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.”

Ramor Ryan is an Irish journalist based in Chiapas, Mexico. His book "Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile" was published by AK Press in 2006.

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