San Juan Copala Calls for Second Human Rights Caravan to Break Siege.
by Ramor Ryan, Oaxaca May 12th.
UpsideDownWorld.com
In an act of implacable defiance, the Autonomous Municipality of San
Juan Copala has called on civil organizations to organize another
Human Rights caravan to attempt to break the paramilitary blockade
surrounding their besieged headquarters in the indigenous Triqui
region of Oaxaca, Mexico. The caravan, called for May 30-31, hopes for
the participation of hundreds of national and international human
Rights observers and activists, and will be convened by Diocesan
Commission of Peace and Justice, and the Bartolomé Carrasco Regional
Human Rights Center .
The first Caravan which attempted to break the San Juan Copala siege
was ambushed on the isolated road to the community on April 27 by 25
masked and heavily armed paramilitaries, resulting in the death of two
activists, while injuring a dozen more.
Blame for the attack was attributed by the Autonomous Municipality
authorities to “groups of paramilitaries from the Union of Social
Welfare for the Triqui Region Organization [UBISORT, in its Spanish
initials] linked to the PRI [the governing party of Oaxaca State, the
Institutional Revolutionary Party].”
The two dead were well-known and respected human rights defenders.
Bety Carino Trujillo, director of the local NGO Cactus, which focuses
on indigenous and communitarian rights, was one of the primary
organizers of the fated caravan, and had recently toured Europe giving
testimony to the violence suffered by indigenous communities in
resistance in her home state of Oaxaca. Her words, somewhat
prophetically dwelling on the life and death struggle of her people,
are recorded here in Dublin, Ireland. The Finnish citizen Jyry Antero
Jaakkola was a popular activist who worked on a (as yet unrealized)
project to send a ship full of humanitarian aid from Europe to
beleaguered communities in Mexico–from Oaxaca to Chiapas. Jyry was
currently working closely with the Oaxaca City- based, and
predominantly anarchist group VOCAL (Oaxacan Voices Constructing
Autonomy and Freedom). Understanding the dangers faced in the struggle
in Oaxaca, he expressed his willingness to stand alongside his Mexican
companeros and the social movement in their resistance against
government repression.
“We know the risks involved in social activism in Oaxaca, and we knew
the risks going into San Juan Copala on April 27,” explained one of
the survivors of the ambush in an interview given to to Upside Down
World this week in Oaxaca City. The radical activist who asked to
remain anonymous for reasons of security, maintains they did the right
thing despite criticisms from other activist sectors that it was a
dangerous and foolhardy expedition.
“When the autonomous municipality put out a call for observers to
break the siege, we answered that call because of the terrible
situation faced by the people. These companeros had come to Oaxaca
City during the uprising of 2006 and now it was our turn to go to them
in their time of need. Solidarity, togetherness–this is what the
movement is all about.”
While the first caravan was initially imagined as far bigger, various
actors pulled out at the last moment out of fear, while others simply
couldn’t find the meeting point, and so the eventual group that set
off on the road numbered a much reduced 22 people. The group agreed
amongst themselves that at the first sign of trouble, they would turn
back. They didn’t want to provoke anything with the paramilitaries,
but they also wanted the beleaguered community to know that they were
not alone. And so they set off hoping to get as close as they could,
and maybe even achieve the goal of delivering humanitarian aid in the
form of food and medicine thus breaking the 5 month long siege, both
materially and psychologically.
The Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala, created in January of
2007 by a breakaway group of Triqui’s inspired by the Zapatista model,
was an act of rebel impudence that did not go unnoticed by the state
authorities, who immediately began consolidating other Triqui groups
into an armed opposition. The state government, according to Proceso
magazine, “ channeled millions of pesos into the Triqui organizations
Ubisort and Mult to contest the newly created Autonomous
Municipality.” That financial support was used to arm and train the
paramilitaries and a reign of violence engulfed the zone – there have
been 19 politically-linked assassinations in the Trique region since
December 2009 alone.
The siege on the autonomous municipality began in November, 2009.
Paramilitaries from Ubisort set up road-blocks and cut the town’s
electricity and telephone lines. The town market closed as the flow of
goods and services ceased, and the schools shut down. Some 700
families were trapped within the blockade. Meanwhile, the governor
Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and state authorities looked the other way or
insisted, cynically, that it was an “internal Triqui issue.” Citing
“ancestral conflicts and inter-community strife”, they washed their
hands of the situation. “The Mexican State benefits more than anyone
else when the Triqui are fighting amongst themselves. But the region’s
political and economic bosses also benefit,” explains lawyer and
investigator Francisco López Bárcenas, emphasizing the political
interests in maintaining the violence. Why send in the security forces
or army, when the paramilitaries are doing the job of destroying the
Autonomous Municipality for them?
“Mexico is a dangerous country to defend Human Rights,” commented
Amnesty International in their Demand Dignity report, highlighting the
case of two young Triqui women, Teresa Bautista Merino and Felicitas
Martinez Sanchez who worked on the autonomous community radio station
The Voice That Breaks the Silence. The duo, presenters of a radio show
denouncing human rights abuses, were similarly ambushed and killed by
paramilitaries in the region in April, 2008.
Nevertheless, even in a country where according to the Office of the
High Commissioner of Human Rights of the United Nations, eleven human
rights activists have been murdered since 2006, the ambush of the
Human Rights observers caravan is unprecedented in its audacity.
“These kind of brazen attacks on Human Rights missions don’t even take
place in war zones like Colombia, Iraq or Afghanistan,” pointed out
Contralinea, an investigative magazine who sent two reporters on the
caravan.
So nobody on the caravan expected what came next as they approached a
makeshift blockade of stones strewn across the road in a quiet,
deserted part of the hilly terrain on April 27.
The human rights defenders, sensing danger, decided to turn around
immediately and head back. As they u-turned the three vehicles,
legions of masked figures started streaming down the rocky hillside
towards them, pointing AK-47’s. Without warning or indication the 20
or so gunmen opened fire and didn’t stop for a quarter of an hour. “A
rain of bullets enveloped us,” explained one survivor. In the panic
and confusion of the assault, Bety and Jyry were both shot dead on the
spot, while others fled into the surrounding hills seeking cover,
pursued by the attackers.
A few days later, sitting in a dark bar near the bustling Oaxaca City
market, the radical activist and ambush survivor is pondering upon his
escape, while his good friend Jyri perished.
“It’s the fourth attempt on my life since 2006,” he explains. “I’ve
been lucky so far. I’m just trying to be as effective as possible as
long as I’m still alive.”
As we talk, news comes through on the attack on another militant from
the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) on his way to
work that morning. Marcelino Coache, a well known public speaker and
movement activist who last year was kidnapped and tortured by unknown
assailants presumed to be a death squad, was once again attacked by
assailants, who stabbed him and left him for dead. But he survives.
“Here in Oaxaca such is the level of state-sponsored aggression and
total impunity,” explains the activist, “that these death-squads or
the paramilitaries can pull off yet another stunt like this on
Marcelino or the ambush in Copala without fear of consequences. They
can do whatever they want to do. They have backing right to the top.”
Indeed, State Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz insists on referring to the
ambush as a “confrontation between the community and national and
international activists.” The governor, publicly denounced recently as
a tyrant (by members of his own PRI party!), when asked about the
death of the Finnish Human Rights activist Jyri, countered by asking
about the visa status of the foreigner. “It is against the
Constitution for foreigners to be involved in Mexican politics.”
Which brings to mind the problematic of the second caravan to break
the siege of San Juan Copala. Not all activists in the city are in
agreement in sending another caravan into the “intractable Triqui
situation.” Add to the measure the suspicion that Ubisort are involved
in narco-activities and therefore, like in other parts of the country
wracked by the "Drug War", where narco-lords, state officials and
security forces are in tight collaboration (‘Colombiaization’), the
security of the caravan is anything but certain. Members of the
Autonomous Municipal Authority have called for State police protection
for the caravan, while Governor Ruiz Ortiz has promised to block the
caravan, and deport any foreigners on it.
“If we can get 1000 people, or more, they can’t stop us,” says the
radical activist. This seasoned militant is hopeful that the teachers
union, Section 22, the backbone of the 2006 uprising, will mobilize in
big numbers for the second caravan. But the teachers have been in a
state of disarray of late and will be overseeing a state-wide teachers
strike at the same time. Meanwhile the formerly powerful social
movement is also heavily divided, and feeling the pressure of years of
unceasing repression.
“We reaffirm our commitment to never give up, because the future we
yearn for is near,” ends the communique from the San Juan Copala
Autonomous Municipality, sent out from the municipal headquarters now
under its fifth month of blockade. “We know that the night is darkest
before the dawn."
