerosas, vivían por piezas (habitaciones) y en espacios físicos muy reducidos".
"Era muy doloroso ver los camiones que se llevaban a los familiares y a los amigos. Los llevaron a las periferias a lugares como galpones o fábricas donde dividían sus espacios con cortinas de baño o con muebles y tenían que dar cuenta de la hora que entraban y salían", recuerda con dolor.
La dirigente de AOM señala que "después de determinado tiempo les dieron unas viviendas de emergencia en Cerro Norte (un barrio pobre periférico de Montevideo), donde se dio una mezcla de un montón de cosas, porque allí habían llevado a otros vecinos desalojados de otros sitios de la ciudad, todos mezclados".
Con este pasado doloroso compartido, este grupo de mujeres se propuso recuperar esos espacios y volver a sus orígenes.
La idea prosperó y el gobierno de Vázquez, del Frente Amplio (FA) y surgido en 2005, decidió reparar a los últimos habitantes del conventillo Ansina, que fueron desalojados por la dictadura en 1978 y 1979.
Con la asesoría de García como representante del colectivo afro en el Ministerio de Vivienda, se construye un complejo habitacional para darles la oportunidad de volver a algunos de los que fueron desarraigados de ese viejo barrio montevideano, cargado de cultura afro-uruguaya.
Para ello se firmó un acuerdo entre el gobierno nacional y el de Montevideo, también del FA, que permitió construir un edificio con 15 viviendas en barrio Palermo, destinado a los viejos habitantes de Ansina y a sus hijos.
"El programa de reparación fue un avance y una conformidad total. Cuando antes le hablábamos de reparación a los gobiernos anteriores (de derecha y centroderecha) era como hablarle del diablo", dijo García.
Otra cooperativa de vivienda, llamada Unidades Familiares Mundo Afro (Ufama al Sur), surgió en 1998 con la idea de crear un complejo habitacional en el Barrio Sur, donde estuvo el conventillo Medio Mundo, también desalojado por la dictadura.
Comenzar esta construcción demoró un tiempo, pero a partir de 2007, cuando se crea la asesoría de la comunidad afro dentro del Ministerio de Vivienda, el proceso se aceleró y se espera que a fin de este año finalicen las obras que beneficiarán a 36 familias afrodescendientes.
Con el mismo objetivo, últimamente se conformó la cooperativa de vivienda Ufama Cordón, también de mujeres, en este caso que vivían en el conventillo Gaboto, en Cordón, también víctima de la dictadura.
Donde suenan los tambores
La dictadura pudo desalojar a parte de la población negra de Barrio Sur y Palermo, "pero no nos pudieron sacar los tambores y nuestra cultura", dicen con orgullo bien ganado sus protagonistas.
"En las fechas importantes para nosotros siempre vamos a esos barrios, porque allí tenemos nuestro foco. Ahora queremos recuperar en el barrio todo el tiempo perdido, recuperar parte de nuestra cultura, nuclearnos y estar un poco más juntos", comenta García.
Por su parte, el diputado izquierdista Edgardo Ortuño, primer negro en llegar al parlamento uruguayo pese a la importancia de la población de este origen, explica a IPS que esos barrios son referencias simbólicas muy importantes de la presencia afrodescendiente en el país.
"Allí dejaron su aporte cultural, social y económico. El colectivo afro desarrolló en esos lugares la manifestación de su cultura por excelencia, como es el candombe. Los barrios son patrimonio material por sus construcciones que debieron ser protegidas y no destruidas", agrega.
"También reúnen el patrimonio inmaterial como el candombe y toda la cultura negra. No vivimos ahí, pero logramos mantener una serie de peregrinaciones a esos lugares desarrollando allí nuestra cultura, todo un simbolismo que no pudieron destruir", sostuvo el legislador frenteamplista.
Según explicó, no sólo se ha trabajado en la puesta en marcha de la reparación a situaciones de discriminación racial y de desalojos durante de la dictadura, sino que también se ha avanzado mucho en la sensibilización y en dar conocer las discriminaciones hacia el colectivo afro, que todavía existen.
"Desde el gobierno y el parlamento planteamos una línea de acción que reconociera y valorara la presencia afrodescendiente y su cultura para poder superar la invisibilización y esa falsa construcción histórica de que la población uruguaya es más bien europea, ocultando la presencia indígena y negra", apunta.
"Los daños causados a los afrodescendientes durante la dictadura, que como otros significaron violaciones a los derechos humanos, no fueron incorporados a los daños sufridos en esa época", señala.
Para Ortuño, los logros alcanzados se dieron sin lugar a duda gracias a la lucha de las organizaciones de afrodescendientes que pusieron el tema en la agenda pública, con un apoyo importante de organismos internacionales como la Organización de las Naciones Unidas y sus agencias, como el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo.
También el cambio de signo político del gobierno y la incorporación del primer negro en el parlamento, permitieron que un cambio sea posible.
"Estamos tratando de volver y parte de las políticas del gobierno están orientadas a permitir el retorno a estos barrios. Es una larga marcha, se ha iniciado el camino de reparación y hay acciones a favor, se han hecho cosas que no se hicieron nunca", afirma.
Sin embargo, advierte que, pese a que "se ha avanzado bastante, aún falta mucho". "Se necesita más asignación de recursos y ampliar el número de beneficiarios. Es un buen comienzo, ahora hay que seguir en esa dirección", concluyó.
IPS
Luego de un proceso continuo de desalojos y discriminaciones, las familias negras fueron desplazadas a lo largo de las últimas décadas desde los barrios Sur, Palermo y Cordón hacia la periferia de Montevideo, invisibilizadas, lejos de los servicios y de sus raíces.
La fuerte lucha del colectivo afrodescendiente y las señales positivas del primer gobierno de izquierda del país, liderado por Tabaré Vázquez, permitieron hace cuatro años comenzar a transitar un camino hacia la reparación que les permita a los afro-uruguayos volver a los barrios donde se asentaron mayoritariamente y donde aún suenan los tambores.
Algunas de las experiencias más importantes en este sentido surgen de la necesidad que tienen las mujeres negras, jefas de hogares, de brindar una vivienda digna a sus familias
"Siempre fuimos discriminadas por tres motivos: por ser mujeres, afrodescendientes y pobres. En su mayoría somos todas jefas de familia, porque históricamente en nuestro colectivo se dio el matriarcado", contó a IPS Alicia García, referente de la Organizaciones Mundo Afro (OMA), creado en 1988 y que reúne a la comunidad negra de Uruguay
"Una de las grandes carencias que tenemos es que nos cuesta muchísimo brindarle a nuestra familia una vivienda digna", añadió.
Para atender esta problemática, un grupo de mujeres decidió impulsar la creación de cooperativas de viviendas, con ayuda de OMA, en los barrios donde históricamente vivieron y desarrollaron su cultura los afrodescendientes, que son Barrio Sur, Palermo y Cordón, en el sur de Montevideo.
La población originaria de estos barrios estaba formada por trabajadores inmigrantes y libertos negros, que alquilaban viviendas y se ubicaban en "conventillos", como les llamaban en Buenos Aires y Montevideo a las casas colectivas, de uno o más pisos con varias habitaciones, una para cada familia.
En esas grandes casonas se gestó la cultura afro-uruguaya y se desarrolló el candombe, típica música urbana de este país que lo identifica en el mundo. Casi siete por ciento de los 3,3 millones de habitantes de este país son descendientes de africanos.
La situación persistió con pocos cambios hasta pasados los años 70, cuando muchas de las familias negras comenzaron a ser desalojadas para apropiarse de los predios, ya de alto valor al estar en una zona céntrica y de desarrollo urbanístico de la ciudad. Este proceso se acentuó en la dictadura cívico-militar (1973-1985).
"Para nosotros lo que sucedió en esos años fue un genocidio y una acción totalmente racista. Los barrios donde estábamos ubicados tenían viviendas de muchos años de construcción. En ese entonces, el gobierno de facto emitió un comunicado informando que se les repararía las viviendas deterioradas a quienes denunciaran el mal estado edilicio de éstas", cuenta García, quien tenía entonces 12 años.
"La gente fue con sus denuncias para que les repararan las viviendas, pero se trató de un engaño, ya que los militares gobernantes juntaron todas esas denuncias y declararon al lugar en estado ruinoso y comenzaron los desalojos aduciendo esa causa. Fue una decepción terrible para todos", agregó.
Del desalojo compulsivo al digno regreso
García, por vivir muy cerca y tener a toda su familia en ese lugar, resalta el caso dramático del conventillo Ansina, ubicado en el barrio Palermo y que toma su nombre del apodo de Joaquín Lenzina, negro esclavo en su juventud, poeta y conocido en especial en la historia uruguaya como asistente del héroe mayor del país, José Artigas, hasta su muerte en el exilio paraguayo.
"A fin de año, cuando la gente estaba esperando las fiestas y todo eso, empiezan a llegar las notificaciones de desalojo. Todos lloraban y algunos murieron antes de irse porque no resistieron que lo desarraigaran de algo que era parte de su vida", narra.
"Fue terrible ver cómo los empezaban a sacar en camiones. Pasé mucho tiempo separada de mi familia y de mis amigos, quedé allí en el barrio, pero ya no había nadie", comentó.
Según cuenta García, fue un barrio donde "la solidaridad y la humildad estaban a flor de piel y todo se compartía". "Existían más de 300 familias y todas eran muy numerosas, vivían por piezas (habitaciones) y en espacios físicos muy reducidos".
"Era muy doloroso ver los camiones que se llevaban a los familiares y a los amigos. Los llevaron a las periferias a lugares como galpones o fábricas donde dividían sus espacios con cortinas de baño o con muebles y tenían que dar cuenta de la hora que entraban y salían", recuerda con dolor.
La dirigente de AOM señala que "después de determinado tiempo les dieron unas viviendas de emergencia en Cerro Norte (un barrio pobre periférico de Montevideo), donde se dio una mezcla de un montón de cosas, porque allí habían llevado a otros vecinos desalojados de otros sitios de la ciudad, todos mezclados".
Con este pasado doloroso compartido, este grupo de mujeres se propuso recuperar esos espacios y volver a sus orígenes.
La idea prosperó y el gobierno de Vázquez, del Frente Amplio (FA) y surgido en 2005, decidió reparar a los últimos habitantes del conventillo Ansina, que fueron desalojados por la dictadura en 1978 y 1979.
Con la asesoría de García como representante del colectivo afro en el Ministerio de Vivienda, se construye un complejo habitacional para darles la oportunidad de volver a algunos de los que fueron desarraigados de ese viejo barrio montevideano, cargado de cultura afro-uruguaya.
Para ello se firmó un acuerdo entre el gobierno nacional y el de Montevideo, también del FA, que permitió construir un edificio con 15 viviendas en barrio Palermo, destinado a los viejos habitantes de Ansina y a sus hijos.
"El programa de reparación fue un avance y una conformidad total. Cuando antes le hablábamos de reparación a los gobiernos anteriores (de derecha y centroderecha) era como hablarle del diablo", dijo García.
Otra cooperativa de vivienda, llamada Unidades Familiares Mundo Afro (Ufama al Sur), surgió en 1998 con la idea de crear un complejo habitacional en el Barrio Sur, donde estuvo el conventillo Medio Mundo, también desalojado por la dictadura.
Comenzar esta construcción demoró un tiempo, pero a partir de 2007, cuando se crea la asesoría de la comunidad afro dentro del Ministerio de Vivienda, el proceso se aceleró y se espera que a fin de este año finalicen las obras que beneficiarán a 36 familias afrodescendientes.
Con el mismo objetivo, últimamente se conformó la cooperativa de vivienda Ufama Cordón, también de mujeres, en este caso que vivían en el conventillo Gaboto, en Cordón, también víctima de la dictadura.
Donde suenan los tambores
La dictadura pudo desalojar a parte de la población negra de Barrio Sur y Palermo, "pero no nos pudieron sacar los tambores y nuestra cultura", dicen con orgullo bien ganado sus protagonistas.
"En las fechas importantes para nosotros siempre vamos a esos barrios, porque allí tenemos nuestro foco. Ahora queremos recuperar en el barrio todo el tiempo perdido, recuperar parte de nuestra cultura, nuclearnos y estar un poco más juntos", comenta García.
Por su parte, el diputado izquierdista Edgardo Ortuño, primer negro en llegar al parlamento uruguayo pese a la importancia de la población de este origen, explica a IPS que esos barrios son referencias simbólicas muy importantes de la presencia afrodescendiente en el país.
"Allí dejaron su aporte cultural, social y económico. El colectivo afro desarrolló en esos lugares la manifestación de su cultura por excelencia, como es el candombe. Los barrios son patrimonio material por sus construcciones que debieron ser protegidas y no destruidas", agrega.
"También reúnen el patrimonio inmaterial como el candombe y toda la cultura negra. No vivimos ahí, pero logramos mantener una serie de peregrinaciones a esos lugares desarrollando allí nuestra cultura, todo un simbolismo que no pudieron destruir", sostuvo el legislador frenteamplista.
Según explicó, no sólo se ha trabajado en la puesta en marcha de la reparación a situaciones de discriminación racial y de desalojos durante de la dictadura, sino que también se ha avanzado mucho en la sensibilización y en dar conocer las discriminaciones hacia el colectivo afro, que todavía existen.
"Desde el gobierno y el parlamento planteamos una línea de acción que reconociera y valorara la presencia afrodescendiente y su cultura para poder superar la invisibilización y esa falsa construcción histórica de que la población uruguaya es más bien europea, ocultando la presencia indígena y negra", apunta.
"Los daños causados a los afrodescendientes durante la dictadura, que como otros significaron violaciones a los derechos humanos, no fueron incorporados a los daños sufridos en esa época", señala.
Para Ortuño, los logros alcanzados se dieron sin lugar a duda gracias a la lucha de las organizaciones de afrodescendientes que pusieron el tema en la agenda pública, con un apoyo importante de organismos internacionales como la Organización de las Naciones Unidas y sus agencias, como el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo.
También el cambio de signo político del gobierno y la incorporación del primer negro en el parlamento, permitieron que un cambio sea posible.
"Estamos tratando de volver y parte de las políticas del gobierno están orientadas a permitir el retorno a estos barrios. Es una larga marcha, se ha iniciado el camino de reparación y hay acciones a favor, se han hecho cosas que no se hicieron nunca", afirma.
Sin embargo, advierte que, pese a que "se ha avanzado bastante, aún falta mucho". "Se necesita más asignación de recursos y ampliar el número de beneficiarios. Es un buen comienzo, ahora hay que seguir en esa dirección", concluyó.
The Mind of Amiri Baraka
Q&A by JR Valrey
San Francisco Bay View
Amiri Baraka, one of the most fiery political poets and cultural critics in Black America, recently celebrated his 75th birthday. He is the father of the Black Arts Movement of the ‘60s and in 2001, New Jersey abolished the poet laureate position because they couldn’t fire him, the incumbent, after he wrote his controversial piece, “Somebody Blew Up America.”
M.O.I. JR: Now that you just turned 75 years old, what do you think is your biggest contribution to the plight of Black people in this country?
Amiri: I would hope as a writer and political activist.
M.O.I. JR: How did you become a poet and when? How many different books and plays have you produced within your career?
Amiri: I became a poet when I woke up to the power of words and my ability to use them. Maybe 40 books, 20 plays.
M.O.I. JR: What was the importance of the Black Arts Movement, which many people consider you a founder of?
Amiri: The Black Arts Movement brought some of the most skilled and progressive poets into Harlem with the agenda that we wanted an art that was Black in form and content, as Black as Duke Ellington or Billie Holiday. In the summer of ‘65, we sent four trucks a day out into the community with drama, poetry, graphic arts, music played in the streets, parks, vacant lots. (See the essay, “The Black Arts Movement,” in the “LeRoi Jones /Amiri Baraka Reader,” available on Google Books.
M.O.I. JR: How do you feel about Newark taking back you being awarded the poet laureate, after you wrote the poem, “Somebody Blew Up America”?
Amiri: I was the New Jersey Poet Laureate. Newark Schools Poet Laureate as well. It was the state, Gov. McGreevy, who ended the Poet Laureate position because they couldn’t fire me. He did this because of the Anti Defamation League, who should be identified as an agent of a foreign power – Israel.
Certainly there was nothing anti-Jewish in the poem. McGreevey had to resign and apologize the next year for having an adulterous relationship with an Israeli male aide. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case and two lower courts inferred I had no First Amendment rights!
M.O.I. JR: How do you feel about Obama, a Black man, being the president of United States? How do you feel about what he has been doing within his first year in office?
Amiri: I’m very supportive of Obama and think his Black and progressive critics are idealists or anarchists, in that they downplay the resistance to everything he does.
How bright are people who oppose his plan for improving their health care? We should be supportive of what Obama is trying to do. We should spend our energy opposing the far right and the Republicans, who have become the new Ku Klux Klan, complete with a real public coon named Steele (to identify him as continuing a GOP paradigm).
M.O.I. JR: Why do you think Obama spoke out on behalf of Professor Skip Gates being harassed by the police but not on Oscar Grant who was unjustifiably killed by a number of police while cell phone cameras watched?
Amiri: He spoke out on Gates, I guess, because he knew him and he also went to Harvard, and knew the racism of the Cambridge community. He backed down because of pressure from the Right and the fact that only 43 percent of white people voted for him. Obama is president because of the 95 percent Black vote and the 60-70 percent Latino and Asian vote.
The Right hates him because he proved that this is no longer “White America.” It is a multinational nation.
About the Grant thing, it remained unfortunately “localized.” But it is a question you should put to the president.
M.O.I. JR: Are you working on anything new? What have you been up to?
Amiri: I just had a new book come out: “Digging: The Afro American Soul of American Classical Music” (UC Press).
Email POCC Minister of Information JR, Bay View associate editor, at blockreportradio@gmail.com and visit www.blockreportradio.com.
San Francisco Bay View
Amiri Baraka, one of the most fiery political poets and cultural critics in Black America, recently celebrated his 75th birthday. He is the father of the Black Arts Movement of the ‘60s and in 2001, New Jersey abolished the poet laureate position because they couldn’t fire him, the incumbent, after he wrote his controversial piece, “Somebody Blew Up America.”
M.O.I. JR: Now that you just turned 75 years old, what do you think is your biggest contribution to the plight of Black people in this country?
Amiri: I would hope as a writer and political activist.
M.O.I. JR: How did you become a poet and when? How many different books and plays have you produced within your career?
Amiri: I became a poet when I woke up to the power of words and my ability to use them. Maybe 40 books, 20 plays.
M.O.I. JR: What was the importance of the Black Arts Movement, which many people consider you a founder of?
Amiri: The Black Arts Movement brought some of the most skilled and progressive poets into Harlem with the agenda that we wanted an art that was Black in form and content, as Black as Duke Ellington or Billie Holiday. In the summer of ‘65, we sent four trucks a day out into the community with drama, poetry, graphic arts, music played in the streets, parks, vacant lots. (See the essay, “The Black Arts Movement,” in the “LeRoi Jones /Amiri Baraka Reader,” available on Google Books.
M.O.I. JR: How do you feel about Newark taking back you being awarded the poet laureate, after you wrote the poem, “Somebody Blew Up America”?
Amiri: I was the New Jersey Poet Laureate. Newark Schools Poet Laureate as well. It was the state, Gov. McGreevy, who ended the Poet Laureate position because they couldn’t fire me. He did this because of the Anti Defamation League, who should be identified as an agent of a foreign power – Israel.
Certainly there was nothing anti-Jewish in the poem. McGreevey had to resign and apologize the next year for having an adulterous relationship with an Israeli male aide. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case and two lower courts inferred I had no First Amendment rights!
M.O.I. JR: How do you feel about Obama, a Black man, being the president of United States? How do you feel about what he has been doing within his first year in office?
Amiri: I’m very supportive of Obama and think his Black and progressive critics are idealists or anarchists, in that they downplay the resistance to everything he does.
How bright are people who oppose his plan for improving their health care? We should be supportive of what Obama is trying to do. We should spend our energy opposing the far right and the Republicans, who have become the new Ku Klux Klan, complete with a real public coon named Steele (to identify him as continuing a GOP paradigm).
M.O.I. JR: Why do you think Obama spoke out on behalf of Professor Skip Gates being harassed by the police but not on Oscar Grant who was unjustifiably killed by a number of police while cell phone cameras watched?
Amiri: He spoke out on Gates, I guess, because he knew him and he also went to Harvard, and knew the racism of the Cambridge community. He backed down because of pressure from the Right and the fact that only 43 percent of white people voted for him. Obama is president because of the 95 percent Black vote and the 60-70 percent Latino and Asian vote.
The Right hates him because he proved that this is no longer “White America.” It is a multinational nation.
About the Grant thing, it remained unfortunately “localized.” But it is a question you should put to the president.
M.O.I. JR: Are you working on anything new? What have you been up to?
Amiri: I just had a new book come out: “Digging: The Afro American Soul of American Classical Music” (UC Press).
Email POCC Minister of Information JR, Bay View associate editor, at blockreportradio@gmail.com and visit www.blockreportradio.com.
La Maldición de los Mapas
Gorka Andraka
Gara
Suena bien: Kokoroko. Mágico, natural, feliz. Si pudiera elegir, me mudaba a la tierra de Queequeg, el arponero de Moby Dick. “Kokoroko, una isla lejana del sudeste. No figura en mapa alguno. Le ocurre lo que a la mayoría de los sitios que existen de verdad”, cuenta Henry Melville en las desventuras de su célebre cachalote. Un lugar allende los mapas. Se puede pedir más.
De críos, nos asomábamos a los mapas con la esperanza de encontrarnos, de vernos, de señalarnos con el dedo. Ahí estamos, somos, pensábamos ingenuos entonces. La mayoría de las veces, Armintza, mi pequeño pueblo, no aparecía por ningún lado. Como si aún no hubieran descubierto el tesoro, recapacito hoy con nostalgia. Se acabó el misterio. Tecleas en el ordenador y aparece todo. Todos. Sin secretos.
Nadie escapa a Google Maps. En los últimos días, hay quienes han viajado hasta el sur de Ormskirk, en la región británica de Lancashire, para visitar Argleton. Según el buscador de internet, esta ciudad, con sus habitantes, empresas y calles, se situa junto a unos campos que bordean la autopista M58. Una vez allí, nada. Argleton no existe. Google ha reconocido “errores ocasionales” en su mapa y Tele Atlas, la empresa que le suministra los datos, asegura, sin dar más explicaciones, que borrará la ciudad fantasma. ¿Será, tal vez, que Argleton también existe de verdad, como Kokoroko?
Por mucho que nos empeñemos, que nos engañemos, el mundo todo no cabe en los mapas. Por fortuna, al sur del sur, del otro lado, fuera de órbita, quedan rumbos inexplorados, espacio libre, para los contrarios. Territorios marginales, cartografías imposibles, que algún día se harán presentes.
Gara
Suena bien: Kokoroko. Mágico, natural, feliz. Si pudiera elegir, me mudaba a la tierra de Queequeg, el arponero de Moby Dick. “Kokoroko, una isla lejana del sudeste. No figura en mapa alguno. Le ocurre lo que a la mayoría de los sitios que existen de verdad”, cuenta Henry Melville en las desventuras de su célebre cachalote. Un lugar allende los mapas. Se puede pedir más.
De críos, nos asomábamos a los mapas con la esperanza de encontrarnos, de vernos, de señalarnos con el dedo. Ahí estamos, somos, pensábamos ingenuos entonces. La mayoría de las veces, Armintza, mi pequeño pueblo, no aparecía por ningún lado. Como si aún no hubieran descubierto el tesoro, recapacito hoy con nostalgia. Se acabó el misterio. Tecleas en el ordenador y aparece todo. Todos. Sin secretos.
Nadie escapa a Google Maps. En los últimos días, hay quienes han viajado hasta el sur de Ormskirk, en la región británica de Lancashire, para visitar Argleton. Según el buscador de internet, esta ciudad, con sus habitantes, empresas y calles, se situa junto a unos campos que bordean la autopista M58. Una vez allí, nada. Argleton no existe. Google ha reconocido “errores ocasionales” en su mapa y Tele Atlas, la empresa que le suministra los datos, asegura, sin dar más explicaciones, que borrará la ciudad fantasma. ¿Será, tal vez, que Argleton también existe de verdad, como Kokoroko?
Por mucho que nos empeñemos, que nos engañemos, el mundo todo no cabe en los mapas. Por fortuna, al sur del sur, del otro lado, fuera de órbita, quedan rumbos inexplorados, espacio libre, para los contrarios. Territorios marginales, cartografías imposibles, que algún día se harán presentes.
Media Campaign Seeks to Link Chiapan Social Organizations to Narcos
Government Allows Misleading and False Information to Spread in the Corporate Media
by Kristin Bricker
NarcoNews
On October 24, Chiapan state police arrested Rocelio de la Cruz Gonzalez and Jose Manuel de la Torre Hernandez, both leaders of the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization (OCEZ). Narco News' Fernando Leon reports that the men say police tortured them during interrogation. De la Torre Hernandez said in a statement: "Multiple times they put a nylon bag over my head, suffocating me, so that I would answer affirmatively to a list of questions. [The questions included] if our organization OCEZ has weapons and a relationship with the church and with former and current Carranza mayors. They also shot mineral water up my nose until I passed out." De la Torre told his lawyer that police made him sign papers without reading them during the torture session. Police tortured him until he passed out, then they woke him up to sign papers while he was still groggy.
On October 25, a contact sent this reporter an email with the subject "Official Communique." The email was written in the style of a government press release, but it contained no media contact information nor was it signed by a government agency. The contact believed the email was the government's official press release regarding the de la Torre Hernandez and de la Cruz Gonzalez arrests. The contact had received the email from a local reporter who also seemed to believe the email was the government's official press release. However, this "Official Communique" did not appear on the Chiapas state government's "Public Relations Institute" website, where all official state government press releases are posted, nor did it appear on the Chiapas State Attorney General's Office website, where press releases regarding arrests are posted.
The "Official Communique's" absence from the websites where all official government communiques are posted is particularly noteworthy due to the wild claims made in the "communique."
First, the "communique" claims that de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez belong to "Los Pelones," which the communique reports is a gang that is "known for its strong activity in trafficking weapons and drugs and is responsible for multiple homicides, including the 2007 murder of state police...in Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacan."
The "communique" also claims that de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez paid the Carranza mayor MX$300,000 in order to purchase weapons. The Carranza mayor, Amín Coutiño Villanueva, is from the President's National Action Party (PAN). The Chiapas governor is from the opposition Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).
The "communique" claims that de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez, acting as members of Los Pelones, "also bought and distributed 9mm pistols, for which they paid MX$8,000 per gun, and the social organization [OCEZ] supported them in this." The "communique" also claims that the detained men engaged in "human trafficking as well as migrant extortion. Their lands have served as a collection site for hiding weapons and drugs. The social organization mask has impeded civilian and military authorities' access to the area surrounding the 28 de Junio community [where OCEZ operates]. That is why they had so-called 'international observers': to cover up their criminal activity."
Normally, Narco News wouldn't classify an email of this sort as "news" without verifying the source: it makes wild claims, and no government agency has verified its authenticity. This reporter thought the email was a hoax.
However, local and national corporate media seem to have also received the "Official Communique" email, and they don't seem to think it is a hoax. Articles have appeared in papers across Mexico that quote lines that appear word-for-word in the "Official Communique" email this reporter received. Mexico's national daily El Universal, for example, ran a wire article by the Spanish news agency EFE that credited the quotes from the "Official Communique" to a statement by the Chiapas State Attorney General's Office (the State Attorney General's Office is prominently mentioned in the "communique"). The EFE article's quotes only come from the "Official Communique," the defendants' lawyer, and the OCEZ. No government official confirms or denies the statements. As previously mentioned, the State Attorney General's Office has not posted any information on its website about the arrests of de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez.
The "Official Communique's" unorthodox distribution method (unsigned and not posted to a government website) aside, the email contains other inconsistencies and red flags. Narco News spoke with Marcos López Pérez, the lawyer who represents de la Cruz Gonzalez, de la Torre Hernandez, and Jose Manuel Hernandez Martinez, a third OCEZ leader who was arrested one month before the other two men.
Lopez Perez informed Narco News that the arrest warrants for the three OCEZ leaders are all part of the same case: a 2003 land occupation in Chiapas that successfully pressured the Chiapas government to legally turn the land over to peasants who are OCEZ members. That case dossier only covers the 2003 land occupation and alleged crimes related to that takeover; arms trafficking, migrant extortion, human trafficking, and other crimes are mentioned nowhere in the dossier.
Lopez Perez says that he is not aware of any other official investigation against the men that involves those crimes. He assured Narco News that the government has not charged the men with any sort of trafficking; they have only been charged with crimes related to the 2003 land occupation, which are all state-level crimes.
The crimes the "Official Communique" and the corporate media accuse the men of committing are federal crimes. The federal government has made no comment on the arrests, nor do the men have any federal investigations or charges pending, says their lawyer.
However, Lopez Perez does not rule out the possibility that the federal government could initiate an investigation. He says that he has reviewed every paper in the dossier against his clients, and he can't find the papers de la Torre claims he signed under torture. Neither de la Torre nor his lawyer know what the papers say because de la Torre wasn't able to read them before signing. Lopez Perez says it's possible that the papers could appear in a future investigation as part of a case file.
The "Official Communique" smelled like a whisper campaign even before this reporter spoke to the men's lawyer. The "communique" accuses de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez of belonging to "Los Pelones," which is a criminal group associated with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera's Sinaloa-based drug trafficking organization. However, when the government reportedly seized a massive weapons stockpile in October, the Chiapas government claimed the weapons belonged to the OCEZ, and the federal government claimed the weapons belong to Loz Zetas. Los Zetas are the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, and are also reported to work for the Beltran Leyva criminal organization. Both the Gulf cartel and the Beltran Leyvas are reportedly enemies of El Chapo. It is highly unlikely that a small peasant organization would be working for or with the armed factions of opposing drug trafficking organizations.
When the Chiapas government arrested de la Cruz and de la Torre, between 20 and 40 trucks full of state police carried out house-to-house searches of two Carranza County communities that belong to the OCEZ: 28 de Junio and Laguna Verde. Two helicopters participated in the operation. The police ransacked dozens of homes in those communities, terrorizing residents and reportedly beating some. The police were looking for suspects, and they reportedly threatened bodily harm to residents if they didn't tell them "where they were hiding the guns." The police did not find a single piece of contraband in either community. For all of the claims the government makes about the OCEZ's alleged use of the communities to hide drugs and weapons, the government didn't find a single weapon. Its Merida Initiative-style ion scanners and drug dogs didn't find a trace of illegal substances.
Casting further doubt on the "Official Communique's" claims, the Carranza mayor that allegedly received MX$300,000 from the detainees in order to illegally purchase weapons has not been arrested, nor has the government brought any formal charges against him. Of course, the mayor adamantly denies the accusations and reportedly told press that "it's about time the authorities did something about Roselio de la Cruz and Jose Manuel de la Torre."
Reforma Steps In
On November 9, Reforma, a Mexico City-based daily and one of Mexico's largest newspapers, ran an article by Martin Morita that claimed the reporter obtained an "intelligence report" about arms trafficking in Chiapas. The article does not disclose if the report is from the state or federal government. The only person the article quotes is a "high-ranking state government official" who is "participating in the team that's carrying out the investigation" that is outlined in the report.
In the article, the high-ranking state government official mentions a case in which two fragmentation grenades were found wrapped in cloth in a plastic bag in the government agency parking lot in Tuxtla, the Chiapas state capital. The grenades did not explode. In an interview, the state official accuses leaders of the OCEZ and the National Front for Socialist Struggle (FNLS, an unarmed civil society organization with a strong presence in Chiapas) of having "orchestrated that terrorist act." No charges have been filed; currently this baseless anonymous statement is the only accusation linking the two organizations with the grenades.
The Reforma article doesn't limit its accusations to the OCEZ. It says that the intelligence report claims that the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), the People's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARP), and the Insurgent People's Revolutionary Army (ERPI) are "connected" to "subversive armed cells" that are "receiving support from organized crime groups such as Los Zetas, the Gulf cartel's armed wing, and the Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, in order to obtain firearms." The report claims, "It is confirmed that organizations that call themselves civilian have strong ties to these subversive groups [who are gathering arms] and are trying to carry out violent acts, particularly during the 2010 Bicentennial celebrations."
The Reforma article reprints the following quote from the report:
The Reforma article mentions de la Cruz, de la Torre, and Hernandez Martinez: "The three are accused of using the [OCEZ] organization to distribute weapons and drugs." Reforma fails to mention that it is only the press, not the government, that is officially accusing the OCEZ of trafficking arms and drugs.
Reporter Martin Morita filed a similar article on TabascoHOY.com. In that article, he says that Hernandez Martinez "is linked to the seizure of an arms arsenal on October 11." It also claims that "the official investigation points to Hernandez Martinez as the leader of the EPR in Chiapas and of having links to Los Zetas." Again, no charges have been filed against Hernandez Martinez that link him to arms trafficking, Los Zetas, or the EPR. Morita does not specify which "official investigation" he is referring to in the article. However, Hernandez Martinez's lawyer only knows of one official investigation--the one related to the 2003 land takeover--and it does not mention any trafficking allegations.
War on Social Movements
In a letter to Tabasco HOY's editor, the OCEZ writes, "This type of stigmatization in the corporate media doesn't only have negative political consequences for those who suffer [the stigmatization]. Rather, frequently they are orchestrated by government agencies in order to sway public opinion to help justify arbitrary judicial actions."
As the government intelligence report mentions, authorities are growing increasingly concerned about the possibility that armed groups will take action in 2010 to commemorate the bicentennial and centennial of two Mexican revolutions. According the Reforma, the report states that "the groups are trying to carry out actions aimed at destabilizing, through armed struggle, the PRD member Juan Sabines' administration in 2010, in particular during the Bicentennial celebrations."
The government may be trying to preemptively smear social organizations in the media by alleging links to drug trafficking organizations. This may prevent insurgent organizations from enjoying the sort of national and international support that protected the Zapatistas when they staged an uprising in Chiapas in 1994. It may also serve to justify judicial or military actions against civil society, which always seems to get caught in any war's crossfire. The smear campaign even includes a preemptive strike against international human rights observers, who have played a key role in human rights defense in Chiapas since 1994. In accusing human rights observers of preventing the military and police from carrying out their anti-trafficking work, the corporate media places them directly in the drug war's line of fire.
Thanks to the war on drugs, in 2010 Mexico will be more militarized than it was in 1994. The military will be better prepared and better armed than it was in 1994 during the Zapatista uprising. And now, thanks to the media smear campaign against social organizations, it may have more public approval to use its drug war military might against non-drug war targets.
Narco News has warned that the increasing militarization under the guise of the drug war could have negative consequences for insurgent and social organizations. The Merida Initiative's counterpart in Colombia, Plan Colombia, targeted insurgent organizations as a matter of official policy. In Mexico, both the US and the Mexican governments have predicted "links" between insurgent and drug trafficking organizations. In December 2008, Narco News reported:
The OCEZ may be a test case, to see how far civil society will allow the government to go in its war on social movements. As Jaime Ramírez Yáñez writes in an editorial in Milenio,"The detention of these two indigenous men [de la Cruz and de la Torre], who are visibly opposed to the government, was carried out with only the alleged testimony of a 'protected witness,' and without the bother of a formal criminal investigation." A protected witness is often a suspect himself, and the government offers leniency or immunity in exchange for testimony against other people.
Using that one protected witness and the media, the government has linked the OCEZ, an unarmed organization, to the armed EPR and nearly every major drug trafficking organization in the country. The media has accused the OCEZ of human trafficking, arms trafficking, migrant extortion, and drug trafficking. It also stigmatized human rights observers who are in OCEZ communities to assure that human rights are respected. In turn, the government has been able to stage one of the largest raids in recent memory on two peasant communities, and no one seemed concerned that the raids produced no contraband. State police continue to occupy the area around Laguna Verde. The state government has been able to hunt down and allegedly torture the OCEZ's leadership. The government has executed three of fourteen warrants stemming from the 2003 OCEZ land takeover, leaving the communities terrified that police will carry out another violent raid at any moment.
by Kristin Bricker
NarcoNews
On October 24, Chiapan state police arrested Rocelio de la Cruz Gonzalez and Jose Manuel de la Torre Hernandez, both leaders of the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization (OCEZ). Narco News' Fernando Leon reports that the men say police tortured them during interrogation. De la Torre Hernandez said in a statement: "Multiple times they put a nylon bag over my head, suffocating me, so that I would answer affirmatively to a list of questions. [The questions included] if our organization OCEZ has weapons and a relationship with the church and with former and current Carranza mayors. They also shot mineral water up my nose until I passed out." De la Torre told his lawyer that police made him sign papers without reading them during the torture session. Police tortured him until he passed out, then they woke him up to sign papers while he was still groggy.
On October 25, a contact sent this reporter an email with the subject "Official Communique." The email was written in the style of a government press release, but it contained no media contact information nor was it signed by a government agency. The contact believed the email was the government's official press release regarding the de la Torre Hernandez and de la Cruz Gonzalez arrests. The contact had received the email from a local reporter who also seemed to believe the email was the government's official press release. However, this "Official Communique" did not appear on the Chiapas state government's "Public Relations Institute" website, where all official state government press releases are posted, nor did it appear on the Chiapas State Attorney General's Office website, where press releases regarding arrests are posted.
The "Official Communique's" absence from the websites where all official government communiques are posted is particularly noteworthy due to the wild claims made in the "communique."
First, the "communique" claims that de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez belong to "Los Pelones," which the communique reports is a gang that is "known for its strong activity in trafficking weapons and drugs and is responsible for multiple homicides, including the 2007 murder of state police...in Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacan."
The "communique" also claims that de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez paid the Carranza mayor MX$300,000 in order to purchase weapons. The Carranza mayor, Amín Coutiño Villanueva, is from the President's National Action Party (PAN). The Chiapas governor is from the opposition Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).
The "communique" claims that de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez, acting as members of Los Pelones, "also bought and distributed 9mm pistols, for which they paid MX$8,000 per gun, and the social organization [OCEZ] supported them in this." The "communique" also claims that the detained men engaged in "human trafficking as well as migrant extortion. Their lands have served as a collection site for hiding weapons and drugs. The social organization mask has impeded civilian and military authorities' access to the area surrounding the 28 de Junio community [where OCEZ operates]. That is why they had so-called 'international observers': to cover up their criminal activity."
Normally, Narco News wouldn't classify an email of this sort as "news" without verifying the source: it makes wild claims, and no government agency has verified its authenticity. This reporter thought the email was a hoax.
However, local and national corporate media seem to have also received the "Official Communique" email, and they don't seem to think it is a hoax. Articles have appeared in papers across Mexico that quote lines that appear word-for-word in the "Official Communique" email this reporter received. Mexico's national daily El Universal, for example, ran a wire article by the Spanish news agency EFE that credited the quotes from the "Official Communique" to a statement by the Chiapas State Attorney General's Office (the State Attorney General's Office is prominently mentioned in the "communique"). The EFE article's quotes only come from the "Official Communique," the defendants' lawyer, and the OCEZ. No government official confirms or denies the statements. As previously mentioned, the State Attorney General's Office has not posted any information on its website about the arrests of de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez.
The "Official Communique's" unorthodox distribution method (unsigned and not posted to a government website) aside, the email contains other inconsistencies and red flags. Narco News spoke with Marcos López Pérez, the lawyer who represents de la Cruz Gonzalez, de la Torre Hernandez, and Jose Manuel Hernandez Martinez, a third OCEZ leader who was arrested one month before the other two men.
Lopez Perez informed Narco News that the arrest warrants for the three OCEZ leaders are all part of the same case: a 2003 land occupation in Chiapas that successfully pressured the Chiapas government to legally turn the land over to peasants who are OCEZ members. That case dossier only covers the 2003 land occupation and alleged crimes related to that takeover; arms trafficking, migrant extortion, human trafficking, and other crimes are mentioned nowhere in the dossier.
Lopez Perez says that he is not aware of any other official investigation against the men that involves those crimes. He assured Narco News that the government has not charged the men with any sort of trafficking; they have only been charged with crimes related to the 2003 land occupation, which are all state-level crimes.
The crimes the "Official Communique" and the corporate media accuse the men of committing are federal crimes. The federal government has made no comment on the arrests, nor do the men have any federal investigations or charges pending, says their lawyer.
However, Lopez Perez does not rule out the possibility that the federal government could initiate an investigation. He says that he has reviewed every paper in the dossier against his clients, and he can't find the papers de la Torre claims he signed under torture. Neither de la Torre nor his lawyer know what the papers say because de la Torre wasn't able to read them before signing. Lopez Perez says it's possible that the papers could appear in a future investigation as part of a case file.
The "Official Communique" smelled like a whisper campaign even before this reporter spoke to the men's lawyer. The "communique" accuses de la Cruz Gonzalez and de la Torre Hernandez of belonging to "Los Pelones," which is a criminal group associated with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera's Sinaloa-based drug trafficking organization. However, when the government reportedly seized a massive weapons stockpile in October, the Chiapas government claimed the weapons belonged to the OCEZ, and the federal government claimed the weapons belong to Loz Zetas. Los Zetas are the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, and are also reported to work for the Beltran Leyva criminal organization. Both the Gulf cartel and the Beltran Leyvas are reportedly enemies of El Chapo. It is highly unlikely that a small peasant organization would be working for or with the armed factions of opposing drug trafficking organizations.
When the Chiapas government arrested de la Cruz and de la Torre, between 20 and 40 trucks full of state police carried out house-to-house searches of two Carranza County communities that belong to the OCEZ: 28 de Junio and Laguna Verde. Two helicopters participated in the operation. The police ransacked dozens of homes in those communities, terrorizing residents and reportedly beating some. The police were looking for suspects, and they reportedly threatened bodily harm to residents if they didn't tell them "where they were hiding the guns." The police did not find a single piece of contraband in either community. For all of the claims the government makes about the OCEZ's alleged use of the communities to hide drugs and weapons, the government didn't find a single weapon. Its Merida Initiative-style ion scanners and drug dogs didn't find a trace of illegal substances.
Casting further doubt on the "Official Communique's" claims, the Carranza mayor that allegedly received MX$300,000 from the detainees in order to illegally purchase weapons has not been arrested, nor has the government brought any formal charges against him. Of course, the mayor adamantly denies the accusations and reportedly told press that "it's about time the authorities did something about Roselio de la Cruz and Jose Manuel de la Torre."
Reforma Steps In
On November 9, Reforma, a Mexico City-based daily and one of Mexico's largest newspapers, ran an article by Martin Morita that claimed the reporter obtained an "intelligence report" about arms trafficking in Chiapas. The article does not disclose if the report is from the state or federal government. The only person the article quotes is a "high-ranking state government official" who is "participating in the team that's carrying out the investigation" that is outlined in the report.
In the article, the high-ranking state government official mentions a case in which two fragmentation grenades were found wrapped in cloth in a plastic bag in the government agency parking lot in Tuxtla, the Chiapas state capital. The grenades did not explode. In an interview, the state official accuses leaders of the OCEZ and the National Front for Socialist Struggle (FNLS, an unarmed civil society organization with a strong presence in Chiapas) of having "orchestrated that terrorist act." No charges have been filed; currently this baseless anonymous statement is the only accusation linking the two organizations with the grenades.
The Reforma article doesn't limit its accusations to the OCEZ. It says that the intelligence report claims that the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), the People's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARP), and the Insurgent People's Revolutionary Army (ERPI) are "connected" to "subversive armed cells" that are "receiving support from organized crime groups such as Los Zetas, the Gulf cartel's armed wing, and the Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, in order to obtain firearms." The report claims, "It is confirmed that organizations that call themselves civilian have strong ties to these subversive groups [who are gathering arms] and are trying to carry out violent acts, particularly during the 2010 Bicentennial celebrations."
The Reforma article reprints the following quote from the report:
"It is noted that, based on the detention of people involved in said groups and through testimonies obtained by intelligence networks, there is evidence that establishes a relationship between those groups and people and criminal organizations that are dedicated to drug trafficking, such as the so-called Zetas and the organization led by Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka El Chapo. This complicity stems from the distribution of weapons to subversive groups."
The Reforma article mentions de la Cruz, de la Torre, and Hernandez Martinez: "The three are accused of using the [OCEZ] organization to distribute weapons and drugs." Reforma fails to mention that it is only the press, not the government, that is officially accusing the OCEZ of trafficking arms and drugs.
Reporter Martin Morita filed a similar article on TabascoHOY.com. In that article, he says that Hernandez Martinez "is linked to the seizure of an arms arsenal on October 11." It also claims that "the official investigation points to Hernandez Martinez as the leader of the EPR in Chiapas and of having links to Los Zetas." Again, no charges have been filed against Hernandez Martinez that link him to arms trafficking, Los Zetas, or the EPR. Morita does not specify which "official investigation" he is referring to in the article. However, Hernandez Martinez's lawyer only knows of one official investigation--the one related to the 2003 land takeover--and it does not mention any trafficking allegations.
War on Social Movements
In a letter to Tabasco HOY's editor, the OCEZ writes, "This type of stigmatization in the corporate media doesn't only have negative political consequences for those who suffer [the stigmatization]. Rather, frequently they are orchestrated by government agencies in order to sway public opinion to help justify arbitrary judicial actions."
As the government intelligence report mentions, authorities are growing increasingly concerned about the possibility that armed groups will take action in 2010 to commemorate the bicentennial and centennial of two Mexican revolutions. According the Reforma, the report states that "the groups are trying to carry out actions aimed at destabilizing, through armed struggle, the PRD member Juan Sabines' administration in 2010, in particular during the Bicentennial celebrations."
The government may be trying to preemptively smear social organizations in the media by alleging links to drug trafficking organizations. This may prevent insurgent organizations from enjoying the sort of national and international support that protected the Zapatistas when they staged an uprising in Chiapas in 1994. It may also serve to justify judicial or military actions against civil society, which always seems to get caught in any war's crossfire. The smear campaign even includes a preemptive strike against international human rights observers, who have played a key role in human rights defense in Chiapas since 1994. In accusing human rights observers of preventing the military and police from carrying out their anti-trafficking work, the corporate media places them directly in the drug war's line of fire.
Thanks to the war on drugs, in 2010 Mexico will be more militarized than it was in 1994. The military will be better prepared and better armed than it was in 1994 during the Zapatista uprising. And now, thanks to the media smear campaign against social organizations, it may have more public approval to use its drug war military might against non-drug war targets.
Narco News has warned that the increasing militarization under the guise of the drug war could have negative consequences for insurgent and social organizations. The Merida Initiative's counterpart in Colombia, Plan Colombia, targeted insurgent organizations as a matter of official policy. In Mexico, both the US and the Mexican governments have predicted "links" between insurgent and drug trafficking organizations. In December 2008, Narco News reported:
In an official DEA PowerPoint presentation recently leaked to Narco News correspondent Bill Conroy, the DEA argued that the possibility exists that drug cartels will seek allies in insurgent organizations: “DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] will further reach out to the Mexican military and foreign paramilitary and possible insurgent organizations in order to acquire much needed human and material support to fend off advances by competing Cartels.” Similarly, in a report obtained by the Mexican daily Milenio entitled “The National Defense Department in Combat Against Drug Trafficking,” Mexico's National Defense Department says "a symbiosis between [drug cartels and] armed groups who are hostile to the government is forseeable."
The OCEZ may be a test case, to see how far civil society will allow the government to go in its war on social movements. As Jaime Ramírez Yáñez writes in an editorial in Milenio,"The detention of these two indigenous men [de la Cruz and de la Torre], who are visibly opposed to the government, was carried out with only the alleged testimony of a 'protected witness,' and without the bother of a formal criminal investigation." A protected witness is often a suspect himself, and the government offers leniency or immunity in exchange for testimony against other people.
Using that one protected witness and the media, the government has linked the OCEZ, an unarmed organization, to the armed EPR and nearly every major drug trafficking organization in the country. The media has accused the OCEZ of human trafficking, arms trafficking, migrant extortion, and drug trafficking. It also stigmatized human rights observers who are in OCEZ communities to assure that human rights are respected. In turn, the government has been able to stage one of the largest raids in recent memory on two peasant communities, and no one seemed concerned that the raids produced no contraband. State police continue to occupy the area around Laguna Verde. The state government has been able to hunt down and allegedly torture the OCEZ's leadership. The government has executed three of fourteen warrants stemming from the 2003 OCEZ land takeover, leaving the communities terrified that police will carry out another violent raid at any moment.
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