May 28 March: Free the May 3-4 Political Prisoners

"Today a new cycle of movements starts..." --Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, May 28th rally, Zocalo, Mexico City.
"The mobilizations that occured from the 19th of May through and on the 28th show that we now have a national leftist anticapitalist organization." --Subcomandante Marcos, 2nd National Assembly of Adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle, May 29th, Mexico City. The estimated numbers of participants of the May 28th march range widely, from 10,000 to 50,000. Some 25,000 might be a good estimate. [see Kilombo webpage on the Sixth for updates on the Intergalactic mobilizations] There were contingents from each state of the republic, international contingents, children's contingents, campesino contingents, women's contingents, released political prisoners contingents, punk contingents, and many more. The Abejas, members of the indgienous community of Acteal where paramilitaries massacred 45 men, women, and children in December 1997, marched under their banner, "Atenco, brothers, the Abejas of Acteal are with you." People carried signs with pictures of Javier Cortes, the 14-year-old shot in the chest and killed by police May 3rd, of Alexis Benhumea, the young student shot in the head with a tear gas bullet on May 4 who has laid in a coma ever since, of FPDT (Popular Front in Defense of the Land) leader Ignacio del Valle, held political prisoner in La Palma, a high-security federal prison in Toluca, of Felipe Alvarez, another FPDT leader and Hector Galido, human rights lawyer for the Atenco resistance, both also being held in La Palma, of America del Valle, daughter of Ignacio del Valle, who has been in hiding since the May 4 police operation, with arrest warrants hanging over her head, of Valentina Palma, the Chilean student studying in Mexico who was detained, beaten, sexually abused, and deported May 4th. These faces, names, voices, have been claimed by all of the Other Campaign, and of the 6th Declaration internationally, as compa~eros in struggle, as "one of our own." Now in addition to "Todos somos Atenco" "We are all Atenco," the Other Campaign shouts, "We are all America" (del Valle), "We are all Alexis," and "Todos somos todos," or "We are all 'us'!"
The campesinas from Veracruz, whose naked manifestation is their own protest for peasant rights, continue to support the mobilizations of the Other Campaign. They chanted with the Other Campaign marchers, "Free the political prisoners," "You are not alone!"
This woman went police officer by police officer, showing them her sign, referring to the rapes and sexual abuses by police of the women taken prisoner May 4, "If it had been your sister, your mother, you! Would you still stand here with your arms crossed?" If they refused to look at the sign she read it out loud to them. On the other side of her sign reads, "We are all Atenco." Other women, some of them who were taken prisoner May 3-4 and have been since released, shouted "rapist," "murderer," at the riot police lines.


At the rally, in addition to the contributions by representatives from various states, messages were sent to be read in the Zocalo from Trinidad, the wife of Ignacio del Valle, from America del Valle, from Valentina Palma, from the political prisoners still in Santiaguito, Almoyoloya, from those in permanent vigilance outside the prison. At the 2nd National Assembly of Adherents of the Other Campaign, May 29th, we hear reports from around the network of the Other: 26 prisoners in Santiaguito continue their hunger strike, they are now in day 29, and have insufficient medical monitoring. Of the prisoners 6 have severe untreated injuries, including multiple broken ribs, mental illness, and a paraplegic man who was dragged from his home and beaten on May 4. Alexis Benhumea has now been declared officially braindead. The permanent presence outside the prison is at risk of being evicted by police in the next couple days. The lawyer representing many of the political prisoners, an adherent of the Other Campaign himself, clarifies that the complaints and demands of the women prisoners against police are of charges of sexual torture, not just beating or sexual abuse. In each national adherents assembly we see more faces that before we had only known by their bloodied bodies on the videos taken in Atenco May 3 and 4. At the first assembly, Jorge Salinas Jardon, a telephone worker from Atenco, one of the most savagely beaten, who appeared on live tv the morning of May 3 under the flailing batons and boots of 24-27 police, appeared, bandaged and in heavy casts, but walking and talking and fighting. At the 2nd assembly the UNAM student whose bald head we knew from its bloodied appearance in the prison videos, appeared, wounds scabbed over, the white of one eye blood red, but walking and talking among us. The spirit of the Other, in the face of brutal violence and state repression, has been militant, of unprecedented compa~erismo and commitment and creativity, and most importantly, organization. "The worst we could do right now is be disorganized," a member of the prison sit-in declares. "My father taught me never to hate," America del Valle said, "to know our enemy, and to fight, but never to hate."
The EZLN Intergalactic Commission reports global solidarity mobilizations in the following cities (see the Kilombo webpage on the Sixth for the complete Intergalactic report): San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Riverside, La Puente, Santa Ana, San Diego, Houston, Sacramento, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Tucson, Portland, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Montreal, Vancouver, Bogotá, Quito, Caracas, San Salvador, San José, Buenos Aires, Rosario, Bahía Blanca, Mar de Plata, Brasilia, Cochabamba, Santiago, La Havana; Stockholm, Bilbao, Barcelona, Madrid, Munich, Munster, Heidelberg, Berlin, Paris, Toulouse, Athens, Venice, Rome, Mestre-Marghera, Bologna, Naples, London, Oslo, Copenhagen, Vienna, and Salzburg. In addition, letters in solidarity with Atenco and condemning repression directed by the Mexican government have been sent from: Palestine, Turkey, Basque Country, Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Denmark and Belgium; and from Argentina, Puerto Rico, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Venezuela, United States, Cuba, and Chile.

And the Flowers Bled

[photo: from Indymedia Mexico City; sign by Chicana artist, from LA protests yesterday]
Yesterday's national and international day of action--"todos desde su lugar y en su modo;" or "everyone in their own place and their own way"--reaped at least 85 actions in 22 countries, including Catalunia, Argentina, Ecuador, El Salador, Chile, Canada, Colombia, Venezuela, United States, Brazil, Cuba, Basque Country, Austria, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, france, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and Norway. Check the El Kilombo page on the Other Campaign for the complete account of the intergalactic actions May 19.

Currently 39 of the original 211 prisoners taken in Atenco remain in jail, 29 acused of kidnapping, the most serious charge, and another 10 for attack on channels of communication, a charge which allows them to pay bail. As many have left the prison their testimonies are made public, and the accounts of the May 4 police attack on Atenco and the subsequent transfer to the prison at Santiaguito, Almoloya are horrific. See the Narco News artice posted on our page:
Yesterday Mexico State government distributed over 2,000 buckets of white and yellow paint to residents of San Salvador Atenco, with the intent that they paint over the signs of support and graffitti in favor of the FPDT (Popular Front in Defense of the Land, the organized resistance in Atenco). La Jornada reports that the response by residents was "nil."

The Struggle for Everything

[photo: Zocalo, Mexico City, May 1, 2006]

[This was a blog entry I prepared before the events in Atenco took place. I’m going to put it up here because some of the same themes are coming up again now, only with a greater intensity in light of the now clear willingness of the state to use a cruel and unrestrained violence to stop this movement. In Atenco-related news, some prisoners have been released and with new testimonies from both within and outside of the prison, the evidence accumulates with proof of the rapes, sexual assaults, and brutality waged by the police—and not in the heat of the moment; there was no resistance in Atenco May 4 when 3,000 police—this number now confirmed—entered Atenco and hauled people out of their houses. The police not only carried guns that day—something denied for weeks by officials—but also condoms. The content and brutality of the attack was not only premeditated, it came as an order from above. [photo: Police guarding Starbucks during May 1, 2006 march in Mexico City]In Mexico City and around the country the resistance continues, in road blockades, marches, sit-ins, strikes, occupations, etc. Tomorrow (Friday the 19th) in Mexico and around the world actions will take place in every place and every “way” chosen by adherents and supporters of the Other Campaign, followed by a week of information diffusion and mobilization culminating in the massive Mexico City march with the participation of contingents from all over Mexico May 28th].
*************

“It is not possible to construct indigenous autonomy without a radical transformation of the system,” The EZLN has repeated in many spaces of the Other Campaign. “Not only is it not possible, it has a deadline.” If everything continues above as it is and we continue divided, separated, they continue, we will be destroyed. If we do not manage to create an alternative, an anticapitalist alternative, that creates something else at the same time as it destroys what is above, there will not be anyone left with whom to create solidarity, not people to fight with nor a struggle to fight….” Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

The are several important themes of the Other Campaign here at work: the radical transformation of the system, the biopolitical nature of the struggle, and the deadline.

First, briefly on the necessary radical transformation of the system, Kilombo North Carolina wrote me the other day observing that in many of the commentaries that were coming out in national and international opinion pieces, there are those that think this, the Zapatista struggle and the movement proposed by the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign, will be resolved if the San Andres Accords are passed into legislation. Or, in another example, there are the sectors in Mexico and the US that put primacy and priority into organizing electoral monitoring teams to ensure the “fairness” of the elections and to guard against fraud, an honest and valid project but one that promises little if one intends social transformation, as if the proper operation of the ballot box ensured the legitimacy of the representative system. Neither new legislation nor proper electoral procedure has anything to say to this movement now. It is both simpler and bigger than this. We don’t want just to survive, we don’t want just recognition, we are not fighting for the basics, the Other Campaign declares, we want everything. (I’ll return to this later.) [photo: May 1, 2006 march, Mexico City]


The deadline is also a recurring theme. In response to a participant in one meeting who stated that the results of this struggle would be a long time in coming, that maybe we, those present, would not see the changes worked for in the Other Campaign, maybe not even our children, but rather our grandchildren would see and live these changes, Subcomandante Marcos replied, no compañero, I think we’re going to see it, and I think we’re going to see it in the next few years.

That “something is going to happen,” an economic crisis, a social explosion, a culmination of the multiple crises of the system of representation, of nation-state sovereignty, and an unequal global economy, is fact; whether we are ready for it or not, whether we are part of it or not, whether we contribute to its direction or not, it’s going to happen. The EZLN said this at the very first stop of the Other Campaign, in San Cristobal de las Casas, and in many states along the way: the system is going to fall; we can wait and see what happens or we can decide what happens next.

They specify: we don’t think it is a correct attitude to think that everything will disappear up there above, that it will self-destruct, and that we’ll be fine here, with our life vests. It has never been that way. We have to create something else if there is going to be something else…”if we are to return the earth its function as producer of fruits and nurturance instead of cancer and sickness.” [photo: Rally, Zocalo, Mexico City, May 1, 2006]
Kilombo NC was saying the other day, imagine if, when a moment of crisis hits, when the system of representation falls, like in Argentina, like in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in places that have been subject to harsh neoliberal reforms without the wealth or global positioning to cushion the blow, there is an organized alternative project there to meet it? What if there is the “Other Campaign?” [and in recent interviews this week, Marcos confirms: in the country right now we see the same signs we saw in 1992 when the (zapatista) communities voted to go to war. If there had been an Other Campaign then, we wouldn’t have had to rise up in arms in 1994.]

Sup Marcos in Colima: Imagine when we gather all this pain together, in a pacifist and peaceful struggle, not to return to something else, the nostalgia of (Pancho) Villa and (Emiliano) Zapata, but in what we can be now, what you…want to be, but with us, the EZLN, with others, with workers, with some you will never see or meet…
And in Aguascalientes: This conviction that we have in the Other Campaign that gives us the impulse to build this movement, is about creating something new. You all have a place, you, compañera housewife, you have a place. What we have gathered in our trajectory is the rage and indignation of this country, but now with different matrix. [and in this week’s discourse: “…but our rage won’t be the rage of before, the rage of always. No. Now it is an organized indignation, an other rage.”]
And in Morelia, Michoacan: “The days that are coming are going to be terrible, hard, dirty, low, like few times this country has seen. If we don’t do anything it’s going to be like that. And if we do do something, well it’s still going to be like that. But there’s going to be hope, the hope of something else, of another organization of organizations, of another movement that provides an exodus from this night that they are proposing to make, and now for real, eternal, in the only way that things can be eternal, with death….”

The deadline is not a mere milestone after which things are reorganized: “Before we thought [if the struggle didn’t go anywhere] we could continue in our poverty. What we’re seeing now is that this isn’t going to be possible. They are coming for us, for our land…” (Sup Marcos, El Rincon, Guerrero) and “...even our poverty they want to take away from us,” (Sup Marcos, Aguascalientes, Guerrero). In a simple explanation of biopower and biopolitics (Morelia): “The Other Campaign, to put in terms we all understand, is the struggle for life. And capitalism is the struggle to impose, on all of us, death, and it doesn’t matter to them that they destroy the same world that they themselves inhabit. As long as there’s profit it doesn’t matter that the water is contaminated, that nature destroyed, that communities are left abandoned and deserted. And we must not forget to give this the name is deserves: capitalism. It is the enemy, not just in Mexico but in the whole world. This struggle that we are generating is for humanity, because on the other side….they need war, and the only war remaining is one against humanity. If they win, we disappear. If we win, not only do we survive, but we live with dignity, liberty, democracy, and justice.”


Also in Morelia, Michoacan, “…As Zapatistas we think that for particular circumstances that we won’t discuss here, (that will be the job of the historians of the 21st century) this work is falling to Mexico. It’s not just our duty and our hope in this country, but in the continent and the rest of the world. If in some way Zapatismo has achieved a synchrony of global sympathy, it’s not because we have made certain use of the word, or because of the unquestionable heroism of the indigenous communities, but because from this moment it was proposing an alternative, the seed of something else. And this is what the Other Campaign means to do: name the enemy, capital, and the ally of this enemy, the political class….we mean the defeat of this government and the destruction of capital. And then, like someone said once, we will have only just won the right to start over…but we will have to start where one always has to start, from below.”

EZLN Sixth Commission Communiqué May 14, 2006

Translation El Kilombo Intergalactico

Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Mexico
Sixth Commission of the EZLN

May 14, 2006

To all the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:

To the coordinators, commissions, state committees, regions, subregions, municipalities, and sectors of the Other in all of Mexico:

Compañeras y compañeros:

Receive our greetings. Yesterday, May 13, some of the organizations, groups, collectives, families, and individuals from 17 states of the Mexican Republic who are adherents of the Other Campaign met in the Auditorium “Che Guevara” of Ciudad Universitaria, UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico]. In this meeting we looked at how the struggle is gong for our compañeras y compañeros repressed and prisoners since May 3 and 4 in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico State.

We have come to a few agreements that we want to PROPOSE to you, all of the compañeras y compañeros of the Other Mexico:

1. To maintain our demand to free all of the political prisoners
2. To convoke the Other in Mexico and on the Other side to a period of information diffusion, promotion, and activism, in the entire country and around the world, on the following points:
—This happened: explain what happened in Atenco May 3 and 4 of 2006.
—Explain that the same has happened, is happening, or could happen to whomever of those of us from below, to humble and simple people
—What we want: that all [political prisoners] are set free
—Invitation to participate in the programmed events
3. To summon the Other in all of the states of the country, regions, subregions, municipalities, and sectors to carry out civil and pacifistic actions, everybody in their own place and in their own way, Friday May 19th, 2006, at 8 a.m., with the central demand of freeing all those detained in Atenco May 3 and 4.
4. To convoke all the adherents of the Sixth and the Other Campaign to a national gathering in Mexico City, Sunday, May 28th, 2006, meeting a the Angel of Independence at 10:30 a.m. to march to the Mexico City Zocalo [town square]

We invite all the people of Mexico to participate in this march.

5. To convoke a national assembly of adherents, that will take place Monday, May 29th, 2006, at 10 a.m. in the auditorium “Che Guevara” of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the UNAM.

May we each participate with and from our own difference and identity within the Other. That is, as states, regions, subrgions, municipalities, families, individuals, sectors; as women, children, elderly, lesbians, homosexuals, transgendered, sex workers, laborers, peasants, indigenous peoples, students, teachers, artists, communications media, environmentalists, believers, street workers, scientists and researchers, intellectuals, rockers, all of us that are below and to the left.

Vale. Cheers and may the cry of “You are not alone!” break down the walls of the prisons.

From the Other Mexico City

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, May, 2006

March in Mexico City against Atenco Repression

[photo: "Stop Police Repression"]

These photos are from the march against the repression in Atenco held in Mexico City on May 12. The estimated numbers range widely, from 5,000 to 20,000. The best estimate is likely between 10,000 and 15,000.

[photo: "We are all Atenco"]

There is so much happening in these days I can’t hardly get things translated and reported at the rate they occur, but El Kilombo continues to put up relevant articles and translations on the webpage www.elkilombo.org. Click on the Zapatismo link. [photo: Mostly naked campesinos from an organization in Veracruz who are waging their own protest in Mexico City support the March, shouting their support, "You are not alone!"]
[photo: There were reportedly between 2,600 and 3,000 police at the march, which was peaceful and civil]

The following is an excerpt from Subcomandante Marcos’s discourse at the rally at the march, where he spoke with particular emphasis and passion on the crimes committed by “forces of order” against the women the 3rd and the 4th of May, 2006:

“…today we are convoked by rage and indignation. The rage and indignation provoked by the knowledge that, for those above, women are loot, war booty promised ahead of time to the forces of “order.” The aggression inflicted on our compañeras was for the fact of being women. The intent not just to detain and beat them, but to humiliate them and destroy them morally. The message was not just for them as women in struggle for a better country, another Mexico. It was for all the women of Mexico. [photo: "189 prisoners, beaten, abused, raped: state of law?"] For this economic and political system, women are the booty paid to those that impose with force what they cannot sustain with reason. To submit to this level of despise, of mistreatment, of sexual aggression, of rape; to be obligated to submit to this with the legal use of violence…this is the alternative that they system offers, regardless of what political sign they represent, to all the women from below, humble and simple.

[photo: "Free the Political Prisoners! Fox, your hands are stained with blood"] Who can proudly applaud this as a symbol of democratic modernity in this country? Who can be honest and maintain silence in the face of this cruelty? Who, as a woman, as a human being, in Mexico or whatever part of the world, can understand what it meant to be a woman in San Salvador Atenco, in the state of Mexico, May 3rd and 4th, 2006, and not care, not do anything, and continue carrying one’s own humiliation, disguising as destiny and bad luck what has been converted into damnation…”

[photo: "Human Rights? ha ha ha!] “…but our rage won’t be the rage of before, the rage of always. No. Now it is an organized indignation, an other rage. We have only just begun, and we will not stop. Liberate the prisoners, all the prisoners, or put us all in jail once and for all.”

Letter from Women Political Prisoners

Letter from the women taken political prisoner May 3 and 4 in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, sent from the prison in Santiaguito, Almoloya.

Translated by El Kilombo Intergalactico

Santiaguito, Almoloya, May 12, 2006

To the population in general:

We women, workers of the country and city, housewives, students, etc.; political prisoners since the 3rd and 4th of May of the current year, are enraged by the formal indictment handed down on May 10th. Not only were we insulted, humiliated, beaten, tortured, sexually abused, and raped, but now we are also prisoners and delinquents. We have lived with repression, not only in social struggle, but also in a particular way as women, because if it’s true that the men were beaten the hardest, we were attacked sexually and raped.

We were submitted to every type of repression during our detention, first with insults like “you are a bitch,” “goddamn f*&#ing bitch,” “we’re going to rape you like the bitch that you are,” etc.; and then, not content to beat us, for some, unconscious, they threatened to kill or disappear us, even to torture us into giving names and information of our families with the threat to kill them, too.

Nothing can heal us of the sexual abuse and rape we suffered; we were touched, pinched, kicked, hit with fists, batons, and shields on our breasts, buttocks, and genitals. While they continued threatening us we were bitten on the breasts, nipples, ears, lips, tongue, etc.; some of us were penetrated with fingers and objects, some were forced to perform oral sex, all of this while they made fun of us as women.

In addition to being subjected to this abuse, we continue to be victims of medical negligence. Some of us should have been bandaged and cured since the day we arrived, some of us have vaginal infections, others infections in our wounds, others of us can’t even sit down because of the blows we received, and despite all this we continue in hunger strike, because we will not take one step back in this struggle, because we want justice for all, for everyone, because if we must fight from this prison that is what we will do. We continue to stand in struggle!

We demand our liberation!
We demand justice for the physical and sexual abuse and rape!
May no one be indifferent to the pain that we have lived!

Free political prisoners!

Sincerely,
The women political prisoners, below and to the left, standing in struggle

The orders came from above

May 11: As of 1:50a.m. 17 of the political prisoners held at Santiaguito were freed. 144 will be released on bail (now 24,000 pesos per person, or USD$2,400), and 23 have been charged with serious offenses.

Today was national highway blockade day in demand of the liberation of the political prisoners taken in Atenco. Blockades took place on most of the major highways in and out of Mexico City. Police presence was heavy. [photo from Independent Media Center Mexico City] Students marching from the ENAH (National School of Anthropology and History) report the march was completely surrounded by police forces threatening to “partirles la madre” (f&*% them up); at one point this morning they report 2 buses of riot police had pulled up; the number is promptly raised to 12 buses. The students report that police released tear gas inside the ENAH. They also denounce government infiltrations and provocations within the school. Once again commercial media report that the police were unarmed, while protesters report that they were not only armed, but on the Mexico-Puebla highway, a helicopter of PFP (Federal Preventative Police) elite forces landed right on the highway, unloading reinforcements directly in front of them. The Mexico City Independent Media Center reports that despite all this, the protesters did not fall into provocations.

A Human Rights Center Miguel Agustin Pro interview with three anonymous police officers published in La Jornada (May 11, 2006) today confirms that the bullet that killed 14-year-old Francisco Javier Cortes was fired by state police (this after the it had been denied by government and police officials that the police were armed). The officers interviewed reported that “some officers carried weapons like the R-15, and 38 and 9 millimeter rifles, we received orders to hit anything that moved, as longs as the media couldn’t see us, and to enter the houses and haul out all the people we could.” In command of the operation was the ex-commissioner of the PFP during the presidency of Ernestoz Zedillo, Wilfrido Robledo Madrid. “There were more than 3,500 of us in the operation, just of the state police, and the PFP in addition to that. In command of our group was the commander David Pintado Espinoza, code name Zafiro.” They go on to list commanders of all the regions of Mexico state involved in the operation. When asked if their orders were to detain the people who had participated with the leaders (of the FPDT) in the blockade, they respond, “No, anything that moved. Because many of the people detained had nothing to do with it. Some were going to work, some were on their bicycles just watching, they were taken too. Everybody we found in the street and that we took out of houses..” “We even took out people who were still sleeping, young people still asleep, we grabbed them and cuffed them. That was the order. Grab any and all people, doesn’t matter if they’re leaders or not, it wasn’t about looking for who did it, but rather who would pay...”
What was the order to advance into San Salvador? They were asked. “Nothing other than that we were mobilizing, they hadn’t given us information, they hadn't told us what the problem was, or what the operation consisted of. We didn’t find out until that night that it was about some vendors in Chapingo.” Later in the interview they add, “I’m indignant, ashamed about everything that happened. Seeing it all on television now, the truth is I’m indignant about what I saw, what was done to this community, after all we are all human beings. There were many excesses that shouldn’t have happened. We want the people to know that those were orders from above. They make us do this kind of work. And we want to tell the government that this is not the way to govern, by repressing the people. We want them to give us training, but professional training.”

Update on Political Prisoners

[photo: Indymedia Chiapas. "Federal Police, Assassins!")]

Update, Wednesday May 10, 2006: The permanent sit-in outside Almoloyita, where those detained May 3 and 4 in San Salvador Atenco are being held, continues, now with added intensity and mobilization as today expires the 72 hour period in which the detained must be formally charged or set free. There are apparently two sets of charges. For those from Atenco detained in the May 3 highway confrontation: “delinquent association” and “attack on channels of communication”; for those detained May 4 during the police raid on Atenco
(this group from the community as well as supporters of the Other Campaign), those same two charges plus a charge “equivalent to kidnapping.” [photo from Independent Media Center Mexico City: Indigenous Masagua women protesting outside the prison at Almoyolita for the liberation of the political prisoners at Atenco] Letters and communiques have been sent out by the prisoners denouncing their arbitrary arrest, the physical and psychological violence against them in their detainment, including torture during the transfer from Atenco to the prison, and continuing abuse within the prison. Some are on hunger strike and denounce that they are being forced to eat in front of video cameras. Letters and testimonies have been publicly released from 3 of the 5 internationals deported, recounting the violence with which they were detained and transported and which they witnessed in the treatment of other prisoners, as well as the illegality of their detainment and deportation. Victor Ballinas for La Jornada reports today that the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH is the Spanish acronym) that it has received 150 complaints from Atenco inhabitants, of which 16 are of sexual abuse and 7 of rape of women between 20 and 50 years old. The complaints filed for sexual abuse include forced disrobing, molestation, forced oral sex, objects inserted in the rectum, among others, all of these acts committed by police during the transfer of the detained to the prison at Santiaguito. Until now these denunciations had been heard secondhand but as of yesterday the women that experienced these abuses have testified personally. Other prisoners with serious injuries remain handcuffed to their hospital beds.
Much of this information is only in Spanish but what we can find in English or translate ourselves I will post at www.elkilombo.org. Click on our “Zapatista page” in the upper right hand column under News and Events.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos began granting interviews to the mass media this week, La Jornada has published an interview in two parts on May 9 and 10, www.jornada.unam.mx, and Televisa has video of its May 9 morning interview at its website http://www.esmas.com/noticierostelevisa/mexico/ (scroll down, right hand column in the video gallery. I will have summaries up on these interviews promptly and again, where we can find or do translations of these interviews we’ll post them at www.elkilombo.org.

Indymedia Chiapas has a summary of the international mobilizations in support of the liberation of all political prisoners detained in Atenco (http://chiapas.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=12197), taken from the Intergalactic page of the Sixth Declaration (http://zeztainternazional.ezln.org.mx./). They include actions in 29 cities: Stockholm, Berlin, Bilbao, Barcelona, Munich, Paris, Athens, Munster, Madrid, Venice, Rome, Mestre-Marghera, Bologna, Minneapolis, Tucson, New York, Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Riverside, Santa Ana, San Diego, Houston, Sacramento, Boston, Chicago, Quito, and Buenos Aires.

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.

EZLN on Red Alert

Companer@s,
As of this afternoon, the EZLN is on red alert and has cancelled its participation in all activites of the Other Campaign for the time being. This morning ejiditarios (communal land owners) in Salvador Atenco, the community that gained international rapport when it successfully resisted the building of a new airport on its communal lands, came under attack by police forces. The community defended themselves, and as of now, over ninety community members have been arrested, including a prominent leader of the resistance. Eleven police officers are being held by the Atenco community. The Other Campaign was in the middle of a meeting in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, Tlatelolco (site where over 300 students and civilians were massacred by the Mexican military in 1968) when the news arrived of the first Atenco death--a 14-year-old boy. Shortly thereafter Subcomandante Marcos announced the red alert and stated, "from this moment on an alternative command structure is in place in case anything were to happen to me."
"I don't know about all of you," he added, "but today, as Zapatistas, we are all Atenco"

Lieutenant Colonel Moises, of the Intergalactic Commission, posts this on the Intergalactic site of the Enlace Zapatista webpage:

Zapatista Army of National Liberation

May 3, 2006

Compañeros and Compañeras around the World:

This is Insurgent Lt. Col. Moisés speaking to you,

Today we have entered into a Red Alert.

Our compañeras and compañeros from Texcoco near San Salvador Atenco (State of México) were attacked. This is a place where our compañero Subcomandante Marcos has just visited.

We are calling for a national and international mobilization against the government of Vicente Fox for April 4th beginning at 8 in the morning in front of Mexican embassies.

Up to this point we do not know how many dead and injured there might have been because our brothers and sisters from Atenco were confronted by the forces of the bad government and they defended themselves.

Stay tuned compañeros and compañeras.

We will be in contact when necessary.

May 1st

25,000 March with the Zapatistas and the Other Campaign in Mexico City
News and photos from May 1 coming soon