American proxy regime using fascist police and torture in Mexico: The tactics & techniques used by the police/paramilitaries reported here are straight out of SOA/WHINSEC manuals. One thing you can do is get people to watch John Pilger’s War On Democracy, lay down some righteous truth on those living in corporate media darkness-

 The events of Atenco, Oaxaca, Chiapas are clearly not aberrations. They all involve the considered, premeditated, and continued use of municipal, state, and federal forces and institutions to illegally, and with apparent total impunity, trample the human rights of both Mexicans and foreigners alike, including those of international human rights observers and media representatives like the four Spanish citizens abducted by police in Oaxaca, like Valentina Palma, Cristina Valls, and María Sostres similarly abducted then deported from Atenco, like Brad Will murdered in Oaxaca while trying to get word out to the rest of the world about what was happening then, and is still happening today, right now, in Mexico – gross, systematic, federally- and seemingly internationally-sanctioned, human rights abuses – and this from the country occupying the chair of the United Nations Human Rights Council. 

Take the four Spanish citizens snatched off the street in Oaxaca a couple of weeks of ago. Laia Serra (human rights lawyer), Ramón Sesén (professor), Nuria Morelló (anthropologist) and Ariadna Nieto (journalist) were walking with a Mexican friend in the historic centre of Oaxaca at 9.30pm on 5th August when they were surrounded by police, thrown up against a wall, then forced into a pick-up truck. They were taken to what appeared to them to be military or police quarters “…where people were dressed in blue and green uniforms. When they took us out of the truck they covered our heads and dragged us to a wall where we were forced to kneel down while they took away our back packs, fanny packs, documentation, and money.” After being robbed, they were variously photographed, interrogated, threatened, beaten, sexually assaulted, forced to do “humiliating acts” and terrorized – but they were not informed of what offences they were accused of or why they had been detained ie, they were subjected to what now appears to be standard Mexican police procedure – violent arbitrary detention. THEN they were taken to a police station, processed (but not permitted to make a phone call or contact their Consulate), and appeared before a judge who informed them that they had been caught without identification – she was completely uninterested in the fact that the police who took their bags had it all, and ordered their transfer to an immigration detention centre in Mexico City, pending deportation. From there they managed to contact the Spanish Consulate, and were finally released on 13 August, when Mexican authorities admitted they were in the country legally, and there was no justification for their deportation. Of course it is pure coincidence that both Laia and Ramón were involved in the 5th International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights, which in February presented a damning report detailing human rights abuses in Oaxaca, and all four had attended the Zapatista International Encuentro in Chiapas the previous week…

The good thing about being a foreigner who is illegally detained, robbed, beaten, sexually assaulted, threatened, tortured and terrorised in Mexico is that afterwards you can jump on a plane and go home, pretty sure that your house will still be there when you arrive back. The option for indigenous Mexicans is somewhat more limited, as the people of Montes Azules in San Manuel municipality found out this week. About the only jumping they got to choose was from the helicopters that, like some fifth-rate video game, police used to round the community up like cattle then forced them aboard to transfer them to the municipal capital, while staff from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources destroyed their houses and pastures.

Keeping the home fires burning seems to be the order of the day, as I discovered 1-14 August while human rights observing in another San Manuel Zapatista Autonomous community, Emiliano Zapata. Local paramilitary group OPDICC are suspected of setting fire to neighbouring land two days after our arrival, but a well-timed torrential rainfall put it out within a few hours. A couple of days later they set another, which burnt overnight but was also rained out (see photo – brown areas are fire- burnt). Obviously unsatisfied with these efforts, and perhaps in honour of the meeting of the San Manuel Municipal Council attended by members from throughout the entire region, Saturday 11th saw an even bigger fire at the end of our valley, blocking the only road out for several hours. (h/t The Unapologetic Mexican)