Anti-Ulises : A Day in the Life of a Simmering City
by Ramor Ryan, 13 May 2008
From Upsidedownworld.com
The Epic Struggle for Another Oaxaca Has Not Finished, says David Venegas.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake." - Stephen Daedalus, in Ulysses, James Joyce 1922
Oaxaca City, Mexico, May 15 - Midnight in Oaxaca, and walking around the historic center, it's almost as if nothing had ever happened here. The bourgeoisie sit around under the colonial arches in the long stretch of French-style outdoor cafes lining the central plaza. Aside from being beset by a small army of ambulant trinket vendors and beggars, the well-heeled citizens sipping cappuccinos seem very at ease with the world. A few late night tourists wander about the pleasant old streets under the starry sky, and the industrious hum of the sultry cosmopolitan city invokes an eternal calm.
It's as if there had never been a riotous peoples' insurrection in these same streets just two years ago. As if the rebel citizenry had never erected one thousand and one barricades to defend their city from the marauding police forces of the despised and despotic state government. And as if the tens of thousands of rebels and insurrectionists had not been this close to winning the great battle for Oaxaca in the heady summer days and nights at the barricades of 2006. The famous subversive graffiti that painted the whole town red and black is removed, whitewashed, as is the blood in the streets of the 26 fallen comrades shot down by the police and state paramilitaries.
“Since all of this, we will not be the same at all as before; we can’t be and we don’t want to be,” said a resident shortly after the quelled uprising.
But at this moment, to a visitor just having stepped off the bus from Chiapas, the strange normality of the place gives the appearance that everything has not changed, that everything remains the same in Oaxaca as it was before the uprising.
Sometimes hope comes from the most unexpected quarters. Walking away from the sanitized Zocalo, we chance upon a moribund vista. Shuffling around in the half shadows of a street corner, about a hundred tooled-up riot cops loiter with menace - as if itching for something to happen. The phalanx of troops, an ominous dark mass of helmets, riot shields and shiny black boots, clank their long metal sticks on the somewhat medieval flagstones. It is an incongruous sight at this time of night, amidst this placid ambiance, without the slightest disturbance to be ascertained of any kind anywhere.
Paradoxically, their presence signifies a welcome sign - where there are riot police there is generally trouble, and trouble in the Oaxaca context, means...resistance.
I have followed the movements of police riot squads with close interest for many years. So I approach the last cop in the line – a young indigenous man clad in state-of-the-art modern armor – and with all the sweet innocence of a visiting tourist ask him as to why they are here.
"Is there a problem, officer?" I ask.
He tenses up, grips his metal baton and stares at the distant wall, not at me.
“We are here for your protection” he says sternly - and somewhat comically.
We have heard that one before. Back in the day, during the war in Ireland, this is how the occupying British troops behaved - nervous, uncertain and trigger-happy. So this is it - as people had forewarned - this tremulous peace in the city is one overseen by riot cops lingering in the shadows. Oaxaca is a city under stealthy occupation.
The March of the Umbrellas
Around midday, under the glare of the blazing tropical sun, some 50,000 protesting teachers start flooding into downtown Oaxaca. Today, May 15 is Teachers Day, and the states educators have downed chalk on-mass, and declared a strike as they have done religiously every year for the last 25 years.
It's a remarkable sight, the arrival of the teacher hordes. Teachers anywhere in the world are a most innocuous bunch of people, and the members of this particular branch of the national teachers union, known as Section 22, are the most unlikely street revolutionaries imaginable. Yet these same humble unionists were the solid backbone of the 2006 insurrection. Here they come, this sea of teachers under the midday sun, these revolutionary hordes and... they are not masked up, nor linking arms, nor pumping fists. No, they are strolling along gaily under a roof of colorful bobbing umbrellas, singing songs and being generally full of revelry and joy. Having marched for 3 hours one would expect a certain fatigue, but no, the teachers are boisterous and upbeat and the enticing chaos is more mad hatters tea party than militant discipline.
"The teachers struggling," they sing, "celebrating their day of the teachers!"
But it would be a mistake to underestimate their militant resolve. Maria, an indigenous Zapotec teacher from the isthmus is carrying her one-year-old child Victoria in her arms as she marches.
"Victoria?," I ask.
“Hasta la victoria siempre!” she laughs, towards victory always, quoting Che.
Maria had been part of the uprising in 2006.
“Wow, lots of tear gas and running,” she says, looking back, “but...we almost made it, we almost won.”
"Do you have fear," I ask, "returning here two years later, to Oaxaca city center, after the brutal repression?"
“Not unless I don't have a stone or a stick in my hand to protect myself, no, then I am not afraid,” she says with a laugh, this 20-something-year-old mother who defines herself as "a Christian teacher".
From the central platform on the kiosk in the Zocalo, the teacher's leaders spell out their demands for higher salaries, increased funding for rural schools and the resignation of the state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
“We wont negotiate with the government of Ulises,” says Domingo Cabera, secretary general of the Section 22 of the Teachers Union, “ because we don't recognize the legitimacy of his government, we will only negotiate with the federal government.”
“Here today with this massive turnout,” says the speaker, “we demonstrate that the movement is more consolidated than ever.”
Sort of. It's common knowledge that Section 22 of the Teacher Union is in a state of disarray. Maria, the rural teacher, doesn't trust the words or intentions of her union leadership.
“While striking teachers were selling their cars and their houses in 2006 to support the strike, the corrupt leaders were accepting bribes and selling out the grassroots,” she tells me.“It is a tragedy, but now we are re-organizing.”
Flavio Sosa takes the microphone and it is a significant moment. Recently released from jail, he is one of the most recognized figures of the Oaxaca Peoples Popular Assembly (APPO). As the organizing body of the uprising, APPO brought together a myriad of social and political groupings and could mobilize hundreds of thousands at the height of the rebellion. Flavio is of the faction of the APPO state council who favors negotiation with the authorities and political participation in state and municipal elections - a very contentious issue within the rebel movement.
“We demand the release the remaining political prisoners,” says Flavio over the microphone, outlining the political demands of the movement, “[and] the cancellation of the outstanding arrest warrants (several hundred), punishment for those responsible for the deadly repression committed during 2006 and the resignation of state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Fuera Ulises - Ulises out!”
Ulises, Ulysses, is a most aptly named tyrant – whom Virgil refers to famously in the Aeneid, as “a cruel and deceitful man”. The much hated latter-day Ulises minor continues to be the focus of the protesters ire. Representing the PRI party who ruled Mexico for 70 years, he was elected in 2004 under very dubious circumstances, and marked the beginning of his tenure with a campaign of brutal repression against his opponents. While previous Governors had negotiated or tolerated the widespread and deeply ingrained opposition movement in Oaxaca, Ulises oversaw the criminalization of protest. But he underestimated the strength and determination of the opposition, who responded with the total takeover of Oaxaca. Exiled for most of 2006, his administration was only able to return after a bloody offensive by some 6,500 militarized cops against APPO on October 29 of that same year- leading to 200 arrests, hundreds hospitalized and the city center resembling a battlefield.
A Cantina Full of Anarchists
We - two Irish visitors - have come to Oaxaca to talk with the comrades from Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Freedom (VOCAL), a sizable anti-authoritarian grouping that forms part of APPO. Anarchists and libertarians had played a prominent role in the defense of the city in 2006, and remain an important voice in the movement. In a traditional cantina, a group of grassroots teachers and Vocal-istas engage in a the post-march analysis.
A big march somewhat empty of content, appears to be the general agreement.
We meet with David Venegas Reyes, a 25-year-old local resident who emerged as one of the more charismatic and articulate young voices on the street in 2006. For his trouble, the state issued an arrest warrant and in April 2007 he was abducted from a city park, and thrown in jail. After a campaign for his release, in which even Amnesty International voiced concern for the manner of his detention, he walked in February 2007, all charges dropped.
“On the one hand here in the city,” explains David, “the government has been able to partially dismantle the Section 22 which was the largest of the unions and the center of the movement in 2006. But at the same time there is a lot of discontent in the ranks, and the leadership has been totally discredited by the base. So while the government has managed to corrupt the union leadership by buying them off, the base has become more conscientious and is therefore more difficult to cheat or hoodwink.”
First off, David is not a leader, nor a spokesperson for VOCAL. But it seems by general consensus of the various Vocal-istas here, that he will be the one to talk to us visitors - maybe because he is the affable and chatty one of the group.
The owner of the cantina overhears the table talk, and voicing support for the teachers and APPO, sends over a round of beers. I am impressed by how open and conspicuous are the activists despite the general atmosphere of repression in the city. Several of the people here have outstanding arrest warrants from 2006 still hanging over their heads, yet this does not stop them going out and joining the protests, or simply going about their lives unbowed.
"What about APPO?," I ask. "Is it affected by the same kind of disarray as the Section 22?"
David responds carefully and comprehensively; I think its worth quoting him at length:
“APPO has basically being the unity of the different organizations of the peoples of Oaxaca. The interesting thing, the transcendental thing about APPO is that it has managed to bring together a broad representation of the various peoples of the state with a wide convergence of different ideologies and visions of the world - all under the one assembly. Then came the great wave of actions that took place in 2006, the great advance towards realizing our collective aspirations - first demanding the exit of Ulises, and much more than that, also demanding a radical and profound change in the society in which we live in .”
“So in 2006 our APPO assemblies reflected the assemblies of the indigenous communities in so much as that there were no leaders and it is the assembly which decides things. We tried to act like this but sadly there was a gap between how we acted in assembly and the verticalism practiced by some of the social organizations. So there was this tension within APPO as how people wanted to organize and how to practice.”
“The spontaneous combative spirit that arose in the streets was not the result of some bureaucratic orders from some leaders up on top; no, they came from the people in the streets themselves, and the spirit remains there.”
“When the brutal repression against us began, the mobilizations weakened, firstly because of fear at the ferocity of the repression. But alongside this, people felt dispirited and demoralized by the opportunistic actions at this critical moment of some of the considered leaders of a few social movements. The important point of this story is that in February 2007, some social movements decided that the movement couldn't achieve the demand of removing Ulises from government and so proposed that APPO make an alliance with the supposed left-wing political parties in Oaxaca and to compete for power in the local municipal and congressional elections. During this discussion, an important group of companeros defined themselves by opposing this proposal and we managed to stop this attempt to institutionalize our movement. And so emerged strong divisions within the movement, provoked mainly by those whose aspirations for taking power were frustrated.”
“So a group of us libertarian companeros and those who didn't believe in political parties and various ideologies, agreed that for the movement to enter into the electoral route was to merely play the states game in this context in Oaxaca and so we opposed it. VOCAL doesn't aspire to become the leadership of APPO. VOCAL is a space of unity for those who think the autonomy of our diverse and multicultural peoples is a political proposal for our reality. We stayed with the APPO because the unity of the people is important. And its important to remain true to the words that were said in 2006 that the APPO is a movement of bases and not of leaders. Although it was said, many did not act like this and began to invest their confidence in false leaders.”
Other voices around the table are more forthright in their criticism of the PRD (opposition political party) and Marxist-type elements which took control of the APPO, but David remains staunchly non-sectarian.
“So there are many of us, not just VOCAL, the Magonistas and some Marxists, but many of the base who believe that we have to re-organize the movement from below, not from the top down. Because the truth is that APPO is in the communities and in the union bases – not just in the leadership. In Mexico there is a long history of leaders becoming compromised – anybody who knows a little of the union history knows how often this has happened – the leadership always becomes compromised, recuperated by power. And the leadership in APPO has similar tendencies.”
So what are the lessons, I ask, that have been taken away from 2006? As in, you almost had it, APPO was in control of the city like a modern day Paris Commune and Ulises was on his way out the door; victory was so close. And then after holding the city for eight long, glorious months, came the huge wave of repression and the movement was beaten off the streets. What went wrong?, I ask.
“There are some who say we made tactical errors in 2006, but I don't think it was an error or mistake to defend our territory in a physical form against the assassins of Ulises and the militarized Federal police of (Presidents) Vincente Fox and Felipe Calderon. For me that was not the error - to defend ourselves , no, the error that was made was when people started to believe in false leaders," said David.
Another comrade chimes into the discussion. “And there are those who say that the movement brought repression upon themselves by upping the ante of resistance, that they got what they deserved! Nonsense!”
“The prisoners and the dead aren't guilty!” says David. “The guilty are those who imprisoned and murdered them."
It's now late afternoon and everyone disperses for various meetings. The political energy is perceivable and the days' march has got people upbeat. The spirit of resistance is simmering once more in the streets of Oaxaca.
Of Police and Streets
Sometime after dusk, we reunite with David under the portal of the great old central Cathedral in the Zocalo. Despite the days events, the police presence in the center is negligible – mostly undercover agents discreetly monitoring the proceedings. The authorities have decided upon a non-aggressive strategy and the city is teeming with teachers in repose. It must be surreal for them to be confronted with this veil of normality in the city they once occupied. One noticeable difference from even the night before is the clandestine presence of graffiti all over the place. The ubiquitous APPO slogans and Fuera Ulises! are back on the walls of the city again.
Walking the darkening city thoroughfare, a police car slowly passes by, and David involuntarily glances over his shoulder. I imagine he has his fears - after all, it was in these very streets that he was suddenly lifted by an undercover snatch squad in broad daylight, and abruptly removed to the nightmare of indefinite incarceration.
“Fear? Yeah,” he says, “of course we have fear. But fear should not impede us from moving forward. People continue to struggle just as they did in 2006 without stepping back, or wobbling. People are coming together again, to make sure that Ulises's assassins or the abductions don't continue."
"I was a prisoner held for 11 months, just a caprice for the authorities. And then I was released for lack of evidence.” he added.
It wasn't that justice was done, more that the pressure from outside meant it was politically untenable for the state to hold him hostage any longer. David recognizes the role national and international solidarity played in his release, and in the struggle in general.
“A really important part in detaining the repression was the level of national and international observation that took place from outside. If this hadn't happened, I think that the repression would have been even much worse.”
“But it shouldn't be thought that suddenly we live in a just state now,” emphasizes David. “We still live under a state of daily repression and harassment. It's unbearable, and we can't have some government telling us that we must accept living under this state of oppression, as if it was some kind of normalcy. We don't accept it, because we are a free people, free we are born and free we were brought up. And since the resistance hasn't stopped, so the repression continues. I think that whatever happens in Oaxaca in the next while it's really important that people from outside don't stop the vigilance, and continue pressurizing the government to limit their use of reactionary violence.”
A new Amnesty International report echoes his concerns, denouncing the repression on the social movement and the general impunity that exists for security forces in the country in general, and the abuse of citizen's rights in Oaxaca in particular.
But this climate of fear engendered by the authorities doesn't stop David traversing these streets which he has known all his life. Indeed, the going is slow as he meets and greets all and sundry along the way – like this middle-aged indigenous man who stops him randomly and wishes him well, knowing of his unjust imprisonment. It's like the movement, even if it doesn't hold the center, still has the street.
We are going to a social center where a bunch of musicians and activists are gathered for a night of Son Jarocho, a traditional popular song and dance. It's an autonomous space, familiar to other cultural and political spaces in different parts of the globe - self-managed, a shebeen of sorts, where people come and go, and the mood is friendly. Between ardent musical performances, people give brief presentations, like this from a representative of the Universidad de la Tierra ( UniTierra), a peoples' university based here in the city. Another is a report back from the caravan of the isthmus region undertaken by a group of VOCAL activists, including David, who returned early this morning. The Trail of the Jaguar political tour of the rural isthmus consolidated links with indigenous communities under the theme “for the regeneration of our collective memory”.
In a quiet moment we drag David away for the gathering and continue with our interrogation. On the flat roof of the social center, the city stretches out far and wide, the lights shimmering across the vast valley. Oaxaca is a much bigger place than it seems when wandering around the historic center.
"What's going on with the movement in the city, and in the countryside," I ask, "Where do we stand now?"
“Here in the city, there has been a strong militarization and a heavy police presence to repress the movement. Meanwhile the government has somewhat ignored the indigenous communities and it is there, in the rural community that some very important organizing is happening. I'm not saying that the movement in the city has finished and now the movement is only in the countryside, no. It is more that the government, while focusing all their attention on defeating the movement in the city, has allowed discontent to flourish in the countryside,” says David.
While of course simultaneously letting the paramilitaries have a free hand to do their dirty work in the communities – including the April ambush murder of two women journalists working for La Voz que Rompe el Silencio (“The Voice that Breaks the Silence”), a community radio station serving the Trique indigenous community. But the kind of police and military saturation within the City has not occurred in the communities.
“And so today in Oaxaca City there is a tense calm. The councilors and officials of the APPO and Section 22 leadership are being conciliatory and opportunistic. Groups of Stalinists and PRD-istas of the electoral persuasion are making a pact with the business leaders to get permission to mobilize. But the others, like us in VOCAL and other groups, the majority of the movement, are in constant confrontation with the authorities because our mobilizations are not seen gladly by the state - and the line between repression and tolerance is barely visible,” says David.
A Oaxaca Commune
The Son Jarocho session is wrapping up and people are homeward bound. We pile into a van going out to the outskirts of town where a bunch of people are staying. There's about a dozen of us in this beat up van, rattling along the highway out of town. There's a certain spirit of abandonment about these people and its contagious. I'm thinking if the cops stop this thing, they will net a good dirty dozen desperadoes of veteran anarchists.
The van arrives at a feral warehouse on a sprawling lot, cluttered with machines, tools and a big old bus just back from the Trail of the Jaguar tour. The collective living space is populated by a group of weary and sonambulant activists. A tattered, faded image of the Virgin of the Barricades adorns a wall, the ironic patron saint who presided over those at the barricades in 2006. Her image, with her iconic gas mask and cloak of burning tires reminds me of Calamidad's words, the last gringa on the last barricade on the last night of the Oaxaca commune.
"A lot of people have been fucked in the head ever since November 25, 2006, " she lamented, "when it was all lost in a flurry of bullets--but damn was it a close fight for awhile. In a sense people are just as traumatized by the tragic implications of what victory might have been- and how close people were to it, so close they could taste it for the first time in their lives- as they were by the violence. When I returned to Oaxaca, I would walk into a party, and comrades would come up to me and say - 'she remembers! We almost did it, we had the city! All the barricades! The city was ours!' So its not only the repression that people remember, but also the memory of holding the streets for so long is a bitter one.....because they lost them."
Here in this chaotic, creative space, among the barricadistas who have not given up, there is a palpable feeling that, despite the loss in 2006, there is still hope and people are now organizing harder than ever.
“And,” David Venegas reminds us, “as the Mexican saying goes - 'There is no evil that can last a hundred years, and there's no body that can't resist it', meaning that everything has its own time, and this straight-jacket of a state has come to its end. That the time has come.”
Up and down the country people are invoking the centennial memory of the first Mexican revolution – 1910 - to herald a new revolution in 2010. "What's the feeling here," I ask David, "about this quasi-mystical belief in revolutionary change on a sanctified date?"
“Well many Mexicans are resigned to the fatality of the idea of 2010,” he says with a smile, “ and as you know, Mexico is profound and millenarian. But for me, its not important that the deed happens on this very date, but more importantly that it occurs! And I can feel it in the air in Mexico - a longing for revolution. But revolutions don't just occur on a certain date - they are prepared. And what I'm seeing is an growing insurgent spirit, alongside an increase in the brutality of the government. There is a great indignation felt by the communities and movements against whom the bad government has declared war.”
“I hope a revolutionary change occurs in this country because there can be no half solutions, reforms are not going to end the injustice and exploitation. A change from the bottom is necessary, a profound and truthful change. This is what millions are demanding, and this is what the government are trying to deny us. The government has failed to reform the state constitutionally, to comply to our aspirations. That is why it is we, the people who must make those changes – because the government has lost its opportunity. So now its our responsibility to make those changes.”
It's midnight once more in Oaxaca, and this long plenteous day, May 15, 2008, is over. We bed down in the loft cosy with about 20 other companeras and companeros and dreams come easily. History is a nightmare from which Oaxaca, like Mexico, is trying to wake up from and maybe 2006 was just a primer.
From Upsidedownworld.com
The Epic Struggle for Another Oaxaca Has Not Finished, says David Venegas.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake." - Stephen Daedalus, in Ulysses, James Joyce 1922
Oaxaca City, Mexico, May 15 - Midnight in Oaxaca, and walking around the historic center, it's almost as if nothing had ever happened here. The bourgeoisie sit around under the colonial arches in the long stretch of French-style outdoor cafes lining the central plaza. Aside from being beset by a small army of ambulant trinket vendors and beggars, the well-heeled citizens sipping cappuccinos seem very at ease with the world. A few late night tourists wander about the pleasant old streets under the starry sky, and the industrious hum of the sultry cosmopolitan city invokes an eternal calm.
It's as if there had never been a riotous peoples' insurrection in these same streets just two years ago. As if the rebel citizenry had never erected one thousand and one barricades to defend their city from the marauding police forces of the despised and despotic state government. And as if the tens of thousands of rebels and insurrectionists had not been this close to winning the great battle for Oaxaca in the heady summer days and nights at the barricades of 2006. The famous subversive graffiti that painted the whole town red and black is removed, whitewashed, as is the blood in the streets of the 26 fallen comrades shot down by the police and state paramilitaries.
“Since all of this, we will not be the same at all as before; we can’t be and we don’t want to be,” said a resident shortly after the quelled uprising.
But at this moment, to a visitor just having stepped off the bus from Chiapas, the strange normality of the place gives the appearance that everything has not changed, that everything remains the same in Oaxaca as it was before the uprising.
Sometimes hope comes from the most unexpected quarters. Walking away from the sanitized Zocalo, we chance upon a moribund vista. Shuffling around in the half shadows of a street corner, about a hundred tooled-up riot cops loiter with menace - as if itching for something to happen. The phalanx of troops, an ominous dark mass of helmets, riot shields and shiny black boots, clank their long metal sticks on the somewhat medieval flagstones. It is an incongruous sight at this time of night, amidst this placid ambiance, without the slightest disturbance to be ascertained of any kind anywhere.
Paradoxically, their presence signifies a welcome sign - where there are riot police there is generally trouble, and trouble in the Oaxaca context, means...resistance.
I have followed the movements of police riot squads with close interest for many years. So I approach the last cop in the line – a young indigenous man clad in state-of-the-art modern armor – and with all the sweet innocence of a visiting tourist ask him as to why they are here.
"Is there a problem, officer?" I ask.
He tenses up, grips his metal baton and stares at the distant wall, not at me.
“We are here for your protection” he says sternly - and somewhat comically.
We have heard that one before. Back in the day, during the war in Ireland, this is how the occupying British troops behaved - nervous, uncertain and trigger-happy. So this is it - as people had forewarned - this tremulous peace in the city is one overseen by riot cops lingering in the shadows. Oaxaca is a city under stealthy occupation.
The March of the Umbrellas
Around midday, under the glare of the blazing tropical sun, some 50,000 protesting teachers start flooding into downtown Oaxaca. Today, May 15 is Teachers Day, and the states educators have downed chalk on-mass, and declared a strike as they have done religiously every year for the last 25 years.
It's a remarkable sight, the arrival of the teacher hordes. Teachers anywhere in the world are a most innocuous bunch of people, and the members of this particular branch of the national teachers union, known as Section 22, are the most unlikely street revolutionaries imaginable. Yet these same humble unionists were the solid backbone of the 2006 insurrection. Here they come, this sea of teachers under the midday sun, these revolutionary hordes and... they are not masked up, nor linking arms, nor pumping fists. No, they are strolling along gaily under a roof of colorful bobbing umbrellas, singing songs and being generally full of revelry and joy. Having marched for 3 hours one would expect a certain fatigue, but no, the teachers are boisterous and upbeat and the enticing chaos is more mad hatters tea party than militant discipline.
"The teachers struggling," they sing, "celebrating their day of the teachers!"
But it would be a mistake to underestimate their militant resolve. Maria, an indigenous Zapotec teacher from the isthmus is carrying her one-year-old child Victoria in her arms as she marches.
"Victoria?," I ask.
“Hasta la victoria siempre!” she laughs, towards victory always, quoting Che.
Maria had been part of the uprising in 2006.
“Wow, lots of tear gas and running,” she says, looking back, “but...we almost made it, we almost won.”
"Do you have fear," I ask, "returning here two years later, to Oaxaca city center, after the brutal repression?"
“Not unless I don't have a stone or a stick in my hand to protect myself, no, then I am not afraid,” she says with a laugh, this 20-something-year-old mother who defines herself as "a Christian teacher".
From the central platform on the kiosk in the Zocalo, the teacher's leaders spell out their demands for higher salaries, increased funding for rural schools and the resignation of the state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
“We wont negotiate with the government of Ulises,” says Domingo Cabera, secretary general of the Section 22 of the Teachers Union, “ because we don't recognize the legitimacy of his government, we will only negotiate with the federal government.”
“Here today with this massive turnout,” says the speaker, “we demonstrate that the movement is more consolidated than ever.”
Sort of. It's common knowledge that Section 22 of the Teacher Union is in a state of disarray. Maria, the rural teacher, doesn't trust the words or intentions of her union leadership.
“While striking teachers were selling their cars and their houses in 2006 to support the strike, the corrupt leaders were accepting bribes and selling out the grassroots,” she tells me.“It is a tragedy, but now we are re-organizing.”
Flavio Sosa takes the microphone and it is a significant moment. Recently released from jail, he is one of the most recognized figures of the Oaxaca Peoples Popular Assembly (APPO). As the organizing body of the uprising, APPO brought together a myriad of social and political groupings and could mobilize hundreds of thousands at the height of the rebellion. Flavio is of the faction of the APPO state council who favors negotiation with the authorities and political participation in state and municipal elections - a very contentious issue within the rebel movement.
“We demand the release the remaining political prisoners,” says Flavio over the microphone, outlining the political demands of the movement, “[and] the cancellation of the outstanding arrest warrants (several hundred), punishment for those responsible for the deadly repression committed during 2006 and the resignation of state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Fuera Ulises - Ulises out!”
Ulises, Ulysses, is a most aptly named tyrant – whom Virgil refers to famously in the Aeneid, as “a cruel and deceitful man”. The much hated latter-day Ulises minor continues to be the focus of the protesters ire. Representing the PRI party who ruled Mexico for 70 years, he was elected in 2004 under very dubious circumstances, and marked the beginning of his tenure with a campaign of brutal repression against his opponents. While previous Governors had negotiated or tolerated the widespread and deeply ingrained opposition movement in Oaxaca, Ulises oversaw the criminalization of protest. But he underestimated the strength and determination of the opposition, who responded with the total takeover of Oaxaca. Exiled for most of 2006, his administration was only able to return after a bloody offensive by some 6,500 militarized cops against APPO on October 29 of that same year- leading to 200 arrests, hundreds hospitalized and the city center resembling a battlefield.
A Cantina Full of Anarchists
We - two Irish visitors - have come to Oaxaca to talk with the comrades from Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Freedom (VOCAL), a sizable anti-authoritarian grouping that forms part of APPO. Anarchists and libertarians had played a prominent role in the defense of the city in 2006, and remain an important voice in the movement. In a traditional cantina, a group of grassroots teachers and Vocal-istas engage in a the post-march analysis.
A big march somewhat empty of content, appears to be the general agreement.
We meet with David Venegas Reyes, a 25-year-old local resident who emerged as one of the more charismatic and articulate young voices on the street in 2006. For his trouble, the state issued an arrest warrant and in April 2007 he was abducted from a city park, and thrown in jail. After a campaign for his release, in which even Amnesty International voiced concern for the manner of his detention, he walked in February 2007, all charges dropped.
“On the one hand here in the city,” explains David, “the government has been able to partially dismantle the Section 22 which was the largest of the unions and the center of the movement in 2006. But at the same time there is a lot of discontent in the ranks, and the leadership has been totally discredited by the base. So while the government has managed to corrupt the union leadership by buying them off, the base has become more conscientious and is therefore more difficult to cheat or hoodwink.”
First off, David is not a leader, nor a spokesperson for VOCAL. But it seems by general consensus of the various Vocal-istas here, that he will be the one to talk to us visitors - maybe because he is the affable and chatty one of the group.
The owner of the cantina overhears the table talk, and voicing support for the teachers and APPO, sends over a round of beers. I am impressed by how open and conspicuous are the activists despite the general atmosphere of repression in the city. Several of the people here have outstanding arrest warrants from 2006 still hanging over their heads, yet this does not stop them going out and joining the protests, or simply going about their lives unbowed.
"What about APPO?," I ask. "Is it affected by the same kind of disarray as the Section 22?"
David responds carefully and comprehensively; I think its worth quoting him at length:
“APPO has basically being the unity of the different organizations of the peoples of Oaxaca. The interesting thing, the transcendental thing about APPO is that it has managed to bring together a broad representation of the various peoples of the state with a wide convergence of different ideologies and visions of the world - all under the one assembly. Then came the great wave of actions that took place in 2006, the great advance towards realizing our collective aspirations - first demanding the exit of Ulises, and much more than that, also demanding a radical and profound change in the society in which we live in .”
“So in 2006 our APPO assemblies reflected the assemblies of the indigenous communities in so much as that there were no leaders and it is the assembly which decides things. We tried to act like this but sadly there was a gap between how we acted in assembly and the verticalism practiced by some of the social organizations. So there was this tension within APPO as how people wanted to organize and how to practice.”
“The spontaneous combative spirit that arose in the streets was not the result of some bureaucratic orders from some leaders up on top; no, they came from the people in the streets themselves, and the spirit remains there.”
“When the brutal repression against us began, the mobilizations weakened, firstly because of fear at the ferocity of the repression. But alongside this, people felt dispirited and demoralized by the opportunistic actions at this critical moment of some of the considered leaders of a few social movements. The important point of this story is that in February 2007, some social movements decided that the movement couldn't achieve the demand of removing Ulises from government and so proposed that APPO make an alliance with the supposed left-wing political parties in Oaxaca and to compete for power in the local municipal and congressional elections. During this discussion, an important group of companeros defined themselves by opposing this proposal and we managed to stop this attempt to institutionalize our movement. And so emerged strong divisions within the movement, provoked mainly by those whose aspirations for taking power were frustrated.”
“So a group of us libertarian companeros and those who didn't believe in political parties and various ideologies, agreed that for the movement to enter into the electoral route was to merely play the states game in this context in Oaxaca and so we opposed it. VOCAL doesn't aspire to become the leadership of APPO. VOCAL is a space of unity for those who think the autonomy of our diverse and multicultural peoples is a political proposal for our reality. We stayed with the APPO because the unity of the people is important. And its important to remain true to the words that were said in 2006 that the APPO is a movement of bases and not of leaders. Although it was said, many did not act like this and began to invest their confidence in false leaders.”
Other voices around the table are more forthright in their criticism of the PRD (opposition political party) and Marxist-type elements which took control of the APPO, but David remains staunchly non-sectarian.
“So there are many of us, not just VOCAL, the Magonistas and some Marxists, but many of the base who believe that we have to re-organize the movement from below, not from the top down. Because the truth is that APPO is in the communities and in the union bases – not just in the leadership. In Mexico there is a long history of leaders becoming compromised – anybody who knows a little of the union history knows how often this has happened – the leadership always becomes compromised, recuperated by power. And the leadership in APPO has similar tendencies.”
So what are the lessons, I ask, that have been taken away from 2006? As in, you almost had it, APPO was in control of the city like a modern day Paris Commune and Ulises was on his way out the door; victory was so close. And then after holding the city for eight long, glorious months, came the huge wave of repression and the movement was beaten off the streets. What went wrong?, I ask.
“There are some who say we made tactical errors in 2006, but I don't think it was an error or mistake to defend our territory in a physical form against the assassins of Ulises and the militarized Federal police of (Presidents) Vincente Fox and Felipe Calderon. For me that was not the error - to defend ourselves , no, the error that was made was when people started to believe in false leaders," said David.
Another comrade chimes into the discussion. “And there are those who say that the movement brought repression upon themselves by upping the ante of resistance, that they got what they deserved! Nonsense!”
“The prisoners and the dead aren't guilty!” says David. “The guilty are those who imprisoned and murdered them."
It's now late afternoon and everyone disperses for various meetings. The political energy is perceivable and the days' march has got people upbeat. The spirit of resistance is simmering once more in the streets of Oaxaca.
Of Police and Streets
Sometime after dusk, we reunite with David under the portal of the great old central Cathedral in the Zocalo. Despite the days events, the police presence in the center is negligible – mostly undercover agents discreetly monitoring the proceedings. The authorities have decided upon a non-aggressive strategy and the city is teeming with teachers in repose. It must be surreal for them to be confronted with this veil of normality in the city they once occupied. One noticeable difference from even the night before is the clandestine presence of graffiti all over the place. The ubiquitous APPO slogans and Fuera Ulises! are back on the walls of the city again.
Walking the darkening city thoroughfare, a police car slowly passes by, and David involuntarily glances over his shoulder. I imagine he has his fears - after all, it was in these very streets that he was suddenly lifted by an undercover snatch squad in broad daylight, and abruptly removed to the nightmare of indefinite incarceration.
“Fear? Yeah,” he says, “of course we have fear. But fear should not impede us from moving forward. People continue to struggle just as they did in 2006 without stepping back, or wobbling. People are coming together again, to make sure that Ulises's assassins or the abductions don't continue."
"I was a prisoner held for 11 months, just a caprice for the authorities. And then I was released for lack of evidence.” he added.
It wasn't that justice was done, more that the pressure from outside meant it was politically untenable for the state to hold him hostage any longer. David recognizes the role national and international solidarity played in his release, and in the struggle in general.
“A really important part in detaining the repression was the level of national and international observation that took place from outside. If this hadn't happened, I think that the repression would have been even much worse.”
“But it shouldn't be thought that suddenly we live in a just state now,” emphasizes David. “We still live under a state of daily repression and harassment. It's unbearable, and we can't have some government telling us that we must accept living under this state of oppression, as if it was some kind of normalcy. We don't accept it, because we are a free people, free we are born and free we were brought up. And since the resistance hasn't stopped, so the repression continues. I think that whatever happens in Oaxaca in the next while it's really important that people from outside don't stop the vigilance, and continue pressurizing the government to limit their use of reactionary violence.”
A new Amnesty International report echoes his concerns, denouncing the repression on the social movement and the general impunity that exists for security forces in the country in general, and the abuse of citizen's rights in Oaxaca in particular.
But this climate of fear engendered by the authorities doesn't stop David traversing these streets which he has known all his life. Indeed, the going is slow as he meets and greets all and sundry along the way – like this middle-aged indigenous man who stops him randomly and wishes him well, knowing of his unjust imprisonment. It's like the movement, even if it doesn't hold the center, still has the street.
We are going to a social center where a bunch of musicians and activists are gathered for a night of Son Jarocho, a traditional popular song and dance. It's an autonomous space, familiar to other cultural and political spaces in different parts of the globe - self-managed, a shebeen of sorts, where people come and go, and the mood is friendly. Between ardent musical performances, people give brief presentations, like this from a representative of the Universidad de la Tierra ( UniTierra), a peoples' university based here in the city. Another is a report back from the caravan of the isthmus region undertaken by a group of VOCAL activists, including David, who returned early this morning. The Trail of the Jaguar political tour of the rural isthmus consolidated links with indigenous communities under the theme “for the regeneration of our collective memory”.
In a quiet moment we drag David away for the gathering and continue with our interrogation. On the flat roof of the social center, the city stretches out far and wide, the lights shimmering across the vast valley. Oaxaca is a much bigger place than it seems when wandering around the historic center.
"What's going on with the movement in the city, and in the countryside," I ask, "Where do we stand now?"
“Here in the city, there has been a strong militarization and a heavy police presence to repress the movement. Meanwhile the government has somewhat ignored the indigenous communities and it is there, in the rural community that some very important organizing is happening. I'm not saying that the movement in the city has finished and now the movement is only in the countryside, no. It is more that the government, while focusing all their attention on defeating the movement in the city, has allowed discontent to flourish in the countryside,” says David.
While of course simultaneously letting the paramilitaries have a free hand to do their dirty work in the communities – including the April ambush murder of two women journalists working for La Voz que Rompe el Silencio (“The Voice that Breaks the Silence”), a community radio station serving the Trique indigenous community. But the kind of police and military saturation within the City has not occurred in the communities.
“And so today in Oaxaca City there is a tense calm. The councilors and officials of the APPO and Section 22 leadership are being conciliatory and opportunistic. Groups of Stalinists and PRD-istas of the electoral persuasion are making a pact with the business leaders to get permission to mobilize. But the others, like us in VOCAL and other groups, the majority of the movement, are in constant confrontation with the authorities because our mobilizations are not seen gladly by the state - and the line between repression and tolerance is barely visible,” says David.
A Oaxaca Commune
The Son Jarocho session is wrapping up and people are homeward bound. We pile into a van going out to the outskirts of town where a bunch of people are staying. There's about a dozen of us in this beat up van, rattling along the highway out of town. There's a certain spirit of abandonment about these people and its contagious. I'm thinking if the cops stop this thing, they will net a good dirty dozen desperadoes of veteran anarchists.
The van arrives at a feral warehouse on a sprawling lot, cluttered with machines, tools and a big old bus just back from the Trail of the Jaguar tour. The collective living space is populated by a group of weary and sonambulant activists. A tattered, faded image of the Virgin of the Barricades adorns a wall, the ironic patron saint who presided over those at the barricades in 2006. Her image, with her iconic gas mask and cloak of burning tires reminds me of Calamidad's words, the last gringa on the last barricade on the last night of the Oaxaca commune.
"A lot of people have been fucked in the head ever since November 25, 2006, " she lamented, "when it was all lost in a flurry of bullets--but damn was it a close fight for awhile. In a sense people are just as traumatized by the tragic implications of what victory might have been- and how close people were to it, so close they could taste it for the first time in their lives- as they were by the violence. When I returned to Oaxaca, I would walk into a party, and comrades would come up to me and say - 'she remembers! We almost did it, we had the city! All the barricades! The city was ours!' So its not only the repression that people remember, but also the memory of holding the streets for so long is a bitter one.....because they lost them."
Here in this chaotic, creative space, among the barricadistas who have not given up, there is a palpable feeling that, despite the loss in 2006, there is still hope and people are now organizing harder than ever.
“And,” David Venegas reminds us, “as the Mexican saying goes - 'There is no evil that can last a hundred years, and there's no body that can't resist it', meaning that everything has its own time, and this straight-jacket of a state has come to its end. That the time has come.”
Up and down the country people are invoking the centennial memory of the first Mexican revolution – 1910 - to herald a new revolution in 2010. "What's the feeling here," I ask David, "about this quasi-mystical belief in revolutionary change on a sanctified date?"
“Well many Mexicans are resigned to the fatality of the idea of 2010,” he says with a smile, “ and as you know, Mexico is profound and millenarian. But for me, its not important that the deed happens on this very date, but more importantly that it occurs! And I can feel it in the air in Mexico - a longing for revolution. But revolutions don't just occur on a certain date - they are prepared. And what I'm seeing is an growing insurgent spirit, alongside an increase in the brutality of the government. There is a great indignation felt by the communities and movements against whom the bad government has declared war.”
“I hope a revolutionary change occurs in this country because there can be no half solutions, reforms are not going to end the injustice and exploitation. A change from the bottom is necessary, a profound and truthful change. This is what millions are demanding, and this is what the government are trying to deny us. The government has failed to reform the state constitutionally, to comply to our aspirations. That is why it is we, the people who must make those changes – because the government has lost its opportunity. So now its our responsibility to make those changes.”
It's midnight once more in Oaxaca, and this long plenteous day, May 15, 2008, is over. We bed down in the loft cosy with about 20 other companeras and companeros and dreams come easily. History is a nightmare from which Oaxaca, like Mexico, is trying to wake up from and maybe 2006 was just a primer.
The Last Rebels of the Caribbean
Garifuna Fighting For Their Lives
by Ramor Ryan from Upsidedownworld.org >
They hang the man, and flog the woman,
That steals the goose from off the common;But let the greater villain loose,
That steals the common from the goose.
-Anonymous protest poem from the 17th century
Enclosing the commons – the historical process of fencing off land which had previously been in the public domain, for private use – is perhaps one of the most blatant expressions of the fundamental criminal nature of the capitalist state. Today it's the voracious neo-liberal model which stalks the last pockets of community-held global territory for privatization - from Chiapas, Mexico, to the deep Amazon, to the Garifuna coast of Honduras, leaving no stone unturned.
"We have hundreds of kilometers of beaches that aren't developed, and it's a waste,'' said the then Honduran Tourism Secretary, Ana Abarca in 2001. "We want strong tourism. We are going after the sun and the beach."
While the neo-liberal government sees unproductive beaches and waste, other people see living communities existing in harmony with their surroundings. These hundreds of kilometers of "waste" are home to 76 Garifuna villages, where people live as they have for a couple of hundred years, reliant on the sea for fishing, on the beach for coconut and fruit, on the wetlands for rice cultivation and the surrounding hillsides for growing manioc, yucca, firewood, and hunting. Their simple wooden homes are built along the beaches, or on stilts above the waves. Men fish from dugout canoes or dive with spears along the reefs.
Ironically, it is the Garifuna communities' two most salient attributes – the simple beauty of their territory, and the uniqueness of their vibrant culture – that pose a threat to their existence. The former coveted by the tourist industry because of the pristine nature, the latter commodified, spearheaded by the commercialization of the mesmerizing Punta music and dance, as exotic eye-candy for the tourists.
"We dont want the mega tourist industry here," says Miriam Miranda, executive committee member of OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras), the most prominent organization representing the Garifuna people. "Why do these people come to take our resources? They are not welcome."
So despite UNESCO declaring Garifuna culture one of nineteen Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001, the problem for the neo-liberals is that the land is unproductive, and the people superannuated. The assault on the Garifuna culture and way of life on the northern coast of Honduras by a powerful cabal of government ministers and foreign investors, overseen in the name of economic developement, seems too shockingly philistine to contemplate, and somewhat akin to the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyam Buddah statues, formerly declared as another of UNESCO's cultural heritages of humanity. But such is fundamentalist nature of neo-liberal capitalist ideology: profit before people driven by naked greed.
And balanced with that rapacity is the dignity of the Garifuna resistance to the privatization of their ancestral lands. This is a struggle with fable-like, epic qualities, of heroes and villains, theft and floggings and, well if not quite geese, at least sharks. But talk to Garifuna community leader Alfredo Lopez for 5 minutes and it becomes clear that any attempts to romanticize the cut-throat struggle is incongruous. He will talk of the brutal repression, the murders, the prisoners, of an venerable culture against the wall, of a proud people facing extinction. "All this privatization is illegal, and if it continues - we are going to die as a people." says Alfredo, standing before the breathtaking Bay of Tela – the disputed territory coveted by the lascivious conglomerate of tourist industry transnationals. "To lose our land, is to lose everything. We are in a struggle for our life and we will do what it takes to defend ourselves."
Dispossessed, Marooned, Marginalized : Resistance Blossoms
The quintessential banana republic, Honduras remains after Haiti the second poorest country in the hemisphere. The Central American staples of chronic insecurity, massive migration and economic precariousness bedevil the country. And in a nation saturated by Pepsi Cola culture, McDonalds, shopping malls, and all things tacky USA bent on homogenizing everything into consumer conformity, the Garifuna stand out as fantastically different.
About 100,000 Garifuna live in small fishing communities hugging the Caribbean coast, speaking their own Igñeri dialect which is a combination of Arahuaco, Swahili, and Bantu.
Theirs is a vibrant living culture born of an utterly unique history. Between 1640 and 1670, two slave ships coming from West Africa ran aground of the tiny island of St. Vincent, in the lesser Antilles. So began the story of the people who came to be known as the Garifuna - born of a shipwreck, and never enslaved. Their fate should have been to labor to death on the colonizers’ cotton and cane plantations, but instead they find themselves - a couple of hundred castaways - on a tropical island populated by a hostile indigenous population known as the Red Caribs. This is character building stuff for sure.
The Red Caribs rescued the shipwrecked but any goodwill ended there. The indigenous attempted to enslave the newcomers and the Africans, as was to become characteristic of them, resisted. The Africans retreated to the western mountains of the island, forming a Maroon community that in time, was sought out by other runaway slaves and fugitives. So a liberated territory was consecrated and a kind of pirate utopia blossomed, an anti-capitalist autonomous zone in the age of seventeenth century capitalist expansionism. Conflict with the Red Caribs was constant and occasionally brutal, but somewhere along the line love (or maybe just cupid) overcame differences and the flowering of the union became known as " karibena galibina" - child of the Caribe, indigenous galibi - a name which underwent some morphological fine tuning until eventually becoming Garifuna. (British colonialists who had trouble with the preponderance of foreign names confronting them as they plundered about the region just called them Black Caribs.)
Resistance was the leitmotif of this Maroon community. At the dawn of the 18th century, the Red Caribs sought support from the French to defeat them. But using intrepid guerrilla tactics, the Garifuna fought the French forces back. The sword failed, but the cross had more success, and missionaries were able to penetrate the communities. But as the Garifuna converted, their spiritual resistance was to retain their African gods within the catholic paradigm: this syncretistic religion remained, not imposed, but their own.
At the dearth of the 18th century, they fought the next colonizing force – the British - to stand-still. Facing annihilation from the sole superpower of its day, the British Empire, the Garifuna negotiated and underwent a forced deportation. Exodus brought them to the uninhabited island of Roatan off the coast of Honduras. Many died at sea, but against all odds, the rebellious Garifuna survived once more.
This ethnic group that should have been killed off a few times already in their brief 100 or so years of struggle, now found a little space to work in with the regional colonial masters - the Spanish. Thriving on Roatan, (we like to have lots of children, Alfredo Lopez will tell you 200 years later) the Garifuna spread out along the Honduras coast, eventually encompassing the Caribbean coast lines of Nicaragua, Guatemala and Belize. There they intermingled uneasily with the indigenous inhabitants and always keeping their ethical and cultural identity intact. But they remained as ever, marginalized, independent and rebellious in their little autonomous enclaves.
"Going After the Sun and Beach" - the Enclosure of the Commons
Tela Bay and its environs is the center of the Honduran Garifuna world, with some 36 communities dotted along an impressive 80km sandy shore. The largest of them, Triunfo de la Cruz, population 800 families, is a quiet, unassuming village that now finds itself on the front line of the conflict. The first thing the visitor may notice about the Triunfo de la Cruz beachfront is what is lacking. Unusual for a paradise vista like this - a sweeping sun-drenched bay with lush sands and majestic palms. There is no line of beachfront hotels, no bars, no reclining tourists in bikinis sipping margaritas, no uniformed attendants sweeping up the ocean debris. Instead there is a group of hardy fishermen dragging their small old boats from the sea, there are gaggles of raggedy children playing games and and there is an intriguing, languorous feel to the place. It’s a though nothing has changed much here on the beach at Triunfo de la Cruz for a couple of centuries, and people like it that way.
Traditionally the Garifuna holds their land communally, as part of the patrimony of the people in general. The community assembly gathers to decide upon whatever happens in the territory. It is an autonomous zone as such, where the authority is the people’s assembly, and sovereignty lies not in the Honduran state, but with the Garifuna as a whole. Marginalized and isolated, this arrangement worked fine without interruption for some two hundred years, partly due to the isolation of the coast and the marginalization of the community from Honduras. Nobody else wanted to live in such a wild and remote region, so they were left alone.
Sensing encroaching danger and exhibiting not a little premonition, in 1992 the Garifuna achieved legal recognition in the courts for their communally-held land, after decades of struggle. They could rest easy, it seemed.
In 1994, the cabal of powerful business interests made their move. They imagined a Honduran-version of Cancun, bringing in the state and investors bags of money. Locals looked on aghast as suddenly a big fence went up on the beach at Triunfo in 1994 and the building of luxury villas commenced. The fact that it was a completely illegal move presented no difficulties for the developers: they got their buddies in government to change the laws. A privatization bill was introduced, rendering the communally-held land titles of the Garifuna useless. The criminal nature of the state is always the most apparent when it comes to the question of enclosing the commons. As the Tourist Minister emphasized, they were "going after the sun and the beach" and the legal annexation of community-owned lands began with impunity.
They hadn't counted on the fierce refusal of the Garifuna to accomodate these plans. Organized in the Land Defense Comittee of Triunfo de la Cruz (CODETT) the locals resisted, focusing on the unscrupulous malfeasance of the regional state authorities who in the process of fencing off the land had granted erroneous title deeds to the investors. CODETT accused the Tela Municipality authorities of abuse of authority and embezzlement of public funds.
The assault on the Garifuna came swift. Upon signing the lawsuit in 1997, three Garifuna leaders in Triunfo met violent deaths. First, activist Oscar Bregal was murdered leaving the community on January 7. Next, CODETT leader Jesus Alvarez was shot dead on April 7 while he ate with his small son in the nearby town of Tela. This was the third murder attempt on Jesus. Then later, two gunmen entered the home of Santos Zacarias Santos and shot him 17 times in front of his children. Unsurprisingly, Honduran police have not resolved any of these cases – quite possibly because they themselves are among the lead suspects.
Another prominent activist Alfredo Lopez was taken out by legal means – framed and imprisoned for trumped up drug charges. He was jailed for 7 years.
Repression is nothing new for the Garifunas. The OFRANEH organization ( Honduras Black Fraternal Organization) formed in the 1970s to defend the interests of the people and protect their communally-held ancestral land, has been the constant target of state repression. Its members’ houses have been searched, and the members themselves have been illegally detained, surveiled and harrassed. This systematic assault on the organization continues unabated. The last deadly assualt was aimed at the OFRANEH president Gregoria Flores who suffered gunshot wounds while walking down the street in nearby La Ceiba town.
The best way to combat repression is to respond with lightning action. OFRANEHs base of support is predominantly amongst women of the communities, and it was the women who responded with direct action against the first tourist project, occupying the site, and building their own form of alternative community based eco-tourist cabins alongside the stalled resort construction site. "With the force of Barauda and Satuye, our resistance continues!" proclaimed the Garifuna, winning this round of the fight.
The Long Struggle
But the reach of power and money is long. While the various legal petitions to stop the usurpation of the land went through national and international courts at a painfully slow pace, the state and investors were garnering support for their mega-tourist resort plans from high capital – the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, while at the same time wearing away at community resistance. By the time Alfredo Lopez was released from jail, having won his case before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in 2003, the struggle had almost spanned a decade. By means of another unscrupulous legal connivance called the Area Under Special Management (ABRE) edict, the Government decreed Tela Bay a kind of officially denominated developers playground. The new property law was yet another attempt to break up the Garifunas collective titles, increasing pressure on individual owners to sell their newly acquired property titles. In the small impoverished Garifuna community of Miami, a remote beachside paradise, most residents eventually succumbed to the pressure, and sold their individual land plots, opening the way up to the investors. The coercion was accompanied by veiled threats. As Garifuna leader Edgardo Benedeth pointed out: "The Miami residents think that if they don't sell the land, it will be stolen anyway".
The multi-million dollar Los Micos Beach and Golf Resort affected not only the beach but also the wetlands behind Tela Bay upon which the Garifuna depend for their livelihood. Community water supplies were heavily impacted by the hotel and golf course. "We dont play golf!" laughs Alfredo Lopez, pointing out the absurdity of putting an extravagant golf course on Garifuna land. Confronted by the heavily guarded new enclosures appearing along the beach, Alfredo comments, "We are not used to living with fences or to walk among armed security personnel. They block access to the beach and local tourism is affected. What kind of development is this that only benefits the businessmen and the owners of the projects and goes against the culture and ways of the communities?"
Not even the promised jobs for the locals materialized. "They talk of employment," points out the Garifuna organization OFRANEH, "but the reality is that the hotel chains won’t give us work, they bring workers from outside."
Still the government harked on about bringing wealth and developing the communities through the investment projects.
"According to what we have seen in the past, the reality is completely different, " argued OFRANEH. "We believe that the development has to come from inside and not from outside, and that is why already we have experiences of common and traditional tourism that the local communities are developing. So that gives us the firmness and the moral authority to say that it is not true. There can’t be development if these people force the communities to give up their property."
Employing the ever effective tactic of divide and rule, the government and investors are using money and influence to pressure, bully and buy allegiance. Some sectors of the Garifuna have given in and take the government view that the development of mega-tourism is an inevitability that can't be fought. "This is going to happen, the question is how to prepare,'' says Natividad Rochez, the Tourism Ministry's coordinator of ethnic projects and himself a Garifuna. Government friendly Garifuna NGO's are popping up, ostensibly representing locals, but in reality, payrolled by big business. The states battle for hearts and minds is fought village by village, house by house and generally negotiated through the wallet.
But resistance continues. The Garifuna will tell you a story of the origins of their famous Punta dance. The world renowned music and dance form grew from a war dance called the Yancunu. Back in the day of resistance to the colonialists, Garifuna men donned colorful masks, dressed up as women, danced salaciously before the conquistador foe and at the least expected moment, would whip out the weapons hidden among their many skirts to do battle. The struggle today takes on less extravagant tactics: in the form of legal suits before national and international courts, or mass marches on the Capital, mobilizing popular support. Yet the cunning and passion remains the same. In Tela Bay, roads are blocked and construction of the hotels sabotaged. Resistance is both collective and individual, like the single old lady who refuses to budge in the center of the development at Miami village, forcing them to build their mega complex around her little hut.
The Face of Implacable Resistance
"Very often when I do something which the state regards as illegal, I regard as legal. That is, I regard the state as criminal." - Noam Chomsky
So I’m off to the front line of the struggle, Triunfo de la Cruz, to meet the man who served 7 long years of illegal imprisonment. Alfredo Lopez currently plays a central role with the OFRANEH organization, and refusing to be silenced, has emerged as an eloquent and veracious voice denouncing injustice on his campaigning radio shows on the local Garifuna Radio Faluma Bimetu, (the Sweet Coco) and the regional-wide Radio Progreso. Implacable, he seems a living example of the dictum that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Never trust a cell phone. Sure enough the day we are meant to meet in the nearby town of Tela I can’t get through to his cell. Frustrated, I decide to board the chicken bus to Triunfo, on a blind attempt to locate him.
The bus is full of Garifuna speaking away in their own distinct Igñeri tongue, then suddenly changing to Spanish, and then, most strangely, occasionally speaking in English - and a very accented Bronx, New York English at that. I notice that the bus is full of kids and middle aged people: there is almost a complete lack of people in the 18-35 range. Then I remember that the Garifuna are a migrant community and almost half the population, predominantly young adults, live in the US.
We trundle into Triunfo de la Cruz and it’s a hot, sleepy Caribbean village with the 500 or so family houses spread out far and wide amongst the lush tropical trees. Because the town is not designed to the Spanish colonial pattern like the rest of Honduras, the imagined central plaza for me to debark at never materializes. I am already lost. So when most people have exited the bus that seems to be just riding around the labyrinthine roads somewhat randomly, I turn and ask the lady behind me where I can find Alfredo. As luck would have it, the lady tells me she is his sister.
"He’s very hard to find, you are lucky you met me," she tells me, as she takes me to her house. There she dispatches a child to alert her brother, and eventually, after getting clearance, we set off down back lanes and across yards and finally come to a little house under a bunch of big old trees. Kids are everywhere and Alfredo is busy finishing up installing a new water pump for his well as the community water system is not working.
"I’m hard to find, he says , "you were lucky." I am.
The recent spate of repression against OFRENEH members explains Alfredo’s allusive behavior. We sit under a tree and he holds a bundle of papers. He looks weary, it’s a difficult moment; OFRANEH is under a lot of pressure, people are being bought off, one by one. Other activists are migrating, Alfredo explains, and others still are simply tired of the struggle, resistance fatigue setting in. "We are really at a crucial moment in the struggle and it could go either way..."
Alfredo is an athletic 50-something year old (I used to play soccer professionally, he says), with a well lived in face and a mouth full of sparkling metal when he smiles, which he does as he tells his stories.
His is a world of total defiance. His foe – the government, the foreign investors, the compliant NGO’s and most of all, the local authorities in the town of Tela, those who framed him and killed his comrades – he refers to either as the all-encompassing "el turismo" or else simply, el enemigo – the enemy.
As in "the enemy is dividing the communities. They are setting up small meetings with certain individuals and creating divisions, so our unity is affected. They are systematically, house by house, removing us. Their tactics are complex, but familiar from other campaigns. El turismo is using local people, setting up NGOs as fronts, paying them well, buying some, pressurizing others. Our community assemblies are infiltrated by individuals working for el turismo, they try to ferment division..."
"Look what has happened in Miami" he says, referring to the only community so far to sell out to el turismo. "The community hardly exists now. It’s a tragedy, they tricked the people into signing over their deeds, and now the community is destroyed. It serves as a warning for what will happen to the rest. People look at Miami and see the future. That’s why the struggle here in Triunfo is so important. We are at the top of the list for el turismo, they want this land. If we hold out, so will the other communities."
His teenage daughter arrives out with a couple of plates of food. Delicious chicken, I’m thinking, savouring the home cooking.
"You like it?" asks the daughter.
"Fantastic."
"It's shark," she says with a laugh.
Fuck me! I’m eating a shark for the first time in my life and it’s great!
The conservation NGO's are pressuring the fishermen, explains Alfredo. Garifuna have always eaten shark and sea turtle and other now endangered ocean species.
"It's not us who emptied the ocean, we have always fished just for subsistence. Industrial fishing depletes the stocks." he says.
People constantly come and go, having a quick word with Alfredo, or looking for information. A big tall dreadlocked fisherman with hands the size of oars and an impressive laugh greets me like a brother, warm and friendly. He lingers long enough to assure me, as if there was any doubt at all in my mind – which I can assure you there was not – that he's totally down with the struggle. "To the very end," he says, with a great booming laugh.
Another man, clad in city attire, hands Alfredo an envelope, and leaves quickly, glancing about him. Cloak and dagger stuff. "We have our sources in the municipality," says Alfredo, his gold teeth flashing. "I broadcast all the inside information we receive on my radio show." Alfredo has a program on the community Radio Faluma Bimetu and uses it to inform the community of the case and the campaign. "The enemy are my best listeners because they know I’ve got the inside information!" He chuckles.
Alfredo loves to tell stories. Like when one of the OFRANEH members was arrested while blockading some construction equipment coming in. The cops brought him to the police station in nearby Tela. Within an hour a large group of Garifuna assembled, making a serious raucous with drums, music and dance, demanding his release. So he walked, the police not up to dealing with all these obstreperous Garifuna. Alfredo chuckles away while relating the story, his teeth sparkling, and it’s like every little victory for the community against the enemy fills his heart with joy.
Seven years in jail. I say. That’s tough.
"They’ll never stop me. This is a struggle to the end," he says. "We will do whatever it takes to win. We have the moral authority."
But he doesn’t want to dwell on the miscarriage of justice he has suffered, he is keen to talk about the work the campaign is doing now, or the community spirit, or the context of it all.
"Garifuna were never enslaved," he emphasis, proudly. "And our dignity keeps us resisting. The slaves’ families were broken up, but not the Garifuna and that is why they have been able to retain such a strong family bond, generations living in each others shadow. We have a real strength of community here. The spiritual element is important - our ancestors walk with us."
I can’t do justice here to his words, or how he expresses them. He speaks with utter conviction and carries himself like a proud chieftain of old, eloquent, and steadfast .
It’s one thing to read all the articles and reports about the epic Garifuna struggle but it’s another to sit here under the great old tree listening to this lion-hearted man talk, with all the children playing in the background, the sun setting over Tela Bay, a Caribbean sunset, the most majestic of them all.
What Is To Be Done?
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization declared Garifuna culture as one of the Heritages of Humanity, due to their "outstanding value, roots in cultural tradition, affirmation of cultural identity, source of inspiration and intercultural exchange, contemporary cultural and social role, excellence in the application of skills, unique testimony of living cultural tradition, and risk of disappearing."
A risk of disappearing because the Garifuna are up against murderous local authorities, the avarice of the central government, the neo-liberal plans of the foreign investors and a bunch of dodgy local and international NGOs. Now they are even pitted against members of their own community who have turned. In a word, the Garifuna are at a risk of disappearing because of capitalism. Savage, unremitting pursuit of profit.
"It’s all part of the broader Plan Puebla Panama and Cafta (Central America Free Trade Area)," says Alfredo, referring to the macro-economic plan for the region pushed by neo-liberal governments and institutions. But unity is strength and that is why they have strong ties with the indigenous network COPINH, and organizations further afield, like the Mexico-based COMPPA organization or US-based Rights Action. "We are in this together," says Alfredo, " same struggle, same enemies."
What can we do to help the Garifuna struggle? For a start we can help them develop their own local tourism by visiting them and make common cause with their plight. We can boycott the tourist industry and speak out about the inherent injustice of the mega-tourist development in the region. Italian solidarity groups have campaigned against the Italian consortium backing the project, and other groups are putting pressure on the Honduran government of Manuel Zelaya. The reputable Geneva based Human Rights group COHRE (Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions) found in July 2007 after a lengthy investigation, that "The government of Honduras is responsible for the violations of property rights, living conditions, development and life of the Garifuna communities of Triunfo de la Cruz and San Juan. Consequently it has the obligation to put integral reparation into effect, including just and adequate compensation."
That is not going to happen unless the corrupt, mercenary and criminal government at state and regional level are forced to do it.
"With such odds stacked against you," I ask Alfredo Lopez, "what are the hopes?"
"We have a string of petitions before the Inter-American Human Rights Court and we have high hopes that we can win there. The state has never won a case in that court."
"That's the hope?"
"We are in a struggle to save our people. We will do what we have to do here in Triunfo. We are the strongest community, so the struggle will be won or lost here. And we think we will win our demands! That is our hope."
***
Contact the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras at -ORGANIZACIÓN FRATERNAL NEGRA HONDUREÑA, OFRANEH Barrió El Centro, Avenida La República, 2ª Planta de Librería El Trébol, Contiguo a CELTEL, La Ceiba, Atlántida, Honduras, C. A. Apartado Postal 341.
Telefax: 00(504) 443-24-92,
e-mail: ofraneh@ofraneh.org.hn
COPINH (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras.)Barrio Lempira, La Esperanza, Intibucá, Honduras. copinhonduras@yahoo.es
COMPPA ( Coalition of Popular Communicators for Autonomy) http://www.comppa.org/
Note – Background information for this article is taken from Jose Idiaquez' The Walagallo: Heart of the Garifuna World, Envio magazine, and Rights Action Report - The Tourist Industry and Repression in Honduras (8.31.05).
by Ramor Ryan from Upsidedownworld.org >
They hang the man, and flog the woman,
That steals the goose from off the common;But let the greater villain loose,
That steals the common from the goose.
-Anonymous protest poem from the 17th century
Enclosing the commons – the historical process of fencing off land which had previously been in the public domain, for private use – is perhaps one of the most blatant expressions of the fundamental criminal nature of the capitalist state. Today it's the voracious neo-liberal model which stalks the last pockets of community-held global territory for privatization - from Chiapas, Mexico, to the deep Amazon, to the Garifuna coast of Honduras, leaving no stone unturned.
"We have hundreds of kilometers of beaches that aren't developed, and it's a waste,'' said the then Honduran Tourism Secretary, Ana Abarca in 2001. "We want strong tourism. We are going after the sun and the beach."
While the neo-liberal government sees unproductive beaches and waste, other people see living communities existing in harmony with their surroundings. These hundreds of kilometers of "waste" are home to 76 Garifuna villages, where people live as they have for a couple of hundred years, reliant on the sea for fishing, on the beach for coconut and fruit, on the wetlands for rice cultivation and the surrounding hillsides for growing manioc, yucca, firewood, and hunting. Their simple wooden homes are built along the beaches, or on stilts above the waves. Men fish from dugout canoes or dive with spears along the reefs.
Ironically, it is the Garifuna communities' two most salient attributes – the simple beauty of their territory, and the uniqueness of their vibrant culture – that pose a threat to their existence. The former coveted by the tourist industry because of the pristine nature, the latter commodified, spearheaded by the commercialization of the mesmerizing Punta music and dance, as exotic eye-candy for the tourists.
"We dont want the mega tourist industry here," says Miriam Miranda, executive committee member of OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras), the most prominent organization representing the Garifuna people. "Why do these people come to take our resources? They are not welcome."
So despite UNESCO declaring Garifuna culture one of nineteen Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001, the problem for the neo-liberals is that the land is unproductive, and the people superannuated. The assault on the Garifuna culture and way of life on the northern coast of Honduras by a powerful cabal of government ministers and foreign investors, overseen in the name of economic developement, seems too shockingly philistine to contemplate, and somewhat akin to the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyam Buddah statues, formerly declared as another of UNESCO's cultural heritages of humanity. But such is fundamentalist nature of neo-liberal capitalist ideology: profit before people driven by naked greed.
And balanced with that rapacity is the dignity of the Garifuna resistance to the privatization of their ancestral lands. This is a struggle with fable-like, epic qualities, of heroes and villains, theft and floggings and, well if not quite geese, at least sharks. But talk to Garifuna community leader Alfredo Lopez for 5 minutes and it becomes clear that any attempts to romanticize the cut-throat struggle is incongruous. He will talk of the brutal repression, the murders, the prisoners, of an venerable culture against the wall, of a proud people facing extinction. "All this privatization is illegal, and if it continues - we are going to die as a people." says Alfredo, standing before the breathtaking Bay of Tela – the disputed territory coveted by the lascivious conglomerate of tourist industry transnationals. "To lose our land, is to lose everything. We are in a struggle for our life and we will do what it takes to defend ourselves."
Dispossessed, Marooned, Marginalized : Resistance Blossoms
The quintessential banana republic, Honduras remains after Haiti the second poorest country in the hemisphere. The Central American staples of chronic insecurity, massive migration and economic precariousness bedevil the country. And in a nation saturated by Pepsi Cola culture, McDonalds, shopping malls, and all things tacky USA bent on homogenizing everything into consumer conformity, the Garifuna stand out as fantastically different.
About 100,000 Garifuna live in small fishing communities hugging the Caribbean coast, speaking their own Igñeri dialect which is a combination of Arahuaco, Swahili, and Bantu.
Theirs is a vibrant living culture born of an utterly unique history. Between 1640 and 1670, two slave ships coming from West Africa ran aground of the tiny island of St. Vincent, in the lesser Antilles. So began the story of the people who came to be known as the Garifuna - born of a shipwreck, and never enslaved. Their fate should have been to labor to death on the colonizers’ cotton and cane plantations, but instead they find themselves - a couple of hundred castaways - on a tropical island populated by a hostile indigenous population known as the Red Caribs. This is character building stuff for sure.
The Red Caribs rescued the shipwrecked but any goodwill ended there. The indigenous attempted to enslave the newcomers and the Africans, as was to become characteristic of them, resisted. The Africans retreated to the western mountains of the island, forming a Maroon community that in time, was sought out by other runaway slaves and fugitives. So a liberated territory was consecrated and a kind of pirate utopia blossomed, an anti-capitalist autonomous zone in the age of seventeenth century capitalist expansionism. Conflict with the Red Caribs was constant and occasionally brutal, but somewhere along the line love (or maybe just cupid) overcame differences and the flowering of the union became known as " karibena galibina" - child of the Caribe, indigenous galibi - a name which underwent some morphological fine tuning until eventually becoming Garifuna. (British colonialists who had trouble with the preponderance of foreign names confronting them as they plundered about the region just called them Black Caribs.)
Resistance was the leitmotif of this Maroon community. At the dawn of the 18th century, the Red Caribs sought support from the French to defeat them. But using intrepid guerrilla tactics, the Garifuna fought the French forces back. The sword failed, but the cross had more success, and missionaries were able to penetrate the communities. But as the Garifuna converted, their spiritual resistance was to retain their African gods within the catholic paradigm: this syncretistic religion remained, not imposed, but their own.
At the dearth of the 18th century, they fought the next colonizing force – the British - to stand-still. Facing annihilation from the sole superpower of its day, the British Empire, the Garifuna negotiated and underwent a forced deportation. Exodus brought them to the uninhabited island of Roatan off the coast of Honduras. Many died at sea, but against all odds, the rebellious Garifuna survived once more.
This ethnic group that should have been killed off a few times already in their brief 100 or so years of struggle, now found a little space to work in with the regional colonial masters - the Spanish. Thriving on Roatan, (we like to have lots of children, Alfredo Lopez will tell you 200 years later) the Garifuna spread out along the Honduras coast, eventually encompassing the Caribbean coast lines of Nicaragua, Guatemala and Belize. There they intermingled uneasily with the indigenous inhabitants and always keeping their ethical and cultural identity intact. But they remained as ever, marginalized, independent and rebellious in their little autonomous enclaves.
"Going After the Sun and Beach" - the Enclosure of the Commons
Tela Bay and its environs is the center of the Honduran Garifuna world, with some 36 communities dotted along an impressive 80km sandy shore. The largest of them, Triunfo de la Cruz, population 800 families, is a quiet, unassuming village that now finds itself on the front line of the conflict. The first thing the visitor may notice about the Triunfo de la Cruz beachfront is what is lacking. Unusual for a paradise vista like this - a sweeping sun-drenched bay with lush sands and majestic palms. There is no line of beachfront hotels, no bars, no reclining tourists in bikinis sipping margaritas, no uniformed attendants sweeping up the ocean debris. Instead there is a group of hardy fishermen dragging their small old boats from the sea, there are gaggles of raggedy children playing games and and there is an intriguing, languorous feel to the place. It’s a though nothing has changed much here on the beach at Triunfo de la Cruz for a couple of centuries, and people like it that way.
Traditionally the Garifuna holds their land communally, as part of the patrimony of the people in general. The community assembly gathers to decide upon whatever happens in the territory. It is an autonomous zone as such, where the authority is the people’s assembly, and sovereignty lies not in the Honduran state, but with the Garifuna as a whole. Marginalized and isolated, this arrangement worked fine without interruption for some two hundred years, partly due to the isolation of the coast and the marginalization of the community from Honduras. Nobody else wanted to live in such a wild and remote region, so they were left alone.
Sensing encroaching danger and exhibiting not a little premonition, in 1992 the Garifuna achieved legal recognition in the courts for their communally-held land, after decades of struggle. They could rest easy, it seemed.
In 1994, the cabal of powerful business interests made their move. They imagined a Honduran-version of Cancun, bringing in the state and investors bags of money. Locals looked on aghast as suddenly a big fence went up on the beach at Triunfo in 1994 and the building of luxury villas commenced. The fact that it was a completely illegal move presented no difficulties for the developers: they got their buddies in government to change the laws. A privatization bill was introduced, rendering the communally-held land titles of the Garifuna useless. The criminal nature of the state is always the most apparent when it comes to the question of enclosing the commons. As the Tourist Minister emphasized, they were "going after the sun and the beach" and the legal annexation of community-owned lands began with impunity.
They hadn't counted on the fierce refusal of the Garifuna to accomodate these plans. Organized in the Land Defense Comittee of Triunfo de la Cruz (CODETT) the locals resisted, focusing on the unscrupulous malfeasance of the regional state authorities who in the process of fencing off the land had granted erroneous title deeds to the investors. CODETT accused the Tela Municipality authorities of abuse of authority and embezzlement of public funds.
The assault on the Garifuna came swift. Upon signing the lawsuit in 1997, three Garifuna leaders in Triunfo met violent deaths. First, activist Oscar Bregal was murdered leaving the community on January 7. Next, CODETT leader Jesus Alvarez was shot dead on April 7 while he ate with his small son in the nearby town of Tela. This was the third murder attempt on Jesus. Then later, two gunmen entered the home of Santos Zacarias Santos and shot him 17 times in front of his children. Unsurprisingly, Honduran police have not resolved any of these cases – quite possibly because they themselves are among the lead suspects.
Another prominent activist Alfredo Lopez was taken out by legal means – framed and imprisoned for trumped up drug charges. He was jailed for 7 years.
Repression is nothing new for the Garifunas. The OFRANEH organization ( Honduras Black Fraternal Organization) formed in the 1970s to defend the interests of the people and protect their communally-held ancestral land, has been the constant target of state repression. Its members’ houses have been searched, and the members themselves have been illegally detained, surveiled and harrassed. This systematic assault on the organization continues unabated. The last deadly assualt was aimed at the OFRANEH president Gregoria Flores who suffered gunshot wounds while walking down the street in nearby La Ceiba town.
The best way to combat repression is to respond with lightning action. OFRANEHs base of support is predominantly amongst women of the communities, and it was the women who responded with direct action against the first tourist project, occupying the site, and building their own form of alternative community based eco-tourist cabins alongside the stalled resort construction site. "With the force of Barauda and Satuye, our resistance continues!" proclaimed the Garifuna, winning this round of the fight.
The Long Struggle
But the reach of power and money is long. While the various legal petitions to stop the usurpation of the land went through national and international courts at a painfully slow pace, the state and investors were garnering support for their mega-tourist resort plans from high capital – the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, while at the same time wearing away at community resistance. By the time Alfredo Lopez was released from jail, having won his case before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in 2003, the struggle had almost spanned a decade. By means of another unscrupulous legal connivance called the Area Under Special Management (ABRE) edict, the Government decreed Tela Bay a kind of officially denominated developers playground. The new property law was yet another attempt to break up the Garifunas collective titles, increasing pressure on individual owners to sell their newly acquired property titles. In the small impoverished Garifuna community of Miami, a remote beachside paradise, most residents eventually succumbed to the pressure, and sold their individual land plots, opening the way up to the investors. The coercion was accompanied by veiled threats. As Garifuna leader Edgardo Benedeth pointed out: "The Miami residents think that if they don't sell the land, it will be stolen anyway".
The multi-million dollar Los Micos Beach and Golf Resort affected not only the beach but also the wetlands behind Tela Bay upon which the Garifuna depend for their livelihood. Community water supplies were heavily impacted by the hotel and golf course. "We dont play golf!" laughs Alfredo Lopez, pointing out the absurdity of putting an extravagant golf course on Garifuna land. Confronted by the heavily guarded new enclosures appearing along the beach, Alfredo comments, "We are not used to living with fences or to walk among armed security personnel. They block access to the beach and local tourism is affected. What kind of development is this that only benefits the businessmen and the owners of the projects and goes against the culture and ways of the communities?"
Not even the promised jobs for the locals materialized. "They talk of employment," points out the Garifuna organization OFRANEH, "but the reality is that the hotel chains won’t give us work, they bring workers from outside."
Still the government harked on about bringing wealth and developing the communities through the investment projects.
"According to what we have seen in the past, the reality is completely different, " argued OFRANEH. "We believe that the development has to come from inside and not from outside, and that is why already we have experiences of common and traditional tourism that the local communities are developing. So that gives us the firmness and the moral authority to say that it is not true. There can’t be development if these people force the communities to give up their property."
Employing the ever effective tactic of divide and rule, the government and investors are using money and influence to pressure, bully and buy allegiance. Some sectors of the Garifuna have given in and take the government view that the development of mega-tourism is an inevitability that can't be fought. "This is going to happen, the question is how to prepare,'' says Natividad Rochez, the Tourism Ministry's coordinator of ethnic projects and himself a Garifuna. Government friendly Garifuna NGO's are popping up, ostensibly representing locals, but in reality, payrolled by big business. The states battle for hearts and minds is fought village by village, house by house and generally negotiated through the wallet.
But resistance continues. The Garifuna will tell you a story of the origins of their famous Punta dance. The world renowned music and dance form grew from a war dance called the Yancunu. Back in the day of resistance to the colonialists, Garifuna men donned colorful masks, dressed up as women, danced salaciously before the conquistador foe and at the least expected moment, would whip out the weapons hidden among their many skirts to do battle. The struggle today takes on less extravagant tactics: in the form of legal suits before national and international courts, or mass marches on the Capital, mobilizing popular support. Yet the cunning and passion remains the same. In Tela Bay, roads are blocked and construction of the hotels sabotaged. Resistance is both collective and individual, like the single old lady who refuses to budge in the center of the development at Miami village, forcing them to build their mega complex around her little hut.
The Face of Implacable Resistance
"Very often when I do something which the state regards as illegal, I regard as legal. That is, I regard the state as criminal." - Noam Chomsky
So I’m off to the front line of the struggle, Triunfo de la Cruz, to meet the man who served 7 long years of illegal imprisonment. Alfredo Lopez currently plays a central role with the OFRANEH organization, and refusing to be silenced, has emerged as an eloquent and veracious voice denouncing injustice on his campaigning radio shows on the local Garifuna Radio Faluma Bimetu, (the Sweet Coco) and the regional-wide Radio Progreso. Implacable, he seems a living example of the dictum that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Never trust a cell phone. Sure enough the day we are meant to meet in the nearby town of Tela I can’t get through to his cell. Frustrated, I decide to board the chicken bus to Triunfo, on a blind attempt to locate him.
The bus is full of Garifuna speaking away in their own distinct Igñeri tongue, then suddenly changing to Spanish, and then, most strangely, occasionally speaking in English - and a very accented Bronx, New York English at that. I notice that the bus is full of kids and middle aged people: there is almost a complete lack of people in the 18-35 range. Then I remember that the Garifuna are a migrant community and almost half the population, predominantly young adults, live in the US.
We trundle into Triunfo de la Cruz and it’s a hot, sleepy Caribbean village with the 500 or so family houses spread out far and wide amongst the lush tropical trees. Because the town is not designed to the Spanish colonial pattern like the rest of Honduras, the imagined central plaza for me to debark at never materializes. I am already lost. So when most people have exited the bus that seems to be just riding around the labyrinthine roads somewhat randomly, I turn and ask the lady behind me where I can find Alfredo. As luck would have it, the lady tells me she is his sister.
"He’s very hard to find, you are lucky you met me," she tells me, as she takes me to her house. There she dispatches a child to alert her brother, and eventually, after getting clearance, we set off down back lanes and across yards and finally come to a little house under a bunch of big old trees. Kids are everywhere and Alfredo is busy finishing up installing a new water pump for his well as the community water system is not working.
"I’m hard to find, he says , "you were lucky." I am.
The recent spate of repression against OFRENEH members explains Alfredo’s allusive behavior. We sit under a tree and he holds a bundle of papers. He looks weary, it’s a difficult moment; OFRANEH is under a lot of pressure, people are being bought off, one by one. Other activists are migrating, Alfredo explains, and others still are simply tired of the struggle, resistance fatigue setting in. "We are really at a crucial moment in the struggle and it could go either way..."
Alfredo is an athletic 50-something year old (I used to play soccer professionally, he says), with a well lived in face and a mouth full of sparkling metal when he smiles, which he does as he tells his stories.
His is a world of total defiance. His foe – the government, the foreign investors, the compliant NGO’s and most of all, the local authorities in the town of Tela, those who framed him and killed his comrades – he refers to either as the all-encompassing "el turismo" or else simply, el enemigo – the enemy.
As in "the enemy is dividing the communities. They are setting up small meetings with certain individuals and creating divisions, so our unity is affected. They are systematically, house by house, removing us. Their tactics are complex, but familiar from other campaigns. El turismo is using local people, setting up NGOs as fronts, paying them well, buying some, pressurizing others. Our community assemblies are infiltrated by individuals working for el turismo, they try to ferment division..."
"Look what has happened in Miami" he says, referring to the only community so far to sell out to el turismo. "The community hardly exists now. It’s a tragedy, they tricked the people into signing over their deeds, and now the community is destroyed. It serves as a warning for what will happen to the rest. People look at Miami and see the future. That’s why the struggle here in Triunfo is so important. We are at the top of the list for el turismo, they want this land. If we hold out, so will the other communities."
His teenage daughter arrives out with a couple of plates of food. Delicious chicken, I’m thinking, savouring the home cooking.
"You like it?" asks the daughter.
"Fantastic."
"It's shark," she says with a laugh.
Fuck me! I’m eating a shark for the first time in my life and it’s great!
The conservation NGO's are pressuring the fishermen, explains Alfredo. Garifuna have always eaten shark and sea turtle and other now endangered ocean species.
"It's not us who emptied the ocean, we have always fished just for subsistence. Industrial fishing depletes the stocks." he says.
People constantly come and go, having a quick word with Alfredo, or looking for information. A big tall dreadlocked fisherman with hands the size of oars and an impressive laugh greets me like a brother, warm and friendly. He lingers long enough to assure me, as if there was any doubt at all in my mind – which I can assure you there was not – that he's totally down with the struggle. "To the very end," he says, with a great booming laugh.
Another man, clad in city attire, hands Alfredo an envelope, and leaves quickly, glancing about him. Cloak and dagger stuff. "We have our sources in the municipality," says Alfredo, his gold teeth flashing. "I broadcast all the inside information we receive on my radio show." Alfredo has a program on the community Radio Faluma Bimetu and uses it to inform the community of the case and the campaign. "The enemy are my best listeners because they know I’ve got the inside information!" He chuckles.
Alfredo loves to tell stories. Like when one of the OFRANEH members was arrested while blockading some construction equipment coming in. The cops brought him to the police station in nearby Tela. Within an hour a large group of Garifuna assembled, making a serious raucous with drums, music and dance, demanding his release. So he walked, the police not up to dealing with all these obstreperous Garifuna. Alfredo chuckles away while relating the story, his teeth sparkling, and it’s like every little victory for the community against the enemy fills his heart with joy.
Seven years in jail. I say. That’s tough.
"They’ll never stop me. This is a struggle to the end," he says. "We will do whatever it takes to win. We have the moral authority."
But he doesn’t want to dwell on the miscarriage of justice he has suffered, he is keen to talk about the work the campaign is doing now, or the community spirit, or the context of it all.
"Garifuna were never enslaved," he emphasis, proudly. "And our dignity keeps us resisting. The slaves’ families were broken up, but not the Garifuna and that is why they have been able to retain such a strong family bond, generations living in each others shadow. We have a real strength of community here. The spiritual element is important - our ancestors walk with us."
I can’t do justice here to his words, or how he expresses them. He speaks with utter conviction and carries himself like a proud chieftain of old, eloquent, and steadfast .
It’s one thing to read all the articles and reports about the epic Garifuna struggle but it’s another to sit here under the great old tree listening to this lion-hearted man talk, with all the children playing in the background, the sun setting over Tela Bay, a Caribbean sunset, the most majestic of them all.
What Is To Be Done?
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization declared Garifuna culture as one of the Heritages of Humanity, due to their "outstanding value, roots in cultural tradition, affirmation of cultural identity, source of inspiration and intercultural exchange, contemporary cultural and social role, excellence in the application of skills, unique testimony of living cultural tradition, and risk of disappearing."
A risk of disappearing because the Garifuna are up against murderous local authorities, the avarice of the central government, the neo-liberal plans of the foreign investors and a bunch of dodgy local and international NGOs. Now they are even pitted against members of their own community who have turned. In a word, the Garifuna are at a risk of disappearing because of capitalism. Savage, unremitting pursuit of profit.
"It’s all part of the broader Plan Puebla Panama and Cafta (Central America Free Trade Area)," says Alfredo, referring to the macro-economic plan for the region pushed by neo-liberal governments and institutions. But unity is strength and that is why they have strong ties with the indigenous network COPINH, and organizations further afield, like the Mexico-based COMPPA organization or US-based Rights Action. "We are in this together," says Alfredo, " same struggle, same enemies."
What can we do to help the Garifuna struggle? For a start we can help them develop their own local tourism by visiting them and make common cause with their plight. We can boycott the tourist industry and speak out about the inherent injustice of the mega-tourist development in the region. Italian solidarity groups have campaigned against the Italian consortium backing the project, and other groups are putting pressure on the Honduran government of Manuel Zelaya. The reputable Geneva based Human Rights group COHRE (Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions) found in July 2007 after a lengthy investigation, that "The government of Honduras is responsible for the violations of property rights, living conditions, development and life of the Garifuna communities of Triunfo de la Cruz and San Juan. Consequently it has the obligation to put integral reparation into effect, including just and adequate compensation."
That is not going to happen unless the corrupt, mercenary and criminal government at state and regional level are forced to do it.
"With such odds stacked against you," I ask Alfredo Lopez, "what are the hopes?"
"We have a string of petitions before the Inter-American Human Rights Court and we have high hopes that we can win there. The state has never won a case in that court."
"That's the hope?"
"We are in a struggle to save our people. We will do what we have to do here in Triunfo. We are the strongest community, so the struggle will be won or lost here. And we think we will win our demands! That is our hope."
***
Contact the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras at -ORGANIZACIÓN FRATERNAL NEGRA HONDUREÑA, OFRANEH Barrió El Centro, Avenida La República, 2ª Planta de Librería El Trébol, Contiguo a CELTEL, La Ceiba, Atlántida, Honduras, C. A. Apartado Postal 341.
Telefax: 00(504) 443-24-92,
e-mail: ofraneh@ofraneh.org.hn
COPINH (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras.)Barrio Lempira, La Esperanza, Intibucá, Honduras. copinhonduras@yahoo.es
COMPPA ( Coalition of Popular Communicators for Autonomy) http://www.comppa.org/
Note – Background information for this article is taken from Jose Idiaquez' The Walagallo: Heart of the Garifuna World, Envio magazine, and Rights Action Report - The Tourist Industry and Repression in Honduras (8.31.05).
Waiting For Hector
An Implacable Fight for Justice in Nueva Linda, Guatemala
By Ramor Ryan, March 2008
Upside Down World >
Why would anybody camp by the side of a busy road? Why would anybody camp by the side of a busy road sheltered only by rough structures made from palm tree fronds in the punishing tropical heat and torrential downpours? And why would anyone do it for four long years?
Bety Reyes, an indigenous campesina, has been camping outside the Nueva Linda Finca on the road to Retalhuleu, Guatemala, and she remains there today. True enough, she isn't alone - she has her husband and children with her, as well as some of her extended family, and is accompanied by 173 other campesina families. And if you were to ask her why she has been camping at the side of the busy roadside for over 4 years in horrendous conditions, she will tell you, simply, that she is waiting for justice. Her father Hector Reyes was disappeared here on the Nueva Linda Finca on the 5th of September 2003; Hector’s family and their supporters are staying put until the authors of the crime are brought to trial. "A rich landlord disappeared a poor peasant," says Bety, "we know who did it, and now we want to bring them to justice."
One More Disappeared
The story of the Nueva Linda resistance encampment is one of unrelenting sorrow and unrepentant resilience. Hector Reyes worked as an administrator on the Nueva Linda Finca, one of the many huge plantation farms on the southern coast of Guatemala owned by a handful of wealthy landowners - this particular one owned by a Spaniard by the name of Carlos Vidal. Typically the conditions of work were semi-feudal, and farm hands received maybe $5 a day, working under harsh conditions in the scorching tropical heat. As soon as Hector Reyes stood up to defend the rights of his fellow workers, he was a marked man. They came for him in the dead of night, bundled him away and he was never seen again.
Disappearances are nothing uncommon in Guatemala. During the 36-year long Civil War, tens of thousands of labor and campesino organizers were disappeared without a trace, their corpses buried, tossed into the ocean, or sometimes dropped into volcanos from military helicopters.
Everybody on the Nueva Finca farm knew that the owner Carlos Vidal sent one of his henchmen, Víctor de Jesús Chinchilla, to get rid of Hector. Disappearing campesinos is of little more import for the land-owners of the fincas of southern Guatemala than culling pestilent beasts. What Senor Carlos Vidal had not accounted for was the determination of Hector’s family and his campesino organization - Maya Sin Tierra - to pursue the cause of justice.
In a brazen act of rebellion, 1200 campesinos occupied the Nueva Linda Finca on December 13 2003, surrounding Vidal's mansion and demanding the "re-appearance" of Hector Reyes, or his remains. Senor Vidal's favored means of transport in and out of his property was by helicopter, and landing became somewhat hazardous amongst a vast tent city of indigenous peasants squatting the entire area. That non-violent occupation demanding justice came to a dreadful and abrupt end ten months later on August 31, 2004 - Bloody Tuesday.
Death in Nueva Linda
It was a massacre foretold. Then President Oscar Berger predictably rolled over to pressure from the Farm Owners Association. "The state must protect private property," he announced ominously. "The state police must be sent in to evict the squatters in Nueva Linda."
So, one sunny morning armored vehicles accompanied by 1200 army, police and hired guns came up the road, spread out across the lush, verdant fields and opened fire on the squatters’ encampment. 9 campesinos were killed - five executed at point blank range, and 45 were injured. The unarmed protesters resisted - against the odds but fighting for their lives - and in the ensuing melee, 3 police were killed. Thirty-odd campesinos were brutally arrested and the camp lay vanquished, burnt to the ground. President Berger praised the security forces and blamed the indigenous for the massacre.
Massacres are nothing uncommon in Guatemala. Of the 200,000 deaths during the interminably long civil war, over 90% of the killing has been attributed to the Armed Forces, principally by means of massacre. Perhaps the most infamous of them all was the assault on the Spanish Embassy on Jan 31, 1980 - which had been occupied by protesters - in which over 40 people were murdered by the army. Since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, the unrelenting violence has persisted in the form of social war. As street gangs battle it out with each other and the security forces, social movements continue to be the target of human rights abuses. The Mirna Mack Foundation puts the death toll in the country at 25,700 - from just the last 5 years of generalized violence.
So the Nueva Linda massacre was soon forgotten in the media and the public consciousness as Guatemalans got on with living their lives in the shadow of huge daily insecurity, economic precariousness and the mass exodus of its youth to the arduous road toward the United States. What are 13 deaths in a remote field on the coast compared to the daily slaughter on the city streets? On the same day I visited the Nueva Linda Encampment, February 27 2008, I counted 13 reported violent street deaths in the daily newspaper.
But the campesinos of Nueva Linda continued their campaign of resistance. Soon after the massacre, Hector Reyes family fearlessly took up residence on the side of the road outside the Nueva Linda Finca. This few yards of land - a no-mans’ land between the landowner’s finca and the federal highway, could be squatted because it wasn't private property. There they boldly set up camp and were joined by survivors of the massacre and others from the national indigenous farmers coordination (CONIC) - eventually numbering 173 families. Conditions were appalling, but they pitched their makeshift tents of plastic sheets and palm tree fronds, dug a well for water, and like a little roadside refugee camp, they managed. The shameless finca owner set up an armed security post across the road to intimidate the encampment, but Hector Reyes' family and their supporters were immovable. "Not one step backwards" they said, "until justice is done,” now demanding justice for the victims of the massacre as well as the disappeared.
Government and Lies
Faced with such unrelenting determination, the state turned to more conniving and Machiavellian tactics to get rid of the problem.
"Hector Reyes migrated to the USA," stated the State Governor of Retalhuleu. Not only was he alive and well, the governor claimed, but they knew exactly where he was and were willing to pay the airfare for Hector’s wife, Floridema, to fly up there to find him! Floridema had been a persistent and troubling presence on the protest for the state and landowners. So, remarkably, off went Floridema on a desperate and futile goose chase across the state of Florida in search of a man who the people who sent her knew was buried not a mile from where she had been camping by the side of the road. Floridema remains in the US still, cleaning a hotel in Florida and sending back money to her family so that they can continue their roadside struggle.
The state hadn't counted on the resilience of Floridema's daughter, Bety, who continued to hold the family flag of resistance and leading the road-side vigil with new vehemence. She gave birth to a child during the long protest, naming him Hector in honor of her missing father.
Some two years passed by the side of the road, and the authorities steadfastly ignored the protest. So the protesters decided to relocate to the central plaza of Guatemala City, right in front of the palace of justice, putting the case back on the national agenda. But in a country where the left has been decimated, what hope is there for the social movement like the Nueva Linda protesters? The government continued to ignore their encampment in the central plaza and the mass media paid them scant attention. As they packed up their paltry possessions to return to the roadside at Nueva Linda after the month-long stint in the Capital, it might have seemed like they had touched rock bottom - a time of despair and hopelessness. But no, the protesters could still count on their resources and their own agency to carry them through. "If we don't struggle," a campesina told the cameras in a rain-swept central plaza, "what is left for us?"
Among the Implacable
There are those who struggle for a day and they are good.
There are those who struggle for a year and they are better.
There are those who struggle many years, and they are better still.
But there are those who struggle all their lives:
These are the implacable ones.
- Bertolt Brecht
The chicken bus speeds at top speed past kilometer 207 on the Retalhuleu-Champerico road, its tail-wind flapping the plastic sheet coverings of the roadside encampment in its wake. "We’re getting out!" I shout at the driver, and the old bus skids to a dramatic halt. All the passengers look curiously at the two gringos descending the bus in the middle of nowhere.
We jump onto the dusty roadside and clamber along the uneven ditch. An elderly man with but a couple of teeth is raking the dirt in front of a makeshift plastic bag hut - the first in a long line - and he smiles broadly.
"You have arrived," he says.
"Yes," we say, "we have arrived."
He points us up further along the track, towards camp central.
As we make our way along the ditch, I take in the surroundings. The Nueva Linda farm is a rich, fertile plain, flat and green as far as the eye can see. The aroma of the tropical vegetation is overpowering to the senses, but here by the side of the road, only the gaseous fumes of the constant traffic trundling by overwhelms us.
Welcome!" shouts Bety Reyes as we approach the heart of the encampment. She cradles an 18-month old child in her lap - young Hector, I presume - and she smiles effusively. We are quickly introduced to about a half dozen people and the mood is startlingly delightful. What’s up with these people? Shouldn't they be miserable, stuck forlornly on the road side for years, like some unremitting purgatory? But no, there is something else going on here.
The tractor trailers, buses and trucks and cars whiz by an arm’s length away. We, the visitors, are almost shaken to the core by their passing, but the occupants of the camp seem oblivious. Their mirth is contagious and even the kids seem enthused to meet us. Among the dust and debris of the ditch, their joy amazes us, as if the protest camp were a party, or perhaps some deeply intoxicating rebel elixir. It’s all good karma though, and, I surmise, it feels right to be humbled before others' high spirits. Mahatma Ghandi would have loved this place.
We are debriefed by the group’s human rights representative, Mariano Lellel of the Civil Association Pro-Justice Nueva Linda Group. As one of the most articulate and outspoken advocates for the protest, Mariano - a cheerful indigenous activist in his late 40's - is clearly a marked man. Death treats forced him to go underground recently, and he hid out in indigenous villages for 2 months. "I am like a hunted animal," he says, smiling wryly. But now he walks freely.
"What protection do you have?"
"National and international solidarity," he says.
Scant protection, I'm thinking. But Mariano is confident that the authorities and powers that be don't want to further tarnish their image in this sensitive case with another disappeared.
He is, however, far more eager to talk about the protest in general than his own personal safety. After four years, they are still confident of the future. While they are not expecting much from the new (slightly) left/leaning president, Álvaro Colom, it is a positive sign that he has accepted an invitation to meet them in person in Guatemala City. "[Former president] Berger tricked and mocked us," says Mariano, "let the new President prove himself by his actions."
“What gives the group hope?” I ask.
"We have brought a petition to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission", he says, "and that body has ruled favorably in the past with social movements."
“And what are your hopes beyond the immediate political goals?”
Mariano looks away ponderously, and for a moment he is actually thinking beyond strategy and tactics - into the realm of dreaming. "We wish that we can get a little piece of land so that we can stay together. Maybe we can get a loan from a national or international institution to help us achieve this. In this very area, where we are from..."
So at least one product of this epic struggle has been a group of people who want to live, work, and struggle, side-by-side, sharing the same space and land for the rest of their lives - together.
I find this thought quite satisfying. Having traveled a long way to know their struggle, I am very happy to have met these people.
For Justice's Sake
It is time for us to leave the encampment. In yet another stroke of bad fortune, an accidental fire a few weeks previous burnt most of the camp to the ground. Characteristically, residents bounced back undaunted and have rebuilt everything with gusto. A young girl comes forward to exhibit the pretty horrific 2nd degree burns on her arm and back, but even she is smiling and upbeat. How this struggle leaves its mark.
"For us, the poor, there is no justice," says Bety, as we bid farewell.
“What plans for the future?” I ask.
"I'm not moving anywhere soon," she says smiling and then gets back on her cellphone to discuss the case with some human rights lawyers in the city.
But finally, one last somewhat philosophical quandary that had been troubling my mind: “Why? Why sit on a roadside for 4 years? Why give your life to a cause? Is it to win, or is it because it is the right thing to do?”
Mariano, the hunted man, the marked man, replies with a characteristic wide smile - "It’s for both of these," he says, "and it’s for justice."
For more information, visit the Pro-Justice Nueva Linda Group,
or contact them here: info@justicianuevalinda.org
By Ramor Ryan, March 2008
Upside Down World >
Why would anybody camp by the side of a busy road? Why would anybody camp by the side of a busy road sheltered only by rough structures made from palm tree fronds in the punishing tropical heat and torrential downpours? And why would anyone do it for four long years?
Bety Reyes, an indigenous campesina, has been camping outside the Nueva Linda Finca on the road to Retalhuleu, Guatemala, and she remains there today. True enough, she isn't alone - she has her husband and children with her, as well as some of her extended family, and is accompanied by 173 other campesina families. And if you were to ask her why she has been camping at the side of the busy roadside for over 4 years in horrendous conditions, she will tell you, simply, that she is waiting for justice. Her father Hector Reyes was disappeared here on the Nueva Linda Finca on the 5th of September 2003; Hector’s family and their supporters are staying put until the authors of the crime are brought to trial. "A rich landlord disappeared a poor peasant," says Bety, "we know who did it, and now we want to bring them to justice."
One More Disappeared
The story of the Nueva Linda resistance encampment is one of unrelenting sorrow and unrepentant resilience. Hector Reyes worked as an administrator on the Nueva Linda Finca, one of the many huge plantation farms on the southern coast of Guatemala owned by a handful of wealthy landowners - this particular one owned by a Spaniard by the name of Carlos Vidal. Typically the conditions of work were semi-feudal, and farm hands received maybe $5 a day, working under harsh conditions in the scorching tropical heat. As soon as Hector Reyes stood up to defend the rights of his fellow workers, he was a marked man. They came for him in the dead of night, bundled him away and he was never seen again.
Disappearances are nothing uncommon in Guatemala. During the 36-year long Civil War, tens of thousands of labor and campesino organizers were disappeared without a trace, their corpses buried, tossed into the ocean, or sometimes dropped into volcanos from military helicopters.
Everybody on the Nueva Finca farm knew that the owner Carlos Vidal sent one of his henchmen, Víctor de Jesús Chinchilla, to get rid of Hector. Disappearing campesinos is of little more import for the land-owners of the fincas of southern Guatemala than culling pestilent beasts. What Senor Carlos Vidal had not accounted for was the determination of Hector’s family and his campesino organization - Maya Sin Tierra - to pursue the cause of justice.
In a brazen act of rebellion, 1200 campesinos occupied the Nueva Linda Finca on December 13 2003, surrounding Vidal's mansion and demanding the "re-appearance" of Hector Reyes, or his remains. Senor Vidal's favored means of transport in and out of his property was by helicopter, and landing became somewhat hazardous amongst a vast tent city of indigenous peasants squatting the entire area. That non-violent occupation demanding justice came to a dreadful and abrupt end ten months later on August 31, 2004 - Bloody Tuesday.
Death in Nueva Linda
It was a massacre foretold. Then President Oscar Berger predictably rolled over to pressure from the Farm Owners Association. "The state must protect private property," he announced ominously. "The state police must be sent in to evict the squatters in Nueva Linda."
So, one sunny morning armored vehicles accompanied by 1200 army, police and hired guns came up the road, spread out across the lush, verdant fields and opened fire on the squatters’ encampment. 9 campesinos were killed - five executed at point blank range, and 45 were injured. The unarmed protesters resisted - against the odds but fighting for their lives - and in the ensuing melee, 3 police were killed. Thirty-odd campesinos were brutally arrested and the camp lay vanquished, burnt to the ground. President Berger praised the security forces and blamed the indigenous for the massacre.
Massacres are nothing uncommon in Guatemala. Of the 200,000 deaths during the interminably long civil war, over 90% of the killing has been attributed to the Armed Forces, principally by means of massacre. Perhaps the most infamous of them all was the assault on the Spanish Embassy on Jan 31, 1980 - which had been occupied by protesters - in which over 40 people were murdered by the army. Since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, the unrelenting violence has persisted in the form of social war. As street gangs battle it out with each other and the security forces, social movements continue to be the target of human rights abuses. The Mirna Mack Foundation puts the death toll in the country at 25,700 - from just the last 5 years of generalized violence.
So the Nueva Linda massacre was soon forgotten in the media and the public consciousness as Guatemalans got on with living their lives in the shadow of huge daily insecurity, economic precariousness and the mass exodus of its youth to the arduous road toward the United States. What are 13 deaths in a remote field on the coast compared to the daily slaughter on the city streets? On the same day I visited the Nueva Linda Encampment, February 27 2008, I counted 13 reported violent street deaths in the daily newspaper.
But the campesinos of Nueva Linda continued their campaign of resistance. Soon after the massacre, Hector Reyes family fearlessly took up residence on the side of the road outside the Nueva Linda Finca. This few yards of land - a no-mans’ land between the landowner’s finca and the federal highway, could be squatted because it wasn't private property. There they boldly set up camp and were joined by survivors of the massacre and others from the national indigenous farmers coordination (CONIC) - eventually numbering 173 families. Conditions were appalling, but they pitched their makeshift tents of plastic sheets and palm tree fronds, dug a well for water, and like a little roadside refugee camp, they managed. The shameless finca owner set up an armed security post across the road to intimidate the encampment, but Hector Reyes' family and their supporters were immovable. "Not one step backwards" they said, "until justice is done,” now demanding justice for the victims of the massacre as well as the disappeared.
Government and Lies
Faced with such unrelenting determination, the state turned to more conniving and Machiavellian tactics to get rid of the problem.
"Hector Reyes migrated to the USA," stated the State Governor of Retalhuleu. Not only was he alive and well, the governor claimed, but they knew exactly where he was and were willing to pay the airfare for Hector’s wife, Floridema, to fly up there to find him! Floridema had been a persistent and troubling presence on the protest for the state and landowners. So, remarkably, off went Floridema on a desperate and futile goose chase across the state of Florida in search of a man who the people who sent her knew was buried not a mile from where she had been camping by the side of the road. Floridema remains in the US still, cleaning a hotel in Florida and sending back money to her family so that they can continue their roadside struggle.
The state hadn't counted on the resilience of Floridema's daughter, Bety, who continued to hold the family flag of resistance and leading the road-side vigil with new vehemence. She gave birth to a child during the long protest, naming him Hector in honor of her missing father.
Some two years passed by the side of the road, and the authorities steadfastly ignored the protest. So the protesters decided to relocate to the central plaza of Guatemala City, right in front of the palace of justice, putting the case back on the national agenda. But in a country where the left has been decimated, what hope is there for the social movement like the Nueva Linda protesters? The government continued to ignore their encampment in the central plaza and the mass media paid them scant attention. As they packed up their paltry possessions to return to the roadside at Nueva Linda after the month-long stint in the Capital, it might have seemed like they had touched rock bottom - a time of despair and hopelessness. But no, the protesters could still count on their resources and their own agency to carry them through. "If we don't struggle," a campesina told the cameras in a rain-swept central plaza, "what is left for us?"
Among the Implacable
There are those who struggle for a day and they are good.
There are those who struggle for a year and they are better.
There are those who struggle many years, and they are better still.
But there are those who struggle all their lives:
These are the implacable ones.
- Bertolt Brecht
The chicken bus speeds at top speed past kilometer 207 on the Retalhuleu-Champerico road, its tail-wind flapping the plastic sheet coverings of the roadside encampment in its wake. "We’re getting out!" I shout at the driver, and the old bus skids to a dramatic halt. All the passengers look curiously at the two gringos descending the bus in the middle of nowhere.
We jump onto the dusty roadside and clamber along the uneven ditch. An elderly man with but a couple of teeth is raking the dirt in front of a makeshift plastic bag hut - the first in a long line - and he smiles broadly.
"You have arrived," he says.
"Yes," we say, "we have arrived."
He points us up further along the track, towards camp central.
As we make our way along the ditch, I take in the surroundings. The Nueva Linda farm is a rich, fertile plain, flat and green as far as the eye can see. The aroma of the tropical vegetation is overpowering to the senses, but here by the side of the road, only the gaseous fumes of the constant traffic trundling by overwhelms us.
Welcome!" shouts Bety Reyes as we approach the heart of the encampment. She cradles an 18-month old child in her lap - young Hector, I presume - and she smiles effusively. We are quickly introduced to about a half dozen people and the mood is startlingly delightful. What’s up with these people? Shouldn't they be miserable, stuck forlornly on the road side for years, like some unremitting purgatory? But no, there is something else going on here.
The tractor trailers, buses and trucks and cars whiz by an arm’s length away. We, the visitors, are almost shaken to the core by their passing, but the occupants of the camp seem oblivious. Their mirth is contagious and even the kids seem enthused to meet us. Among the dust and debris of the ditch, their joy amazes us, as if the protest camp were a party, or perhaps some deeply intoxicating rebel elixir. It’s all good karma though, and, I surmise, it feels right to be humbled before others' high spirits. Mahatma Ghandi would have loved this place.
We are debriefed by the group’s human rights representative, Mariano Lellel of the Civil Association Pro-Justice Nueva Linda Group. As one of the most articulate and outspoken advocates for the protest, Mariano - a cheerful indigenous activist in his late 40's - is clearly a marked man. Death treats forced him to go underground recently, and he hid out in indigenous villages for 2 months. "I am like a hunted animal," he says, smiling wryly. But now he walks freely.
"What protection do you have?"
"National and international solidarity," he says.
Scant protection, I'm thinking. But Mariano is confident that the authorities and powers that be don't want to further tarnish their image in this sensitive case with another disappeared.
He is, however, far more eager to talk about the protest in general than his own personal safety. After four years, they are still confident of the future. While they are not expecting much from the new (slightly) left/leaning president, Álvaro Colom, it is a positive sign that he has accepted an invitation to meet them in person in Guatemala City. "[Former president] Berger tricked and mocked us," says Mariano, "let the new President prove himself by his actions."
“What gives the group hope?” I ask.
"We have brought a petition to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission", he says, "and that body has ruled favorably in the past with social movements."
“And what are your hopes beyond the immediate political goals?”
Mariano looks away ponderously, and for a moment he is actually thinking beyond strategy and tactics - into the realm of dreaming. "We wish that we can get a little piece of land so that we can stay together. Maybe we can get a loan from a national or international institution to help us achieve this. In this very area, where we are from..."
So at least one product of this epic struggle has been a group of people who want to live, work, and struggle, side-by-side, sharing the same space and land for the rest of their lives - together.
I find this thought quite satisfying. Having traveled a long way to know their struggle, I am very happy to have met these people.
For Justice's Sake
It is time for us to leave the encampment. In yet another stroke of bad fortune, an accidental fire a few weeks previous burnt most of the camp to the ground. Characteristically, residents bounced back undaunted and have rebuilt everything with gusto. A young girl comes forward to exhibit the pretty horrific 2nd degree burns on her arm and back, but even she is smiling and upbeat. How this struggle leaves its mark.
"For us, the poor, there is no justice," says Bety, as we bid farewell.
“What plans for the future?” I ask.
"I'm not moving anywhere soon," she says smiling and then gets back on her cellphone to discuss the case with some human rights lawyers in the city.
But finally, one last somewhat philosophical quandary that had been troubling my mind: “Why? Why sit on a roadside for 4 years? Why give your life to a cause? Is it to win, or is it because it is the right thing to do?”
Mariano, the hunted man, the marked man, replies with a characteristic wide smile - "It’s for both of these," he says, "and it’s for justice."
For more information, visit the Pro-Justice Nueva Linda Group,
or contact them here: info@justicianuevalinda.org
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