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(DV) Webb-Pullman: Terror in San Salvador Atenco


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Terror in San Salvador Atenco
by Julie Webb-Pullman
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 8, 2006

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Terrorism has been given yet another name -- Atenco. As Britons commemorate the first anniversary of the July 7 London killing and injuring of innocent civilians, the people of San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, are coping with their own attack -- one dead, one in a critical condition, 12 disappeared, 23 men and seven women incommunicado several of whom remain in urgent need of medical attention, seven rapes, at least 16 sexual assaults -- all in all at least 212 detained and 173 human rights violations as a result of being innocent victims of an attack on May 3rd and 4th in Texcoco and neighboring San Salvador Atenco, Mexico State.

 

Whilst Britons, like the victims of the Twin Towers, Madrid and Bali before them, could rely on the police, emergency services and other instruments of State to respond to the tragedy in their midst and, with few notable exceptions, to deliver justice and necessary medical care, the people of San Salvador Atenco have no such “luxury”. Why? Because it was the apparatus of the Mexican State that committed these barbarous acts against the people of Atenco, and against members of the national and international media. It was the police -- federal, state and municipal -- who beat, sexually assaulted and illegally detained them It was the Mexican immigration department that summarily deported several human rights observers, journalists, and others It is the Mexican prison authorities who continue to withhold urgent medical attention. And it is the entire Mexican administration that is continuing its attempt to bury these events as if they never happened.

 

International Civil Commission for Human Rights Observation Finds Abuses

 

Local and international human rights organizations, including the 4th International Civil Commission for Human Rights Observation (CCIODH) who released their preliminary report on June 5, have all concluded that the Mexican municipal, state and federal police used excessive force, and that there were grave violations of human rights, including the rape and sexual assault of detained women, torture, the death of a 14-year-old, and the brain death of a university student. However the Mexican authorities continue to refuse to accept responsibility for the gross and systematic violations of human rights perpetrated by their agencies in the run-up to the July elections.

 

As a State policeman interviewed by the Miguel Angel Pro Juarez Human Rights Center reported, “we were just told to beat people when there were no media around . . . to hit anything that moved . . . We went in with our guns and that was how the operation was done . . . the great majority were covered in blood because the police hit them in the head with their clubs.”

 

Unlike Vicente Fox, this policeman at least had the decency to express his shame at the events he participated in:

 

“The truth is I am indignant, I am ashamed of everything that happened . . . the truth is that it is outrageous what I saw, what happened to that town . . . there are many excesses that should not have happened. The people should be conscious of the fact that these orders come from above. [I would like to say] To the government, first of all, this is no way to govern, repressing the people.”

 

However, despite the overwhelming evidence encompassing photographs, video, and testimonies from witnesses including the detained and police participating in the operation, and despite the numerous calls from human rights and other groups within and outside of Mexico, none of those responsible for giving these orders, neither the politicians nor the police commanders, have been held accountable. The CCIODH called for the immediate dismissals of the Commissioner of State Security Agency Wilfrido Robledo Madrid, Commander David Pintados Espinos responsible for the State Police operation, and Alejandro Eduardo Martínez Aduna, the Commissioner responsible for the Preventive Federal Police operation. They remain in their jobs, President Fox remains silent, and provocative military forays into the streets of Atenco continue.

 

This horrifying saga of repression, systematic beatings and abuse, and sexual assaults of both men and women, seemingly with total impunity, was clearly political, and intended to send a brutal message: if you support the “Other Campaign” of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN in its Spanish initials) you will suffer, in no uncertain terms.

 

Attack on Atenco

 

For those unaware of what happened, on 3 May at around 7am, two days after the residents of Atenco provided protection for Subcommandante Marcos of the EZLN Other Campaign for the May Day march in Mexico City, a confrontation was initiated by municipal police against legitimate flower sellers arriving to work at the Texcoco market, ordinary workers, trying to make an honest living, who were acting within their permits. When the eight vendors had the temerity to defend themselves against the police that were destroying their wares and smashing their stalls, 600 State police arrived within hours, and the escalation in violence resulted in the killing of a 14-year-old boy, and the critical injuring of a university student. The flower sellers, and locals who rallied in their support, defended themselves until nightfall with whatever was at hand -- sticks, stones and machetes, against the tear gas, bullets, long batons and sheer numbers of municipal and State police.

 

Legal Niceties Ignored

 

At around 6am the next morning, some 3,000 State and an unknown number of Federal police surrounded the town, and systematically smashed their way into selected homes destroying anything in their path, beating the occupants, stealing whatever took their fancy, handcuffing and dragging people into the street. There were no search warrants, there were no arrest warrants, there were no authorizations for seizure, of either people or property. Within two hours the police had seized the town. Is this the Rule of Law, Mexico 2006?

 

No one was immune. Not only foreign media, but also housewives, students, old people were all attacked, dragged from their houses and thrown into trucks. Anyone with the misfortune to be in the street fared just as badly: women on their way to work or to the market, boys going to school or just going into the street to see what was happening -- all tell the same story, corroborated by anonymous police informants. People fleeing in fear, trying to find safety but pursued into the homes or buildings they took refuge in, and subjected to beatings before being thrown into trucks and vans, many by their hair, piled on top of each other, some unconscious, shackled and bleeding, where the beatings continued.  And that was only the start -- human rights organizations have detailed sustained sexual assaults on women of all ages, at least seven rapes in the trucks during transfer to the prisons, and repeated death threats. Yet the Mexican authorities continue to do nothing except charge the innocent people they brutalized with attacking a public roadway, despite the fact they dragged many of them from their beds, from their houses! Due process, or Democracy 21st Century?

 

Political Freedom?

 

According to their statements to human rights organizations, few of the women detained had any political affiliation; they were ordinary women going about their business, just like those in London, in New York, in Madrid, in Bali. And just like the bombs in all of those attacks, the Mexican police did not discriminate -- those identifying themselves as supporters of the main political parties, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), National Action Party (PAN), and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) were detained and beaten as well as those with no affiliations. Of course this should not be relevant, given that freedom of political opinion is one of the fundamental human rights, according to the Universal Declaration. . . .

 

Why the Overkill?

 

In a nutshell, the overwhelming support for the “Other Campaign” of the EZLN, running parallel to the current Mexican election campaign, but which aims to change the Mexican political landscape. The Other Campaign is firmly opposed to globalization and the neoliberalism that has decimated the Mexican economy, through measures such as the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), which alone has created immense poverty and unemployment resulting in millions seeking work in the US. This “Other Campaign” is based on a commitment to non-violent political change through the bringing together of the political left. People are being encouraged to ignore the existing Mexican political parties, widely considered to be either corrupt, lapdogs of the United States, self-interested, to have abandoned indigenous people, the workers, and minorities, or all of the above.  A delegation from the Sixth Commission of the EZLN has been traversing Mexico since January 1 listening to the people, to prepare a program for uniting them into a peaceful political force for change. The contrast between the EZLN message of peaceful grassroots organization and autonomy with that of the violently repressive and/or vote-buying traditional election campaigns whereby politicians tell the people whatever they think will get them elected or just eliminate them, has struck a chord that has resonated not only throughout Mexico, but also throughout the world. Faced with a massive boycott of the polls in the July elections, Mexican political parties realize any resulting government will not have the necessary legitimacy -- and are responding with a campaign of terror, of which Atenco is but the most recent example. Oaxaca alone has been the site of many more state terror campaigns.

 

Does THIS explain US Troops Being Deployed on the Mexican Border?

 

How absurd!! The United States has absolutely NO problem with the spread of anti-globalization and anti-neoliberal sentiments in Latin America, or the unprecedented success of leftist movements -- they’ve dealt with it before, as Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba and Venezuela have experienced, to mention but a few. The US supports democrUSAy, just like the current Mexican political parties, and just like the Mexican Government, the US knows exactly what to do with those damn peasants who don’t know their place. They’re only too happy to provide experienced consultants like Dick Morris and Rob Allyn to assist the Mexican government-- and their “exchange students” at the School of the Americas have learnt well, as Atenco attests.

 

Is it not stretching coincidence just a bit too far that the stationing of troops on the Mexican border appears out of the blue, in the run-up to Mexican presidential elections seriously threatened by the massive wave of support for the EZLN? Are Women of Mexican Dissent the new “threat” to be targeted to keep the south safe -- from flower sellers and peaceful political change?

 

Americas in the 21st Century

 

Are these events in Mexico a preview of the Americas of the 21st Century -- a return to the serious and systematic violations of human rights rampant in the latter half of the last century, courtesy of US interventions and puppet governments? Will the events that occurred on May 3 and 4, 2006 in Atenco, the horrific sexual assaults, death threats and beatings meted out indiscriminately through the cynical abuse of the instruments of State power, continue with impunity in Mexico? If they have returned in Mexico, how long before they are back in Guatemala, in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, how long before they reach Chile, Venezuela, Argentina?

 

Or will Feeble Fox finally face up to his responsibilities to his own people, sack those responsible, and run his country in a fashion commensurate with internationally-accepted standards, especially given his country’s representation on the new Human Rights Council, due to have its first meeting on 16 June? Or will he just take the wily way out, and leave it all to the next President, fading flaccidly into the fog of history, another ghost-puppet of the empire like so many Latino lapdogs before him? Will the new Human Rights Council show that it is not just a rose by another name, and actually do something about the atrocities in Atenco, Oaxaca, Chiapas and the rest of the country -- suspend Mexico, perhaps?

 

As the events in New York, Madrid, Bali, London and Atenco demonstrate only too well, terror has many faces, and no one is immune. But as the events in Atenco caution, these faces may be only too familiar.

 

Julie Webb-Pullman is a New Zealand activist and writer, currently in Mexico. She can be reached at: juliewp05@yahoo.co.nz.

 

Other Articles by Julie Webb-Pullman

 

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