Article translated from Revolución tres punto cero June 22, 2014 – The bodies of at least 162 dead migrants trying to cross the border from Mexico to the US were found in mass graves in a cemetery located in Falfurrias, TX. According to the Corpus Christi Caller Times, anthropologists and students made the discovery in
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Tampa, FL – It is Cinco de Mayo, or May 5, but before you participate in “Cinco de Drink-o” and yell, “Happy Mexico Independence Day!” read this article.
In the late 1960s the Chicano movement started to commemorate the battle of Puebla and held annual events to mark that history. Over the years the Cinco de Mayo events spread to the point that they reached the ‘mainstream.’ Then U.S. beer companies started to sponsor the Cinco de Mayo events. Eventually Cinco de Mayo increasingly lost its political significance and became a marketing tool for alcohol and other products.
Looking back, it all started around 1862. Mexican President Benito Juárez, of indigenous, Oaxacan descent, declared Mexico would not pay any foreign debts for two years. France reacted by sending in troops to Mexico and demanding payment. What happened on May 5 was the Mexican victory in La Batalla de Puebla, or the Battle of Puebla. The battle was fought in the state of Puebla, Mexico and it was one of the few victories against the French. The poorly-equipped Mexican army defeated the powerful French army.
Just under 15 years earlier, in 1848, Mexico was invaded by another foreign power – the United States. After supporting pro-slavery American settlers who broke Texas away from Mexico, the U.S. took one-third of the land of Mexico, which is now the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and even parts of Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Once-Mexican people would now become trapped in a land that would not acknowledge them as Americans and one that Mexico would shun as non-Mexican. This was in 1848 – the U.S. war and takeover of what is now called the U.S. Southwest would become the homeland of the Chicano nation.
In Mexico, the Battle of Puebla is still remembered and will forever remain a victory for the Mexican people. But Cinco de Mayo is not celebrated in Mexico the way it is commercially celebrated in the U.S. In the U.S., we see major companies and various types of businesses push for parties, drinking, new liquors and ‘Mexican’ memorabilia.
The fact is, Cinco de Mayo is not mentioned in the U.S. as a day when Mexicans fought and won against foreign domination and in particular against France, which is still sending its troops to other countries. Never is the day called “La Batalla de Puebla,” and much less is it ever linked to the Chicano Nation and how it came to exist.
Donning ‘sombreros’ and shaking maracas is just plain incorrect and should not be encouraged. As far as the Independence of Mexico goes, that day is the 16th of September. In 1810 when father Miguel Hidalgo gave the Grito de Dolores, a cry for independence from Spain. And while U.S. beer companies and Dos Equis will keep finding a new beer to market, we remind everyone Cinco de Mayo meant much more to the people than getting drunk. The fifth of May symbolized the day people united to fight back against colonization and against the pillaging of their people by a foreign occupier.
Marisol Marquez is a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Marquez organizes in Tampa with a group called Raices En Tampa. If you wish to contact her, you can message her on her twitter account: twitter.com/elmaryelsol
Tucson, AZ – The usual evening at the University of Arizona might involve young males playing war simulations on video game players. That is unless there is a public presentation and discussion of armed indigenous groups battling Mexican drug cartels.
On Wednesday, February 19, 2014, Simon Sedillo, an activist filmmaker, shared his experience filming “El Movimiento de Autodefensas” (“The Self-Defense Movements”) with fifty University of Arizona students and local activists. Autodefensas are armed indigenous groups that are kicking out the drug cartels in the states of Guerrero and Michoacán. The people are saying “Ya Basta!” to the violence, corruption, and hopeless desperation of living in cartel-controlled areas. Filmmaker Sedillo described the cartel-controlled towns as “The Hood.” In these places, cartels bribe elected officials, police, and military and the community suffers. Taking up arms, communities are now determining their own lives in their ancestors’ territory.
In the agricultural fields of Michoacán, corn, timber, and fruits are harvested but two commodities dominate production: avocados and marijuana. Michoacán is the worlds leading producer in avocados, and marijuana is a hugely profitable cash crop. In 2010, in the town of Periban, the Knights Templar cartel (KT) seized total control after eliminating its competitors. Competing with rivals, the KT initially appeared community-oriented by building schools and funding projects. However, once control was complete, the KT turned on the community and extorted 50% from any profits that people made. From lemon pickers, avocado farm owners, to tortilla vendors, everybody had to pay. Refusal to comply resulted in threats, and then in torture. Continued refusal meant the KT killed your family, and eventually killed you with a plastic bag over your head.
In three short years, the terror campaign launched by the KT took many forms. A form of rape called “prima nocta” used by kings and nobles in medieval Europe, involves KT bosses forcing themselves on brides, while their husbands are held hostage. Killing, torture, extortion and kidnapping grip the communities in fear.
In the most desperate of situations however, the people of Periban and other communities began to rise up in arms. Former gang members turned community defenders grabbed their automatic weapons, while other community members grabbed hunting rifles. With police and politicians long gone, the abandoned vehicles and artillery of the police became the communities’ resources. Boldly, the community defenders began to hunt down and kill members of the KT. After initial success, even lower level members of the KT began begging to switch sides and join the autodefensas. The upper level KT sought to consolidate power by killing off rank and file members of the autodefensas. However, entry into the autodefensas by outsiders is almost impossible.
Who are the autodefensas?
The corporate media casts the autodefensas as vigilantes. Others are less certain; Laura Carlsen of the Center for International Policy, joining the conversation from Mexico City by phone, described the autodefensas as “a bunch of men running around with guns.”
In the room at University of Arizona, Sedillo clarified: “the mainstream media and the official line claim the self-defense patrols are composed of marauding militias. Not true. Comunitarios is what the people in this part of the state call the self-defense groups in order to clarify their relationship to the community. They are from the community and are therefore comunitarios (communitarians).”
Many communities are returning to traditional ways of governing themselves while also adopting new methods. Both include consensus decision-making and participatory democracy in the form of assemblies. These assemblies decide what is to be done. So the armed groups do not act without the consent of the community, but are accountable to the assemblies.
Ms. Carlsen cautioned the “militarized nature” of this movement and advocated a peaceful, nonviolent approach. She feels it could lead to further destabilization and an escalation of Federal and paramilitary involvement.
Carlsen was immediately confronted by an audience member who said: “Malcolm X’s analogy of people sitting on a hot stove and not letting them up best describes your liberal attitude toward these communities right to self-determination and to use force to end the KT’s rape, murder, and torture of their families!”
The assemblies also decided to root out the remaining elements of the “narcocultura.” For example, a famous “narcocorrido” singer was barricaded from entering Periban to play a scheduled concert. Communities are operating their own TV, radio, and newspapers. They are connected to the indigenous struggles in Chiapas, inspired by the Zapatistas. Solidarity and support is also coming from groups of people in Mexico City.
Two things stuck out in the presentation: On the one hand, the KT’s capitalist tendency to expand and dominate by investing in productive enterprises such as agriculture and manufacturing, in addition to their drug, gun, and human trafficking operations.
On the other hand, and much to Sedillo’s pleasant surprise, three mestizo communities are following the indigenous autodefensas inspiration and forcibly removed the cartels from their communities. “If you told me two years ago that I’d be talking about mestizo autodefensas, I would have said you’re crazy,” smiled Sedillo.
Interestingly, the Federal Government approached the comunitarios for dialogue and the opportunity to become legalized and registered. But this is because “they must admit that it is the comunitarios who know exactly who is involved, where they are hiding, and what the cartel has done to their families over the last several years. The government officials admit that without the help of the comunitarios, it would be impossible to get rid of the Knights Templar cartel. It is clear that the comunitarios have the upper hand in this situation.”
Unlike Carlsen, Sedillo actually spent time in these “warzones,” giving him access to community members’ voices. Sedillo added that the community members he spoke with named two big fears: “this list of comunitarios names will later be used to criminalize and incarcerate the comunitarios after they have accomplished the task at hand, ridding their state of the Knights Templar” and that “the whole agreement is pure theater, an act by the federal government to buy time and gain control of the situation.”
Two elderly women from Apatzingan told Sedillo under condition of anonymity: “Why are they signing now? Why work with the government when we have proven that we don’t need them to organize and defend ourselves? Why sign with the white-collar criminals?”
While drugs, bribery, corruption, and violence cross the US-Mexico border, so too does the fight back. Reports say community members who were living in the US returned home to play a role in this struggle for self-determination. One such person, Nestora Salgado, a strong, dynamic indigenous woman and naturalized US citizen is imprisoned in Mexico since August 21, 2013. Her “crime” is participating in her community’s legal right to form a community police force to protect themselves against the cartels.
Despite the violence and intensity, Sedillo said he felt safe in what is “liberated territory.”
The domination of the US over Mexico sees the marriage of drugs and high finance. Profits, prisons, and violence hit both sides, but unequally. In the US, banks launder $350 billion, while mass incarceration is over two million. In Mexico, cartel violence has killed 100,000 and disappeared 10,000 in the last seven years. Banks get the money, the poor get prison, and many Mexicans are displaced, disappeared, or murdered.
For more information about the autodefensas visit: http://elenemigocomun.net/
Huntsville, TX – On Jan. 22 at 6:00 p.m., the State of Texas is planning to execute Mexican national Edgar Tamayo by lethal injection. The planned execution has sparked intense controversy and a broad international movement demanding that Texas halt the execution. Texas has executed far more people than any other state in the U.S., a disproportionate number of them Black and Latino.
Edgar Tamayo, a laborer from Morelos, México living in Texas, was convicted of killing a Houston police officer in 1994. But Tamayo was not informed of his right as guaranteed in an international treaty known as the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to contact the Mexican consulate and request their assistance. In 2004, the United Nations’ International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. to reconsider the convictions of 51 Mexicans, including Tamayo, who had been sent to death row without being informed of their consular rights. Nine of those 51 are on death row in Texas. So far, two of that group has been executed; Tamayo would be the third.
Tamayo’s lawyer Sandra Babcock said that if Tamayo would have been notified of his right to contact the Mexican consulate he could have received consular protection and thereby would have had lawyers and investigators that likely could have prevented him from getting sentenced to death, even if he were still found guilty.
Babcock noted that Texas Governor Rick Perry could still commute the death sentence, saying on Univisión, “We still haven’t received a response to our petition for executive clemency, which would commute the death sentence.” But observers note that based on Texas’ general practice, a commutation of the sentence is highly unlikely without massive pressure.
The Mexican government has pressed Texas to stop the execution of Tamayo. In a statement on Jan. 19, Mexico’s foreign ministry said, “If Edgar Tamayo’s execution were to go ahead without his trial being reviewed and his sentence reconsidered … it would be a clear violation of the United States’ international obligations.” In the streets in México the outrage is more visceral: at protests in Cuernavaca, the capital of the Mexican state of Morelos, protesters burned U.S. flags and shut down businesses associated with the U.S. such as McDonalds and Burger King.
Texas’ planned execution of Tamayo causes problems for the U.S. government around the world, not just in México. That’s because if the U.S. government continues to violate the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by executing foreign nationals without notifying them of their right to get help from their country’s consulate, then the U.S. government’s demand for such rights for U.S. nationals in other countries are less likely to be honored.
The Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement is planning a protest outside the prison in Hunstville, where the execution would take place, starting at 5:00 p.m. on Jan. 22, an hour before the scheduled execution. On Facebook, a member of Tamayo’s family encouraged people to sign an online petition (in Spanish) demanding that Texas Governor Rick Perry stop Tamayo’s execution. There is also a sample letter here you can send to Governor Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles demanding they stop Edgar Tamayo’s execution.