HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN MEXICO

Virtual Truth Commission

A. Background on Human Rights in Mexico

"According to the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, Mexico has the second largest army in Latin America, and the third highest defence budget after Brazil and Argentina....Ten years ago the Mexican army was rarely in the spotlight, where it frequently finds itself today due to its counterinsurgency and anti-drugs efforts." Diego Cevallos, "Troops Schooled on Human Rights," InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS), August 12, 1998. For more information, send a message to Peacenet, a non-profit progressive networking service.

There are 570 municipal districts in Oaxaca, 410 of them governed according to the traditional popular assembly , or "uses and customs". In the 1950s, grants of indigenous land were given by the government to 70 Mixtec, non-indigenous, families and the caciques were formed. The caciques are relatively large tracts of land controlled by families sympathetic to and supportive of the PRI since the '60s and '70s. They employ nearby indigenous and control markets and transport for all goods produced in their areas of influence. This means the indigenous do not have control of prices paid for their own crops, which gives the cacique owners the power to keep them impoverished and, even, in debt- again, a source of cheap labor. They don't need everybody's labor, so they are driving the indigenous from their lands, their villages, in order to take them over. To do so, they employ paramilitaries, protected by the Federal, State, Municipal police and trained by the Army. The indigenous report that the cacique owners are using their lands to grow marijuana and opium poppies. Wilson M. Powell "Veterans for Peace tour Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico and Bring back a Story of National Shame: Ours"; 5/7/98. Email Veterans for Peace

A watershed of Mexico's tragedy was the Tlatelolco massacre which unfolded on the night of October 2, 1968, when a student demonstration ended in a storm of bullets in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The extent of the violence stunned the country. When the shooting stopped, hundreds of people lay dead or wounded, as Army and police forces seized surviving protesters and dragged them away. Although months of nation-wide student strikes had prompted an increasingly hard-line response from the Diaz Ordaz regime, no one was prepared for the bloodbath that Tlatelolco became. Eye-witnesses to the killings pointed to the President's "security" forces, who entered the plaza bristling with weapons, backed by armored vehicles. But the government...claimed that extremists and Communist agitators had initiated the violence...It is Mexico's Tiananmen Square, Mexico's Kent State: when the pact between the government and the people began to come apart and Mexico's extended political crisis began." Kate Doyle, Director, Mexico Documentation Project, TLATELOLCO MASSACRE: DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUMENTS ON MEXICO AND THE EVENTS OF 1968 National Security Archive, George Washington University.

B. Human Rights Violations of the Mexican Government

B1. Murder

Emilio Alvarez-Icaza, Director of the National center of Social Communication, describing the PRI's reaction to its steadily diminisghing status, commented that , "Six hundred PRD members and sixty independent journalists have been killed since 1988." Wilson M. Powell ; 5/7/98. Email Veterans for Peace

The Mexican Constitution states that the Army is allowed out of its barracks only to defend the nation's borders and to respond to natural disasters. However, now "the army is out of its barracks," complained Deputy Benito Miron Linze, Chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Mexican Senate. "Since the popular uprising of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, in 1994, the Mexican army has built a presence in the area of over 75,000 men under arms, 45,000 since December, 1997." (On December 22, the Acteal massacre occurred, during which 45 people, mostly women and children, were murdered in a raid carried out by paramilitaries armed and directed by the Mexican army. ).... "The elimination of social leaders by arrest and murder is alarming. In Oaxaca, there has been a wave of repressions -- ever since the People's Revolutionary Army (EPR), made its appearance in three coordinated attacks on local military bases in Guerrero and Oaxaca on the 28th of August, 1996." Wilson M. Powell ; 5/7/98. Email Veterans for Peace

B2. Expropriation of the Poor

We heard stories of mass arrests, disappearances, disingenuous deceptions by state governors. "Why is this happening?", asked Benito Linze, rhetorically. "Land tenancy. Prior to 1992, ejido land (communal land held under constitutional guarantees by indigenous communities) could not be sold. Then, Article 27 was passed. The government, for the first time, authorized the sale of previously exempt ejido lands. Under pressure from NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), large landowners, who wanted to expand and convert subsistence farmland to high-productivity agribusiness, pressured the indigenous communities to sell or move out. They exerted pressure by controlling the costs of transport and marketing of ejido products, offered cash bribes, threatened bankruptcy and, even death. Some of the lands were desired for timber and mineral resources. Of course, there was no provision for those who sold to make a living other than as cheap labor for the large land holders. "What's happened," he said, "Is that accelerated privatization has made the government incapable of meeting its constitutional obligation of supporting and preserving indigenous communities." Wilson M. Powell ; 5/7/98. Email Veterans for Peace

Disappearance of communal lands activist in Tabasco. December, 1998.

B3. Clandestine Prisons

Israel Ochoa, attorney for the oppressed: "There are clandestine prisons in the country, used for illegal detention and torture. One powerful evidence of a rising consciousness, is the encampment of the women of the imprisoned indigenous on the steps of the governor's palace in Oaxaca. They have been there nine months, eating, sleeping in full view of the world, their signs of protest posted around them, telling their stories to all who will hear. "The pattern of arrests and releases is to take a few and release a few, keeping a pretty constant number behind bars. Recently, 10 cases were dropped for lack of evidence. The law is manipulated shamelessly. The same charges that don't hold up in one jurisdiction are levied in another." The government charges the detainees are guerrillas, Ochoa disproves it. The government links Ochoa with the EPR, it links the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH) with the EPR They move prisoners to prisons 1000 miles away (to Mexico City) so that families cannot visit, favorable witnesses cannot afford to travel there to testify. Ochoa himself is shunned by people because the government has them believing he is associated with the EPR and they are afraid, because the EPR is so "dark" and unknown. Wilson M. Powell ; 5/7/98. Email Veterans for Peace

B4. GAFE--a trail of pain, death and terror.

The Special Forces of the Air Transportation Group, better known as GAFE.Their fame transcends Mexico's borders. United States veterans speak of them, as do European military specialists. In inner circles, their direct and indirect participation is known in operations which have left a trail of pain, death and terror in civil society. They are Mexican Army troops, highly prepared and trained in 17 of the major academies, schools and specialized bases of the United States armed forces. In these centers, Mexican officals are prepared and trained in various military disciplines. In "low intensity warfare" strategies at the School of the Americas, located in the state of Georgia; in counterinsurgency in the countryside, at the Special Forces School in North Carolina; on intelligence, at Bolling Air Force Base In Washington DC; on techniques of night helicopter flights, at Fort Tucker in Alabama; helicopter repair in San Antonio, Texas and various preparations in 12 other military bases in the United States. Triunfo Elizalde, "The Special Groups": Yankee Collaborators, La Jornada ( Spanish Language original), August 15, 1998. Translated from the Spanish by Nuevo Amenecer Press Email address

B5. Attempts to improve military human rights record

Military personnel in Mexico, accused by rights groups of violating human rights and enjoying impunity in the shelter of military courts, have begun attending courses aimed at fostering respect for constitutional guarantees.

The Secretariat of Foreign Relations announced this week that it had instructed the Secretariat of Defence to expand coverage of the courses, which got underway a few months ago. It also asked the army to make it obligatory for military personnel to carry a card with information on the promotion and observance of human rights.
Activists described the measures as positive Wednesday, saying impunity was ingrained on many members of the military, who moreover were frequently forced to act in clear violation of human rights, such as in the conflict in the southern state of Chiapas. United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Nigel Rodley, said earlier this year that Mexican troops seemed immune to civilian justice and were generally protected by the military courts. Rodley, who visited the country last year, said police and members of the army continued using torture and other forms of abuse.
The armed forces staunchly refute such accusations, claiming that they simply do their duty....But rights groups disagree, asserting that never before have there been so many reports of violations as under the Zedillo administration.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation for Human Rights and the U.S. State Department have all expressed concern in the past few years over the deterioration of Mexico's human rights record. Several organisations have objected to restrictions and regulations set on visits by foreign observers, most of whom are interested in visiting the state of Chiapas, where the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) is based. Alleged guerrillas or drug traffickers detained by soldiers this year have denounced that they were forced by physical or psychological torture into signing a declaration.
Activists say there can be little doubt as to the veracity of such reports, because many members of the armed forces have received training in line with the theories of the School of the Americas, a ...U.S. military training centre. Close to 400 Mexican officers have attended courses on counter- insurgency tactics, intelligence work and psychological operations at the School in the past two years. The School of the Americas "is a school of murderers," where officers are taught how to torture, according to the U.S.-based non-governmental School of the Americas Watch, headed by Catholic priest Roy Bourgeois. According to official documents circulated by the press, at least 20 officers trained at the School of the Americas are in charge of fighting the EZLN and the smaller Popular Revolutionary Army. But the Secretariat of Defence insists that the army's counter- insurgency work is only aimed at restoring law and order, and does not breach civil guarantees.
Source: Diego Cevallos, "Troops Schooled on Human Rights," InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS), August 12, 1998. For more information, send a message to Peacenet, a non-profit progressive networking service.

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Updated April 11, 1999