[Ppnews] Mexico - Oaxacans and Others Fight to Free Political Prisoners

[Political Prisoner News]

Seeking Justice in the Snake-Pit of Mexican Politics


Oaxacans and Others Fight to Free Political Prisoners

http://www.narconews.com/Issue51/article3037.html

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca

March 19, 2008

The justice system of Mexico has no category 
called 
“<http://www.narconews.com/presoslibertad/en.html>political 
prisoners.” The public knows men and women have 
been unlawfully grabbed, tortures, raped and/or 
jailed, as deterrents to social movements. The 
human rights organizations protest. Posters 
appear on the walls. Nothing happens. Nobody 
knows how many persons who in are fact political 
prisoners might be imprisoned under the category of common criminal.

David Venegas Reyes, referred to by the nickname 
“El 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alebrije>Alebrije,” 
a member of the directing council of the Popular 
Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO in its 
Spanish initials), told me his best guess is that 
Mexico holds between 600 and 900 political 
prisoners or prisoners of conscience.

A forum was held in Oaxaca for three days, March 
14, 15, and 16, for the specific purpose of 
coordinating planned strategies to obtain release 
for all the political prisoners across Mexico. A 
group inside Oaxaca’s 
<http://salonchingon.com/cinema/otra_ixcotel.php?city=ny>Santa 
María Ixcotel prison planned and prepared 
posters. About fifty delegates attended El Foro 
de Articulación por la Libertad de los Pres at s 
Politic at s del País, most of them youngsters. 
Freedom for all prisoners, they say, is 
inextricably linked to building a new society.

Venegas Reyes, at the forum’s street tent set up 
between the local teacher’s union office (Section 
22, a founding part of the APPO) and the HSBC 
bank, told me on Saturday, “I am free today 
because others helped.” He was referring to the 
determined efforts of not only his sisters and 
his lawyer, but also the APPO, including Section 
22. “One person alone struggling to be released 
with dignity, the government will push down 
deeper,” he affirmed. By “released with dignity,” 
what did he mean? He obtained his liberty without 
“the gracious consent of the government, nor by a 
negotiation under the table.” He was grabbed on 
April 13, 2007 in the Llano public park by 
plainclothes officers of the Auxiliary, Bank, 
Industrial and Commercial Police (PABIC), and 
charged first with carrying drugs, and then 
successively with sedition, criminal association, 
and arson. When one accusation of a false 
criminal charge was nullified by the higher 
courts, the state governments fabricated another, 
thus the total of three additional accusations.

When Venegas was initially accused of carrying 
drugs, his family put down 4,000 pesos ($375 
dollars) to get him freed on bail. However, the 
government immediately filed the other charges, 
so David was kept inside the Oaxaca prison of 
Ixcotel for eleven months. Eventually, Venegas 
says, that initial drug charge which is still in 
process will also be ruled illegitimate, and the 
4,000 pesos will be returned. Maybe.

During the year’s imprisonment David never 
confessed to false accusations against him. “This 
naming a crime is the government’s way to 
criminalize social protests,” Venegas said.

In the same time-frame, four of the 
<http://www.narconews.com/Issue45/article2651.html>San 
Salvador Atenco (in Mexico state) prisoners were 
also released: Venegas was freed on March 5 and 
four Atenco people were freed on March 8, 2008. 
Forty-seven remain imprisoned in Chiapas, and 
jailed members of the Revolutionary Army of the 
Insurgent People (ERPI) include two Oaxaqueños. 
Venegas believes that bringing to bear 
international pressure, human rights commissions, 
and sound legal logic, all helped to gain 
releases for the four Atenco people and himself.

The forum, taking off from that point, has 
decided that international human rights pressure 
is effective – Mexico is a signatory to 
indigenous and human rights agreements – but it’s 
not enough. It named other areas which must be 
confronted, among them the media, which repeat 
criminal accusations against social protesters 
and use biased, denigrating word such as “riots” 
and “brutality”, effectively labeling protesters as criminals.

The San Salvador Atenco prisoners (who were 
<http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1827.html>tortured, 
raped and brutalized) were grabbed on May 4, 
2006. The Oaxaca teachers were assaulted on June 
14, despite placards reading “WE ARE NOT ATENCO,” 
but most of the murders, arrests and 
disappearances conducted by hired guns and police 
in civilian clothing, occurred later.

Forum participants watched a documentary film 
about Atenco on Friday evening, March 14. Sitting 
in the outdoor audience, I watched the scenes of 
violence on the screen with one thought: this 
film looks just like events in Oaxaca. The 
helicopters, the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), 
the beatings with clubs and guns, the kicking in 
of doors during illegal searches – all too 
familiar. Several of the forum participants were 
former Atenco prisoners, or prisoners from other 
areas where the social movement is active. 
Alongside them were other delegates from Tabasco, 
Chiapas, Mexico state, Mexico City and Oaxaca.

Also in the audience (and attending the forum) 
was the father of Alexis Benhumea Hernández, a 
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) 
student who was 
<http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1884.html>killed 
at the age of twenty in Atenco, Mexico on May 4. 
A 
<http://www.narconews.com/Issue41/article1807.html>gas 
canister shot by the Federal Preventive Police 
penetrated his skull. He died after some days in 
a coma. His father, Ángel Benhumea Salazar, was 
wearing a T-shirt with the words “Alex lives” 
stenciled on the front. Both Alex Benhumea and 
his father, Angél were affiliated with the 
<http://www.google.com/custom?q=other+campaign&sa=Go&cof=+T%3Awhite%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnarconews.com%2Fgfx%2Fnewlogo1_sm.gif%3BGFNT%3Agrey%3BLC%3Ayellow%3BBGC%3Ablack%3BAH%3Acenter%3BGL%3A2%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnarconews.com%3BGALT%3Ared%3BAWFID%3Aabcde338c7ad74f8%3B&domains=narconews.com&sitesearch=narconews.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8>Zapatista 
“Other Campaign.” Benhumea told me that La Otra 
is now a national presence, propelled by the 
anger against international capital and 
neoliberalism foisted onto workers and campesinos 
via the North American Free Trade Agreement 
(NAFTA). As Angél spoke he cradled in his arms an 
envelope filled with photographs of his dead son.

The campesinos of Atenco 
<http://www.narconews.com/Issue38/article1395.html>won 
a struggle against the federal government’s 
attempt to take their land for expansion of the 
Mexico City airport, in August of 2002. The 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2006/5/3/211717/2654>repression 
in neighboring Texcoco on May 3, 2006, Angél 
affirmed, was provoked by the government when 
flower vendors were refused permission to sell 
their flowers as usual, in the market of 
Belisario Domínguez. The Peoples’ Front for the 
Defense of the Land (FPDT) came from its near-by 
Atenco base, to support their struggle, as did people from the Other Campaign.

Some from the FPDT also maintained that Texcoco 
wanted to rid itself of street vendors in order 
to attract a Wal-Mart. Whatever the truth of that 
may be, ultimately, 300 civilians faced off 
against more than 3,000 PFP, Angél Benhumea told 
me. At present, he continued, those who were 
involved have moved in different directions: some 
like himself stayed with La Otra, some have gone 
with the center-left Party of the Democratic 
Revolution (PRD), and some with underground guerrilla forces.

Angél, as a trained economist and a present 
administrator at UNAM, notes that many in the PRD 
segment hope for a reform of capitalism. He says 
he has no hope for that, given the rampant 
corruption. As it happens, in Oaxaca’s elections 
for national PRD president on Sunday, March 16, 
one headline in the statewide daily newspaper 
Noticias not too subtly read, “PRD elects 
president and the PRI wins.” That referred to the 
collusion within Oaxaca. The columnist Luis Ocejo 
Martinez (March 16, 2008, page 19A “Entrevistas”) 
revealed the names of PRD “leaders” meeting with 
the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) 
governor Oaxaca Ulises Ruiz, while another 
article quotes “the people’s priest” Padre Uvi as 
saying that if the PRD doesn’t get clean and 
represent a true opposition, they will be buried. 
The national PRD did choose a person affiliated 
with Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador – with the Oaxaca votes not counted.

For his part, Ángel cites a statistic of eight 
million campesinos impoverished by NAFTA and the 
use of cheap labor reserves in Mexico. Regarding 
the guerrillas, he said, “There are PFP 
<http://narconews.com/Issue50/article3005.html>all 
over the country; the people are going to 
mobilize” against the police. People are stashing 
weapons, he said, and they will affiliate with 
the guerrillas ­ in other words, he believes that 
Mexico may see armed uprisings.

The forum attendees scheduled a protest march and 
meeting for Sunday, March 16, the final day of 
their stay in Oaxaca. While waiting for the march 
to set out, Calypso Mejía Lopez, a forum attendee 
and organizer who is the sister of Adán Mejía 
López, spoke with me. Her brother Adán was 
arrested on narcotics charges, and at age 
twenty-five faces twenty-five years in prison (he 
is in Ixcotel) if the committee to free prisoners doesn’t get him released.

Calypso told me: “The struggle at the base is the 
struggle of political ideas against capitalism 
and neoliberalism.” According to Calypso, Adán is 
a member of the APPO as well as a Marxist. She 
repeated his recent words: “It’s important for me 
to get out, but it’s so much more important that 
the people continue organizing to win social 
demands and changes in the political system.” The 
siblings were not born Oaxaqueños; they came from 
Mexico City. Does that mean, “outside agitators”? 
I don’t think so. The Oaxaca struggle is 
considered part of the same national struggle to which Angél Benhumea alluded.

Calypso affirmed that the committee’s task to 
free political prisoners includes public 
discussions, where people, often family members 
like her, explain to the public what each 
prisoner is like: an individual human being with 
human rights. This requires that the political 
situation in Mexico be openly discussed – why are 
these people imprisoned? Many people, like David 
Venegas, were arrested because they were involved 
with the APPO. Similar arrests go on all over 
Mexico. The courts know it; that’s why eventually 
the criminal charges get thrown out. The Human 
Rights committees know it; especially because 
these “criminals” are often tortured. But when 
someone is thrown in jail as a “criminal,” most 
of the public don’t ask if that is justice – or 
what is going on. They don’t recognize these 
“criminals” as people like themselves, because 
the government label of criminal is rarely challenged.

The other openly claimed political prisoners 
remaining in Ixcotel are Pedro Castillo Aragón, 
arrested in June, 2006, who was accused of 
kidnapping but who was linked to the EPR; and Miguel Ángel García.

The march from Llano Park met up with family and 
friends at the Ixcotel prison, on the highway 
outside Oaxaca city, for a crowd of about two 
hundred. Along the march route young graffiti 
painters left slogans, despite mournful appeals 
of private homeowners. McDonalds and the banks 
made no appeal; their painters disappeared the 
slogans an hour after they appeared. However, as 
is normal for Oaxaca, photographers and video makers captured many scenes.

This is a nation where social protest has been 
criminalized, according to the forum attendees. 
As David Venegas said, the forum and the 
self-organized Santa Maria Ixcotel Political 
Prisoners Committee are together formulating a 
program for struggle and a plan of action “to 
achieve liberty for all the men and women 
political prisoners, and to stop the 
militarization and the repression of social struggle.”

According to <http://elenemigocomun.net/>the El 
Enemigo Común<http://elenemigocomun.net/> website of February 19:

In Oaxaca alone, 28 social activists and comrades 
were imprisoned for political reasons. Seventeen 
of them remain in the Santa María Ixcotel Central 
Penitentiary: Adán Mejìa Lòpez, Vìctor Hugo 
Martínez Toledo, Miguel Ángel García, Pedro 
Castillo Aragón, Gonzalo López Cortéz, Isabel 
Almaraz Matías, Agustín Luna Valencia, Eleuterio 
Hernández García, Álvaro Sebastián Ramírez, 
Urbano Ruiz Cruz, Cirilo Ambrosio Antonio, 
Abraham García Ramírez, Fortino Enríquez 
Hernández, Ricardo Martínez Enríquez, Justino 
Hernández José, Estanislao Martínez Santiago, and Mario Ambrosio Martínez.

In the Pochutla Regional Prison the following 
three comrades are held: Abraham Ramírez Vázquez, 
Noel García Cruz, and Juventino García Cruz. 
There is one prisoner in the Villa de Etla 
Penitentiary––Zacarías P. García López––and one 
more is in the Cuicatlán Regional Prison––Flavio 
Sosa Villavicencio. Four comrades are in the 
Tehuantepéc Prison: José Luís Sánchez Gómez, 
Amado Castro López, Nicasio Zaragoza Quintana, 
and Edmundo Espinosa Guzmán, and another is in 
the Juvenile Facility: Jaciel Cruz Cruz.





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