COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
MAY 31, 2008
RAZA STUDIES: A CEREMONIAL DISCOURSE
BY ROBERTO DR. CINTLI RODRIGUEZ
Atop the hills of the Nahuatl-speaking village of Ocotepec, Morelos,
Mexico, while a colony of red ants is carrying maiz kernels on their
backs, an elder explains: "These are the ants of Quetzalcoatl."
The sensation is magical. In a metaphorical sense, the ants are acting
out a cosmic drama. It and similar stories – which can be considered a
ceremonial discourse – are recorded in many of the ancient
Mesoamerican amoxtlis or codices of how maiz or cintli came to the
people. They are also recorded in songs and dances and in the
collective memory of the maiz-based cultures of the Americas.
In the nearby village of Amatlan, the late elder, Don Felipe Alvarado
Peralta, relates from memory the following story:
At the dawn of the Fifth Sun, after humans were created, Quetzalcoatl
– bringer of civilization, writing, the calendar and the arts – is put
in charge of finding food for the people. Walking along, Quetzalcoatl
notices a red ant carrying a kernel of corn. Quetzalcoatl asks:
"What's that on your back?"
"Cintli," replies the ant. "Maiz. It is our sustenance."
"Where did you get it?"
Reluctantly, the ant points toward Tonalcatepetl – the mountain of
sustenance. "Follow me."
When they arrive, the only way into the mountain is through a small
opening. At that, Quetzalcoatl transforms into a small black ant. Once
inside the mountain, Quetzalcoatl sees the maiz and takes it,
proceeding to bring it to the "lords" in Tamuanchan. There, they
approve of it. Unable to bring Tonalcatepetl itself, Quetzalcoatl
instead brings the seeds to the people.
This ancient story of the Nahuatl peoples of Mexico was recorded in
the Chimolpopoca Codex of 1548. Don Felipe was reputedly the keeper of
the stories of the Quetzalcoatl priest, Ce Topitzin, who had been born
in the ancient city of Amatlan some 1200 years earlier. One such story
was about the association between Nahuatl-speaking Mexican
revolutionary Emiliano Zapata and Quetzalcoatl. He related that during
the 1910-1920 Revolution, Zapata had hid in the caves above Amatlan –
the same caves associated with Ce Topitzin. After Ce Topiltzin's
schooling in nearby Xochicalco, he also later left his impressionable
civilizational mark throughout Mesoamerica, including the ancient
cities of Cholula, Tula, Cacaxtla and Chichen Itza. Known as a wise
and peaceful elder, he took his name from the much older or mythic
Quetzalcoatl – the plumed or beautiful serpent – whose presence is
also recorded in the ancient city of Tollan-Teotihuacan. According to
Maya scholar, Domingo Martinez Paredez, in Un Continente y Una
Cultura, Quetzalcoatl is known by various names throughout the
continent, including Kulkulkan among the Maya of Yucatan, Gucumatz
among the Maya Quiche of Guatemala, Itzam among the Huastecas, Tohil
among the Zapotecas and Arara among the Andean Quechuas. This plumed
or water serpent reputedly also goes by several other names in what is
today the U.S. Northeast, Southwest and Northwest.
While it is not certain when and where maiz was specifically created,
most botanists place the age of maiz somewhere in the vicinity of
7,000 years in Southern Mexico and /or Central America. Oral
traditions generally agree with this framework and scenario.
While there are plenty of variations, Mesoamerican cultures appear to
have sprung forth from a common root – maiz. Thus, many share similar
stories of mythic or hero twins who battle lords of the underworld in
a cosmic ballgame; stories of a plumed or beautiful serpent; and the
attempts to create humans, first out of mud, then wood, and finally
maize, as recounted in the ancient Popul Vuh, the Maya creation book.
It includes maize-based calendars and similar cosmovisions, including
the belief in the sacredness of maiz. As Guillermo Bonfil Batalla
argued in Mexico Profundo, maiz itself is the civilizational impulse
or germinational seed that triggered Mesoamerica's development. Traces
of that impulse can still be seen today throughout Turtle Island or
the Americas, including wherever corn, beans and squash – wherever
tortillas and chile – are being eaten.
* * * *
This society tells people of Mexican/Central and South American
descent that they don't belong; witness the massive immigration raids
sweeping the nation and the clamor for a 2,000 mile wall. At best,
they are told that they are subservient. This maiz discourse, which
underpins Raza-Mexican American Studies nationwide, tells a different
story. The primary stories teach respect and that as humans, we are
all equal. It is such stories, contained in the codices, that were
destroyed by fanatical priests during the colonial era. Contrary to
the myths [about Raza Studies in Tucson and Semillas del Pueblo in Los
Angeles] that are being foisted upon by new would-be censors – rather
than subvert Western Civilization – these stories provide an
invaluable glimpse of the continent's history. And similar to
Greco-Roman, Chinese and Egyptian stories, they are part of our human
legacy and heritage.
* Positive Representation in Education has been formed to Save Raza
Studies. They have a listserv at: notosb1108@lists.riseup.net. Also, a
petition to Save Raza Studies can be found at:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-raza-studies
Rodriguez can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com or 520-743-0376. Column
of the Americas PO BOX 85476 -- Tucson, AZ 85754. The column is
archived at: http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html
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6/6/08
La JBG El Camino del Futuro denuncia la incursión militar de 200 soldados
Jun 5, 2008
La JBG El Camino del Futuro denuncia la incursión militar de 200 soldados, así como policías y judiciales, en los pueblos zapatistas de Hermenegildo Galeana y San Alejandro, del Caracol de La Garrucha.
CARACOL DE RESISTECIA
HACIA UN NUEVO AMANECER
JUNTA DE BUEN GOBIERNO
EL CAMINO DEL FUTURO
CHIAPAS, MÉXICO
4 DE JUNIO DEL 2008
DENUNCIA.
ACTO DE PROVOCACIÓN
El que suscribe, la Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro.
Al pueblo de México y al mundo, a los compañeros y compañeras de la otra campaña de México y del mundo, a los medios de comunicación nacional e internacional, a los defensores de los derechos humanos, a los organismos no gubernametal honestos:
Por medio de la presente, la Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro, Chiapas, México, denuncia:
1. Columna de convoy militar y seguridad pública y policía municipal y PGR, a las 9 de la mañana, hora sur oriental, 2 carros grandes de soldado y 3 carros chicos de soldado y 2 carros de seguridad pública, 2 carros de policía municipal y una tanqueta y un carro de PGR.
2. Un total de alrededor de 200 provocadores.
3. Antes de entrar en el pueblo de Garrucha, sede del Caracol, a 30 metros de la orilla del pueblo, se paran 3 convoy y bajan del carro 4 soldados, como queriendo flanquear al pueblo de Garrucha, aprovechando de nuestro camino del trabajadero colectivo de milpa, reacciona el pueblo para rechazarlo y empiezan a organizarse, al instante los soldados suben de su carro y siguen su camino, mientras los otros que están adelante está intimidando a la población tomando películas y fotografiando, y así mientras están esperando los que están provocando.
4. Llegando en la otra posición de los soldados de Patiwitz, se incorpora otro convoy militar con rumbo a donde fueron a provocar nuevamente.
5. Llegan a la ranchería de Rancho Alegre, conocido como Chapuyil.
6. Se bajan todos en sus carros y agarran rumbo al pueblo de Hermenegildo Galeana, donde todos y todas son bases de apoyo zapatistas, acusando que en ese pueblo tienen sembradillos de mariguanas.
7. Toda la zona zapatista de Garrucha y sus autoridades autónomos somos testigos que no existe plantíos, sólo hay zapatistas y hay trabajadero de milpa y platanar, y están dispuestas y dispuestos a luchar por libertad, justicia y democracia. Rechazar cualquier provocación.
8. Como 100 soldado y 10 seguridad pública y 4 judicial se disponen a ir a enfrentar al pueblo de Galeana, todos los represores se pintan la cara para confundirse y no sean reconocidos dentro del monte, caminan unos tramos del camino y se meten al monte y así van avanzando rumbo al pueblo.
9. Es guiado por una persona llamado Feliciano Román Ruiz y es conocido que es policía municipal de Ocosingo el quien lleva a la columna de federales.
10. El pueblo de Galeana, hombres, mujeres, niñas y niños, se organizan para rechazarlos dispuestos y dispuestas a lo que salga.
11. En el medio del camino se encuentran y comienza el alboroto, llenos de coraje, las zapatistas mujeres y hombres, niños, niñas, diciéndoles a los soldados que regresen, y diciéndoles que no los necesitan aquí, queremos libertad, justicia y democracia, no soldados.
12. Los soldados responden: venimos aquí porque sabemos que hay marihuana y vamos a pasar a huevos, y es ahí donde el pueblo sacan sus machetes, palos, piedras, resorteras, hondas y todo lo que haya en el alcance de la mano y empieza el rechazo.
13. Los soldados dicen: esta vez no vamos a pasar, pero regresamos en 15 días y eso sí a huevos vamos a pasar.
14. Toman otro rumbo para bajar en otro poblado llamado San Alejandro, pueblo zapatista bases de apoyo, ahí estaban esperando 9 carros con 50 soldados y 10 policías municipales.
15. Donde bajaron los soldados, dejaron pisoteado el sembradillo de maíz, que es único alimento del pueblo para vivir.
16. Mientras, en el poblado zapatista de San Alejandro 60 represores provocadores se posicionaron como para estar dispuesto al enfrentamiento.
17. Reacciona el pueblo y toman lo que encuentran a la mano y rechazan a la fuerza federal.
18. En esta provocación participaron soldados de Toniná y soldados de Patiwitz y soldados de San Quintín.
19. Pueblo de México y al mundo queremos decirles que no será tan tarde habrá enfrentamiento y eso si es provocado por Calderón y Juan Sabines y Carlos Leonel Solórzano, presidente municipal de Ocosingo. Mandando a sus perros de represores de cualquier corporación.
No somos narcotraficantes, somos lo que ya saben hermanos y hermanas de México y del mundo.
Está claro que vienen por nosotros los y las zapatistas, y vienen los 3 niveles de malos gobiernos encima de nosotros, y nosotros estamos dispuestos de resistir y si es necesario cumplir nuestro lema, que es: vivir por la patria o morir por la libertad.
20. Pueblo de México y el mundo, ustedes saben que nuestra lucha está dirigida en la lucha política y pacífica, como dice nuestra Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, lucha política y pacífica, conocido como OTRA CAMPAÑA y vean por dónde viene la provocación de la violencia.
21. Compañeras y compañeros de la otra campaña de México y de otros países, pedimos que estén atentos, porque los soldados dijeron que en 15 días vendrán nuevamente, no queremos guerra, queremos paz y con justicia y dignidad. No nos queda de otra, defender, rechazar y resistir porque nos vienen a buscar para enfrentarnos, por eso nos está buscando a nosotros, los pueblos zapatistas bases de apoyo.
22. Sólo nos queda decirles que vean por dónde viene esta provocación. Ahí los estamos informando si es que nos da tiempo.
Es todo nuestras palabras
A T E N T A M E NT E
La Junta de Buen Gobierno
Elena Gordillo Clara Claribel Pérez López
Freddy Rodríguez López Rolando Ruiz Hernández
La JBG El Camino del Futuro denuncia la incursión militar de 200 soldados, así como policías y judiciales, en los pueblos zapatistas de Hermenegildo Galeana y San Alejandro, del Caracol de La Garrucha.
CARACOL DE RESISTECIA
HACIA UN NUEVO AMANECER
JUNTA DE BUEN GOBIERNO
EL CAMINO DEL FUTURO
CHIAPAS, MÉXICO
4 DE JUNIO DEL 2008
DENUNCIA.
ACTO DE PROVOCACIÓN
El que suscribe, la Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro.
Al pueblo de México y al mundo, a los compañeros y compañeras de la otra campaña de México y del mundo, a los medios de comunicación nacional e internacional, a los defensores de los derechos humanos, a los organismos no gubernametal honestos:
Por medio de la presente, la Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro, Chiapas, México, denuncia:
1. Columna de convoy militar y seguridad pública y policía municipal y PGR, a las 9 de la mañana, hora sur oriental, 2 carros grandes de soldado y 3 carros chicos de soldado y 2 carros de seguridad pública, 2 carros de policía municipal y una tanqueta y un carro de PGR.
2. Un total de alrededor de 200 provocadores.
3. Antes de entrar en el pueblo de Garrucha, sede del Caracol, a 30 metros de la orilla del pueblo, se paran 3 convoy y bajan del carro 4 soldados, como queriendo flanquear al pueblo de Garrucha, aprovechando de nuestro camino del trabajadero colectivo de milpa, reacciona el pueblo para rechazarlo y empiezan a organizarse, al instante los soldados suben de su carro y siguen su camino, mientras los otros que están adelante está intimidando a la población tomando películas y fotografiando, y así mientras están esperando los que están provocando.
4. Llegando en la otra posición de los soldados de Patiwitz, se incorpora otro convoy militar con rumbo a donde fueron a provocar nuevamente.
5. Llegan a la ranchería de Rancho Alegre, conocido como Chapuyil.
6. Se bajan todos en sus carros y agarran rumbo al pueblo de Hermenegildo Galeana, donde todos y todas son bases de apoyo zapatistas, acusando que en ese pueblo tienen sembradillos de mariguanas.
7. Toda la zona zapatista de Garrucha y sus autoridades autónomos somos testigos que no existe plantíos, sólo hay zapatistas y hay trabajadero de milpa y platanar, y están dispuestas y dispuestos a luchar por libertad, justicia y democracia. Rechazar cualquier provocación.
8. Como 100 soldado y 10 seguridad pública y 4 judicial se disponen a ir a enfrentar al pueblo de Galeana, todos los represores se pintan la cara para confundirse y no sean reconocidos dentro del monte, caminan unos tramos del camino y se meten al monte y así van avanzando rumbo al pueblo.
9. Es guiado por una persona llamado Feliciano Román Ruiz y es conocido que es policía municipal de Ocosingo el quien lleva a la columna de federales.
10. El pueblo de Galeana, hombres, mujeres, niñas y niños, se organizan para rechazarlos dispuestos y dispuestas a lo que salga.
11. En el medio del camino se encuentran y comienza el alboroto, llenos de coraje, las zapatistas mujeres y hombres, niños, niñas, diciéndoles a los soldados que regresen, y diciéndoles que no los necesitan aquí, queremos libertad, justicia y democracia, no soldados.
12. Los soldados responden: venimos aquí porque sabemos que hay marihuana y vamos a pasar a huevos, y es ahí donde el pueblo sacan sus machetes, palos, piedras, resorteras, hondas y todo lo que haya en el alcance de la mano y empieza el rechazo.
13. Los soldados dicen: esta vez no vamos a pasar, pero regresamos en 15 días y eso sí a huevos vamos a pasar.
14. Toman otro rumbo para bajar en otro poblado llamado San Alejandro, pueblo zapatista bases de apoyo, ahí estaban esperando 9 carros con 50 soldados y 10 policías municipales.
15. Donde bajaron los soldados, dejaron pisoteado el sembradillo de maíz, que es único alimento del pueblo para vivir.
16. Mientras, en el poblado zapatista de San Alejandro 60 represores provocadores se posicionaron como para estar dispuesto al enfrentamiento.
17. Reacciona el pueblo y toman lo que encuentran a la mano y rechazan a la fuerza federal.
18. En esta provocación participaron soldados de Toniná y soldados de Patiwitz y soldados de San Quintín.
19. Pueblo de México y al mundo queremos decirles que no será tan tarde habrá enfrentamiento y eso si es provocado por Calderón y Juan Sabines y Carlos Leonel Solórzano, presidente municipal de Ocosingo. Mandando a sus perros de represores de cualquier corporación.
No somos narcotraficantes, somos lo que ya saben hermanos y hermanas de México y del mundo.
Está claro que vienen por nosotros los y las zapatistas, y vienen los 3 niveles de malos gobiernos encima de nosotros, y nosotros estamos dispuestos de resistir y si es necesario cumplir nuestro lema, que es: vivir por la patria o morir por la libertad.
20. Pueblo de México y el mundo, ustedes saben que nuestra lucha está dirigida en la lucha política y pacífica, como dice nuestra Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, lucha política y pacífica, conocido como OTRA CAMPAÑA y vean por dónde viene la provocación de la violencia.
21. Compañeras y compañeros de la otra campaña de México y de otros países, pedimos que estén atentos, porque los soldados dijeron que en 15 días vendrán nuevamente, no queremos guerra, queremos paz y con justicia y dignidad. No nos queda de otra, defender, rechazar y resistir porque nos vienen a buscar para enfrentarnos, por eso nos está buscando a nosotros, los pueblos zapatistas bases de apoyo.
22. Sólo nos queda decirles que vean por dónde viene esta provocación. Ahí los estamos informando si es que nos da tiempo.
Es todo nuestras palabras
A T E N T A M E NT E
La Junta de Buen Gobierno
Elena Gordillo Clara Claribel Pérez López
Freddy Rodríguez López Rolando Ruiz Hernández
6/2/08
New Targets For Tomato Pickers
New Targets For Tomato Pickers
June, 01 2008
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food restaurants have done it. Now it's time for other fast-food chains to do it. And for WalMart, Whole Foods and the other large supermarket chains to do it.
It's time for them to join the drive to guarantee decent pay and decent working conditions to the highly exploited farmworkers who pick most of the country's tomatoes.
The pickers work in the Immokalee area of southern Florida. Most of them are undocumented Latinos who have had little choice but to accept the truly miserable conditions imposed on them.
They work under the blazing sun in open-air sweatshops -- usually from sunrise to sunset --for up to seven days a week. During a typical day, each of them picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. .
For all that, the pickers rarely get more than $10,000 a year. They have no paid holidays or vacations, no overtime pay, no health insurance, no sick leave, pensions or other benefits. No union rights.
Most of them are forced to live in crowded, dilapidated trailers. that rent for as much as $50 per person per week. After paying their rent and other expenses, they may net as little as $20 for a week of very hard labor.
Some of the workers are held in virtual slavery by the labor contractors who hire them for the tomato growers. The contractors make deductions from the workers' wages for transportation, food, housing and other services that can force them to turn over their entire paychecks and continue working against their will until their debts to the labor contractors are paid off.
It's been like that for years. But finally a coalition of workers, student, labor, community and religious activists, lawmakers and others has mounted a nationwide drive aimed at raising the workers' pay and improving their miserable working and living conditions.
They've been holding marches, rallies and other demonstrations, petition drives, and arguing their case before legislative committees. The coalition -- the Coalition of Immokalee Workers or CIW -- has been scoring some important victories.
The first victory came in 2005 after a four-year-long boycott against Taco Bell, which is owned by a corporation, Yum Brands, that also owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, A & W, Long John Silver's and All America Food Restaurants.
Yum Brands agreed to the CIW's demand that fast food restaurants increase by a penny what they had been paying growers for a pound of tomatoes and give the extra penny directly to workers. That would nearly double their pay of just a little over one cent per pound picked -- a piece rate that had not increased since the 1970s. That would add as much as $7,000 a year to the average picker's pay -- enough to provide a living wage.
The coalition also won the right to monitor the payment and treatment of workers, to investigate complaints about poor treatment, and to confer with growers on improving conditions.
Last year, the CIW won a similar agreement from industry leader McDonald's, just as it was about to carry out its threat to wage a nationwide boycott of the chain.
Just this month, the world's second largest fast-food chain, Burger King, came to terms. But reaching that agreement did take another nationwide boycott. Burger King, with annual revenues of well over $2 billion, held out for nearly a year.
Burger King didn't go down easily. It hired a private security firm that specializes in union busting to secretly obtain information about student and farm labor organizations that helped wage the boycott. The corporation's vice president actually posted derogatory comments about the coalition on You Tube and other internet outlets under an assumed name. Burger King also tried to pressure McDonald's and Yum Brands to rescind their agreements with the coalition.
But Burger King is singing a different tune now. The corporation's CEO, John Chidsey, apologized "for any negative statements about the CIW or its motives previously attributed to Burger King or its employees and now realize that those statements were wrong."
What's more, Chidsey pledged that Burger King will now work with the coalition "to further the common goal of improving Florida tomato farm workers' wages, working conditions and lives" and to seek "industry-wide, socially responsible change."
The CIW's Lucas Benitez also had something important to say. Once, he noted, the tomato pickers were treated as "just another tool and nothing more. But we aren't alone anymore. There are millions of consumers with us, willing to use their buying power to eliminate the exploitation behind the food they buy."
That's very likely to be proved once again at supermarkets and other fast-food outlets that have yet to do what desperately needs to be done.
Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based writer. He's co-author of "A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America's Farm Workers" (Macmillan). Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17784
June, 01 2008
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food restaurants have done it. Now it's time for other fast-food chains to do it. And for WalMart, Whole Foods and the other large supermarket chains to do it.
It's time for them to join the drive to guarantee decent pay and decent working conditions to the highly exploited farmworkers who pick most of the country's tomatoes.
The pickers work in the Immokalee area of southern Florida. Most of them are undocumented Latinos who have had little choice but to accept the truly miserable conditions imposed on them.
They work under the blazing sun in open-air sweatshops -- usually from sunrise to sunset --for up to seven days a week. During a typical day, each of them picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. .
For all that, the pickers rarely get more than $10,000 a year. They have no paid holidays or vacations, no overtime pay, no health insurance, no sick leave, pensions or other benefits. No union rights.
Most of them are forced to live in crowded, dilapidated trailers. that rent for as much as $50 per person per week. After paying their rent and other expenses, they may net as little as $20 for a week of very hard labor.
Some of the workers are held in virtual slavery by the labor contractors who hire them for the tomato growers. The contractors make deductions from the workers' wages for transportation, food, housing and other services that can force them to turn over their entire paychecks and continue working against their will until their debts to the labor contractors are paid off.
It's been like that for years. But finally a coalition of workers, student, labor, community and religious activists, lawmakers and others has mounted a nationwide drive aimed at raising the workers' pay and improving their miserable working and living conditions.
They've been holding marches, rallies and other demonstrations, petition drives, and arguing their case before legislative committees. The coalition -- the Coalition of Immokalee Workers or CIW -- has been scoring some important victories.
The first victory came in 2005 after a four-year-long boycott against Taco Bell, which is owned by a corporation, Yum Brands, that also owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, A & W, Long John Silver's and All America Food Restaurants.
Yum Brands agreed to the CIW's demand that fast food restaurants increase by a penny what they had been paying growers for a pound of tomatoes and give the extra penny directly to workers. That would nearly double their pay of just a little over one cent per pound picked -- a piece rate that had not increased since the 1970s. That would add as much as $7,000 a year to the average picker's pay -- enough to provide a living wage.
The coalition also won the right to monitor the payment and treatment of workers, to investigate complaints about poor treatment, and to confer with growers on improving conditions.
Last year, the CIW won a similar agreement from industry leader McDonald's, just as it was about to carry out its threat to wage a nationwide boycott of the chain.
Just this month, the world's second largest fast-food chain, Burger King, came to terms. But reaching that agreement did take another nationwide boycott. Burger King, with annual revenues of well over $2 billion, held out for nearly a year.
Burger King didn't go down easily. It hired a private security firm that specializes in union busting to secretly obtain information about student and farm labor organizations that helped wage the boycott. The corporation's vice president actually posted derogatory comments about the coalition on You Tube and other internet outlets under an assumed name. Burger King also tried to pressure McDonald's and Yum Brands to rescind their agreements with the coalition.
But Burger King is singing a different tune now. The corporation's CEO, John Chidsey, apologized "for any negative statements about the CIW or its motives previously attributed to Burger King or its employees and now realize that those statements were wrong."
What's more, Chidsey pledged that Burger King will now work with the coalition "to further the common goal of improving Florida tomato farm workers' wages, working conditions and lives" and to seek "industry-wide, socially responsible change."
The CIW's Lucas Benitez also had something important to say. Once, he noted, the tomato pickers were treated as "just another tool and nothing more. But we aren't alone anymore. There are millions of consumers with us, willing to use their buying power to eliminate the exploitation behind the food they buy."
That's very likely to be proved once again at supermarkets and other fast-food outlets that have yet to do what desperately needs to be done.
Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based writer. He's co-author of "A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America's Farm Workers" (Macmillan). Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17784
Mixtecs on the border fall on hard times
Mixtecs on the border fall on hard times
© Indian Country Today June 02, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: June 02, 2008
by: Victor Morales
Lagging economy affects southern neighbors
MEXICALI, Mexico - For eight years, indigenous Mixtecs from the Mexican southern state of Oaxaca have sustained themselves by selling merchandise to U.S.-bound travelers waiting in line to cross the border that divides Mexicali and Calexico in southeastern California.
The 150 Mixtecs have carved out a neighborhood in this sprawling frontier city of almost 1 million where foreign factories, including some of the biggest U.S. aerospace companies, have set up industrial plants. The Mixtecs park their jalopies in front of their tiny cinderblock homes not far from the city's Mercedes-Benz dealer and newest Wal-Mart. They have cell phones and their children attend public schools.
They have lived in relatively calm and reasonable conditions since joining the exodus escaping the 38 - 50 percent poverty level that Mexican think tank CONEVAL estimates plagues Oaxaca and other southern Mexican states in 2005 data.
But several abrupt forces have the Mexicali Mixtec cornered.
They have been ousted from the Mexican customs compound.
Mexicali municipal officials have agreed to allow them to sell on the city limits near the federal compound after the Mixtecs attended a council meeting to protest the federal government's treatment.
But the municipal officials issued few and expensive permits. And municipal officials have also issued a considerable amount of permits to other non-Mixtec vendors, a Mexicali spokesman said. The Mixtecs have traditionally monopolized the port, but now have to contend with more competition for fewer customers. The changes have many Mixtecs resenting the government, claiming they are targets of discrimination in a nation that still sees indigenous groups under a colonial eye and where they are ranked at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
''We are being taxed for this very ground we stand on,'' said Pedro Barrios, president of the Mixtec Civil Association.
Municipal officials said they have done much for the Mixtec by granting them the permits and soliciting assistance from the state of Baja California on their behalf. Each vendor has received $100 (U.S.) to replace merchandise lost or confiscated during the recent purges. But the Mexicali municipality has no control over access into the traveler-congested federal compound.
''In other words, the municipal government can't issue commercial permits for street vendors in that zone and, to put it simply, we don't have jurisdiction,'' Mexicali municipal spokesman Alejandro Dominguez said in an e-mail.
Mixtec vendors who have city permits stay within the city limits, but have few travelers to sell to. Those who don't, circumvent Mexican federal customs officers and sometimes their K-9s by rounding the port and precariously entering the port close to U.S. inspections stations through holes cut in fences. U.S. customs officers allow them at the port mostly because the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency does not have enough officers to shadow the vendors, said Billy Whitford, port director of the Calexico port of entry.
The Mixtec have also been impacted by the dwindling U.S. economy. Travelers, most with U.S. ties, buy less and bargain more.
For 29-year-old Fedilina Barrios, the $20 (U.S.) per day profit she used to make last year selling beverages was tolerable. Now she is lucky if she makes half that, she said.
''They don't buy anything. I don't know how long we could do this.''
In addition, officials of the U.S. border county of Imperial have claimed the long border lines have interrupted their economy. Their fervent pleads to U.S. authorities to mitigate prolonged wait times has the line down significantly since increased security measures were implemented after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But that has had an inverse effect on the Mixtecs who depend on the lines.
Altogether, the shorter lines, fewer customers and increased competition, scrutiny and consumer fear are forcing the Mixtecs to rethink their future on the frontier. For the first time since settling in Mexicali, they are mulling over the idea of traveling yet farther north and working in the U.S. as farm workers.
''If we don't have any other choice, we may have to do it. We are beginning to look into it,'' Barrios said.
© Indian Country Today June 02, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: June 02, 2008
by: Victor Morales
Lagging economy affects southern neighbors
MEXICALI, Mexico - For eight years, indigenous Mixtecs from the Mexican southern state of Oaxaca have sustained themselves by selling merchandise to U.S.-bound travelers waiting in line to cross the border that divides Mexicali and Calexico in southeastern California.
The 150 Mixtecs have carved out a neighborhood in this sprawling frontier city of almost 1 million where foreign factories, including some of the biggest U.S. aerospace companies, have set up industrial plants. The Mixtecs park their jalopies in front of their tiny cinderblock homes not far from the city's Mercedes-Benz dealer and newest Wal-Mart. They have cell phones and their children attend public schools.
They have lived in relatively calm and reasonable conditions since joining the exodus escaping the 38 - 50 percent poverty level that Mexican think tank CONEVAL estimates plagues Oaxaca and other southern Mexican states in 2005 data.
But several abrupt forces have the Mexicali Mixtec cornered.
They have been ousted from the Mexican customs compound.
Mexicali municipal officials have agreed to allow them to sell on the city limits near the federal compound after the Mixtecs attended a council meeting to protest the federal government's treatment.
But the municipal officials issued few and expensive permits. And municipal officials have also issued a considerable amount of permits to other non-Mixtec vendors, a Mexicali spokesman said. The Mixtecs have traditionally monopolized the port, but now have to contend with more competition for fewer customers. The changes have many Mixtecs resenting the government, claiming they are targets of discrimination in a nation that still sees indigenous groups under a colonial eye and where they are ranked at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
''We are being taxed for this very ground we stand on,'' said Pedro Barrios, president of the Mixtec Civil Association.
Municipal officials said they have done much for the Mixtec by granting them the permits and soliciting assistance from the state of Baja California on their behalf. Each vendor has received $100 (U.S.) to replace merchandise lost or confiscated during the recent purges. But the Mexicali municipality has no control over access into the traveler-congested federal compound.
''In other words, the municipal government can't issue commercial permits for street vendors in that zone and, to put it simply, we don't have jurisdiction,'' Mexicali municipal spokesman Alejandro Dominguez said in an e-mail.
Mixtec vendors who have city permits stay within the city limits, but have few travelers to sell to. Those who don't, circumvent Mexican federal customs officers and sometimes their K-9s by rounding the port and precariously entering the port close to U.S. inspections stations through holes cut in fences. U.S. customs officers allow them at the port mostly because the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency does not have enough officers to shadow the vendors, said Billy Whitford, port director of the Calexico port of entry.
The Mixtec have also been impacted by the dwindling U.S. economy. Travelers, most with U.S. ties, buy less and bargain more.
For 29-year-old Fedilina Barrios, the $20 (U.S.) per day profit she used to make last year selling beverages was tolerable. Now she is lucky if she makes half that, she said.
''They don't buy anything. I don't know how long we could do this.''
In addition, officials of the U.S. border county of Imperial have claimed the long border lines have interrupted their economy. Their fervent pleads to U.S. authorities to mitigate prolonged wait times has the line down significantly since increased security measures were implemented after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But that has had an inverse effect on the Mixtecs who depend on the lines.
Altogether, the shorter lines, fewer customers and increased competition, scrutiny and consumer fear are forcing the Mixtecs to rethink their future on the frontier. For the first time since settling in Mexicali, they are mulling over the idea of traveling yet farther north and working in the U.S. as farm workers.
''If we don't have any other choice, we may have to do it. We are beginning to look into it,'' Barrios said.
Un buen paso frente a la carrera armamentista
Un buen paso frente a la carrera armamentista
Editorial Gara
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=68180&titular=un-buen-paso-frente-a-la-carrera-armamentista-
La Conferencia de Dublín ha concluido con un éxito rotundo al haber conseguido sus organizadores que un total de 111 gobiernos de todo el mundo firmen un Tratado Internacional contra las bombas de racimo, uno de los tipos de armamento más peligrosos, mortales e indiscriminados. En sí mismo ese tratado supone un gran paso adelante frente a la carrera armamentista promovida durante décadas por las principales potencias, especialmente los Estados Unidos de América. Y es que la mayoría de países y poblaciones que han sido víctimas de bombardeos masivos con este tipo de armas, lo han sido de la mano de los EUA, como Irak, o cuando menos con su apoyo explícito, como Líbano. Tanto gobiernos firmantes como movimientos sociales contrarios al desarrollo de la industria armamentística coinciden en valorar positivamente el acuerdo adoptado que, además, no admite ni prórroga ni enmienda.
No obstante, hay que destacar que el tratado firmado ayer se da en el marco del Proceso de Oslo, que ha sido deliberadamente organizado al margen de las Naciones Unidas para poder así evitar el veto de los miembros del Consejo de Seguridad. Es evidente que la iniciativa ha tenido éxito, puesto que exceptuando al Estado francés y a Gran Bretaña, ninguno de los otros miembros de ese Consejo -Rusia, China y los EUA- ni sus más cercanos y peligrosos aliados militares y políticos -por ejemplo Israel, Pakistán o India- han rubricado el documento. Eso evidencia que, de haberse dado el mismo debate en el marco de la ONU, la iniciativa hubiese caído en un camino burocrático sin salida.
Todo ello debería llevar a la reflexión y a una acción concertada a aquellos países y a aquellas organizaciones internacionales que aún creen en unas relaciones internacionales más justas, equitativas y libres. Así mismo, debería desembocar en una profunda reorganización de las mal llamadas Naciones Unidas. Pero eso será otro día, porque hoy es el momento para celebrar una de las pocas noticias positivas que llegan de este ámbito en muchos años.
Editorial Gara
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=68180&titular=un-buen-paso-frente-a-la-carrera-armamentista-
La Conferencia de Dublín ha concluido con un éxito rotundo al haber conseguido sus organizadores que un total de 111 gobiernos de todo el mundo firmen un Tratado Internacional contra las bombas de racimo, uno de los tipos de armamento más peligrosos, mortales e indiscriminados. En sí mismo ese tratado supone un gran paso adelante frente a la carrera armamentista promovida durante décadas por las principales potencias, especialmente los Estados Unidos de América. Y es que la mayoría de países y poblaciones que han sido víctimas de bombardeos masivos con este tipo de armas, lo han sido de la mano de los EUA, como Irak, o cuando menos con su apoyo explícito, como Líbano. Tanto gobiernos firmantes como movimientos sociales contrarios al desarrollo de la industria armamentística coinciden en valorar positivamente el acuerdo adoptado que, además, no admite ni prórroga ni enmienda.
No obstante, hay que destacar que el tratado firmado ayer se da en el marco del Proceso de Oslo, que ha sido deliberadamente organizado al margen de las Naciones Unidas para poder así evitar el veto de los miembros del Consejo de Seguridad. Es evidente que la iniciativa ha tenido éxito, puesto que exceptuando al Estado francés y a Gran Bretaña, ninguno de los otros miembros de ese Consejo -Rusia, China y los EUA- ni sus más cercanos y peligrosos aliados militares y políticos -por ejemplo Israel, Pakistán o India- han rubricado el documento. Eso evidencia que, de haberse dado el mismo debate en el marco de la ONU, la iniciativa hubiese caído en un camino burocrático sin salida.
Todo ello debería llevar a la reflexión y a una acción concertada a aquellos países y a aquellas organizaciones internacionales que aún creen en unas relaciones internacionales más justas, equitativas y libres. Así mismo, debería desembocar en una profunda reorganización de las mal llamadas Naciones Unidas. Pero eso será otro día, porque hoy es el momento para celebrar una de las pocas noticias positivas que llegan de este ámbito en muchos años.
Two Years Later in Oaxaca: Part II
Two Years Later in Oaxaca: Part II
What’s The Difference? - Networking and Local Autonomy: The Thigh Bone’s Connected to The Knee Bone
http://www.narconews.com/Issue54/article3123.html
By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
June 2, 2008
Read Part I of this series here.
Part II
Oaxaca, Mexico now serves as the crossroad for national social movements – and perhaps international ones as well, according to David Venegas, the former political prisoner and activist of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO in its Spanish initials).
The annual occupations by frustrated members of Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE in its Spanish initals) in their 2008 strike add to the frustration of the population. Permission to convoke a statewide teachers assembly to legitimize new officials for Section 22 within SNTE is clearly a union-busting maneuver, and a dangerous one at that. Stymied by the unsavory Elba Esther Gordillo, abetted by Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) in not yielding on this most important union piece, the tension grows in Oaxaca as we approach the June 14 anniversary of the movement.
Section 22 in the midst of their struggle incorporated other concerns, particularly the privatization of the petroleum industry. This is the legitimate task of teachers – they plow the ground; the social movement plants the seeds. Inside the teachers’ plantón, education proceeds. Alongside the encampment in the Alameda, another anti-privatization forum took place on May 29, sponsored by the National Democratic Alternative (ADN) of the National Democratic Party (PRD).
And if the avalanche of initials and organizations overwhelms you, so does it me –organizations and sectors of organizations are multiplying like rabbits.
Barring another not impossible social explosion, the changes in Oaxaca answer this query:
Where is the APPO? My response, and the difference after the 2006 events, is people organizing on the ground. A network of activists spread across the state who are all, in some sense “the APPO.” As David Venegas told me, when the youth caravan El Sendero del Jaguar arrived in small communities on the Isthmus in May, although the youngsters do not identify themselves as APPO (many don’t belong to the APPO), the townspeople rushed out to meet them shouting “the APPO is coming! The APPO is here!”
We Are All The APPO
The main body of the APPO, those thousands who took to the streets in 2006, are not attending quarrelsome ideological meetings – but they haven’t vanished. “The head bone‘s connected to the neck bone, the neck bone’s connected to the shoulder bone…, now hear the word of the Lord!” Good song. The word of the Lord in Oaxaca is that everything and everybody is connected, in a cascade of inter-related events and movements. The APPO has been described as a movement of movements, and morenow than ever, that seems accurate.
I postulate that a two-fold change in consciousness in Oaxaca has taken root. One involves networking. Civil society caught on to the government policy of deliberate isolation and separation of communities and groups, often accompanied by PRI-provoked violence. That power tactic is being discussed and acted on via cross-cultural communication. The other change is confrontation of authoritarian top-down control. Local control, horizontal control and autonomy leap up within town after town. They create in-your-face challenges to the resident caciques.
This is not to disregard the fact that many social organizations retain a top-down internal structure, many consist of not more than two people, many hold conservative positions. Nor could I disregard the cost in lives: for example the two Triqui radio broadcasters. Nor government harassment. Nevertheless, as the APPO shouted “elbow to elbow”, the social movements spread like water, very strong and not only horizontal, but respectful of each others programs and priorities.
The Journey of the Sendero del Jaguar
I met the sisters of David Venegas Reyes while they were working to get David out of prison. Sonya was raising money, selling calendars. Natalya was speaking and traveling; both attended meetings of the APPO.
As for David himself, I met him for the first time at a public forum regarding political prisoners on the day after he himself was released. He spent eleven months in the hands of the government, grabbed off the street in April of 2007 and framed with a sequence of false criminal charges, then re-charged, and re-charged again, until finally the courts declared an end to it and he was released.
The siblings live in Oaxaca with their parents, and David graduated from a Oaxaca university with a “agricultural engineer” degree, a title he finds now to be totally useless. As he explained, all they were taught was from the north: agribusiness and chemicals. David is a committed anarchist (in the best sense of the classic political tradition), and a member of VOCAL, the APPO-anarchist socialist faction. In person, he sizzles with energy, a handsome twenty-five year old, seemingly tireless and fearless. When I met him the second time he was heading a march to demand release of other prisoners.
According to David, “The Path of the Jaguar for the Regeneration of our Memory” is the result of the collective work of activist boys and girls who participated in the first youth meeting of the social movement, convoked by the APPO in its third state assembly. This meeting of youngsters, carried out in the month of February of 2008 in the town of Zaachila, organized the caravan of thirty young people who have as their fundamental objective “the reorganization of the Oaxaca social movement.”
On May 27 Las Noticias displayed a half-page ad entitled “Pronunciamiento Politico.” It was signed Caravana “El Sendero del Jaguar por la Regeneración de Nuestra Memoria.” In part it reads:
”As in Mexico and the world, many peoples are struggling and resisting (neoliberal) development and progress because they know it will only benefit some few and those few are not the legitimate owners of the land nor of what is found in it. In the region of the Isthmus de Tehuantepec, towns such as Jalapa del Marqués, Juchitán, San Blas Atempa, Zanatepec and Benito Juárez Chimalapas are located at strategic points for the development of mega-projects like the Plan-Puebla-Panama, the Area of Free Commerce of the Americas (ALCA, or NAFTA), the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and the Alliance for Security and Prosperity of North America (ASPAN).”
The youngsters’ caravan with David Venegas on board left Oaxaca City on May 5, 2008 from in front of the teachers’ building. David’s opinion piece/explanation appeared on the internet blog “Kaos en la Red” and in the newspaper Las Noticias.
The Oaxaca Social Movement: Local Control as a Political Model
Public acknowledgement of issues regarding privatization vs. community ownership – autonomy, local control, indigenous rights and cultural identity – emerged as an integral part of the discourse in 2008. The lawsuits on the Isthmus filed against foreign contractors for the wind generators charge fraud, failure to obtain local input, unfair rental payments as well as misleading environmental studies and failure to observe indigenous rights. It would be a model for the nation if it were won and enforced. It is legally based on violation of the Mexican constitution, closely related to the prohibitions of turning oil over to foreign investors. In the words of Sendero:
“ ... this (2006) movement against globalization not only touched the gates of heaven, took them by storm, which meant that the antagonists–”the governor”, “the state”, “neoliberalism”– were recognized. The demands were direct, they were pressed by solidarity, but also by the insults and discontent of an immoral economy.
The APPO …underlined the necessity of thinking about a new type of authority, one far from Persons governing and Persons governed, but instead (based on the model) “lead by obeying”, as followed by the Zapatistas…to imagine what forms of life suit them, their own beliefs, ...without repeating authoritarian socialism…acting with alliances in which they could fully call themselves “communities”... the APPO simply put forward the idea of returning to “the customary” (usos y costumbres) which expresses alternative forms of possession and of doing politics, in the search for different senses of justice and autonomy for everyone, not for just some.”
The first caravan visited five communities in the troubled Isthmus region, communities on the receiving end of neoliberal assaults. As David explained to me, the misinterpretation that indigenous people oppose “development” is founded on their unwillingness to accept the capitalist model of private gain, which inevitably leads to greed and individual power-grabs. Instead, they seek “development” which evenly benefits the entire community at the same time, leaving nobody side-lined.
As for the Sendero’s caravan, the point was to listen and learn, an attempt to understand. It sounds like the Zapatista caravans, but with a definite difference. In Chiapas, David claims, only one model, the caracoles, prevails. But in Oaxaca each community provides its own model, it’s own version of how to live. Oaxacans, he continued, are much more territorial, not only in the countryside but in the city where the assemblies of colonias meet. “Community” is personal and face-to-face.
Santa Maria Jalapa del Marquez on May 5 observed 47 years since the town was submerged to create the Benito Juárez Dam, an event allegedly achieved through threats and false promises – no surprise there. The relocated population slowly rebuilt, many becoming fishermen. In 2003 the government sprang the idea of the construction of a hydroelectric generator on the dam. Before protests were launched, the government divided the town by handing out lands to those who would vote in favor. Nevertheless, the community won, really because studies showed the hydroelectric project was not feasible. Nevertheless the state and federal governments didn’t let go: the army and police arrived to maintain order.
The Benito Juarez Dam provides water to irrigate farmland in Region 19 of Juchitán and Tehuantepec, among other towns. But something has gone wrong. There’s no water. The Pemex refinery in Salina Cruz receives its quota, but after April nothing went to the campesinos and agriculture. The crop loss is reported at 100%. As the dam’s water levels drop, the church and houses of the drowned town appear like ghosts on the cracked dry ground. The town of Jalapa, now radicalized, alerts other towns threatened with similar mega-projects.
San Blas Atempa, site of a nasty repression and assassination allegedly authored by the PRI cacique Agustina Acevedo Gutiérrez, an ally of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, was visited on May 6. The people came out to greet the Sendero young people, with the women speaking in public assembly against the ambitious, corrupt and criminal woman who is the cacique.
In Juchitán de Zaragoza on May 7, the Sendero met with the Assembly in Defense of Land, involved in the confrontation with the installation of the Eólic Corridor. Endesa, Hiberdrola, Gamesa and Union Fenosa are the transnationals, which installed “La Venta I” starting with eight generators; now La Venta II occupies 850 hectares of land. The electricity generated is sold to the Federal Electric Commission. The goal is 5,000 generators on more than 3,000 hectares of land previously used for agriculture and cattle gazing.
A decade ago in a sweet Oaxaca landscape, cream-colored oxen grazed by the side of the lagoon road, a dreamy vision of peace. Wind-generators are not un-pretty, and the trade-off for clean energy is evident. But it’s not so simple. The noise of the generators effectively drives out every living thing. La Venta IV is projected for another 2,300 hectares – on Zapotec lands. Protests have resulted in 76 orders for arrest.
The Sendero also visited the community radio in Juchitán, “Radio Totopo” which discusses in both Zapotec and Spanish the problems of the various communities on the Isthmus. Neighbors sustain Radio Totopo personnel with food and necessities. Another resistance campaign formed against Wal-Mart and its outlet, Aurrera. Community radio provides another networking link.
May 8 the caravan arrived at Benito Juárez, in the municipality of San Miguel Chimalapa. This community guards the jungle against exploitation and handing over of concessions. It’s on the border with Chiapas, the Chiapas government forty years ago began to give concessions for cutting wood, and sent Chiapanecos to settle there. The governments encouraged battles between the newcomers and the residents. On their own, the rival groups recognized they observe the same spirit of maintaining the natural environment. In one of the first environmental victories, the Chimalapa territory, covered in woods and virgin jungle and with immeasurable biological wealth and water, held back the government and its commissions. The peoples’ maintain the area.
As an aside, in the midst of the electricity-generation wars, these Chimalapa territories have no electric service. The land legally belongs to Oaxaca; the two state governments collude in privatizing the once commonly-held lands as the relentless neoliberal assault continues.
The caravan ended its first tour on May 14. The final day, the ministerial police of Zanatepec stopped and searched the caravan out in the country, away from any population. According to the caravan spokespersons, the cops came out of the woods to threaten them. Nevertheless “reorganization” of the APPO, that is, the population base, goes on as links are forged. The Sendero youngsters, raging in age from 14 up to “elder statesmen” in their late twenties, plan to visit the entire state, region by region. As David told me, they don’t need to speak with civil organizations, which already have their own agendas. They listen to the indigenous people, the campesinos, the ones trying to guard their lives and their visions. They learn what it is so unique about Oaxaca, which inspires the world.
What’s The Difference? - Networking and Local Autonomy: The Thigh Bone’s Connected to The Knee Bone
http://www.narconews.com/Issue54/article3123.html
By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
June 2, 2008
Read Part I of this series here.
Part II
Oaxaca, Mexico now serves as the crossroad for national social movements – and perhaps international ones as well, according to David Venegas, the former political prisoner and activist of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO in its Spanish initials).
The annual occupations by frustrated members of Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE in its Spanish initals) in their 2008 strike add to the frustration of the population. Permission to convoke a statewide teachers assembly to legitimize new officials for Section 22 within SNTE is clearly a union-busting maneuver, and a dangerous one at that. Stymied by the unsavory Elba Esther Gordillo, abetted by Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) in not yielding on this most important union piece, the tension grows in Oaxaca as we approach the June 14 anniversary of the movement.
Section 22 in the midst of their struggle incorporated other concerns, particularly the privatization of the petroleum industry. This is the legitimate task of teachers – they plow the ground; the social movement plants the seeds. Inside the teachers’ plantón, education proceeds. Alongside the encampment in the Alameda, another anti-privatization forum took place on May 29, sponsored by the National Democratic Alternative (ADN) of the National Democratic Party (PRD).
And if the avalanche of initials and organizations overwhelms you, so does it me –organizations and sectors of organizations are multiplying like rabbits.
Barring another not impossible social explosion, the changes in Oaxaca answer this query:
Where is the APPO? My response, and the difference after the 2006 events, is people organizing on the ground. A network of activists spread across the state who are all, in some sense “the APPO.” As David Venegas told me, when the youth caravan El Sendero del Jaguar arrived in small communities on the Isthmus in May, although the youngsters do not identify themselves as APPO (many don’t belong to the APPO), the townspeople rushed out to meet them shouting “the APPO is coming! The APPO is here!”
We Are All The APPO
The main body of the APPO, those thousands who took to the streets in 2006, are not attending quarrelsome ideological meetings – but they haven’t vanished. “The head bone‘s connected to the neck bone, the neck bone’s connected to the shoulder bone…, now hear the word of the Lord!” Good song. The word of the Lord in Oaxaca is that everything and everybody is connected, in a cascade of inter-related events and movements. The APPO has been described as a movement of movements, and morenow than ever, that seems accurate.
I postulate that a two-fold change in consciousness in Oaxaca has taken root. One involves networking. Civil society caught on to the government policy of deliberate isolation and separation of communities and groups, often accompanied by PRI-provoked violence. That power tactic is being discussed and acted on via cross-cultural communication. The other change is confrontation of authoritarian top-down control. Local control, horizontal control and autonomy leap up within town after town. They create in-your-face challenges to the resident caciques.
This is not to disregard the fact that many social organizations retain a top-down internal structure, many consist of not more than two people, many hold conservative positions. Nor could I disregard the cost in lives: for example the two Triqui radio broadcasters. Nor government harassment. Nevertheless, as the APPO shouted “elbow to elbow”, the social movements spread like water, very strong and not only horizontal, but respectful of each others programs and priorities.
The Journey of the Sendero del Jaguar
I met the sisters of David Venegas Reyes while they were working to get David out of prison. Sonya was raising money, selling calendars. Natalya was speaking and traveling; both attended meetings of the APPO.
As for David himself, I met him for the first time at a public forum regarding political prisoners on the day after he himself was released. He spent eleven months in the hands of the government, grabbed off the street in April of 2007 and framed with a sequence of false criminal charges, then re-charged, and re-charged again, until finally the courts declared an end to it and he was released.
The siblings live in Oaxaca with their parents, and David graduated from a Oaxaca university with a “agricultural engineer” degree, a title he finds now to be totally useless. As he explained, all they were taught was from the north: agribusiness and chemicals. David is a committed anarchist (in the best sense of the classic political tradition), and a member of VOCAL, the APPO-anarchist socialist faction. In person, he sizzles with energy, a handsome twenty-five year old, seemingly tireless and fearless. When I met him the second time he was heading a march to demand release of other prisoners.
According to David, “The Path of the Jaguar for the Regeneration of our Memory” is the result of the collective work of activist boys and girls who participated in the first youth meeting of the social movement, convoked by the APPO in its third state assembly. This meeting of youngsters, carried out in the month of February of 2008 in the town of Zaachila, organized the caravan of thirty young people who have as their fundamental objective “the reorganization of the Oaxaca social movement.”
On May 27 Las Noticias displayed a half-page ad entitled “Pronunciamiento Politico.” It was signed Caravana “El Sendero del Jaguar por la Regeneración de Nuestra Memoria.” In part it reads:
”As in Mexico and the world, many peoples are struggling and resisting (neoliberal) development and progress because they know it will only benefit some few and those few are not the legitimate owners of the land nor of what is found in it. In the region of the Isthmus de Tehuantepec, towns such as Jalapa del Marqués, Juchitán, San Blas Atempa, Zanatepec and Benito Juárez Chimalapas are located at strategic points for the development of mega-projects like the Plan-Puebla-Panama, the Area of Free Commerce of the Americas (ALCA, or NAFTA), the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and the Alliance for Security and Prosperity of North America (ASPAN).”
The youngsters’ caravan with David Venegas on board left Oaxaca City on May 5, 2008 from in front of the teachers’ building. David’s opinion piece/explanation appeared on the internet blog “Kaos en la Red” and in the newspaper Las Noticias.
The Oaxaca Social Movement: Local Control as a Political Model
Public acknowledgement of issues regarding privatization vs. community ownership – autonomy, local control, indigenous rights and cultural identity – emerged as an integral part of the discourse in 2008. The lawsuits on the Isthmus filed against foreign contractors for the wind generators charge fraud, failure to obtain local input, unfair rental payments as well as misleading environmental studies and failure to observe indigenous rights. It would be a model for the nation if it were won and enforced. It is legally based on violation of the Mexican constitution, closely related to the prohibitions of turning oil over to foreign investors. In the words of Sendero:
“ ... this (2006) movement against globalization not only touched the gates of heaven, took them by storm, which meant that the antagonists–”the governor”, “the state”, “neoliberalism”– were recognized. The demands were direct, they were pressed by solidarity, but also by the insults and discontent of an immoral economy.
The APPO …underlined the necessity of thinking about a new type of authority, one far from Persons governing and Persons governed, but instead (based on the model) “lead by obeying”, as followed by the Zapatistas…to imagine what forms of life suit them, their own beliefs, ...without repeating authoritarian socialism…acting with alliances in which they could fully call themselves “communities”... the APPO simply put forward the idea of returning to “the customary” (usos y costumbres) which expresses alternative forms of possession and of doing politics, in the search for different senses of justice and autonomy for everyone, not for just some.”
The first caravan visited five communities in the troubled Isthmus region, communities on the receiving end of neoliberal assaults. As David explained to me, the misinterpretation that indigenous people oppose “development” is founded on their unwillingness to accept the capitalist model of private gain, which inevitably leads to greed and individual power-grabs. Instead, they seek “development” which evenly benefits the entire community at the same time, leaving nobody side-lined.
As for the Sendero’s caravan, the point was to listen and learn, an attempt to understand. It sounds like the Zapatista caravans, but with a definite difference. In Chiapas, David claims, only one model, the caracoles, prevails. But in Oaxaca each community provides its own model, it’s own version of how to live. Oaxacans, he continued, are much more territorial, not only in the countryside but in the city where the assemblies of colonias meet. “Community” is personal and face-to-face.
Santa Maria Jalapa del Marquez on May 5 observed 47 years since the town was submerged to create the Benito Juárez Dam, an event allegedly achieved through threats and false promises – no surprise there. The relocated population slowly rebuilt, many becoming fishermen. In 2003 the government sprang the idea of the construction of a hydroelectric generator on the dam. Before protests were launched, the government divided the town by handing out lands to those who would vote in favor. Nevertheless, the community won, really because studies showed the hydroelectric project was not feasible. Nevertheless the state and federal governments didn’t let go: the army and police arrived to maintain order.
The Benito Juarez Dam provides water to irrigate farmland in Region 19 of Juchitán and Tehuantepec, among other towns. But something has gone wrong. There’s no water. The Pemex refinery in Salina Cruz receives its quota, but after April nothing went to the campesinos and agriculture. The crop loss is reported at 100%. As the dam’s water levels drop, the church and houses of the drowned town appear like ghosts on the cracked dry ground. The town of Jalapa, now radicalized, alerts other towns threatened with similar mega-projects.
San Blas Atempa, site of a nasty repression and assassination allegedly authored by the PRI cacique Agustina Acevedo Gutiérrez, an ally of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, was visited on May 6. The people came out to greet the Sendero young people, with the women speaking in public assembly against the ambitious, corrupt and criminal woman who is the cacique.
In Juchitán de Zaragoza on May 7, the Sendero met with the Assembly in Defense of Land, involved in the confrontation with the installation of the Eólic Corridor. Endesa, Hiberdrola, Gamesa and Union Fenosa are the transnationals, which installed “La Venta I” starting with eight generators; now La Venta II occupies 850 hectares of land. The electricity generated is sold to the Federal Electric Commission. The goal is 5,000 generators on more than 3,000 hectares of land previously used for agriculture and cattle gazing.
A decade ago in a sweet Oaxaca landscape, cream-colored oxen grazed by the side of the lagoon road, a dreamy vision of peace. Wind-generators are not un-pretty, and the trade-off for clean energy is evident. But it’s not so simple. The noise of the generators effectively drives out every living thing. La Venta IV is projected for another 2,300 hectares – on Zapotec lands. Protests have resulted in 76 orders for arrest.
The Sendero also visited the community radio in Juchitán, “Radio Totopo” which discusses in both Zapotec and Spanish the problems of the various communities on the Isthmus. Neighbors sustain Radio Totopo personnel with food and necessities. Another resistance campaign formed against Wal-Mart and its outlet, Aurrera. Community radio provides another networking link.
May 8 the caravan arrived at Benito Juárez, in the municipality of San Miguel Chimalapa. This community guards the jungle against exploitation and handing over of concessions. It’s on the border with Chiapas, the Chiapas government forty years ago began to give concessions for cutting wood, and sent Chiapanecos to settle there. The governments encouraged battles between the newcomers and the residents. On their own, the rival groups recognized they observe the same spirit of maintaining the natural environment. In one of the first environmental victories, the Chimalapa territory, covered in woods and virgin jungle and with immeasurable biological wealth and water, held back the government and its commissions. The peoples’ maintain the area.
As an aside, in the midst of the electricity-generation wars, these Chimalapa territories have no electric service. The land legally belongs to Oaxaca; the two state governments collude in privatizing the once commonly-held lands as the relentless neoliberal assault continues.
The caravan ended its first tour on May 14. The final day, the ministerial police of Zanatepec stopped and searched the caravan out in the country, away from any population. According to the caravan spokespersons, the cops came out of the woods to threaten them. Nevertheless “reorganization” of the APPO, that is, the population base, goes on as links are forged. The Sendero youngsters, raging in age from 14 up to “elder statesmen” in their late twenties, plan to visit the entire state, region by region. As David told me, they don’t need to speak with civil organizations, which already have their own agendas. They listen to the indigenous people, the campesinos, the ones trying to guard their lives and their visions. They learn what it is so unique about Oaxaca, which inspires the world.
En estado crítico, las garantías en Oaxaca, considera la CCIODH
En estado crítico, las garantías en Oaxaca, considera la CCIODH
Octavio Vélez Ascencio (Corresponsal)
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/06/02/index.php?section=politica&article=005n2pol
Oaxaca, Oax., 1o. de junio. A casi dos años de que se inició un conflicto político-social en la entidad, la situación de los derechos humanos en Oaxaca permanece en estado crítico, sostuvo la Comisión Civil Internacional de Observación por los Derechos Humanos (CCIODH).
“Los casos documentados de desapariciones forzadas, homicidios, torturas, detenciones arbitrarias y cateos ilegales, con la nueva modalidad de violaciones sexuales, se producen en un estado de excepción latente, a pesar de las declaraciones oficiales en sentido contrario, y nos acercan a la guerra sucia de los años 70”, afirmó Iñaki García, vocero de la CCIODH, al presentar el informe de la sexta visita del organismo, realizada entre el 30 de enero y el 20 de febrero pasado.
En conferencia de prensa, que ofreció con otros miembros del organismo, el activista expuso que la ausencia de una respuesta política y jurídica a las graves transgresiones a los derechos humanos detectadas en la anterior visita, esto es, las derivadas de las movilizaciones magisteriales y la conformación de la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) y la posterior respuesta represiva, constituyen un “elemento grave”.
También es preocupante, dijo, la continuidad del hostigamiento a los miembros o simpatizantes de la movilización social que representa la APPO, y la aparición de nuevas situaciones que vulneran los derechos humanos, que se extienden a otros sectores sociales afectados por casos tan dispares como los de pederastia, delito insuficientemente perseguido en la esfera judicial.
También, anotó, se documentaron desapariciones forzadas en contextos de fuerte conflictividad política, que la CCIDOH considera relacionadas con las estrategias represivas del gobierno estatal, como los casos de las mujeres triquis Daniela y Virginia Ortiz Ramírez, y el de los miembros del Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) Edmundo Reyes Amaya y Gabiel Alberto Cruz Sánchez.
Subrayó que desde noviembre de 2006 la respuesta de los gobiernos federal, estatal y municipal a las demandas sociales “se basa en el hostigamiento a la sociedad civil para disuadirla de cualquier tipo de disidencia, lo que recuerda la estrategia de los manuales de contrainsurgencia tradicionalmente empleada contra los movimientos armados”.
García dijo que la CCIODH documentó “numerosos” casos de homicidios ocurridos en 2007, así como la persistencia en la práctica de la tortura y la desaparición forzada de personas. En este contexto destacó que el conflicto político social en la entidad ha dejado 62 muertes.
Por lo referido, recomendó a las autoridades gubernamentales atender las causas profundas del conflicto, principalmente los problemas estructurales de pobreza, caciquismo, desigual acceso a los recursos, ausencia de canales de participación, y realizar una reforma profunda de las instituciones del estado, así como desmontar el modelo de represión contra las expresiones de disidencia social, cultural y política.
Octavio Vélez Ascencio (Corresponsal)
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/06/02/index.php?section=politica&article=005n2pol
Oaxaca, Oax., 1o. de junio. A casi dos años de que se inició un conflicto político-social en la entidad, la situación de los derechos humanos en Oaxaca permanece en estado crítico, sostuvo la Comisión Civil Internacional de Observación por los Derechos Humanos (CCIODH).
“Los casos documentados de desapariciones forzadas, homicidios, torturas, detenciones arbitrarias y cateos ilegales, con la nueva modalidad de violaciones sexuales, se producen en un estado de excepción latente, a pesar de las declaraciones oficiales en sentido contrario, y nos acercan a la guerra sucia de los años 70”, afirmó Iñaki García, vocero de la CCIODH, al presentar el informe de la sexta visita del organismo, realizada entre el 30 de enero y el 20 de febrero pasado.
En conferencia de prensa, que ofreció con otros miembros del organismo, el activista expuso que la ausencia de una respuesta política y jurídica a las graves transgresiones a los derechos humanos detectadas en la anterior visita, esto es, las derivadas de las movilizaciones magisteriales y la conformación de la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) y la posterior respuesta represiva, constituyen un “elemento grave”.
También es preocupante, dijo, la continuidad del hostigamiento a los miembros o simpatizantes de la movilización social que representa la APPO, y la aparición de nuevas situaciones que vulneran los derechos humanos, que se extienden a otros sectores sociales afectados por casos tan dispares como los de pederastia, delito insuficientemente perseguido en la esfera judicial.
También, anotó, se documentaron desapariciones forzadas en contextos de fuerte conflictividad política, que la CCIDOH considera relacionadas con las estrategias represivas del gobierno estatal, como los casos de las mujeres triquis Daniela y Virginia Ortiz Ramírez, y el de los miembros del Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) Edmundo Reyes Amaya y Gabiel Alberto Cruz Sánchez.
Subrayó que desde noviembre de 2006 la respuesta de los gobiernos federal, estatal y municipal a las demandas sociales “se basa en el hostigamiento a la sociedad civil para disuadirla de cualquier tipo de disidencia, lo que recuerda la estrategia de los manuales de contrainsurgencia tradicionalmente empleada contra los movimientos armados”.
García dijo que la CCIODH documentó “numerosos” casos de homicidios ocurridos en 2007, así como la persistencia en la práctica de la tortura y la desaparición forzada de personas. En este contexto destacó que el conflicto político social en la entidad ha dejado 62 muertes.
Por lo referido, recomendó a las autoridades gubernamentales atender las causas profundas del conflicto, principalmente los problemas estructurales de pobreza, caciquismo, desigual acceso a los recursos, ausencia de canales de participación, y realizar una reforma profunda de las instituciones del estado, así como desmontar el modelo de represión contra las expresiones de disidencia social, cultural y política.
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