"En México se permiten la tortura, la ejecución extrajudicial y la desaparición forzada y que los autores queden en la más completa impunidad"

Entrevista al Comité Cerezo sobre las elecciones del 5 de julio

Raúl Calvo Trenado

Rebelión

¿Los resultados que puedan darse en las próximas elecciones influyen de alguna manera en el trabajo del Comité Cerezo?

Por supuesto que el trabajo de defensa de los Derechos Humanos que realiza el Comité Cerezo México depende, en gran medida, de la política del gobierno mexicano respecto a este tema. En este sentido, el fortalecimiento electoral de partidos políticos que históricamente han violado sistemáticamente los derechos humanos; civiles y políticos, así como los derechos económicos, sociales, culturales y ambientales de la sociedad tendría un efecto sumamente negativo dado que se profundizaría la criminalización y la judicialización de la protesta social y con ello se tendrían más casos de tortura, prisión política, ejecución extrajudicial y desaparición forzada por parte del Estado mexicano, si bien es cierto que para todos los partidos, los DDHH no son, ni por error, parte de su agenda política, es posible trabajar mejor con un sistema más democrático, desde el punto de vista del límite capitalista de este término.

¿Y en la situación de los presos políticos podría influir?

Un Congreso de la Unión (Diputados y Senadores) conformado mayoritariamente por miembros afines a los Partidos de derecha, evidentemente aplicarán con mayor agresividad una estrategia e represión, contención y aniquilamiento de los diversos movimientos sociales que se oponen a las políticas gubernamentales lesivas al disfrute de los derechos humanos de la población en su conjunto, esto resulta en la imposibilidad, como hasta ahora lo ha sido, de por ejemplo, la promulgación de Leyes tanto Federal como estatales de Amnistía, que permitan la libertad de todos los presos políticos y de conciencia del país.

Y la situación penitenciaria de graves violaciones a los derechos humanos será cada vez más aguda, recordemos que hoy se están construyendo nuevos penales de alta y máxima seguridad, que serán monumentos a la impunidad, amén de que en dichos centros, ahora también privatizados, los presos políticos y de conciencia tratarán de ser reducidos a lo mínimo en su dignidad.

¿La estrategia de militarización del gobierno puede condicionar el voto en algunas regiones?

Uno de los objetivos de la militarización es el control geográfico, económico, político y cultural de la sociedad por el Estado mexicano. La militarización como parte de la estrategia del “enemigo interno” en contra de la sociedad organizada cumple la función de impedir, condicionar, determinar o inhibir el voto en las comunidades, pueblos y colonias en las que la participación política de la sociedad ha optado por las elecciones como una forma de cambio de sus condiciones de vida. esta militarización, lejos de brindar seguridad en los procesos electorales, en muchos casos, produce miedo y zozobra en la población y en otros impide el ejercicio pleno del derecho a elegir gobernantes o que la defensa del voto, ahí donde nuevamente se utilice el fraude será inhibido.

¿Qué opinan de las promesas de respeto a los Derechos Humanos que anuncian los diversos partidos en esta campaña?

El problema es que ni siquiera se están dando promesas con respecto a los DDHH, se habla de promesas para paliar las necesidades básicas o más sentidas de las diferentes regiones del país, pero estas incluyen como el Partido Verde Ecologísta de México, la pena de muerte, la cual viola el elemental derecho a la vida, estas promesas como resultado de la violencia exacerbada que se vive por el control del mercado de la droga, la tendencia es a profundizar la legalización de las violaciones a los Derechos Humanos bajo el pretexto de la guerra contra el narcotráfico. En la actualidad, gracias a las reformas a la Constitución, en México existe el marco jurídico, que permite violaciones graves a los Derechos Humanos, como son, la tortura, la ejecución extrajudicial y la desaparición forzada y además, para que los autores materiales e intelectuales queden en la más completa impunidad.

Israeli Police and Military Brutalize Peaceful Protesters at Netanyahu's Speech

By Col. Ann Wright

AlterNet

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was making a major foreign policy speech at Tel Aviv University Sunday, Israeli police outside the university attacked international protesters of Israel's invasion of Gaza, illegal settlements and the apartheid wall.

Heavy-handed police treatment of the unarmed, peaceful members of the CODEPINK delegation there began immediately after they unfurled several pink banners that read "Free Gaza" and "End the Occupation." CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin and New York activist Zool Zulkowitz were physically dragged across the street from their original protest site next to the entrance gate to Bar Ilan University where audience members and press entered the university complex to attend the speech.

Several hours later, a French journalist and member of the CODEPINK delegation, was arrested as she crossed a small street in an attempt to take photos of the demonstration. As she was placed in an Israeli police car, several members of the delegation converged to determine why the journalist was being held.

Israeli police and military violently shoved the group back into a wall. Delegation member Tighe Barry from Santa Monica, Cali. was struck in the face with the butt of a military rifle and pushed to the ground where he could barely breathe. He was taken by ambulance to the Trauma Center of Tal-Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv where he was treated for a concussion, an injured neck and an asthma attack. Benjamin and several other delegation members were bruised in the arms and upper body from being shoved and manhandled by the police and military.

The journalist was taken to a local police station and released an hour later without charges. Mr. Barry was treated overnight at the hospital.

The CODEPINK delegation has requested the Israeli police and military investigate the brutality used by their forces on the peaceful, non-violent protesters.

When President Obama spoke in Cairo on June 4, a separate CODEPINK delegation that had just returned from six days in Gaza in early June, held a demonstration right outside Cairo University holding signs that read "Stop funding Israeli War Crimes." Egyptian police allowed the demonstration to take place.

But not so in Israel.

"Is this the great democracy that the U.S. taxpayers pay for with $3 billion dollars a year?" Benjamin cried, as she was being dragged away by the police.

En la puerta de la libertad, 70 años después del viaje del "Sinaia"

El 13 de junio de 1939 llegó a Veracruz (México) el primer barco con exiliados españoles

Por Andrés Martínez Casares
SOITU


El 13 de junio de 1939 llegó a Veracruz (México) el primer barco con exiliados españoles. Charlamos en el lugar con uno de ellos, el filósofo y antropólogo Claudio Esteva Fabregat.

"Esto no era así. El suelo no era así. Aquel edificio no lo recuerdo, no estaba cuando llegamos", recuerda Claudio Esteva Fabregat mientras camina con su esposa Berta por el Malecón de Puerto de Veracruz. Setenta años separan ambos momentos. Mira a todas partes tratando de reconocer los lugares. "¡Aquello sí lo recuerdo!" Es el faro de Venustiano Carranza. La emoción del momento, el tiempo y la memoria, se aúnan al atardecer, un par de días antes de que se cumplan las siete décadas de la llegada del 'Sinaia' a México con 1.681 republicanos a bordo.

Dieciocho días de travesía desembarcaban el vapor el 13 de junio de 1939 en Veracruz. Primero habían navegado el Mediterráneo, procedentes de Francia. Luego surcaron el Atlántico tras, con cierto temor, haber cruzado el Estrecho de Gibraltar. Ahora la tierra mexicana les daba una cálida acogida. "¡Como héroes, nos recibieron como héroes!" recuerda Esteva Fabregat.

La llegada del primer barco fletado para llevar refugiados republicanos a México tras la Guerra Civil "fue inolvidable. Una multitud nos esperaba en el muelle. Todos vestidos con guayabera, pantalón blanco y sombrero. Y hacía un calor tremendo". Atrás quedaba una guerra, campos de refugiados, huidas, hambre. Por delante, una nueva oportunidad. "Establecimos contacto con los lugareños inmediatamente". Cuenta que al pisar tierra les abrazaban. "Llorábamos. Estábamos siendo recibidos con afecto". Una cercanía que dista de lo que para él fue su estancia en Francia, curiosamente la tierra que, aunque circunstancialmente, le vio nacer (1918, Marsella).

Claudio recuerda hoy, a sus 90 años, cómo cuando contaba con 20 trataba de encontrar una vía para escapar del Campo de Refugiados de Saint-Cyprien. "Habíamos escrito una carta al Comité Británico de Ayuda a España, porque habíamos oído que iba a haber una expedición a Inglaterra". La situación en el campo francés no era nada buena, pero la guerra que parecía que iba a haber en Europa hizo que su solicitud fuera rechazada. "Me llamaron por la megafonía del Campo para decirme que me iba, pero que se había denegado la petición de asilo". Aun así, entró en el cupo que el comité tenía en el "Sinaia". "Días después nos volvieron a llamar para decirnos que podíamos recoger nuestros bienes porque nos íbamos. Pero no teníamos ni una manta". Así pues, con lo puesto, "con la ropa rota, sucios y con barba", ni una ducha. "Imagínese, 100 días en un campo de refugiados en el Pirineo, desde febrero, con ese frío". El lugar donde había llegado tras luchar en los frentes republicanos del Este y del Ebro.

Con su compañero Vicente se embarcó en un vapor que estaba destinado a ser un "barco para salvar a intelectuales en peligro, con un importante valor para México". No tenían muy claro dónde iban. La única idea que se tenía de México por aquel entonces era la de "Pancho Villa o Emiliano Zapata, la de la revolución mexicana". Poco a poco en el barco se les iba instruyendo sobre lo que se encontrarían al llegar. El boletín diario del 'Sinaia', además de informarles de lo que ocurría en el mundo, les daba información del país gobernado por Lázaro Cárdenas. La primera noche la pasamos en vela, por el temor a ser arrestados por alguna fragata franquista al cruzar el estrecho". Se decía que un buque inglés controlaba desde la distancia el barco de exiliados, "pero nunca lo comprobamos". El otro miedo del viaje aparecía cuando a veces un marinero comentaba, refiriéndose al estado del barco: ¡a ver si llegamos!

Finalmente, el 13 de Junio de 1939 una multitud ataviada de blanco recibía entre vítores y abrazos a los exiliados españoles en el malecón de Puerto de Veracruz mientras desfilaban hacia el zócalo. "El primer día no pudimos visitar la ciudad. A los jóvenes nos llevaron a las cantinas, para invitarnos a unas cervezas. Esa fue su forma de acogernos entre ellos".

Tras unos días, la vuelta a la realidad se hacía inevitable. El inminente viaje al Distrito Federal se hacia efectivo, y allí empezar a buscarse la vida. Al principio fue el SERE (Servicio de Evacuación de Republicanos Españoles) el que les concedió un subsidio para sobrevivir, pero a los pocos meses el dinero se acababa y había que buscar trabajo. En Puebla, el equipo de automóviles Packard, aparentemente de fútbol aficionado, le fichó, donde ya jugaban varios españoles, casi todo refugiados. Seguía así su trayectoria futbolística rota por la Guerra Civil, cuando días antes del levantamiento firmaba su ficha como juvenil del Barcelona.

Pero el equipo se disolvió, y fue la industria textil en la que comenzó a trabajar. "Vendía repuestos y accesorios para telares. Pero nunca fui bueno vendiendo". Un día, caminando por el DF se encontró con la escuela de Antropología, donde comenzó a estudiar y al pasar los años se convirtió en profesor. Lo que le llegó a brindar la posibilidad de codearse durante un tiempo con el psicoanalista Erich Fromm. Es en el año 56 cuando vuelve a España con la responsabilidad de haber sido "exiliado político y no económico", y con el encargo de trabajar por el reforzamiento de sus ideas hasta su jubilación, cuando volvió a México para continuar con su labor investigadora en Jalisco.

Hoy, la plateada estatua humana de un 'cowboy', fotógrafos de turistas, vendedores callejeros, barcos y autobuses turísticos, jóvenes que saltan al agua a por monedas, paseantes, niños jugando… pueblan el malecón que 70 años atrás veía llegar el primer barco destinado a evacuar exiliados tras la Guerra Civil; el 'Mexique', con los Niños de Morelia a bordo, lo había precedido dos años antes; después, el 'Ipanema' le tomaba el testigo.

Para saber más:

Perfil profesional de Claudio Esteva Fabregat.
Biografías de españoles refugiados como consecuencia de la guerra.
Semana conmemorativa en el Instituto Veracruzano de la Cultura.
Entrevista a Claudio Esteva Fabregat (año 2002).

Canadian Gold Mining Companies vs. Farmers, Ecologists and Indians

Undermining Mexico

By JOHN ROSS

CounterPunch

For a great many Mexican nationalists, the United States has traditionally been Public Enemy Numero Uno. Uncle Sam is often depicted as a sort of demon vampire sucking the lifeblood from this distant neighbor's veins and gobbling up a hundred Mexicans for lunch. But in recent years, the focus of nationalist rage has moved a few degrees north to Washington's northern-most NAFTA trading partner Canada, land of glaciers and grizzlies and battered baby harp seals, maple leaves and hockey pucks. The behemoth of the frozen north has not been making a lot of friends here lately.

From Chihuahua to Chiapas, Canadian mining corporations are tearing up the land, contaminating water sources, blanketing whole bioregions in noxious dust, and infuriating farmers, environmentalists, and indigenous peoples at their callous disregard for the earth.

Of 1800 mining projects up and running in Mexico today, 813 are transnationally owned, an astounding 87% of them Canadian, according to the Camimex, the Mexican national mining chamber that oversees the industry. The Canadians are armed with revisions to Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution enacted during the run-up to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement that give them carte blanche to "buy, rent, or enter into association" with the nation's 2800 ejidos or farmers' rural collective production units. Prior to the revisions, Article 27 - which governs land use - barred non-Mexican investment in the mining sector.

One of the first of the Canadian outfits to jump into post-NAFTA Mexico was New Gold Limited based in Vancouver, as are Minefinders and Gold Corps, all big investors in Mexican mines. The three are associates of the TSX - the Toronto Ventures Exchange - the financial engine that drives investment in Canadian mining in Mexico and Latin America.

A decade ago, New Gold staked a claim on San Pedro Mountain just outside of San Luis Potosi, the capital of the prosperous northern state of the same name, where it has carved out a huge open pit ("tajo") mine and progressively reduced the mountain to rubble. New Gold Mina San Xavier is sifting through 70,000,000 tons of material for seams of gold and silver, moving about 80,000 tons of earth daily. Precarious slagheaps tower over the colonial state capital, chemical ponds curdle under the open sky, whole "colonias" or neighborhoods have been buried under the dirt, and cyanide-laced dust wafts over the metropolitan area of San Luis Potosi, the tenth most populated in the nation.

The Pro-San Luis Potosi Movement of Ecologists, a grassroots environmental organization, has repeatedly sought injunctions to halt the bludgeoning of the region but court decisions are studiously ignored by lawyers for New Gold Mina San Xavier.

With gold prices peaking near $1000 an ounce, the Canadians' legal beagles can afford to ignore court orders to clean up the mess New Gold has made on San Pedro Mountain.

The gold boom is stark evidence of the lack of confidence in the global economy, a mindset that investors say will not dissipate any time soon despite the chirpy prognostications of U.S. President Barack Obama. New players are moving into Mexican mining in pursuit of gold virtually every week, according to the Camimex - Mexico is now the 14th gold producer on the planet, up from 18th in 2006.

According to a recent New York Times overview of the industry, many of the new ventures are formed by engineers and geologists who have struck out on their own after years of apprenticeships at giants like Denver Colorado's Newmont Gold, the world's largest gold miner with operations on five continents. But because mining is a precarious venture dependent on global markets and local conditions, not all of the wildcatters will find their pot of gold.

Non-precious metal prices are falling fast - zinc is down 70% and lead and copper 60 plus - as industrial manufacturing grinds to a halt due to the worldwide downturn. Even gold for industrial use and jewelry is losing ground - but the market for gold as personal wealth to be horded as a hedge against an uncertain future has skyrocketed nearly 600% since Wall Street went into the tank.

According to Dominican priest Miguel Concha, who heads up the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human Rights Center in Mexico City, New Gold's San Xavier mine operation conforms to a nefarious pattern of Canadian ventures throughout Mexico: illegal expropriation of ejido land, the complicity of federal and state authorities, and the super-exploitation and contamination of ecosystems. The process has provoked significant resistance, Father Concha warns. Throughout the country, ecologists, ejidatarios, indigenous peoples, human rights advocates, and miners and their families are confronting the Canadian ventures.

*ITEM - Huizopa, Chihuahua where Mindfinders has sought to install two mines on 4000 hectares of ejido land, remains tense after a standoff between locals and the Vancouver-based corporation. Dissident members of the ejido complain that their leaders were hoodwinked into granting Minefinders a 16-year lease for a one-time 39 million peso ($3.5 million USD) payout. When the Canadians refused to renegotiate, the ejido members sat in at the openings to the Dolores and Sol de Oro mines shutting down production. In May 2008, federal police were sent in to break up the "planton" (sit-in), an act of repression that ratcheted up the hard feelings.

Huizopa is a farming and ranching community in the municipality of Ciudad Madera, a northern Chihuahua mountain enclave where in 1965, rural school teacher Arturo Gamiz and 12 comrades took up arms against a local military garrison, an attack modeled on Fidel Castro's attempted takeover of the Moncada Barracks that ignited the Cuban revolution. Similarly, Gamiz's bold and ultimately failed uprising (all 13 guerillas were killed) set off ten years of guerrilla warfare throughout Mexico.

Although a tentative agreement was eventually worked out between Minefinders and the Huizopa ejido, the recent arrest of farmers' leader Enrique Torres on federal charges related to the mine blockade threatens to torpedo the pact.

*ITEM - "Zacatecas Minero Y El Pueblo Sin Dinero!" ("Zacatecas is a miner but the people have no money") campesinos chanted outside Gold Corp's huge Penasquito mine in the mountainous north of that central Mexican state this past May 25th. The Penasquito is thought to be one of the richest veins in Mexico holding over 17 million potential ounces of gold and a billion of silver.

Members of three ejidos shut down the mine idling 4,000 "Gambosinos" (poorly paid gold miners) after Gold Corp purportedly reneged on paying out 7% of daily revenues to the communities whose land they are exploiting. The Penasquito is estimated to generate 18 million pesos daily.

*ITEM - Driven by gold fever, the mining boom is taking a toll on indigenous lands. This April, Nahuas in the state of Jalisco paralyzed production at the Los Juanes mine in Ayotitlan after effluvia from the dig contaminated the nearby Marias River. The mine is reportedly operated by Mexican "prestanombres" ("name-lenders") for Chinese investors.

In heavily indigenous Chiapas where 560,000 hectares in 29 communities have been leased to Canadian miners, resistance is building. Outfits like Blackfire, Radius Gold, and Linear Gold are ripping up Indian land along the Guatemalan border and in the Sierra that bisects this southern state, regions in which both the guerrilla Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) have sizeable bases.

This past March 8th, International Womens' Day, women from affected communities marched through the state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez to protest the disruption of communal life, the destruction of the environment, and starvation-wage, backbreaking jobs in the mines. Chiapas anti-mining crusaders have established an alliance with similar efforts in Guatemala and with human rights organizations in Canada in an effort to push that northern NAFTA nation's Parliament into curtailing predatory mining by Canadian corporations in Mexico and Latin America.

"This is really Canada's problem and we Canadians are commited to dealing with it," declared Marie Dominik Lauglois of the Montreal-based Human Rights Committee for Latin America after on-site visits to Canadian mines in Mexico last summer.

* * *

Cananea, the world's eight largest copper pit an hour's drive south from the Arizona border, is owned by Grupo Industrial Mexico, one of three Mexican mining transnationals - Grupo Mexico has interests as far south as Peru. 103 years ago this June 1st, the miners of Cananea rose up against the then-American owner Col. William Green and shut down the pit. An Arizona militia, the Arizona Rangers, was summoned by Green to quash the rebellion and 22 miners were cut down, a massacre that became one of a constellation of events that eventually triggered the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

Although Cananea is cherished as the birthplace of the Mexican labor movement, this year's commemoration of that landmark bloodletting at the huge copper mine in 1906 was necessarily low key. The National Revolutionary Mine and Metal Workers Union of Mexico (SNTMMSRM) has been on strike for the past 18 months and workers are down to boiling their belts to feed their families although they continue to hold out despite a fierce government offensive to force them back to work.

Four times in the past year and a half, the so-called Arbitration & Conciliation Commission of the Mexican Secretariat of Labor has declared the Cananea strike "inexistent" i.e. illegal, at one point sending in the military to protect scabs that owner German Larrea had contracted to break the walk-out. Larrea's father, Jorge Larrea, the founder of Grupo Industrial Mexico, was gifted with the great copper pit for a few pennies during a paroxysm of privatization by the much-reviled Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1989. Just as in 2009, the military was deployed to neutralize striking miners.

German Larrea, a Forbes Magazine billionaire list perennial, is as well-served by Mexican president Felipe Calderon as his progenitor was by Salinas - indeed Fernando Gomez Mont, Calderon's powerful Interior Secretary, is Grupo Industrial Mexico's attorney of record.

Under Calderon and his predecessor Vicente Fox, Grupo Mexico has been granted 600 new mining concessions, according to Carlos Pavon, external secretary for the SNTMMSRM who was jailed last year by the Calderon regime, ostensibly for complicity with union president Napoleon Gomez Urrutia with whom he has since broken.
Urrutia, dubbed "Napito", is the son of the late miners' union czar Napoleon Gomez Sada who ran the organization with an iron fist for decades amidst accusations of wholesale thievery.

Napito himself fled to Vancouver, hometown of Canadian mining titans like Mindfinders and New Gold, in 2006 after Labor Secretary Javier Lozano charged him with skimming $55 million USD from the union's pension fund. The Calderon government subsequently withdrew recognition of Napito as the president of the SNTMMSRM and sought to install a dissident miner in his place and later arrested Pavon - Napito's key operator in Mexico, and petitioned Canada for Urrutia's extradition.

Until recently, the runaway union president seems to have maintained his grip on the SNTMMSRM even from afar - Napito stays in frequent touch with the union rank and file through weekly teleconferences from Vancouver and he has won support from U.S. and Canadian steelworkers unions. Some Mexican labor observers venture that the government campaign has strengthened Napito's standing with important labor federations like the National Workers Union (UNT) and the old-line Congress of Labor in which his father was once a powerful mover and shaker.

Nonetheless, Napito's hold may at last be faltering - on June 7th, Pavon's home local in Monclova Coahuila and eight other sections announced they were breaking with the exiled union boss. Although Pavon is reluctant to talk to reporters, Urrutia stalwarts accuse him of accepting a $10 million dollar bribe from Larrea. Labor Secretary Lozano has purportedly guaranteed Pavon control of the SNTMMSRM.

Despite Urrutia's travails, the miners' union has won impressive contracts so far this year with up to 9% wage increases from Canadian gold miners in Mexico who seek to avoid long and costly strikes at a moment when gold is climbing for $1000 an ounce. But for miners working other metals, 2009 when 85% of the SNTMMSRM's contracts will come due, could prove to be a rough year. At this writing, several thousand union miners are on strike at mines in Sombrerete Zacatecas and Taxco Guerrero in addition to Cananea.

For every ounce of gold and other precious metals the transnationals glean from Mexican soil, they extract a pound of miners' flesh. Indigenous peoples are losing their forests and farmers their growing land and the miners their lives. In February 2006, 65 miners were buried alive at Pasta del Conchos after a methane explosion at a Larrea-owned mine in the coalfields of Coahuila, a state honeycombed with small family operations known as "positos" where hardscrabble miners die in cave-ins and other preventable accidents at the rate of two a month.

Despite pleas from their survivors, Larrea refused to bring the corpses of the miners entombed 150 meters below to the surface and sealed up the mine, claiming that retrieving the dead would be too costly for Grupo Industrial Mexico. While the miners were still alive, they didn't cost the billionaire much - workers were paid 100 pesos a day, about ten dollars Americano. Coahuila Bishop Raul Vera, a liberation theologist, argues that German Larrea should be charged with industrial homicide.

Despite Larrea's cruel indifference, a group of volunteer miners operating under the rubric of "La Otra Minera" ("The Other Mining") and affiliated with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation's "Other Campaign", have begun digging for the remains of those killed at Pasta del Conchos.
The miners' families collect coins from motorists on surrounding highways to offset the cost of the dig.

The bad gas lingers at Pasta del Conchos. In late May, when new owners (ex-Coahuila governor Rogelio Montemayor is reportedly an investor) showed up to take possession of a coal-washing facility at Pasta del Conchos, the miners' families pelted them with rocks and ran them out of town.

The bad gas is hardly limited to Coahuila. Miners and mining communities are taking up cudgels to confront the corporations that are undermining Mexico. As the 100th anniversary of the Mexican revolution looms just ahead in 2010, many remember those killed at Cananea and buried alive at Pasta del Conchos. "Todos Somos Cananea!" ("We Are All Cananea!") tens of thousands of workers thundered this June 1st at a celebration of International Workers Day that had been postponed for a month due to the swine flu panic, as they marched as one great fist into Mexico City's great Zocalo plaza.

John Ross has returned to Mexico after having won round one against liver cancer. His "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books in the fall. A second volume, "Iraqigirl - the Diary of An Iraqi Teenager" (Haymarket), which Ross assembled and edited, will be in bookstores next spring.

Muere integrante de la Sección 22 por explosión de camioneta, al iniciar la mega marcha

14 de junio, tres años después del frustado desalojo contra el magisterio


Revolucionemos Oaxaca

Desde la madrugada de este día, la Ciudad de Oaxaca pareció volver al 2006, los cohetes y campañas sonaron a las primeras horas del 14 de junio, después se instalaron ocho barricadas simbólicas en las principales avenidas y por último, comenzó una mega marcha magisterial-APPO de varios kilómetros de longitud: todo para recordar el tercer aniversario del frustrado desalojo que la policía estatal intentó realizar contra el magisterio oaxaqueño.

Sin embargo, la manifestación también estuvo llena de pánico, pues una camioneta de la Sección 22 explotó y provocó la muerte del trabajador del magisterio, Alberto Gazga Barenca. Al parecer, el incidente te debió a unos cohetes que estaban en el interior de la camioneta, no obstante el secretario General de la Sección 22, Azael Santiago Chepi, expresó que “no se descartaba que pudieran obedecer a acciones provocadas deliberadamente”.

Hasta el momento, la Sección 22 informó a través de un comunicado que otras dos personas siguen en el hospital Aurelio Valdivieso y Presidente Juárez del ISSSTE, debido a las heridas provocadas por la explosión.

Al comenzar el 14 de junio

En la madrugada, se instalaron por algunas horas, barricadas en: el Zócalo de la Ciudad, en la Colonia Brenamiel, Colonia Jardín, Calle de Calicanto, Avenida 5 señores, Símbolos Patrios, frente al Canal 9, y frente a la estación radiofónica La Ley, donde desconocidos realizaron disparos con arma de fuego para amedrentar a los manifestantes, sin embargo no se presentaron lesionados. Además, se instalaron otras barricadas en barrios y colonias, que los y las profesoras no tenían previsto.

A partir de las 10 de la mañana, miles de profesores, integrantes de la APPO y simpatizantes del moviendo popular oaxaqueño, llegaron al crucero de Viguera donde inició la manifestación, a pesar que el transporte público fue cancelado por órdenes del Gobierno Estatal.

En la mega marcha estuvieron presentes, contingentes de las secciones magisteriales de Guerrero, Michoacán, Morelos, Baja California, Puebla y Distrito Federal. Así como las organizaciones que conforman la APPO, todas ellas, acompañadas por varias bandas de música.

Las y los manifestantes exigieron la libertad de los presos políticos Pedro Castillo Aragón, Juan José Martínez Moreno y los 12 presos de San Agustín Loxicha, además que gritaron consignas contra Ulises Ruiz y Elba Esther Gordillo.

Al término de la marcha, se realizó un mitin en el Zócalo capitalino, donde Azael Santiago Chepi, expresó que la Jornada por la Educación y la Justicia, que inició la Sección 22 contra la Alianza por la Calidad de la Educación y las posibles reformas a los artículos 3o y 31 constitucionales, continuará hasta llegar a la huelga nacional, si es necesario.

Revolucionemos Oaxaca
Información Alternativa de Oaxaca

Profit Over Common Sense

Congress and the Health Business Lobby

By KEVIN ZEESE

CounterPunch

Yesterday, as Senator Tom Harkin (D-IO) left the health care hearing room he leaned over to me and said:

“I used to sell insurance. The basic rule is the larger the pool the less expensive the health care. Today we have 1,300 separate pools – separate health care plans – and that is why health care is so expensive; 700 pools would be more efficient and less expensive and one pool would be the least expensive. That’s why single payer is the answer.”

Nothing like common sense.

But, common sense was not on display in the Senate yesterday. Instead, the senate is seeking a path to the goal of universal coverage by protecting the least efficient model – the for-profit insurance industry that through waste, fraud, abuse and bureaucracy eats up 31% the cost of health care.

Chris Dodd (D-CT) who chaired the hearing, standing in for the ailing Ted Kennedy, has received $2.1 million from insurance industry throughout his career, another $547,000 from the pharmaceutical industry, and $467,000 from health care professionals. Dodd opened the hearing stating the stark facts:

We spend more than $2 trillion on health care every year- more than 18 percent of our GDP. By 2040, 34 cents of every dollar we spend could be on healthcare. That is not simply unacceptable – it’s unsustainable. Premiums and out-of-pocket costs for individuals and families alike continue to skyrocket.

It was evident, throughout the day that money was on the mind of the senators. But, they could not look into the face of the obviously most efficient path, single payer, instead they were going through contortions to protect their benefactors from the insurance industry.

The senators and witnesses showed there is a lot of division over financing health care and no easy solution – so long as the first goal is to protect the insurance industry. Business groups wanted to tax employee benefits not take away the business tax credit for companies that provide health care. These are the only two big pots of money the senate sees. There was also talk about making Americans healthier to save money, certainly a good goal. But, Sen. McCain (R-AZ), probably correctly if rudely, mocked witnesses who said health care could be paid for by doing away with inefficiencies and wellness programs. McCain favors taxing health care benefits.

Of course, both the business tax credit and not taxing health benefits are two reasons the health insurance industry is able to acquire massive wealth. These are annual, indirect taxpayer giveaways to the insurance industry that demonstrate how government is already paying for health care. Taxpayers are just doing so in the most inefficient way. Rather than actually using tax dollars to pay for health care, they are used to pay for insurance and all the profits and waste that goes with it.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the sponsor of S.703, the single payer bill in the Senate, finally got his chance to speak and railed against the waste of the health insurance model, criticized their massive profits and emphasized that health care was a human right. He pointed his question to the lone witness advocating for single payer of the dozen testifying, Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for National Health Plan.

Flowers, who had been arrested just six weeks ago for protesting the exclusion of single payer from discussions in the Senate Finance Committee, went into a long list of reasons why the multi-payer system is so expensive – inefficiencies built into the system, insurance companies making massive profits while people died from lack of health care access, hospitals needing massive billing departments creating bigger administrative staff than nursing staff, doctors spending 20% of their overhead on dealing with the insurance industry, fee for service payments that lead to unecessary treatments and expensive, often unneeded tests, malpractice litigation because patients do not have access to health care to bad health care outcomes. . .

Flowers was still going strong, the list was incomplete, when Sanders cut her off, saying I only have a few minutes for questioning.

Sitting next to Flowers was the CEO of Aetna Insurance, Ronald Williams. The senators fawned over him, except for Sanders who pointed out Medicare was more popular that Aetna. Williams makes anywhere from $13 million annually in salary and stock according to Insurance Industry News to $30.86 million annually according to Forbes. Insurance Industry News reports that if Aetna grows by 15% by 2010 Williams gets an addition $4.3 million. Is he not the perfect example of what is wrong with health care in America? Profits are the top priority of corporate interests, and usually short term profits. Should the insurance industry be striving to grow so rapidly when they already gobble up too many health care dollars?

The senate also struggled with how to make sure everyone is covered with health insurance. Again the divisions were obvious. Business groups said there should not be an employer mandate, but rather an individual mandate. Unions said there should be an employer mandate not an individual mandate. Big businesses said there should be no subsidy for small businesses that would be unfair to big businesses. Republicans scoffed at the idea of expanding Medicaid to more of the working poor – too expensive, unaffordable, they pointed out. The public insurance option was described as unfair to the insurance industry and too expensive to implement. The Democrats squirmed uncomfortably at choices that they know will upset some powerful interest group.

What a mess! The effort to protect the insurance industry at all costs is making real health care reform impossible. Maybe, because the Democrats want to do something, anything, so badly they will find a way to pass something, but if they do it will not work, it will be very costly and the group that will benefit most clearly will be the health insurance industry which will reap hundreds of billions in corporate welfare every year from the deform of health care in America. Of course, incumbents who support it will benefit with campaign donations from the industry. Pay to play politics on display in America.

Margaret Flowers, MD was the first witness to testify at the senate hearing on June 12. Her comments focused on health care as a human right. She pointed out how FDR was the first to try and put in place a social security system that included a single payer health care system. And, how years of trying the “uniquely American approach” of the market solution – for-profit health care – had failed the country and put health care on a path to government deficit with health care costs already a cause in two-thirds of bankruptcies. She urged the senate to not tinker with a broken system but instead to take a new path and adopt a national health plan with single payer as the financing system.

Sadly, there were four doctors on the panel and only one, Flowers, who spoke of health care as a human right. Perhaps the AMA was the most despicable. Not only did they oppose single payer – something supported by 60% of doctors according to a survey of the AMA data base – but they even opposed the weak public insurance option. The AMA spokesperson said they would only support market approaches. No wonder the AMA is shrinking rapidly. While not long ago it represented 70% of American doctors, they are now down to only 30%. At this hearing, their callous disregard of the needs of patients and their disregard of the opinions of doctors showed why they are a shell of an organization.

Sen. Sanders pointed out the historic breakthrough of having the first witness for single payer being allowed to testify as part of the health care reform discussion. The audience began to applaud, Sanders warned “be careful, you might get arrested.”

The day before this hearing a House subcommittee held a session on single payer health care. One witness Dr. Walter Tsou, a University of Pennsylvania professor, former health commissioner and an adviser to Physicians for a National Health Program responded to the claim that single payer was too radical saying "Our most famous radical document begins with the words, 'We the People.' Not 'We the Insurers,'" he said. "It is time for our own generation's revolution."

And, it will take the people speaking out and getting active to make real health care reform possible. If you don’t want to see another massive transfer of wealth to the insurance industry while Americans continue to lack health care, you need to take action. Tell your representatives that you want a national health plan funded by a single payer system. The insurers are working hard, the American people have to work harder. The time is now.

You can take action by
clicking here.

Kevin Zeese is the executive director of ProsperityAgenda.US which is working for an economy for all and not just the elites.

Incendio en Sonora, Nellys Palomo y el voto en blanco

Mtra.Elsa Lever M.
MujeresNet

La muerte nos rodea. A veces con indignación, otras con resignación. Las primeras llaman a la denuncia y la protesta, las segundas al homenaje y el agradecimiento.

Hace unos días murieron 44 menores de entre tres meses y cuatro años de edad, en Sonora, debido a un incendio en la "guardería" donde estaban. Trágico accidente producto de la negligencia, de este hacer siempre mal las cosas y a la ligera. ¿Cuándo aprenderemos? ¿Es tan difícil pedir sentido común? ¿Por qué se cree que burlar reglas, procesos, requisitos, es señal de inteligencia? Las bodegas no son guarderías. ¿Quiénes tuvieron la brillante e "inteligente" idea de que sí, y quiénes de aprobarla? Indigna hasta el asco. Exigimos investigación real y eficaz, y todo el peso de la ley para los responsables.

El 9 de junio por la mañana murió Nellys Palomo. Reconocida activista por los derechos indígenas y de las mujeres, perdió la vida en un accidente doméstico, dejando un hueco en el feminismo y en la causa de las mujeres.

Perteneciente a la generación fundadora del PRT (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores) en México y parte importante de su dirección política desde hace muchos años, fue directora de la revista Desde los 4 Puntos fundada en 1997 y parte del Consejo Editorial de Cuadernos Feministas. Fundadora también de Kinal Anzetik y coordinadora editorial, junto con Sara Lovera, del célebre libro Las Alzadas, una coedición de CIMAC y Convergencia Socialista, sobre la participación de las mujeres en el levantamiento zapatista de 1994. Permanente organizadora y ponente en talleres, conferencias y cursos, México y América Latina eran su casa. Fue parte también, como dirigente del PRT, del Comité Internacional de la IV Internacional. Este 10 de junio se le rindió un emotivo homenaje en la explanada del Monumento a la Madre, y en breve regresará a su país natal, Colombia.

Muerte, indignación, tristeza y rabia. Tenemos que hacer algo. Debemos cambiar el rumbo del país. Urge que encontremos formas más inteligentes de detener esta avalancha de negligencia, corrupción, delincuencia, impunidad y violación de garantías y derechos humanos que nos está ahogando.

Estas próximas elecciones del 5 de julio no parecen ser la oportunidad para hacerlo, pero menos lo conseguiremos anulando nuestro voto. En nuestra incipiente democracia, el voto en blanco no funciona. Anular el voto es entregarle el triunfo en bandeja de oro a la fracción en el poder. Nada vamos a lograr permitiendo una mayoría de legisladores de derecha en la Cámara. Aunque la izquierda en el país tampoco ha resultado la panacea, debemos siempre tender al equilibrio de fuerzas, de ideas, de propuestas. Si no nos agradan las personas que serán votadas, deberíamos movilizarnos desde antes para evitar sus candidaturas, y no mantenernos indiferentes a los procesos y sólo al final, entonces sí quejarnos. Anular el voto es disfrazar la cobardía con los colores de la rebeldía y la protesta.



La autora es directora de MujeresNet
Información con perspectiva de género contacto@mujeresnet.info