Police Corruption Los Algodones Mexico

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Police order driver out of car at gunpoint while in line to cross the border into USA

By Valerie Dee Mosso

Police corruption in Los Algodones has not ceased as promised by the Mexican officials in Mexicalli, Baja California. A driver in his own vehicle was ordered out of the car at gunpoint last Friday night while in line to cross the border thru the customs at Los Algodones. He was taken to back streets, handcuffed and beaten, and thrown in the local jail. The treatment was inhuman, and completely unjustified. The driver, a legal permanent resident of USA was given no mercy at the hand of the corrupt Police official, who impounded his car, stole all his cash out of his wallet, and ransacked the car, and stole his cell phone. Jesus Mosso, spent the night shackeled and was refused the use of the bathroom and had to urinate in his pants. The Police told him that if he gave them $200. they would make this all go away. He could not give the money, as it was already stolen out of his wallet by this time. AT the present moment, the Police also have his car, and are demanding $400.00 to give it back. Jesus denies any wrong doing, and is currently undergoing medical treatment for broken ribs and gashes to his face from Police brutality.


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Keywords: Los Algodones Mexico Mexican border town Police corruption Mexican Police brutality

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Mexico police chief, three others killed in Oaxaca

OAXACA, Mexico, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead a local police chief and three other people on Wednesday in Oaxaca, a politically tense southern Mexican city where leftists held a months-long siege in 2006.

Oaxaca state Gov. Ulises Ruiz said the murders were linked to drug smuggling cartels whose violent turf wars killed more than 2,500 people across Mexico last year.

Local police chief Alejandro Barrita was in charge of police units guarding banks and businesses on Oaxaca, a pretty colonial city still scarred by the protests of 2006.

Barrita was killed while he was exercising in a city park. The gunmen also killed his bodyguard and two other people doing exercise in the park, state police director Daniel Camarena told reporters.

Ruiz said the killings were a response to the increased military presence in Oaxaca. President Felipe Calderon has sent 25,000 troops across Mexico to try to control the escalating violence between rival drug gangs.

"This is a result of the fight against organized crime and ... is causing the deaths of our police chiefs," Ruiz told local radio.

Camarena said he was also investigating other motives.

Mexican rebel group Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, bombed natural gas and oil pipelines in 2007 to demand the release of two leftist activists it says were seized by the government in May in Oaxaca.

Oaxaca, a popular stop for European and U.S. tourists, in 2006 faced a violent conflict between state police and protesters calling for Ruiz to resign. (Reporting by Paulina Valencia; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

A Mexico village where women are not citizens

SANTA MARIA QUIEGOLANI: Women in this Indian village high in the pine-clad mountains of Oaxaca rise each morning at 4am to gather firewood, grind corn, prepare the day's food, care for the children and clean the house.

But they aren't allowed to vote in local elections, because — the men say — they don't do enough work.

It was here, in a village that has struggled for centuries to preserve its Zapotec traditions, that Eufrosina Cruz, 27, decided to become the first woman to run for mayor — despite the fact that women aren't allowed to attend town assemblies, much less run for office.

The all-male town board tore up ballots cast in her favour in the November 4 election, arguing that as a woman, she wasn't a "citizen" of the town. "That is the custom here, that only the citizens vote, not the women," said Valeriano Lopez, the town's deputy mayor.

Rather than give up, Cruz has launched the first serious, national-level challenge to traditional Indian forms of government, known as "use and customs," which were given full legal status in Mexico six years ago in response to Indian rights movements sweeping across Latin America.

"For me, it's more like 'abuse and customs,'" Cruz said as she submitted her complaint in December to the National Human Rights Commission. "I am demanding that we, the women of the mountains, have the right to decide our lives, to vote and run for office, because the constitution says we have these rights."

Lopez acknowledged that votes for Cruz were nullified, but claims they added up to only 8 ballots of about 100 cast in this largely unpaved village of about 1,500 people.

Cruz says she was winning — and wants the election to be annulled and held again, this time with women voting.
But the male leaders are refusing to budge. "We live differently here, senor, than people in the city. Here, women are dedicated to their homes, and men work the fields," Apolonio Mendoza, the secretary of the all-male town council, said.

Cruz received some support from older men, who by village law lose their political rights when they turn 60. Some younger men also say the system must change and give women more rights.

As a woman, Eufrosina Cruz is not only barred from being mayor, but from participating in the "community labour" that qualifies male villagers as "citizens." Those tasks include repairing roads, herding cattle, cleaning streets and raising crops. "I'd like to see the men here make tortillas, just for one day, and then tell me that's not work," said Cruz, describing the hours-long process of cleaning, soaking, cooking and milling the corn

Mexico Country Update

The 2006 elections sparked attempts to reform the electoral system, and the Senate has now complied. On September 12, the Senate approved legislation (111 to 11) that places stricter controls on campaign spending and begins a process of replacing the nine elected members of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) General Council—the autonomous, public organization responsible for organizing Mexico’s federal elections. Political parties are also prohibited from paying for the transmission of political propaganda in electronic media during campaigns. The Chamber of Deputies must now approve the measure. Pushed at the behest of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), passage is expected to pave the way for other compromises between Congress and the Executive.

Fiscal reform gets a boost

Mexico has long sought to pass much-needed fiscal reform. Previously, this year’s fiscal reform package—presented to Congress on June 20—was tied up for a number of reasons including the outcome of the electoral reform bill. The two bills were linked together. But with electoral changes now a done deal, the opposition is more favorably inclined to support the government’s fiscal reform.

If passed, fiscal reform is expected to address perennial deficiencies in Mexico’s tax and budget systems. Its centerpieces include reducing tax evasion, expanding the number of taxpayers, improving the efficiency of government expenditure, and diversifying revenue streams away from oil revenue. The proposal aims to raise non-oil fiscal revenue by 2.8 percent of GDP by 2012. Currently Mexico collects only 11 percent of its GDP in taxes, with estimates suggesting a 40 percent tax evasion rate. The bill also gives states the power to levy sales taxes. A National Council for the Evaluation of Public Policy would be created to evaluate federal and state government budgets, and government spending would be cut by $4.2 billion.

As the bill goes through Congress, changes and additions are expected. One has already been finalized: a 60 billion peso ($5.45 billion) tax cut for Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the state oil company. Currently, the Mexican budget draws 40 percent of its funds from PEMEX. This hobbles PEMEX’s ability to fund technological research. A tax cut is expected to free up discretionary funds for investment to increase crude production.
On September 11, after months of inter-party negotiation, the Chamber of Deputies Finance Committee gave initial approval to portions of the fiscal reform bill. It must now be approved on the floor of the lower house as well as by the Senate. All indications are that passage will occur in the near term.

In sending his 2008 budget plan to Congress on September 8, President Calderón noted that the budget was “insufficient” without passage of the fiscal reform bill. The bill would increase revenue by a projected 115 billion pesos next year. According to Secretary of Finance and Public Credit Agustín Carstens, the government would face a deficit of 2.9 percent of GDP by the end of Mr. Calderón’s term without reform.
Reaching abroad

President Calderón has continued his whirlwind efforts at expanding Mexico’s international role. In a move welcomed by the Left, Mexico restored diplomatic relations, severed since 2005, with Venezuela. Venezuela has now appointed Roy Chaderton, a former minister of foreign affairs, as its ambassador in Mexico City. Mario Chacón, Mexico’s recent ambassador to Colombia, heads to Caracas. Combined, the two diplomats have over 70 years of diplomatic experience.

In August, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) visited Mexico, both inviting Mexico to join Mercosur. Argentina and Mexico signed a Strategic Association Agreement aimed at increasing bilateral trade and aligning the two countries’ political positions in the United Nations and other international forums. Following his meetings with Kirchner, Calderón was visited by Mauricio Macri, mayor-elect of Buenos Aires. Cultural, business and education cooperation were on the agenda.

Stopping in Mexico as part of his regional tour, President Lula signed a series of agreements on justice, energy and immigration policy with President Calderón. According to Gonzalo Mourao, the Brazilian foreign ministry director responsible for Mexico, the visit sought to boost two-way commerce with the goal of doubling trade by 2010 (it reached $1.70 million last year).

Beyond Latin America, President Calderón attended the annual North American Leaders’ Summit to discuss trade, security, the economy, and regional integration. However, with Hurricane Dean threatening the Yucatán, he cut short his trip to return home. In early September, he traveled to New Zealand, Australia and India with the goal of promoting trade. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation(APEC) summit, President Calderón pushed for fairer international trade conditions. He then moved on to India—the first Mexican president to travel there in over two decades—where he signed a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement that is expected to foster increased trade flows. India-Mexico trade amounted to only $1.8 billion in 2006, less than 1 percent of both countries’ total trade.
Domestic concerns

Security and the economy appear to dominate the concerns of everyday Mexicans. According to a May-July 2007 Consulta Mitofsky poll, these two issues outweigh unemployment, poverty, drug trafficking, etc. Nevertheless, the poll also showed 65.8 percent of respondents agree with how President Calderón is governing Mexico—the highest level since the poll began measuring Calderón’s approval in October-December 2006.

In the past two months, two rounds of attacks have been launched on PEMEX pipelines. Both have resulted in no casualties but caused fires and gas leaks, affecting over 2,000 businesses. The People’s Revolutionary Army (EPR), a Marxist guerrilla movement that had been quiet for years, claimed responsibility.

What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution?

Mexico's political metabolism incubates insurrection every 100 years. Revolutions tend to rise in the tenth year of the century - 1810 (the war of liberation from Spain) and 1910 (the Mexican Revolution) - a calendar that excites speculation about what might be on this not-so-distant neighbor nation's plate for 2010.

Further inciting expectations of upheaval is the impending demise of the Mayan life cycle - Mayan day keepers calculate that closure will occur in late 2011 or early 2012 when a new life cycle will kick in. This death and renewal of a predominant Meso-American culture is in itself a profoundly revolutionary conceit.

It is perhaps pertinent to note that revolutionary change only takes flight under this timeline. The fuse for liberation from Spain was lit in 1810 but it took years to achieve independence. Similarly, 1910 was only the first act of a Mexican Revolution that a decade later finally dissipated in myth and the death of more than a million Mexicans.

Although mythification is an essential incubus for revolutionary spirit, the nuts and bolts of revolutionary possibilities must be measured by the fulcrum of social forces and their "coyuntura" or coming together at more or less the same moment.

Revolutions are indeed made by the convergence of "objective" and "subjective" tensions. To the revolutionist mindset, "subjective" forces are simply themselves - what they and their allies across class and race boundaries can do to bring about revolution: taking initiative and pushing back, resistance (inevitably followed by repression), revolts, rebellions, and the revolutionary overthrow of existing class structures. "Objective" forces are just about everything else over which the revolutionists have little or no control - capitalist greed, economic collapse, even natural disasters. The Sandinistas could never have taken power in Nicaragua without an earthquake to set the fuse to social instability.

Within the Mexican equation, subjective forces can roughly be delineated between the organized left and the more volatile entity sometimes dubbed "the masses" or the "civil society" or just "El Pueblo" (The People.)

The organized sector encompasses both the electoral and the armed left. Mexico's electoral left is currently represented by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), now sharply split between its legislative representatives, elected officials, and party honchos on one hand and the bases of support for former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who seems to be building his own left party from the bottom up. While both branches of this electoral left promote the illusion that change can come through the ballot box, a corrupt election system, so blatantly manifested in the stealing of the 2006 vote-taking from Lopez Obrador, is a clear illustration of the nexus between foiled reformism and the prospects for a new Mexican revolution.

In 2007, only three years away from a much-contemplated watershed, the armed option, which rejects voting as a means of bringing the underclass to power, is fragmented and regionally isolated. "Moribund", "impotent", and "marginalized" are some of the descriptives that can be applied. This part of the "subjective" forces so necessary to making a new Mexican Revolution is personified by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) and their allied constructs.

After 14 years on public display, the Zapatista communities in eastern Chiapas have become a model for anarchist visions of revolution but the EZLN's on-going rebellion against the "mal gobierno" (bad government) has not had near the impact in Mexico as it has had in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the U.S. Indeed, the further one gets from the actualities of the Zapatista rebellion, the more of a model it seems to become.

Nonetheless, homegrown Zapatismo has achieved a kind of revolutionary autonomy by getting off the mal gobierno's grid and constructing an infrastructure grounded in communalism that serves the people and builds peoples' democracy where the Zapatistas live. One reason for such success is that rebel communities are homogenous. The Zapatistas are Mayans who share a common culture and similar language systems.

But when the EZLN has sought to spread its way of making revolution outside of its zone of influence, such as in the ill-fated "Other Campaign", the rebels have been able to attract little support from anywhere except an intensely sectarian fringe. The Other Campaign is admittedly a slow grow and its prospects for leading a new Mexican revolution by 2010 are slight.

The Popular Revolutionary Army and related "focos" espouse the revolutionary violence the EZLN eschews and are organized along classic Marxist-Leninist lines to take state power. In reality, the EPR, rather than the EZLN, more closely fits Mexico's centuries-old guerrilla tradition. Drawing inspiration from the 1970s guerrilla band of Lucio Cabanas in Guerrero state, the Popular Revolutionary Army sustains a rich continuum of rebellion that began long before the Mexican Revolution - Cabanas's grandfather was himself a general in Emiliano Zapata's Liberating Army of the South.

The EPR is regionally based with active cadre in Guerrero and Oaxaca but has recently claimed responsibility for actions in central Mexico and as far south as Veracruz and Chiapas. Thought to be out of business after a deadly mid-90s spree of attacks on military and police installations, and weakened by internal splits, the EPR sprang to life last May after the forced disappearance of two of its historic leaders and launched a series of bombings of pipelines maintained by the nationalized petroleum conglomerate PEMEX that shut down hundreds - if not thousands - of transnationally-owned factories, a threat to foreign investors headlined in a recent front page report in the Wall Street Journal. Because PEMEX is at the heart of the Mexican economy, any assault on its infrastructures strikes close to power.

Although the EZLN and the EPR have long been bitter rivals, the Zapatistas' quixotic spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos has expressed solidarity with the Popular Revolutionary Army's demands for "the presentation with life" of its disappeared leaders, leading to speculation that rapprochement between Mexico's two most prominent guerrilla formations is in the wings.

But more relevant to prospects for a new Mexican revolution is a non-ideological and seemingly unorganized Left, which doesn't follow - and even rejects - the vanguardism of the EZLN and EPR. The enormous power of "El Pueblo" was underscored by the millions of Mexicans who rose in mostly peaceful resistance after the stealing of the 2006 elections from AMLO, and the prolonged battles on the barricades of Oaxaca to dethrone the state's hated governor, Ulises Ruiz.

Both these explosions of popular resentment have diminished throughout 2007 but they have not been extinguished. In Mexico, the ebb and flow of revolutionary energies is the stuff of history. Uprising is met with repression and dives underground to regroup where it incubates in subterranean caverns only to explode in great unexpected exhalations much like the volcanoes that surround the capital. Nature is often congruent with such an explosive political metabolism - the eruptions of Popocateptl, the smoking giant just south of Mexico City, can presage social upheaval.

The timing of such exhalations depends upon the organization of the subjective forces to respond to worsening objective conditions. If 2010 is the dateline for such convergence, it must be expected that the world will be in even more awful shape than it is today. While the globalization of greed tightens its chokehold on the laboring classes and economies teeter and collapse, objective realities will invoke revolutionary ones. Climatic catastrophe will bring this Armageddon one step closer. As the oil runs out, riot, rapine, and perhaps revolution will rise the world over.

Here in Mexico, the oil is running out faster than it can be pumped from the ground. By 2010, the country will have only eight more years of provable reserves before it becomes a net oil importer - and by then there will be none to import. PEMEX accounts for 70per cent of the nation's social budget without which the 73 million Mexicans living in and around the poverty line cannot survive.

Much as back in 1910, when the dictator Diaz spent the entire education budget to build monuments to the first centennial of a questionable independence, El Pueblo will not be much amused watching its social budget washed down the tubes on tributes to a long-dead revolution in 2010.

Meanwhile, the battered U.S. economy upon which Mexico is hopelessly hooked will no longer be able to respond to its neighbor's needs. The plummeting job market will stir increased lynch mob mentality north of the Rio Bravo and even more draconian anti-immigrant legislation. Remittances from migrant workers, Mexico's second source of income behind $100 a barrel oil, will shrivel. The billions sent home by workers support not just their families and villages but whole regions, often those where revolutionary violence is endemic, and constitute the country's real anti-poverty program.

The sealing of the northern border by U.S. Homeland Security will prevent young, unemployed workers from escaping this pressure cooker - out-migration has always been a "safety valve" against class upheaval - and they will be locked into a social cauldron in which revolution is a feasible option. Will the "subjective" forces - the Left in all its avatars - be ready to receive them?

The prospects for renewed revolution in 2010 are shrouded. Above all, the Left will have to have its ducks in order. Revolutions are regional in Mexico so organization must be in place across the social landscape from border to border. The ERPs and the EZLNs must learn how to backtrack from vanguardism and reintegrate their talents in El Pueblo. It won't be easy to meet the 2010 deadline. Above all, propinquity makes a new Mexican revolution problematic. Rising in revolutionary struggle on the border of the empire, right next door to a sinking imperialist power, seems an improbable scenario.

Yet it has happened before just like clockwork on the tenth year of the new century. Those who believe another world is possible believe also that another revolution is possible. The Mayans, anticipating the rebirth of their life cycle, have the right idea.

“The modern-day revolutionary runs not to the factory, but to the TV station.”

Jill Freidberg’s New Documentary, “A Little Bit of So Much Truth,” Documents the Taking of the TV and Radio Airwaves by the People of Oaxaca

By Al Giordano
Publisher, Narco News

November 19, 2007

“The modern-day revolutionary runs not to the factory, but to the TV station.”

-Abbie Hoffman, 1967

Before its 2006 strike would spark a statewide rebellion and popular assembly movement in Oaxaca, Mexico, Seattle filmmaker Jill Freidberg had chronicled the quarter-century rise of the democratic teachers union there, Sección 22. Freidberg’s 2005 documentary, “Granito de arena” (“Grain of Sand”), like much good reporting out of Latin America, was viewed and praised in union and activist circles around the world, and bought by some university libraries, but was largely ignored by commercial and public television stations.

That documentary provided a detailed and inspiring account of the union’s successful struggles to break the undemocratic national teachers union’s grip: a victory that sparked other unions throughout Mexico to do the same. The true story of how workers, when organized, can win better pay for themselves and also improve conditions for students and their families demonstrated, too, that the commercial and state-run media had not been honest in their own demonizing accounts of labor and other social movements.

But on June 14, 2006, when the state police of dictatorial governor Ulises Ruiz tried to violently squash the massive encampment by protesting teachers and their supporters in Oaxaca City’s historic downtown, only to be chased out and replaced by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO, in its Spanish initials), a new and wider global interest in the roots of that movement brought a sharp rise in online sales of Freidberg’s 2005 documentary. The up-tick in funds to the subsistence-level filmmaker allowed Freidberg to return to Oaxaca repeatedly during 2006 and 2007 to shoot hundreds of hours of video documenting the historic events.

And on August 1, 2006, when thousands of Oaxacan women peacefully occupied the state television station, Channel 9, “Granito de arena” – along with three video newsreels that Freidberg helped Narco News produce in early 2006 about social movements in the state – was broadcast statewide at the very moment when nearly all the eyes and ears of Oaxaca were transfixed upon the suddenly liberated screen. Independent media had, for the first time in Mexico or any other part of North America, gone primetime to a mass media audience.

New from Jill Freidberg’s Corrugated Films, in collaboration with Mal de Ojo TV in Oaxaca, comes “Un poquito de tanta verdad” (“A Little Bit of So Much Truth”), narrated in Spanish with English subtitles, is the definitive documentary on the six months that shook the world during 2006 and the continuing story into 2007. The new documentary brings the viewer on a 93-minute rollercoaster ride alongside the dramatic six-month occupation of the state capital and other cities and towns. The focus of “Un poquito de tanta verdad” turns the lights on, what this reviewer agrees is, the most significant advance to come out of the popular assembly movement in Oaxaca: the citizenry’s reclaiming of the broadcast airwaves from those that have monopolized and abused them.

In addition to the taking of Channel 9, participants in the popular assembly movement took 14 radio stations during the course of the struggle. I know of no other international journalist, and very few local ones, that have earned the trust, respect and access of the Oaxaca democratic teachers and other social movements, which gave Freidberg a unique perspective on the sometimes confusing and always conflicting events of what some historians now call the Oaxaca Commune. This new documentary now allows the rest of the world to share in Freidberg’s outstanding insight, ever evolving and improving over time. “Granito de arena,” the making of which Freidberg has described as an intensive lesson in shedding a foreign journalist’s preconceptions and learning to listen to the story’s own diverse span of local participants in Oaxaca and its peoples, was a very good film. “Un poquito de tanta verdad” is a great one.

Last month I traveled to New York and saw the Big Apple premier of this film at St. Mark’s Church in Manhattan’s East Village. The most frequent comment I heard after the screening, there in the media capital of the world, was that of New Yorkers wondering aloud, “if they can do it there, could we also do it here?” The answer is a qualified yes: the retaking of the media in Oaxaca was the result of years of grassroots organizing among workers, neighborhoods, towns and particularly among 16 distinct indigenous peoples that blanket the city and the state. Taking a cue from Freidberg, rather than just tell it, let’s show it…

Radio Down

“Un poquito de tanta verdad” begins in the makeshift studios of Radio Plantón, a community radio station (what in the US is called pirate radio) in Oaxaca City that had already been broadcasting prior to the May 2006 strike by Sección 22. A volunteer broadcaster speaks into the microphone of the early May police riot and repression in the central Mexican town of Atenco, the political prisoners taken, and the coma of Alexis Benhumea, shot in the head by a US-made teargas canister. When he announces that, “next week there won’t be classes” we hear the gleeful cheers of schoolchildren.

The film is mainly narrated by the participants, with sparing use of voiceover narration, and subtitles in English (Chiapas dramaturge and writer Francisco Alvarez Quiñones assisted in the two-way translation). A female narrator summarizes 26 years of teachers union history, and the scarce resources available to students throughout impoverished Oaxaca, many of whom go to school hungry. (Many teachers there pay out of their own pockets to nourish the students.)

The abrasive din of commercial TV anchors then fills the screen, ranting about the “lawless” and “small” teachers occupation of Oaxaca City streets, “blocking the right of free transit.” But Radio Plantón, at the same time, is receiving a flood of live calls from parents, students, the electrical workers union, and other members of the public supporting the strike and its demands to raise the minimum wage for all Oaxaca workers and to supply books, school supplies and meals for the children. “The phone began to ring off the hook,” noted one community radio broadcaster.

We hear the frightened but continuing voices of Radio Plantón hosts in the predawn hours of June 14, as state police come storming into their studios, destroying the equipment as the station goes off the air. The station was the first target of the police raid. We watch the teargas bombs shot from helicopters above the city, and the wounded testify from hospital beds of how direct hits from the canisters ripped off human skin, now in bandages.

And then we see a miracle: neighbors throughout the city, despite the danger, come out of their houses en masse, angry, particularly housewives and elderly women, and join with the protesters to turn around and chase 3,000 heavily armed, shielded and helmeted police from the city center.

Radio Back Up

David Venegas, now a political prisoner, tells the story of how, simultaneously, students at the Benito Juárez State University (UABJO, in its Spanish initials) took over the school radio station once Radio Plantón had fallen. A new wave of phone calls pour into the studios of Radio Universidad and are broadcast live. 30,000 people take to the streets in what was then the largest march in state history (subsequent marches would exceed 100,000 calling for the removal of the corrupt and tyrannical governor). We see the creativity of the protestors: gigantic puppets on sticks, coffins representing democracy, a helicopter with copal incense symbolizing the teargas that had enveloped the city, and a large marionette of the disgraced governor Ruiz as a rat.

The cameras bring us into community meetings in which the APPO popular assembly comes to life, and the story of the debate, pushed by indigenous participants, that changed the movement’s name from the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca to that of the Peoples, plural, of Oaxaca. Here, and in other moments of the film, Freidberg doesn’t gloss over the difficulties and differences between diverse sectors of the movement. Although the film inspires and makes a convincing argument of the illegitimacy of the Ruiz regime and the justness of the pro-democracy cause, the documentary is not propaganda. The self-critiques by many in the movement are also part of the story, and they usually mirror the fault lines that challenge the unity of social movements everywhere on earth: democratic governance versus top-down leadership, nonviolence versus use of force, pluralism versus sectarianism, and seizing state power versus replacing it with something else.

Almost three weeks after the violence of June 14 and the popular uprising that turned it away came the national presidential election of early July, with a result plagued by electoral fraud to the extreme of the theft of 1.5 million votes nationwide. The APPO, although it rejects political parties, including those on the left or center-left, urged a “punishment vote” against the Institutional Revolutionary Party (the PRI, in its Spanish initials) of Ruiz and the center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) won nine of Oaxaca’s 11 congressional districts. Again, the documentary shows the yellow and blatant dishonesty of what author Carlos Fazio explains is the duopoly of television media control by Televisa and TV Azteca. The state’s Channel 9 features the embattled governor forced to cancel the annual Gueleguetza festival that is the crown-jewel of tourism in Oaxaca, which he says is “postponed” so that “radicals” will not be able to “disrupt” it.

Indigenous teachers explain to the viewer the cultural history behind the Gueleguetza and we follow the cameras with the Mardis Gras style parade by tens of thousands of protesters that held their own popular Gueleguetza instead: An event that usually costs hundreds of pesos to attend, screening out most of the indigenous people whose traditions and dances and costumes are on display, becomes a free celebration, “the real fiesta,” with children chanting “He’s already fallen! Ulises has already fallen!”

Back to national TV: The peaceful and joyful celebration is described by the commercial media as one of “violence and anarchy” by “small groups.” But the cameras in this documentary reveal the massive and happy crowd. In particular, we see, at the side of gigantic stadium-sized fiesta, a young father, José Jimenez Colmenares, playing with his smiling children.

The Taking of Channel 9

An announcer on Radio Universidad announces an upcoming march by women of the APPO and adherent organizations for August 1, in which the organizers ask their sisters to bring pots, pans and wooden spoons as noisemakers. We see the women’s march as it suddenly changes course and head toward the studios of state television station Channel 9. “The TV says our Gueleguetza failed,” on woman denounces, and they enter the station demanding “a half hour, an hour” on the air to make their case. When the authorities refuse to put them on the air they take the studios and begin broadcasting. Commenting on the untrue version offered by the national TV duopoly, a woman tells the camera, “TV Azteca and Televisa are where this is headed.”

We see this historic moment both through cameras on the scene and simultaneously through multiple cameras throughout the state of families and assemblies of neighbors watching those first moments of liberated TV through their own black-and-white consoles. And in a scene similar to what occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s during the fall of Soviet bloc countries, a crowd of real people – only in Oaxaca, they are all women, from grandmothers to mothers to young girls – assembled in front of the camera sharing their stories of life under state repression, now, with virtually every citizen throughout Oaxaca.

The women that participated on that day offer subsequent interviews for the documentary, telling proudly of their accomplishment. One describes what occurred as “a little bit of so much truth,” from where the film gets its title. Another explains, “we put on videos that they wouldn’t put on the air.” And the assembly hall became statewide, in every home and store, all at once, through television airwaves now controlled democratically by thousands. The women denounce that the commercial media claimed that only 200 had seized the station, when they numbered 10,000 instead.

We are there with the women as they meet to discuss how to run the TV station, and doing the tasks of security, sweeping and preparing food for the occupiers. A group of women in a kitchen chant, “With Ulises’ balls we’ll make and egg and cook it,” as others taunt the governor on the air to “come down to Channel 9” and try to remove them himself.

Meanwhile the men of the APPO form shifts to surround and protect the TV station transmitter atop nearby Fortín Hill. The reaction by the governor is violent: He sends goons to raid the critical daily newspaper Notícias, the most widely read in the state. Infiltrators pour sulfuric acid on the Radio Universidad transmitter while paramilitaries create a distraction shooting bullets at the studio from outside. Police in civilian clothes and with a van without licence plates kidnap wheelchair-bound social leader German Mendoza Nube. And during a mass march by the APPO, a gunman assassinates José Jimenez Colmenares, the man we saw playing with his kids at the Gueleguetza.

Sects, Lives and Videotape

Within days of the seizing of Channel 9, state authorities cut the relay transmitters to the rest of the state, but the popular TV station continued to broadcast in the populous central valleys and the state capital. On August 23, after three weeks on the air, under a full moon, this historic chapter in a people’s media gave way to another. Gunmen attacked the antenna, making Channel 9, after the destruction of Radio Plantón and Radio Universidad, the third media to be taken off the air by the regime.

The movement’s response was instantaneous. Different participating organizations in the APPO then fanned out and seized 12 commercial radio stations: on the AM and FM dials, that had previously offered pop music and distorted pro-government news. The national commercial TV chains complain to the entire Republic: “It looks like this is the radicals’ moment,” claiming that the taking of the radio stations had been carried out by an “urban guerrilla.” The popular radio stations take on an important logistical role to brush back and counter against the wave of state repression, alerting the public to the locations of paramilitary convoys or where shots have been heard as neighbors headed to each conflict zone to protect each other with strength in numbers.

The more than 1,000 barricades erected at intersections throughout the state capital “are not just for defense, but a local focal point for organizing,” tells David Venegas, one of the documentary’s most coherent narrators. Today a political prisoner, Venegas’ anarchist political tendencies have caused him to be vilified by some adherents to more sectarian Marxist-Leninist organizations in the multi-colored APPO. Another man explains that the key to the APPO’s success in taking entire towns and cities back from a repressive regime is that it has broken the “individualism” of society toward a more communitarian form of organizing.

Abbie Hoffman would have loved to see, almost four decades later, his 1967 prophesy come true: the media, and who controls it, became as important, if not more, than that of the barricades in the streets. La Jornada columnist Luis Hernández Navarro tells viewers that, “it is impossible to imagine” what has occurred in Oaxaca “without the radio.” Mobile radio – in the form of walkeetalkees through which the people staffing each barricade communicated – was likewise vital. Eventually, the movement returned 10 of the 14 commercial radio stations to their owners, but internecine conflicts broke out between differing political factions for control of what was now a limited number of radio stations in popular hands. An indigenous leader from Gueletao, birthplace of Mexican constitutional lawmaker and president Benito Juárez, offers viewers a critique of the sectarian nature of some of the popular broadcasters: “Urgent calls to action animated the people but did not educate.” At the same time, hundreds of normal citizens learned, during these media occupations, how to operate broadcasting equipment and gained experience communicating through the media.

The Smackdown That Will Not Last

There is no way that a mere text of words can effectively relate the vast sweep of this documentary. Reading a review simply cannot compare with seeing and hearing “Un poquito de tanta verdad” directly. Without revealing how Freidberg resolves this chapter in what is the latest in a series of documentaries and newsreels she has produced on Oaxaca and its political movements, the film brings the viewer to the assassination of New York independent journalist Brad Will on October 27, 2006 and the corresponding calls by national TV anchors and commentators for the deployment of federal forces into Oaxaca to squash the movement. On the Days of the Dead, November 1 and 2, we see the locals honoring their fallen neighbors and the murdered visitor (“Brad! Brad! What have they done?” cries one woman wailing at his posthumous photo), at traditional makeshift and candlelit altars: The film documents the invasion by the federal police an the victorious battle by the citizenry to protect Radio Universidad – back on the air and in popular hands – from those federal forces on November 2.

Freidberg and collaborators also filmed the long march by thousands of Oaxaqueños to Mexico City, their encampments, protests and hunger strikes in the nation’s capital, and the betrayal of the teachers union and the APPO by Sección 22 president Enrique Rueda Pacheco. We see the union rank-and-file reject their leader’s deal-making, one of whom tells the camera: “When some of our leaders say, ‘We’re not part of APPO,’ it is easier for us to say, ‘You’re not our leaders.’”

The documentary also brings us to the terrible events of November 25, 2006 when the boot came down and hundreds of social leaders and citizens were beaten and imprisoned by the federal government. The national TV screamed, “there is no repression” as the governor’s own pirate radio station broadcasted home addresses of APPO participants urging assassination and violence against them, as well as against members of the press including, by name, Nancy Davies, who has chronicled the movement from the start with her commentaries on Narco News and the book, The People Decide. On that night, the filmmaker Freidberg was trapped between two invading squadrons of federal police that had been savagely targeting and beating anyone with a camera and only escaped thanks to the brave generosity of a family on that street that took her into their home. The risks that she and her collaborators took to bring this footage to the world were considerable, and constant over many months. It was Freidberg’s historic knowledge and relationships with Oaxaca and its peoples – with her uncanny street-wisdom – that saved her from the terrible fate of Brad Will and so many others.

Before viewing “Un poquito de tanta verdad,” I confess, I had been very disheartened over the past year by the apparent smackdown of a movement that truly gave the world a new way to fight, particularly regarding the central problem facing change agents everywhere: taking back the airwaves from the dishonest corporate and state-owned media. But leaving its premier at St. Mark’s Church in New York, a smile came back to this face. Freidberg, returning to Oaxaca in 2007, brings a scoop that, kind reader, you really must see for yourself to believe it. Without offering a spoiler, I predict you will smile, too. And so will any person of conscience to whom you give the DVD in this upcoming holiday season.

The struggle is hard, those that control the airwaves are powerful, and the media have become the new state power. The people of Oaxaca figured that out, and came up with solutions to that overwhelming problem. “Un poquito de tanta verdad” is every bit as powerful and effective as the renowned documentary about the coup d’etat and the movement that defeated it in Venezuela in 2002, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Only in this case, in Oaxaca, it was. And it will continue to be televised every time the DVD of Freidberg’s tour de force is shared and seen on monitors throughout the world

Indigenous Education as Politics

The Second National Congress on Indigenous and Intercultural Education


By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
October 28, 2007

A reggae song by Peter Tosh called “Equal Rights” has a lyric which goes, “everyone is crying out for peace; none is crying out for justice.” Tosh sings “I don’t want no peace, I need equal rights and justice…”


Photos: D.R. 2007 Nancy Davies
The Second National Congress on Indigenous and Intercultural Education in Oaxaca this week blossomed with peoples from all over Mexico, in a colorful array of men clad in the short pants of Chiapas authorities moving among women in jeans or long skirts or crowned with beribboned braids. It’s been a long process of self-definition for cultural rescue, language preservation, and equal rights and justice, led by the Coalition of Indigenous Teachers and Promoters of Oaxaca (CMPIO, by its Spanish initials.) Listening to each other and sharing experiences play a major role.

Oaxaca is a state with 16 different language groups; many of which were on the verge of disappearing when CMPIO stepped forward to promote bilingual education. Last July 30, I visited a workshop for teachers which focused on how grandmothers can renew their vanishing languages with their grandchildren: the in-between generation of parents were mono-lingualized by the state education system. Fernando Soberanes, present at that CMPIO event, said that the range of languages and experiences in all of Mexico is mind-boggling. There are at least 62 languages, with about 150 important variants. Oaxaca’s Zapoteco, for example, is spoken in seven variations, not mutually intelligible. At least a dozen Mexican languages verge on extinction, which implies a cultural loss as well. (For more information on languages in Mexico, INEGI, the national bureau of statistics, is a standard source). Hence the current congress has worked to present equal opportunity for geographical regions, and for gender equity as well because so many women historically were left out of both schooling and consultation.

Education in general in Oaxaca has been deplorable. Many accept government propaganda against teachers, but most of them, and especially the indigenous bilingual teachers, are heroic in combating state neglect. The indigenous teachers’ goal, through participation of all, is to invent methods and materials where printed resources in their mother tongues scarcely exist. A method from the spring workshop, offered by an American professor Lois Meyers, focused on going out into the street to gather printed words, on shops or tires or building walls. The printed word becomes precious. Systemization of bilingualism is still far off, aided by sharing of various educational practices. The many alphabets have been codified, along with adaptations as needed of sounds that do not appear in Spanish.

A related consideration of education springs from the extremely high rate of childhood malnutrition – about 50 percent of rural children suffer a dietary deficiency – and the lack of health services. Remote towns receive scant resources.

Nevertheless, under CMPIO’s promotion, Oaxaca is making strides with bilingual primary education, pilot projects at the secondary level, the creation of 20 intercultural community senior high schools, the normal school for indigenous education in the town of Tlacochahuaya, and the Intercultural University Ayuuk in the Mixe region. This places Oaxaca among the leaders for indigenous education, in a state where a third to one half of the population – especially women – remains illiterate.

Services for an Alternative Education (EDUCA, in its Spanish initials), also one of the first organizations to sign on to the APPO in June of 2006, assisted in organizing the Second Congress and served as one of the participants.


In a press conference, EDUCA member Aljandro Sandoval explained that the First National Congress for Indigenous and Intercultural Education (CNEII), held in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán in 2002, made clear the necessity of strengthening regional and local participation to draw on the richness of options and ideas already in practice.

This year’s congress gathered about 400 delegates from 30 different indigenous Oaxacan peoples, participants from 16 other states, and from Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and the U.S.

The U.S. participants included, by video presentation, linguist/political analyst Noam Chomsky, who saluted the “valiant teachers of Oaxaca” for their professional work in education, but above all for participating in “a struggle of far-reaching importance.” The struggle of Oaxacan teachers, he said, “has an impact at this time in all of Latin America.” Chomsky sees Latin America as the most exciting area of the world, for the first time in modern history, because of the movement toward an important level of integration instead of “being separated among themselves and dominated by the imperial powers…. Latin America is beginning to overcome the true curse” of the American continent, “the curse of an enormous gulf, without precedence in the world, between a small elite with enormous wealth and a vast mass of people profoundly impoverished…”

Both Chomsky and the Mexican writer Carlos Montemayor observed that indigenous education necessitates a political posture. Chomsky in his video remarked that “organizing is of paramount importance, because it throws overboard 500 years of miserable ugly history, by revitalizing languages, cultures and technical knowledge.”

Montemayor, addressing the congress in person, added, “we are all profoundly racist in Mexico” because Mexicans, as a mixture of Spanish and original peoples, in public education date their history from the arrival of Spain, throwing aside the prior three thousand years of civilization. (Montemayor did not mention the admixture of Africans brought to Mexico by the Spaniards as slaves, nor the prior agricultural discoveries of perhaps 8,000 BCE.) Mexico must recover its indigenous self, he added.

In Mexico, many laws stand on the books regarding the rights of the indigenous peoples, including not only the federal Constitution and the Oaxaca state constitution, but the San Andrés Peace Accord reached in 1996 after the Zapatista uprising and never implemented. The indigenous peoples now struggle across the state of Oaxaca regarding land and water, mining, and wind power, as well as for equal education and health services. During the height of the popular movement initiated in June, 2006 the goal of peace was invoked on all sides by the government, the church, by the tourist and commercial sectors in Oaxaca.

In the country at large there exists no true policy of what is now called intercultural education, which would place indigenous and mestizo needs on an equal footing. As Fernando Soberanes said, “There is ongoing social and institutional discrimination, and indigenous languages continue to disappear.”

Ixcateco, Chocholteco, Zoque and Chontal languages stand in gave risk of being lost, which in the future would mean “a real poverty for humanity and for culture.”


Therefore, he said, one of the objectives of the second National Congress of Indigenous and Intercultural Education is to initiate a strong resistance movement against this kind of government policy.

Soberanes accused that the politics of education toward the Indian peoples are absolutely discriminatory. The expenditure per student in basic education is 8,000 pesos annually, while for an indigenous child is about 200 pesos.

Furthermore, he added, the State gives “the least and the worst education” to the Indian peoples because they are the ones who attend schools in horrible conditions, if they have any school at all, because the in the majority of cases classes are given under a tree or on top of a rock.

And if that weren’t enough, the teachers “are the worst trained”; so much so that children as docents have no teaching material. At the same time, the curricula proposed by the government do not take into account the indigenous ways, customs and culture.

That fact, he highlighted, “is leading to the loss of identity of the peoples” and when identity disappears there will be no policy on teaching the language. Instead, the strategy of grand capital has caused an expulsion and there are entire populations moving north in the country in search of options.

In spite of the work of social organizations trying to save the indigenous culture, these efforts cannot halt this type of problem, because they have to do with structural issues of the current political and economic policies.

Proposing new agendas for federal, state and city governments goes forward, but at the same time a strong popular movement for alternative education also goes forward.

The challenge falls on the indigenous population to organize and produce their own educational agendas. The indigenous teachers recognize that languages change, and words enter and leave every language. They don’t oppose the evolution of languages or cultures. But they demand equal rights, and justice

"We All Have to Get Together to Fight Colonialism”

Mohawk Warriors Unite with Zapatistas at Encuentro

Thanks to Narco News.
Now Narco news is requesting Funds for its Survival,Since it is showing the latin american truths and it is not running by bloody capitalists but it is running by socially commited intellectuels.Journalists and the supporters etc.If intrested to donate please visit www.narconews.com

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AP


By Brenda Norrell
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
October 23, 2007

TUCSON, Arizona: Mohawk Warriors joined in solidarity with Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas at the Gathering of Indigenous Peoples of América. They quickly learned that one factor is the same for indigenous peoples all over the world: corporations intent on seizing the land, minerals and water have no regard for their lives or rights.

Rarahkwisere, Mohawk Warrior, said the Zapatistas’ encuentro, or gathering, made it clear to him that the same thing is happening to indigenous peoples all over Turtle Island.


Members of the Iroquois Confederacy (Six Nations) make a presentation to Subcomandante Marcos in Sonora, Mexico, in October 2007. Courtesy photo.
“All of our stories were the same, how we are being mistreated to this day,” said Rarahkwisere, among the Mohawks from the United States and Canada attending the encuentro. Mohawks and other members of the Iroquois Confederacy (Six Nations) were among the 570 delegates from 67 Indigenous Peoples, coming from 12 american nations at the encuentro hosted by Yaquis in Vicam Pueblo, Sonora, Mexico, Oct. 11–14, 2007.

“It is all about the natural resources and the big money people,” Rarahkwisere said. In northern Quebec, the invaders go hunting for diamonds and pollute the water. What follows is sickness and displacement, as Indian people have to leave their homelands and search for places to live.

Remembering the encuentro, he said, “There is a revolution, at least on Turtle Island!”

Rarahkwisere said he had no problem crossing the border to attend the encuentro using his Haudenosaunee passport. However, his trip to Mexico revealed the dangers for Indians in the south, including the heavily-armed soldiers at military checkpoints. He said it was scary at first, until he realized that many of these young soldiers’ also had Indian ancestry, and supported Indian efforts.

Rarahkwisere said the attacks on Indian people are formulated in the urban minds with corporations; together urban minds and corporations want to exploit the peoples’ land and resources. In Mexico, and elsewhere in the South, he realized how often Indian people face death for the risk of speaking out.

“You will get killed. The corporations hire paramilitary groups.”

Reflecting on the struggles for indigenous peoples, he said, “It’s hard being Indian, but we are not going to ever, ever give up. We are just getting started.”

Rarahkwiswere said that indigenous peoples in South America face far greater dangers than the people in the North. He said a Colombian attorney told how two groups were called to play football. Instead of a football, the chief’s head was presented. The people were told if they did not play the game, the same thing would happen to them.

Rarahkwiswere, who spoke on the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace and Wampum Belts, said it was good to meet with Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas.

“I want to thank them for hooking up with us. We all have to get together to fight colonialism. I hope to meet them again soon.”

The Haudenosaunee, the People of the Longhouse, live by the Great Law which was given to them by the Creator, said a Mohawk Warrior, unnamed here, in an interview for Narco News.

“The Longhouse originally was all of Turtle Island, from where the sun rises to where the sun sets. The sky is the roof and Mother Earth is the floor.

“The Great Law is what the Creator gave us and what the Six Nations live by. The Great Law was made for all the Nations, not just the Iroquois Confederacy.

“When the Creator came to the people, he began with the worst of the worst. The Creator told them about uniting for peace and power and they accepted. This really formed the first union.

“The Creator held an arrow up and showed the people how easy it was to snap. Then, the Creator bound five arrows with deer hide and showed how these could not be broken, like the Five Nations bound together.”

However, not all of the people have lived by the Great Law. “If they live by the Great Law, they would not be polluting or killing each other. If they live by the Great Law, then they would look for ways to better mankind, rather than destroy it.”

Originally, there were five Nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. Later, the Tuscaroras asked for protection and became the Sixth Nation. The people had their own Constitution and form of government before the invaders arrived.

“The United States Constitution is derived from the Iroquois Confederacy. The invaders that came had no form of government. Benjamin Franklin studied the Iroquois Confederacy,” he said.

However, the Europeans took the foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy out of context, the same way they do with the “black book” (Bible). They take it out of context and use it for fanaticism and to make rich a few people, he said.

The Iroquois Confederacy is comprised of 50 chiefs and 50 clan mothers. All decisions are to be reached through consensus, not through majority vote.

“They have to agree because it has to reflect the decisions made for Seven Generations.” Before making any decision, it is important to consider the impacts for Seven Generations.”

The United States knew all had to agree in order to make decisions, so the U.S began killing the chiefs and clan mothers. When this happened, the people were then in charge. “The people then had the power.”

Wampum belts held the peoples’ history. “It was our form of writing, our form of keeping records. Everything they did, they made a belt, so they could look back and see what happened.”

Individuals were selected to memorize the belt so that they could tell the people what it said. “Those were our stories too.” The Two Row Wampum Belt was white, with two dark lines running parallel. “That was the first agreement made with the Europeans.”

“When the Europeans came here, we had the greatest power, we had a Constitution and this is what the Europeans violated.”

On the Two Row Wampum Belt, one line represents the Native people in their canoes and the other represents the Europeans. The Europeans are to keep whatever they brought with them, including their politics and religion, to themselves.

“The two lines on the wampum belt were never to cross, never to intersect.”

The Creator said everyone had a choice, everyone had the power to reason right and wrong. Today, people have the ability to reason right from wrong.

When Native people become members of the band councils, they step out of their canoes. When the Indian police are trained by the Canadian government, they become agents of the government.

“They became aligned with a foreign government. It is like accepting citizenship. It is impossible for a Native person to accept citizenship, because you have to give up your country to do that. How can a Native person do that?

“In 1924, citizenship was forced on all Native people in the United States and this violated the Constitution, because there was no Native Representation or consultation.”

Natives were forced to form band councils in Canada and elected governments in the United States. “All these are are ‘puppet governments’ for the United States and Canada.” In the same way, the United States is establishing a government in Iraq, one that the U.S. can control.

“They become agents of the government; they are not for the people.”

When the Europeans came to Turtle Island, they emptied the prisons and insane asylums in Europe to populate this country. “That is why there are serial killers, it is genetic, hereditary.”

“A lot of people from Europe didn’t really want to come here. They needed people, so they got all of this riff-raff and sent them here. They just brought them here and turned them loose. In the west, the women were either domestics or prostitutes.”

They emptied the orphanages and brought one million children to work the farms in this country.

“They couldn’t force the natives to be slaves. A native had rather die than be a slave to the white man. Native people were not used to being treated like that. Native people would starve themselves to death or run away.” The people of Africa were kidnapped, sold, enslaved and sent to this country. Their own people helped sell them into slavery, he said.

One hundred million indigenous people were killed by Columbus and the Spaniards in what is now North and South America.

“When the treaties were written, they knew they were not going to honor them. If they are not going to keep the treaties and honor them, then they should get rid of them.”

Nowhere has there been more atrocities than in the north and south of Turtle Island, known as the Americas. Still, the truth is not taught in schools.

“If you don’t know your history, then you don’t have a future,” he said.

Europeans came here for exploitation and that is what continues today. “It is all for exploitation. They even exploit their own people. My dad always said, ‘There’s going to be a worldwide revolution one of these days.’”

“The revolution is coming. It begins with this awakening.”

Resistance in Oaxaca´s Sierra Mixteca

The Oaxaca´s Sierra Mixteca is one of the most impoverished regions in Mexico. One of the poorest regions in Mexico's second poorest and most indigenous state, the Mixteca has become a land without men, most of whom have migrated north to the US and other regions of Mexico.

Productive soil is virtually non-existent, eroded and acidic due to hundreds of years of over-grazing by goats and sheep introduced by the Spaniards, who found the temperate cold of the Mixteca perfect for wool production. Nowadays, the little farming to be done takes place in the valley´s seasonal streams through the construction of permeable dams that obstruct the flow of water without retaining it, a old Mesoamerican trick that floods the nearby corn patches and then trickles downstream to the next patch.
The Mixteca has been all but forgotten by state and federal governments, who have exploited the region´s largely indigenous population so thoroughly that that the area has one of the country's highest indexes of migration. But contrary to what one might be led to believe, the Mixteca is a place full of hope, community, and resistance.
Last year, during the popular uprising that took place throughout the state of Oaxaca, the Mixteca was a hotbed of action. Although things have calmed down since last fall, when 1.5 million people (in a state of 3 million) had taken to the streets, la lucha--the struggle-- is something alive here in the Mixteca, it is spoken and sung, eaten and breathed, every day.
The Center for Community Support and Working Together (CACTUS, in its Spanish initials) based in the regional capital, Huajuapan de Leon, has been a steadfast defender of human and indigenous rights in the Mixteca. Cactus is part of the APPO ( Peoples´ Popular Assembly of Oaxaca), and was an active player in the popular movement last fall.
I had the chance to visit with Bety Cariño, one of Cactus' founding members, in Huajuapan. During the repression that followed the popular movement, Bety´s partner Omar was jailed, and others like Bety herself threatened with imprisonment and forced into hiding.
Bety serves organic coffee grown in the Mixteca by various indigenous communities, and starts to chat about the state of la lucha in the area. Times are tough, money and food hard to come by, she says.
¨We´re dying,¨ she says, "but we aren't going to die. This is a movement of resistance. To say that we are here, that this is our community, this is our fight."
Important at a time when there is almost no national nor international media coverage of events in the area. One year after the whole world had their eye on Oaxaca, nowadays it seems almost forgotten thanks to the media blackout. Not only is there no national coverage, says Bety, but for almost six months after the events of November 25th the radio signal in the entire state was shut off by the states nefarious governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
Bety, who took part in many radio takeovers, is quick to point out that although the APPO is in a process of re-evaluation, that the real heart of the movement is the Oaxacan people.
"In reality the APPO didn't make the movement, the people did. That was the most amazing part of it all, the real political awakening of the people", she says.
Camilo, who can attest to the solidarity of the people, was in Oaxaca city on the night of the 25th. Running from the PFP, he was sheltered in a strangers house.
"The people helped us, but we could hear the police shooting on the street. We could see the dead bodies on the street," he says.
There are still many people missing in the state, most likely dead, and many others still in jail. Although all of the 24 people arrested from Huajuapan have been freed, the repression by the state continues, although more discreetly.
But in spite of the repression, the "dirty war" as it is known, the people continue to fight, looking for new ways to counter the state, to create autonomy and fight poverty, outside of the centralized frame of the APPO.
The home-sprung community transports, buses and taxis who operate without state approval, are a good example. The government gives out taxi and bus licenses to paying friends, who then pay the drivers badly and repress unions. Instead of supporting the government, the people use neighborhood taxis, which although unlicensed, are local, cheaper, and the money goes right to the driver.
"It may not seem like something revolutionary, but its a way not to support the authorities," says Bety.
Another example is the formation of autonomous community San Juan Copala. In January indigenous Triqui authorities formed the autonomous municipality of San Juan, incorporating 20 of the 36 Triqui communities. The new municipality will be run following usos y costumbres, local political traditions based around the community assembly, which elects leaders and makes decisions, marking a big change from the top-down corrupt politics of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) which until now had divided and thoroughly impoverished the Triqui region.

San Juan Mixtepec is another community working towards self-determination and autonomy. A small indigenous community north of Huajuapan, in San Juan migration has taken such a heavy toll that the community authorities have imposed a 5,000 dollar fine on any family who sends a young person to the US. The authorities, mostly men who live in the US and only return to serve their one-year mandate, have organized the building of basketball courts, a municipal building, a church, an auditorium, and are currently building a high school. All the projects are community sponsored and built, without funds or help from the government.
In this community, like some 400 others in the state of Oaxaca, the government follows local usos y costumbres, the traditional form of government. Based around the assembly, town authorities aren't really leaders, rather followers of the will of the people, decided in the assemblies in the recently built auditorium. The people come to a consensus, which of course is far easier said than done, and the authorities carry out the mandate of the assembly. Local authorities, who are unpaid, dread being called back from the US to serve as the job is a tough one. They work from 6 am to 10 pm daily, losing out on money they could be earning in the US. Ironically, these men generally don't speak Spanish, just Mixteca and a little bit of English.
Although San Juan Mixtepec doesn't make headlines like big protests or road blockades, it is a place of daily revolution, a place where the state has little say. San Juan Mixtepec is trying to stop the exodus of youth to the US, and in turn trying to build up the foundations of the community, hoping to reverse the slow-death of the Mixteca.
But as Bety reminded me, there is still much work to be done.
¨On the periphery, far from the grand avenues, outside of the shopping centers, our indigenous communities are dying¨, she said

Activists march in Mexico City in support of missing rebels

MEXICO CITY: Hundreds of leftist activists marched through downtown Mexico City on Wednesday to demand the government provide information on the whereabouts of two members of a rebel group who went missing in May, purportedly after they were detained by security forces.

The government has denied it ever held or detained the two men, who had links to the leftist People's Revolutionary Army, or EPR, the guerrilla group that claimed responsibility for several recent bombings of gas pipelines.

The EPR has said in communiques that it will continue the attacks until the two men, Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Raymundo Rivera Bravo, are released. While the marchers distanced themselves from the EPR and its methods, they said the men had to be released in order for the attacks to end.

"The kidnappings themselves are generating the violence," said Hermenegildo Torres, who was once a member of an older rebel group known as PROCUP, widely viewed as a precursor of the EPR. "If they (the men) don't reappear, the bombings are going to continue."

Torres, like several other former members of the PROCUP — which was blamed for several bombings in the 1980s and early 1990s — said they are now involved in non-violent social development project.

An accused drug queen beguiles MexicoCIA chief orders internal inquiryTurkey condemns U.S. House vote on Armenian killingsAn Associated Press reporter at the scene estimated the number of protesters at about 500.

The government has formed a special anti-subversion task force in response to the Sept. 10 and July 11 attacks claimed by the EPR, which affected gas and oil deliveries and cost businesses hundreds of millions of dollars (euros

“First, Identify the Enemy”

Town by Town, the People Are Fighting Energy Mega-Projects and Neoliberalism in Oaxaca

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
October 8, 2007

OAXACA: Conferences, forums, backyard meetings, neighbors, farmers, fishermen: the peoples of Oaxaca, just as their neighbors in Chiapas and Guerrero, are coming together to talk about the invasion of the transnational corporations. What can they do? “First, identify the enemy,” says human rights lawyer Javier Balderos Castillo.


The La Venta II wind park.
Photos: D.R. 2007 Chesley Hulsey
Mexico, and especially the impoverished southern tier, could use cash that might be produced by developing renewable energy, the transnationals’ hottest projects. They have the weight of “good” on their side because wind and water are “clean”. As experience has proved, however, such development rarely is produced to benefit of the people who live on the lands. The income goes instead to enrich the transnational corporations themselves, who don’t much worry about possible damage – present and future – caused to the environment or the beauty of the countryside by “renewables” which leave tons of cement in the ground, overwhelm then natural landscape by their size, damage wildlife, or flood lands. The profits go partially as pay-off to the federal and state governments of Mexico, which enable the transnationals to use and sell national resources, in direct contradiction to the Mexican national constitution.

National sovereignty, the defense of the land, water, and other resources, and particularly of the rights of the Indian peoples to be consulted about the disposition of their own territory, came to the fore once again – one in a long series of wake-up calls –on the weekend of September 22, 2007. In the small town of La Ventosa on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the municipality of Juchitán, Oaxaca, a national forum educated groups on how to resist.

The forum, which registered 200 attendees, thirty-six towns and twelve organizations, is a small aspect of a greater international movement in defense of water and energy, the “Latin American network against dams and for rivers, their communities and the water” called REDLAR for its Spanish initials. REDLAR is an organization of those concerned about petroleum, electricity, water and land, united around the anti-neoliberal slogans “we can not permit that we become slaves again” and “rescue the countrycountry”.

REDLAR has formed twelve committees in defense of the land across Mexico. Their poster proclaims, “Let’s not permit the new invasion,” over a depiction of three sailing ships called the Niña Iberdrola, the Pinta Fenosa, and the Santa Maria Endesa. The three Spain-based companies they are named for are the main transnational corporations that stand to earn billions of dollars from the sale of wind and water generated electricity in Mexico. Iberdrola leads the wind projects on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The struggle of the Isthmus region of Oaxaca began in the small town of La Venta in 1999. By 2003 Iberdrola had a done deal. The La Venta Solidarity Group and Ucizoni (Union of Indigenous Communities of the North Zone of the Isthmus) allege that the town authorities were paid off to permit rental of ejido (communally owned) lands, holding a fictive assembly where 35 of the 362 landholders attended. The alleged payoff was 700,000 pesos ($65,000).


Human Rights Lawyer Javier Balderos
By now local residents, local organizations, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD, which is very strong on the Isthmus), along with Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) activists like Roberto Girón Carrasco (who himself is with the PRD, Section 22 of the CNTE of the Education Workers Union, State Councilor of the APPO, a member of the La Venta Solidarity Group, of the Isthmus Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land, Water and Natural Resources, and a resident of La Venta, plus acting as our guide) are all mounting heroic efforts to beat the clock on development. The jumble of offers, bribes and rates of payment form an intractable confusion among the residents of various towns, who try to compare rents and fees. The only solution must be a region-wide solution, which the government is not willing to put forth.

La Venta and the area around it is known as one of the world’s windiest landscapes, a corridor going north from Oaxaca’s Pacific coast and an important site for the proposed Plan Puebla Panama. In the year 2003, agents came to town to offer the people, who live by marginal farming and cattle raising, the chance to rent parcels of their land. The rental lease spans thirty years (coincidentally the time one might expect these wind generators to last without important technological changes). The original offer was 260 pesos per month, or 3,120 (roughly $290) annually per hectare on which to build a wind generator, plus 1,500 pesos per hectare for land to be left open. One hectare of land can hold up to three generators, depending on their size. Of the thirty-six ejido residents who accepted the offer, only two or three knew how to read.

Payments have varied according to the population’s awareness. In Santo Domingo Ingenio the offer was 3,250 pesos per hectare annually or 1.5% of the energy income generated on it; up to 11,250 per generator and 14,000 per hectare affected by road construction. Esteban Ríos, from that town, was quoted in July 0f 2007, “they offered us annually 12,500 pesos per generator and 1.38 pesos per square meter to occupy” affirming, “we want what is ours to remain ours, to go on producing, we want them to bring sources for work for us, not for foreigners, business and the government.” Although some people were employed in the initial construction of the fifty meter high generators, fixed employment consists of 29 administrators and technicians

Unrented areas can be used normally, for producing sorghum and animals, so that fawn-colored cattle graze in the surrounding areas while the windmills turn. The electric transmission towers dominate the flat landscape like ungainly robots from a science fiction film, with power lines running from transmitter to transmitter. Some people have expressed fear that living beneath a transmission tower causes brain cancer; the cattle serve as living test cases.

At present, about 1,000 hectares hold 98 generators in La Venta. According to the coalition, the project has drained the lagoon of Tolitoque, and caused great mortality among the birds that migrate along the same route. Eolic Park La Venta II is under construction amid turmoil regarding the rental of parcels of land. The army quarters nearby, and the police defend the construction while the landowners, wakened to the swindle they signed on to, demand that the government declare the contracts null and permit renegotiation. The Solidarity Group demands and explains the following: “Departure of the State, Federal, Ministerial and Private police from the area; negotiated solutions to the problems of the lands of La Venta. We don’t oppose the projects, but first we want to be truly consulted and paid fairly, with justice and not with misery. We oppose the exploitation through deceit that the Transnationals in the Isthmus are perpetrating.”

And that’s just one small portion of the struggle.


A Century-Old System of Communal Lands at Risk

Atop one of the overpass bridges near the wind park, two young ornithologists, one from the university of Puebla and the other from the National Autonomous University (UNAM) in Mexico City, perched on the cement sidewall with open notebooks and field glasses. The fellow from UNAM told me that the problem is not instant mortality for the birds, but changes in the insect and air patterns. Along with bats, birds pollinate and seed many plants, which eventually will also suffer reduced numbers. Both birds and bats also eat insects, which affect harvests. The two young men were tracking with binoculars and notepads the activity along the wind-way, an international migratory route.


National forum in La Ventosa, Oaxaca.
According to the municipal agent of the neighboring town of La Ventosa, Moisés Trujillo Ruiz, 90 percent of the landholders in La Venta accepted the offer to rent their ejido lands. (Ejidos were created after the Mexican revolution in 1917 to provide land for the peasants of that time. Ejidos, community areas, were severely damaged by Carlos Salinas Gortari, who amended the Constitution to allow privatization in preparation for neoliberal investment.) The farmers did not know with whom they were dealing as proxy agents knocked on their doors. The indigenous men had no lawyers; they have yet to see the printed contracts. They knew nothing of the enormous profits to be made. Environmental impact studies were not made public, and no public information meetings were held. In 2006, Iberdrola of Spain poured tons of supporting concrete into the ground. According to sources at the La Ventosa forum, fifteen landowners did not sign the thirty-year lease, thus retaining two hundred hectares inside the proposed La Venta II wind farm area.

While residents oppose La Venta II under the present terms, the federal and state governments have opened a local office. Officials now pay 200,000 pesos to those who will agree to rent. According to Jonás Marcos Ayala, a PRD member who supports the Plan Puebla Panama, the people should “ask for more money and free electricity for the town.” He added, “the new highway will bring jobs, and anyway, people can take the money and move away.”

The residents of La Venta presently pay for electricity at the same rates as everybody else. In fact, they use very little, since the smallest possible bulbs hanging bare from a ceiling cord light their homes, and other than the television, no electric appliances are used. Mexico does not need more electric production for its own use. The transnationals have other plans: send the power north, up the Isthmus, to the United States.

Now the government, Trujillo Ruiz alleges, is offering bribes to the neighboring town leaders of La Ventosa, to convince the people who resist renting their property. The government pays individuals here up to 2,000 pesos to sign the rental agreements if they hold 50 hectares. Those who can only rent smaller parcels receive less – 1,500 pesos. According the independent daily paper El Sur on July 2, 2007, “What they did is they decided to take common terrain, belonging to the community, but weeks prior to the inauguration of the wind park La Venta II, they (the landowners) were thrown off by public force and there exist eighty prior investigations against the group of ejidatarios, in addition to several arrest orders.”

In other words, some town authorities are taking the cash while some landholders have been put under arrest warrants and threatened, in a carrot and stick approach.

The task facing the activists is to raise consciousness among all indigenous peoples regarding their rights to defend their lands and cultural integrity – a task proceeding town-by-town, person-to-person. Unlike Ayala, Trujillo and others came to the forum to help unite the peoples of the area in opposition to the neoliberal projects on the Isthmus.

One way to measure their success is by seeing how many families step forward as “indigenous”, a designation that in the past was denigrating, but which is now the key to certain legal actions. Constitutional laws on human rights are universal and universally ignored. The Oaxaca constitution further guarantees local indigenous rights, which are also ignored.

The slow legal process is one of the main avenues for objecting to the neoliberal projects. Since the Mexican government is not known for observing its own constitution, it struck me as pie-in-the-sky to pursue that path, but I was told by Javier Balderas Castillo that indeed the constitution declares that all national resources and energy must be in the hands of the Mexican government, to hold, sell, transport and use for the public benefit. Every community has the right to consult its own attorneys, and each can make its own decisions. Each person has the right to protect his land if he doesn’t want to rent, or set his own price if he does.

At the forum Juan Carlos Beas Torres, a long-time advocate of indigenous rights in the area and head of UCIZONI, also pointed out that the transnational project is moving very swiftly, with increased offers in the past two years tendered to the different communities on the northward route of the isthmus. Construction of highways is contemplated with no consultation of the residents and no public information. Highways, Beas declared, are of no benefit to the local people and would consume 130,000,000 hectares on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. “They are paying in crumbs,” Beas said, referring to the rents, while the residents pay their bi-monthly electric bills like everyone else. Furthermore, handing over the cultural patrimony to foreigners, destroying national sovereignty violates the constitution. “If we don’t fight now, our children will pay.” People are aware of the “bitter experiences” such as those suffered by the mining towns, with helicopters circling, and water contaminated. They are aware of the struggle against the big dam in La Parrota in Guerrero. They are learning how to organize resistance.

Franco Lopez from the town of Union Hidalgo cited the famous Benito Juarez statement, “Respect for the rights of others is the way to peace,” and pointing out that such respect “simply doesn’t exist. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz is part of this project. More than ten people have been killed. There is a general disregard for rights and laws, they try to force people off their lands.”


The Local Groups Fighting Behind the Scenes

Perhaps more interesting is the behind-the-scenes meetings of small groups who form the backbone of the resistance. One of the resisting groups is the community radio station of Umalaleng. Martín Rosas, a bilingual teacher from the fishing town of San Francisco del Mar, explains that this “pirate” station of 30 kilometer range is working to rescue the indigenous language and culture of San Francisco and San Dionisio del Mar nearby.

We rested on the back porch overlooking a bare yard where a man mended fishing net. The woman of the house cooks over a charcoal heated “oven” typical of Juchitán, consisting of a clay barrel open at both ends. The woman sticks the tortilla dough to the hot sides, and peels it off when it’s baked. The roof of the open shed kitchen serves to dry fish, which were lined up on the hot surface like pancakes. When I spoke to the woman, she had little idea of what the struggle involved. She spends her day in chores, and doesn’t read or go to meetings. Typically the local women know more of God than they do of neoliberalism, although younger women were visible at the forum.


Rosas said he was concerned with the possible contamination to sea fishing areas by residual oil thrown off into the ground by the wind generators. The Ikotz Civil Association, twenty-two people who are professionals, campesinosand fishermen, talk about the options. One clearly is development of ecotourism: the beach at San Dionisio receives a sea serene and lovely in its sheltered lagoon. The fish baked on the beach in a similar clay oven tastes like a gourmet production, served in the simplest style possible. The bathrooms use buckets to flush, paper napkins are hard to come by, washing is done in buckets and consecutive sinks. But the baked fish…ah… Another economic option is the installation of greenhouses, and local collectives for growing crops. But it’s a slow road.

For the past fifteen years the Center for Human Rights of Tepeyac of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, with twenty members, has worked with the local church to teach. Not catechism. They teach that they have the right to hold their ejido unchanged. That the constitution guarantees not only federal use of resources for the common wealth, but also guarantees a life of dignity, the right to obtain food. “The government says there is no land to share out. The government won’t permit it. This land has to suffice.” However the law also says that if land is inhabited without title peacefully for five years, or ten years with violence, it becomes the property of the inhabitant. The government cannot reclaim lands that have been inhabited peacefully for many years. Meanwhile the town of Jalapa del Marquez suffers the installation of the electric plant used to transmit the power. It’s ugly. The industrial tinker-toy constructions cannot stand along with ecotourism.

The same constitution that the government violates says that no private company can generate electricity and then sell it to the government grid. One proposed solution for the pueblos is that instead of forming a corporation with shares, cooperatives be formed, in La Ventosa especially, which is next in line for wind generation. The cooperative example cited is Cruz Azul, a Mexican company known as the second largest cement producer in Mexico. “A cooperative could be formed, but the government doesn’t want it because of their affiliation with the transnationals,” Javier Balderas told me. “Because of NAFTA and the European Accord, foreigners can own Mexican land thirty meters back from the coast. The political bent is neoliberal. To sell this land the government claims it doesn’t have for the people. Zedillo works for Proctor and Gamble, and that’s how they do it. First an official makes it possible for the transnational to take Mexican resources. Then when the official leaves office, this transnational gives him a well-paid job.”

The lawyer went on, “The government has an obligation to rectify the harm done by these first contracts (for ejido land). They are violating the right of the indigenous people to be consulted. Articles 2-19 of the constitution guarantee economic, social, cultural and environmental rights. We demand information. The government doesn’t need more electricity; it is just for foreign investment. We denounce the transnationals.”

The national mobilization for land and water now includes organizations and peoples from Guerrero, Chiapas, Campeche, Puebla, Tabasco, State of Mexico, and Oaxaca. In most cases the population does not want mega-projects that flood entire towns or produce great quantities of centralized energy. Small systems permit less destruction and disruption, while also taking into account local use for local households.

Small is better, more efficient, more people friendly – and doesn’t include transnationals.

Communique EPR-MEXICO

Translated with Google Translater

TO THE TOWN OF MEXICO
TO THE TOWNS OF THE WORLD
TO THE ORGANISMS NONGOVERNMENTAL DEFENDERS OF THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS.
TO THE SOCIAL,POLITICAL,REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS
TO GENERAL CLANDESTINE COMMITTEE REVOLUTIONARY INDÍGENA-COMANDANCIA OF ARMY ZAPATISTA OF LIBERATION NACIONAL MEXICO.
INSURGENT SUBCOMMANDER MARKOS.

SISTERS, BROTHERS, COMRADES!


We make a reflection as we accustomed many years ago: the time is a good advisor and companion.

We are in territory chiapas and we have known of whenever continuously they have been harassed and often assassinated, and in spite of everything have maintained a praiseworthy resistance before these injustices.

For us, in all the divided organizations and groupings always an unequal development in the understanding of the historical phenomena will exist and often all we did not agree with the interpretation of this reality.

We raised it because from before they occurred to publicly know we have offered them our solidarity although modest and quiet by all the ways that they have crossed, in its passage by our zones of equal way and today we could not let do it.

We respected all the forms of fight, to all those that are in the left and were not used to judging all by. Sometimes, lamentably, the directions no matter how hard we wanted not we give account that is people who sabotage the initiatives and the norms that prevail to us, although this does not justify the errors and the offenses.

With we agreed in some things and sometimes we walked together without to integrate us but as a coincidence in the demands and this of some form we agreed with AMLO, Engineer Cardinal red and others more, to those who we respected like a you in spite of the differences and opinions that we received, for that reason return to repeat our better friend has been the time.

Nevertheless, although this one exists decomposition is not complete, no organization can excelsamente be pure, for that reason our respect by all those that are or was seen in the necessity to make nonviolent a fight pacific.

To you and we they have done violence to to us, have harassed to us, they have repressed to us and both we have seen ourselves in the necessity to raise the flags of the resistance.

Also as you know we had indigenous companions of several states of our country and other sectors which identifies to us in our demands.

Nevertheless, its exit worries to us and constant to walk reason why of different ways will continue having the solidarity of our party and army and we will try to avoid in maximum the some action that could jeopardize to them or affect to them. But we say to them that our harassment will continue if it is that this government insists on not presenting/displaying our companions, if is that who you call the political class they do not promote the freedom of all and all the political prisoners and of conscience of the country.

Go a handshake and a strong hug and fraterno as we accustomed in our party and the desire of which what they have seted out with the companions yaquis in Vicam, Sonant, renders its better fruits.

Hopefully it arrives our greeting and our affection fraterno towards you and all those that accompany them.

Neither a disappear the more, freedom and justice for all, fusing to us in a single effort, because the blood and the spirit of our ancestors invincible soldiers, run by our veins.

We took leave thanking for its solidarity.


ALIVE TOOK IT, ALIVE WE WANT THEM!
TO DEMAND THE FREEDOM OF ALL THE POLITICAL PRISONERS AND CONSCIENCE OF
COUNTRY!
BY THE PRESENTATION OF ALL THE MISSING PRISONERS!

BY THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!
TO WIN OR TO DIE!
BY OUR PROLETARIAN COMRADES!
SOLVED TO WIN!
WITH THE POPULAR WAR!
THE EPR PREVAILED!

CENTRAL COMMITTEE
OF
DEMOCRATIC PARTY POPULAR REVOLUTIONARY.
PDPR
SEPARATE MILITARY COMMAND
OF
REVOLUTIONARY POPULAR ARMY
CG-EPR

Year 43
Mexican Republic to 3 of October of 2007

A grocer's secret life as a rebel

Missing Mexican man's family stunned to learn he's a revolutionary who helps bomb pipeline

MEXICO CITY–Edmundo Reyes is a slight, unassuming man of 55 who loves baseball and children's literature. Until recently, he sold candy and soft drinks from his family's corner grocery store in this city's Nezahualcoyotl district.

In May, he left to visit relatives in Oaxaca and never returned. His disappearance might have gone unnoticed but for the fact that it has set off a small war that has twice shut down a sizable chunk of the Mexican economy.

Apparently unbeknownst to his family and friends, Reyes was leading a double life: as a leader of a group calling itself "the Popular Revolutionary Army," also known by its Spanish initials: EPR. His comrades are convinced he has been captured by the "enemy.''

To force his return and that of another EPR militant said to have disappeared with him, EPR has started bombing pipelines owned by Pemex, the national oil company.

The attacks are the most spectacular campaign by a guerrilla army in Mexico since the 1994 uprising of the Zapatistas in the southern state of Chiapas.

Unlike the Zapatistas, EPR has struck at a critical element of Mexico's economic infrastructure: the pipelines that transport petroleum products from the Gulf of Mexico.

Attacks on 10 pipelines in July and this month forced the temporary closing of some of Mexico's largest factories, caused fuel shortages and pushed up the price of oil futures in New York. The economic losses caused by the bombings total hundreds of millions of dollars, according to business groups here.

Yet EPR is an "army" consisting of possibly fewer than 100 people, including several members of five extended families with roots in Oaxaca, according to analysts and Mexican officials.

Intelligence reports leaked to the Mexican media say the mild-mannered Reyes was an EPR leader.

"I'm not convinced that all the things they say about him are true," said Nadin Reyes Maldonado, his daughter and a 25-year-old nursery-school teacher. "But when he appears again, there are some things he's going to have to explain to us.''

The EPR launched itself publicly in 1996 in Guerrero, a Pacific Coast state with long traditions of armed resistance to the Mexican government. Masked members armed with assault rifles marched into the town of Aguas Blancas as local residents were gathering to commemorate the killings a year earlier of 17 members of a peasants' rights group by state police.

At the time, Mexico was already well into its transition from one-party state to a multi-party democracy. But to the EPR, Mexico remained a country of political impunity ruled on behalf of a wealthy few.

"Our political Constitution is ... a dead letter," read the first EPR communiqué, explaining the group's decision to take up arms. "Individual rights are violated every day, and the people are left out of the economic and political decisions of the country.''

Since then, the group has split several times. It now appears to be rooted farther south, in Oaxaca, a state where social inequities and a heavy-handed governing style have fed several militant movements.

Oaxaca remains one of the poorest states in Mexico: 68 per cent of its residents live below the Mexican government's poverty line, with monthly income less than $90. And more than one-third of the population is living in "extreme poverty," according to government statistics.

The EPR has bombed banks and other targets since 2001. Mexican authorities have identified most of the EPR leadership but have been unable to apprehend them, said Jose Luis Pineyro, a security expert at Metropolitan Autonomous University here.

"There was a failure of civilian and military intelligence here," Pineyro said. "The EPR increased their technical and military capacity. They expanded their support base. None of this was detected.''

Authorities said the devices used against the Pemex pipelines were made from a combination of plastic explosives and potassium nitrate, also known as saltpetre.

More impressive than the bombs themselves was the logistical sophistication of the operation: six targets struck simultaneously with 12 bombs.

"To do something like this, you have to have a minimal support base," said Jorge Chabat, an analyst at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching. "You need people who will protect you, hide you, a place where you can melt away.''

Friends and relatives say Reyes, the grocer from Nezahualcoyotl, was a member of an impoverished Oaxaca family. Too poor to complete his studies, he was self-educated and migrated to Mexico City in search of work.

"He travelled often to Oaxaca to visit his mother," said Adrian Ramirez, president of the Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights. "No one suspected that he could be linked to an insurgent group.''

Intelligence reports say members of five extended families make up much of the rank and file of the EPR faction responsible for the Pemex bombings.

Many of the leaders are men in their 50s with experience in failed guerrilla groups of the 1970s.