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.