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Americas News
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Upcoming Events | News and Analysis Links |  Photo Gallery México IMCs: Chiapas, Juárez, México, Oaxaca, Tijuana, Yucatan Caribbean IMC: Puerto Rico
South America IMCs: Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Qollasuyu, Santiago, Uruguay, Valparaiso, Venezuela
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On April 24th and 25th, Centolia Maldonado Vasquez and Bernardo Ramirez Bautista, Oaxaca-based members of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, gave presentations in Greenfield and at UC Santa Cruz on indigenous Mexican migration to the U.S. and its impact in the communities of origin, the current political situation in Oaxaca, the role of women in the movement for social justice in Oaxaca, and current challenges of indigenous governing community institutions in Oaxaca.
On April 7, two indigenous Triqui women who worked at the community radio station La Voz que Rompe el Silencio (The Voice that Breaks the Silence), in the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala (Mixteca region), were shot and murdered while on their way to Oaxaca City to participate in the State Forum for the Defense of the Rights of the Peoples of Oaxaca. Three other people were injured.
According to the state attorney general, the victims are Teresa Bautista Merino (24 years old) and Felícitas Martínez Sánchez (20 years old). Francisco Vásquez Martínez (30 years old), his wife Cristina Martínez Flores (22 years old), and their son Jaciel Vásquez Martínez (three years old) were also injured in the attack.
According to prelimary reports, the women had left the station, which is part of the Network of Indigenous Community Radio Stations of the Southeast (Red de Radios Comunitarias Indígenas del Sureste), around 1 p.m. They were traveling in a truck on their way to Oaxaca City, but were ambushed on the outskirts of the community of Llano Juarez.
The two community radio activists were supposed to coordinate the working group for Community and Alternative Communication: Community Radio, Video, Press, and Internet, at the State Forum for the Defense of the Rights of the People of Oaxaca, which was to begin on April 9 in the auditorium of the teachers union in Oaxaca. The Center for Community Support Working Together (CACTUS) released a statement denouncing the murders and demanding that the state authorities investigate and punish those responsible for the crime.
The state attorney general said that twenty 7.62 caliber bullet shells were found at the site of the murders, along with other arms including an AK-47. International supporters have been asked to contact their local embassies and consulates and organize demonstrations condemning the paramilitary repression of indigenous women and community media projects.
Read more | Two Community Radio Announcers Killed in Copala, Oaxaca | Deep Dish TV blog
On April 6th, 7th and 9th, filmmaker Simón Sedillo led bilingual multi-media presentations in San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Cruz that included scene selections from three films, "El Enemigo Común" (2005), "El Machete" (2007) and "Paz Sin Justicia" (2008), in order to illustrate neoliberal atrocities and community based resistance to them in Oaxaca, Mexico.
The international network demanding accountability for the murder of US journalist Brad Will released secret documents detailing proposed military support for Mexican security forces implicated in murder, torture and continuing arbitrary detentions.
“Finally we were able to obtain these documents, which even Members of Congress have yet to see. We hope that by releasing them to the public we will be able to better make our case for withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military subsidies to the Mexican military. The murderers of Brad and many others in Oaxaca and Atenco and Chiapas must be brought to justice if U.S. support for human rights is to mean anything.” said Harry Bubbins, of Friends of Brad Will. Over 70% of the proposed $1.5 billion would entail lethal aid analysts revealed.
President Bush announced a $1.5 billion dollar “security cooperation initiative” proposal for Mexico that the President is trying to bury into the Iraq supplemental spending package submitted to Congress. The initiative allows sharing of U.S. military intelligence information with Mexican military counterparts and provides weaponry and training with the notoriously corrupt and brutal Mexican military and police. Read More
 PDF of leaked documents: high resolution (33 MB) or low resolution (3 MB) |  Indynewswire: Harry Bubbins on Plan Mexico and Brad Will | Stop "Plan Mexico" (Merida Initiative) | Friends of Brad Will | El Enemigo Común
In the morning of January 30th, Alejandro Barrita Ortiz, director of the Auxiliary, Industrial, Banking and Commercial Police, was assassinated in Oaxaca City at “El Tequio” sports park near the international airport. Two versions of the assassination have surfaced, one which claims the assassins used a 380 and 9mm handguns, and another which claims AK-47s were the weapons of choice. The second version further states that the assassins fled the scene in a red pickup and a black Dodge Stratus.
Unofficial reports have surfaced indicating that a phone call was made to the local emergency services hotline by someone claiming to represent the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), and that the caller clarified there were “two more left to go”. Barrita, director of the obscure police agency, had been identified as a key player in police operations during and immediately after the 2006 Oaxacan popular uprising. He was accused of illegal detentions of activists, as well as coordinating extra judicial operations against the popular social movement.
At the very least, his assassination represents serious ideological provocation against members of the peaceful popular social movement of the Oaxacan Peoples' Popular Assembly (APPO). Police operations are underway throughout the city, and the military has cordoned off the area of the assassination.
The exhibition "Sunday Walk to the Zócalo of Oaxaca" is a multi-media artistic response to the popular revolt and resistance that unfolded in Oaxaca in 2006 and the first traveling solo exhibition outside of Mexico for artist Gabriela León. Some of the elements of the exhibition consist of a "barricade dress" made of barbed-wire, tire treads and mattress springs found amidst the detritus; a video projection of the artist wearing the dress walking among protestors and police; a sound installation that evokes the voices of the crowds; and tarps inspired by the temporary living structures during the lengthy protest. The exhibit is at UC Santa Cruz until March 8th.
By a margin of 1.4 percent, the forces of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez lost a December 2 vote on a referendum of social programs that also would have lifted term limits for the presidency. Chávez called it a "photo finish." The United States reportedly spent $8 million dollars to sway the vote, and a CIA document uncovered by the Chavistas spelled out a thorough program of psy-ops and destabilization. Fidel Castro wrote on the Friday before the election, "The most sophisticated mass media technologically developed, designed to kill human beings and subjugate or exterminate whole peoples … is being used now against the Venezuelans, in an attempt to rip the ideas of Bolívar and Martí to shreds." The referendum would have helped the landless and small producers obtain land, given social security to laborers in the informal sector of the economy, reduced the work week from 40 to 36 hours a week with no reduction in pay, created open admissions for the universities, and sped up socialization of key industries. It would also have empowered the neighborhood councils so they could legislate and invest in their own communities. Wrote analyst James Petras, "The electorate supporting the constitutional amendments is voting in favor of their socio-economic and class interests; the issue of extended re-election of the President is not high on their priorities. And that is the issue that the Right has focused on in calling Chávez a 'dictator' and the referendum a 'coup'." Fidel Castro on the Election | James Petras Article | CIA Revelations
Venezuelan Media on the Internet | Narco News on the Referendum 1 | 2 | Venezuelan Solidarity Network
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Democracy Now
The referendum defeat in Venezuela: A warning to the working class
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Chavez undeterred by vote defeat
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The referendum defeat - What does it mean?
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Oakland Solidarity with Venezuela on 12/2/07
On the evening of November 11th, Border Patrol officers attacked participants in the closing rally of a week-long bi-national camp in Calexico / Mexicali protesting borders. The rally took place on both sides of the fence just east of the pedestrian border crossing. Nearly 100 Border Patrol agents used pepper gas pellets and batons to assault demonstrators on the U.S side. One protestor is being charged with two counts of assaulting a federal officer.
On, October 24th, a benefit was held at Station 40 in San Francisco at 7pm to support the continuing resistance in Oaxaca, Mexico. The newly released documentary "Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad" (A Little Bit of So Much Truth) was screened, accompanied by dinner and refreshments. The proceeds of the evening went to Colectivo Mujer Nueva (Oaxaca autonomous women collective) and VOCAL (Oaxacan Voices Constructing Freedom and Autonomy), an anarchist radio project in Oaxaca. Event Announcement
Un Poquito De Tanta Verdad, the new documentary by Corrugated Films in collaboration with Mal De Ojo TV, has been described by Emir Sader, of the Latin American Council on Social Sciences, as "Powerful...impressive. An essential testimony. Without a doubt, A Little Bit of So Much Truth will leave it's mark on contemporary, independent documentary filmmaking."
During the 6-month active rebellion, Indybay provided coverage of the events thanks to volunteers on the ground. Indybay's Past Coverage on the Oaxaca Insurrection included (but was not limited to): The August Elections | The Attack on the Popular Guelaguetza | Coverage from the month of November when the Federal Police entered Oaxaca City
October 6–13 is an international week of solidarity to demand that "terrorism" charges against Salvadoran protesters be dropped. On July 2, fourteen people were arrested in Suchitoto, El Salvador for taking part in a protest against water privatization. Police brutality against the peaceful demonstration produced international outrage, and ultimately this pressure forced the Salvadoran government to temporarily release the detainees. Nevertheless, protesters continue to be charged under “anti-terrorism” law and could face up to 60 years in prison. This draconian law criminalizing public protest as acts of terrorism is being used to silence the social movement in El Salvador.
The trial of the Suchitoto protesters was scheduled for the first week of October but has been delayed for six months, allegedly while the prosecutors build their “terrorism” case. More likely, the trial was delayed for lack of evidence, since those arrested were in the streets to voice their opinion against water privatization.
The corporate takeover of the world's water has been called "the greatest theft of common resources facing humanity and the planet today." Global capitalists argue that water scarcity problems will be solved by turning water into an economic good – a commodity to be controlled by global corporations and sold to the highest bidder in international markets. Meanwhile, a broad-based social movement in El Salvador is struggling to keep water accessible and public,
improve water conservation and ensure a supply of clean water for all who need it.
 Video and photos from SF protest | CISPES | Food and Water Watch
In an interview by Christina Aanestad, Dr. Ann Lopez discusses the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and it's impacts on farmers from West Central Mexico. In the interview, Dr. Lopez discusses the story of a 60 year old grandmother who risks asphyxiation to travel across the border to visit her "illegal immigrant" farmworker son. Dr. Lopez also talks about the struggles women migrant farmworkers face in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties and how neoliberal trade policies often force Mexican farmworkers to migrate into California's corporate agricultural fields.
On August 16th, email alerts were circulating that Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and other governors from Mexico were visiting Mexican Consulates in Chicago on August 17th, New York City on the 18th and Dallas on the 19th to discuss migratory reform. Activists quickly organized demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Oaxaca, and all of Mexico, as well as the millions of Mexican migrants living on the northern side of the US/Mexico border. Although Ruiz Ortiz failed to show up with the delegation, the protests went on. The Mexican governors were held responsible for conspiring with the US government and multinational corporations to impose a political economy which forces entire communities to migrate north in search of better lives.
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Hector Antonio Ventura, one of 14 people arrested during an anti-water privatization protest last year in the town of Suchitoto, El Salvador, was assassinated in his home on May 3. The assailants apparently stabbed him to death, while another man was attacked but survived. Organizations such as the legal group FESPAD have called for a full investigation into the death of the 19-year old Ventura, while expressing concern that Salvadoran authorities will not address the likely political motivation for the murder.
