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The First Report from Chiapas on the First Day of the Other Campaign

by Narco News
Concepción Villafuerte files the first report today from the first
day of the "Other Campaign," the Zapatistas' ambitious tour of the
entire Mexican Republic. So begins the reporting of the Amado
Avendaño Figueroa Brigade, formed last month to provide an other kind
of journalism to cover the Other Campaign.
January 1, 2006
Please Distribute Widely

Dear Colleague,

Concepción Villafuerte files the first report today from the first
day of the "Other Campaign," the Zapatistas' ambitious tour of the
entire Mexican Republic. So begins the reporting of the Amado
Avendaño Figueroa Brigade, formed last month to provide an other kind
of journalism to cover the Other Campaign.

Villafuerte writes:

"And so, the Other Campaign kicks off on January 1 in colonial San
Cristóbal de las Casas, the city that was taken over on January 1,
1994 by some two thousand masked, armed, and defiant indigenous men
and women, who from the balcony of city hall sent their message of
war to the federal government.

"Twelve years later, with their numbers multiplied, it is hoped that
they return peacefully to take to take the streets and avenues of
this small city that, due to winter vacations, is full of Mexican and
foreign tourists, in addition to the adherents to 'the Sixth' who
could pay for the trip to be present for the start of the Other
Campaign from the cathedral plaza of this city."

...

"Here in San Cristóbal de Las Casa, the first talks were held in the
Cathedral. The fact that Bishop Samuel Ruiz García, or Tatic as the
indigenous call him, had proposed and accepted that then-President
Carlos Salinas de Gortari's representative and the Zapatista
delegation headed by Subcomandante Marcos meet to negotiate peace
accords in the San Cristóbal Cathedral, was denounced as an outrage
to authentic 'Coletos' (a local name for the city's conservative non-
indigenous community). These unleashed their fury by creating a
spontaneous, short-lived organization that never had a formal
structure, led by then-Mayor Jorge Mario Lescieur Talavera. The
violent group attacked the Bishop's house a year later, threatening
to burn it down. At that time, current Mayor Sergio Lobato García was
among Lescieur Talavera's followers, and he drank a good quantity of
alcohol that night to give him the strength and courage to shout
incoherencies in front of the Cathedral.

"These passages, now part of history, will repeat themselves, but in
a different form..."

Read the full report, and all the latest reporting from the Amado
Avendaño Figueroa Brigade, at this special page in The Narco News
Bulletin:

http://www.narconews.com/otroperiodismo/

From somewhere in a country called América,

Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com
webmaster [at] narconews.com

Narco News is supported by:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760
http://www.authenticjournalism.org

The Fund receives online donations at this web page:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Apply for your co-publisher's account, here:

http://www.narconews.com/copublisher/application.php

Subscribe for free alerts of new reports:

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Inscreva-se para alertas gratuitos de reportagens do último minuto em
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