Update on Atenco

[photo: Reforma/AFP]

A quick rundown of the events of the last few days and the current status of things, including most recent information about the imprisoned, deported, and injured.


May 3, morning: State police attempt to violently remove a group of flower growers from the marketplace in Texcoco (town close to San Salvador Atenco). Supporters from San Salvador Atenco (mostly from the FPDT—Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra, or People’s Front in Defense of the Land) arrive to support the flower farmers. Atenco residents set up a highway blockade in protest of the violent eviction, and hundreds of police arrive to try to lift the blockade, instigating an extremely violent clash with the FPDT. In the highway confrontation between hundreds of riot police and some 60 community members, La Jornada reported the next day, the community clearly won, holding down the blockade with burning tires, Molotov coctails, rocks, and machetes. But the price was high: 50 people injured, 100 detained, and a 14-year-old boy from Atenco shot in the chest and killed. State politicians and mass media sources reported that the boy had been hit by explosives carried by the Atenco protesters themselves, but it was later proven that he died of a bullet wound, and the protestors don’t carry guns. Protesters temporarily held 11 police officers hostage.

May 3, afternoon: At the meeting of the Other Campaign in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, Tlatelolco (where hundreds of students were massacred by the army in 1968, a massacre that was denied by the government and ignored by the media until many years later), news of the death of the first fallen of Atenco, the14-year-old, arrives. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos declares the EZLN on red alert, the Zapatista caracoles closed, and postpones the EZ’s participation in all activities of the Other Campaign until further notice. He expresses unconditional solidarity with the resistance in Atenco, and says that the EZ will await directions from the FPDT. He emphasizes that should anything happen to him, an alternative EZLN command is ready to take over.

[photo from www.ezln. org.mx] May 4, dawn: Over 2,000 police arrive in Atenco. They break the Texcoco- Lecheria highway blockade, surround Atenco and invade the town. They fire tear gas and wield clubs, violently beating everyone in their path, including community members, observers, and press. Reports from the scene say that several protesters were shot in the head with metal gas pellets at close range. The police occupation of Atenco was complete within several hours, but the violence not. The police went house to house, breaking down doors and hauling people out into the street. These people were badly, badly beaten—it should be said clearly because while the initial TV footage showed the violence live early Thursday morning, that footage stopped rolling on main media stations shortly thereafter. Over 200 were thrown into police vans, and a communiqué coming from prisoners held Santiaguito la Loma, Toluca, Mexico State, on May 5 reports that they were beaten continuously during the 5-6 hours that it took to transfer them to the jail. Other sources reported rape of the women picked up by police in the hours between their detention and their arrival at the jail; yesterday reports put up on the Independent Media Center site claimed that the sexual assault was more widespread then previously imagined and that both men and women were raped; today La Jornada reports numerous cases of gang rapes.

Ignacio del Valle, leader of the FPDT, was one of those dragged from a house and beaten, pictures show him bleeding from the head, face, and groin. He was reportedly taken to a high-security prison in Toluca, separate from the rest of the prisoners. He daughter, America del Valle, is currently in hiding, and his son, Cesar del Valle, is also in prison. Del Valle is internationally respected for his role in Atenco’s successful resistance in 2001 against the building of an airport on their communally held lands; he had spoken at the May 1st rally of the Other Campaign in the Mexico City Zocalo.

Another tragedy of the raid is 20-year-old Alexis Benhumea. John Gibler, writing for Global Exchange, reports that Benhumea was shot in the head, most likely with a gas pellet, early in the morning Thursday. With his skull broken in two places and brain exposed, Behumea laid unconscious 12 hours, hidden in a house with his father and 23 other people, bleeding profusely from the head and, as told by witnesses also hidden in the house, entering periodically in convulsions. Gibler reports that Behumea’s father didn’t dare leave the house with his son to seek medical help, fearful that the state and federal police blocking both ends of the block and patrolling the streets would kill him and dump him somewhere. Finally supporters were able to get Behumea out of Atenco and to a hospital in Mexico City where Gibler reports he survived 4 hours of brain surgery and is in critical condition with brain damage to an unknown degree.

At least five international citizens were picked up by the police during the raid, though some early reports said 13. There have been different accounts of what happened to the internationals. The first reports coming out said they hadn’t been taken to Immigration offices yet because they were too badly beaten to be presentable. Human rights workers confirmed their physical state, including evidence of blows to the head, blows to the knees, and eye injuries from the tear gas attack. They were later given expulsion orders from Mexico, but shortly after word had arrived that they were being transported to the airport, they again disappeared. On site reports said that once again their appearance in public was undesirable as their injuries were visible and that they would be deported unseen. Yesterday it was confirmed that Cristina Vals Hernández and María Cortés Torrida, from Spain, as well as Samantha Dietmar, from Germany, had arrived in their home countries. They are forbidden from entering Mexico for five years.

It is confirmed that there are 219 detained, 37 disappeared, 5 hospitalized. A list of the detained and disappeared can be found at www.ezln.org.mx.
[photo BBC: Police running away from community members in highway confrontation]

May 5: Between 4,000 and 8,000 march from Chapingo to Atenco, including thousands of students from the UNAM (Autonomous University of Mexico) and supporters from Mexico City. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos marches also and the massive crowd enters the town square of Atenco where 24 hours earlier police had occupied and brutalized the community. The march and the rally are peaceful. The EZLN at the rally announces that the itinerary of the Other Campaign is suspended and that Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos will stay in Mexico City until all of those detained in Atenco, now considered political prisoners, are released. He also denounces the mass media “campaign of contempt” against the people of Atenco and the lies published and aired via the two principal TV stations in Mexico, TVAzteca and Televisa. He addresses the reporters and photographers of these news agencies directly, recognizing that their work is cut and changed by their editors and directors, who never face the pain and the rage of the people on the ground. In a major shift in the Other Campaign, Marcos states that he will now grant interviews to the mass media, on condition that the interviews are published unedited.
[photo BBC: police diving for cover in face of community defending blockade with rocks and molotov coctails]

May 6: An assembly is held in Atenco to design a national plan of action in support of the resistance. The plan is as follows:
Sunday the 7th: Information distribution, each organization should use the means available to them to spread news of the various abuses committed by authorities in the last several days
Monday the 8th: Information distribution continues, leaflets for distribution will be available at the Science Faculty of the CU at 12 noon, and at UNIOS at 1pm.
Tuesday the 9th: National information distribution campaign
Wednesday the 10th: Student Strike
Thursday the 11th: National Highway Blockade
Friday the 12th, 4pm: March from Gobernacion (seat of government) to Los Pinos (presidential residence)
Saturday the 13th: there is a proposal for an Assembly in Atenco
[photo BBC: police re-enforcements sent in to repress resistance]
The national plan of actions is accompanied by a call to the international community to organize protests in solidarity with the activities in Mexico

May 7: There are now 200 people gathered outside the jail in Almoyolita pressuring for the liberation of those taken prisoner in Atenco. Legally the authorities have 48 hours to charge detained people with crimes. That timeline expired at 8am this morning, so as of now the detained are beling held illegally. The Independent Media Center of Mexico City (IMC-DF) reports that lawyers are not being allowed access to the prisoners, which is also illegal. Families gathered outside the prison have also been denied access.