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11th years of imprisonment
by rattytatt
Saturday, Sep. 29, 2007 at 9:28 AM
roll.in.dirt@gmail.com
September 25th, city of Oaxaca. The 11th anniversary of the injust imprisonment 12 indigenous Zapotecos. People marched from El Llano to the prison screaming demands for their freedom, and shouting to the prisoners, their voices carrying over the barbed wire that they are not alone.
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Written in by various resistance groups in Oaxaca.Translated from Spanish.
Oaxaca 15th of September 2007
To the communities of Oaxaca:
To the communities of Mexico:
To the communities of the world:
To the indigenous communities:
To the Other Campaign:
To the 11 years of unjust inprisonment of 12 indigenous Zapotecos of the Loxicha region,the collectives, spaces, people, and organizations below firmly demand:
Immediate freedom for all indigenous prisoners in Oaxaca and Mexico!
-No more repression and plundering of indigenous communities-
The prisons of Oaxaca demonstrate that at present the war in the state of Mexico in complicity with the government of the state and the ´people in its service have developed a long history against indigenous communities. A traves of a silent war, the enterprises and all the political parties intend to finish off indigenous communities, take their natural resouces, erase their history with blood, and strip them of their territory.
The extermination, the exploitation, the lies, the plundering and the prison have been the only implements of the government of the state and the federal government against the indigenous communities of Oaxaca.
In the state of Oaxaca exist approximately 31 indigenous political prisoners, who have been put behind bars for their autonomous community organizing, for the defense of their territories and natural resources, for defending their right to self determination of their communities, and for refusing to forget their culture and their history. All of them have organized for better living conditions in their regions and communities, nevertheless crimes have been invented to keep them imprisoned.
At present there are 13 indigenous people from the region of Loxicha in different prisons in the state of Oaxaca, 12 of them will complete 11 years behind bars, some of whom injustly recieved criminal sentences of 29,30 and 31 years in prison. 4 of them ( Cirilo Ambrosio Antonio, Urbano Ruiz Cruz, Ricardo Martinez Enriquez y Estanislao Martinez Santiago) have sentences of 13 years and 6 months in prison, when really they should have already been liberated but nevertheless they arbitrarily continue as prisoners.
September 25th, 1996 began the massive repression against Zapotecas of the region of Loxicha. The Mexican army brutally punished those who demanded better living conditions.The remainder,'' 200 illegal arrests, 150 cases of torture, 32 illegal raids, 22 extrajudicial enforcements,22 forced disappearances,137 people imprisoned for political and conscious motives, many sexual abuses, harassment,death threats, and irregular penal processes, corrupt in origin'' ( Civil Mission of Human Rights 21-24 Marzo 2002)
'' Today Loxicha is not like before, the community is militarized, 3 bases of operations exist, the police only cause terror to the inhabitants, becuase they can't travel freely in order to accomplish their activities and routines, and they are always in fear of being interrogated or detained or in the worst of cases,being ambushed by the police that serve the government.''- Letter of the Prisoners of Loxicha 08/28/07
Between the people disappeared by the Mexican state and the people and the people at its service since 1996 until the date in Loxicha, they have found : Marcelino Santiago Pacheco, disappeared April 27th 2003, and his brother Anselmo Santiago Pacheco, disappeared at daybreak June 21st 2003.
The names of our compañer@s prisoners from the region of Loxicha who have been brutally robbed of their freedom, are the following: Agustin Luna Valencia,ELEUTERIO HERNANDEZ GARCIA, ALVARO SEBASTIAN RAMIREZ, URBANO RUIZ CRUZ, CIRILO AMBROSIO ANTONIO, ABRAHAM GARCIA RAMIREZ, FORTINO ENRIQUEZ HERNANDEZ, RICARDO MARTINEZ ENRIQUEZ, JUSTINO HERNANDEZ JOSE, ESTANISLAO MARTINEZ SANTIAGO, MARIO AMBROSIO MARTINEZ, Y ZACARIAS P. GARCIA LOPEZ.
All of them were detained since September 25th 1996. Subsequently to this date, groups of tens of indigenous Zapotecos of Loxicha have been arbitrarily detained, among them, our compañera and sister ISABEL ALMARAZ MATIAS who has been injustly imprisoned since June 25th 2002.
June 23rd 2002, PEDRO CASTILLO ARAGON, activist, assistant of the career of rights, advisor of indigenous communities and member of the Committee of Citizen Defense (CODECI),and adherent to the Other Campaign was detained arbitrarily, brutally tortured, and was subjected to constant interrogations with physical and phsycological torture. At present for more than 5 years he has continued to be detained injustly as a prisoner.
In June 2002, they injustly detained the youth GONZALO LOPEZ CORTES, who had been particpipating in the House of the Indigenous Student, a house for students of limited resources. He has been imprisoned 5 years.
In January of 2005, 3 indigenous compañeros:ABRAHAM RAMIREZ VAZQUEZ, NOEL GARCIA CRUZ AND JUVENTINO GARCIA CRUZ, members of the Coordinadora Magonista Popular Antineoliberal ( COMPA), and the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights ( CODEDI) of Santiago Xanica, were injustly arrested by the police of the state of Oaxaca. Under false accusations, today are imprisoned in Pochutla, they were arrested for their participation in the organization, and for demanding better living conditions for their communities. These 3 compañeros were the first political prisoners of the fascist government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
5 prisoners of the Popular Autonomous City Hall of the Village of San Blas Atempas: Since the month of August 2005 until the first of March 2006 they have arrested various compañeros of this city hall,at present 5 are in prison: ALFREDO JIMENEZ HENESTROSA, JORGE REYES RAMIREZ, FELICIANO JIMENEZ LOPEZ, JOSE LUIS SANCHEZ GOMEZ AND NICANOR SALUD RASGADO indigenous Zapotecos inhabitants of San Blas Atempa. The bail to attain the freedom of these compañeros is almost 900 mil pesos for each one and is impossible to pay.
The first of March 2006 the Autonomous City Hall was evicted by force and 10 people were arrested, 94 orders of aprehension against the inhabitants,of which today there are 44, and the otheres have been cancelled. Months after the eviction, the murder of the Treasurer of the Autonomous City Hall of Aan Blas Atempa, Faustino Acevedo Bailon who this day was travelling to the National Indigenous Congress in the State of Mexico as a delegate of San Blas Atempa. His struggle against the priista ( one of the PRI political party) overlord Augustina Acevedo Gutierrez for the disappearance of powers in the municipality, his demand of the violaton of the law of the local representative Agustina Acevedo Gutierres, in order to for there to be a judicial investigation for the crimes and corruption that have been committed in the municipality.
7 politica prisoners of the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca- Ricardo Flores Magon and San Isidro Aloapam, JUANA MORALES PEREZ, JUVENTINO CRUZ PEREZ, EUTIMIO MENDEZ LOPEZ, ANASTASIO LOPEZ PEREZ, ARTEMIO PEREZ CRUZ AND SANTOS PEREZ CRUZ, natives of San Isidro Aloapam, y NOE RAMOS HERRERA indigenous prisoner.
San Isidro Aloapam is an indigenous Zapoteco community in the Sierra Norte, of the municipality of San Miguel Aloapam of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The community resists day to day, taking care of its forest and its territory. June 18th, 2007 they suffered the agression of a priista group supported by the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and federal officials. Since this date, they have wanted to make the community look like guerrilleros and violent people, when in reality they have been defending their forests in a peaceful manner, resisting and protecting their territory, conserving and feeding their communal life before the onslaught of the government and the national and international corporate enterprises that are plundering and exterminating indigenous communities in order to keep their territory and resources.
To us it remains clear that all the accusations against these indigenous compañer@s are inventions of the government of the state and the federal government, of the police and the military in order to finish off the resistance of the indigenous and the indigenous people themselves. The resistence has been an example of the wisdom that has lived in our land that is not for sale, the hope of freedom and autonomy for the communities in rural areas and in the cities.
We know that in these days, in all Mexican territory the war against indigenous communities is being intensified, from the south until the north of Mexico they come with injustice, murder, militarization, destruction, exploitation, abuse, repression, and death against the communities that fight for their autonomy, their history, their territory, and their natural resources.