Fox fails to deliver in Mexico
BY SOLEDAD GALIANA
A year ago, Mexicans elected a new president, Vicente Fox. During
his campaign, Fox committed himself to resolving long-standing
economic and human rights issues. He spoke about the rights of
the Indigenous people and promised to implement the San Andrés
Accords, a peace deal signed by the Mexican government and the
Zapatista Army in 1996. He spoke about respect for human rights
and he promised that he would improve the economic situation of a
country that, though an economic ally of the US and Canada,
remains the poor partner in a very prosperous trade treaty.
Fox's election marked the end of an unbroken 71 years of power by
the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), but one year on,
hopes for change are fading.
In one positive development, the Mexican authorities have
arrested former Argentinian military officer Ricardo Miguel
Cavallo, whose extradition is sought in connection with his role
in the tortures and disappearances that took place during the
military dictatorships in Argentina.
But in the main, Fox has failed to deliver on his promises,
creating only new and empty structures whose function seems to be
to add extra bulk to an already oversized Mexican bureaucracy.
Arturo Requesens Galnares is a human right lawyer with ACAT, an
organisation working on the human rights field offering legal
assistance to victims of torture and the relatives of those
disappeared or assassinated by state forces. He came to Ireland
recently at the invitation of Amnesty International to present
the organisation's report on human rights in Mexico, titled
``Mexico: Human Rights in a Time of Change''. This 25-page document
shows how the names of those in government may have changed, but
the attitudes of the establishment remain the same.
In the past, PRI governments approached human rights issues as an
internal affair. Those in power did not want to recognise the
right of international mechanisms or conventions to deal with the
human rights situation in Mexico. President Fox promised change,
and in his inaugural speech before Congress on 1 December 2000,
he stated: ``Mexico will no longer be held as a bad example in
matters of human rights. We will protect human rights as never
before, respecting them as never before and seeking a culture
that repudiates any violation and punishes the guilty.''
But it is a difficult, if not impossible task, to introduce a
culture of respect for human rights when the security structures
that over decades have violated the rights of citizens remain in
place. There has been no police reform in Mexico and the security
forces are not held accountable for widespread human rights
violations.
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report for 2001 highlights that
deficiencies in the administration of justice are ``a major
concern'' in Mexico. ``Prosecutors frequently ignored abuses by
police and also directly fabricated evidence, and judicial
oversight of their work was seriously inadequate,'' states the HRW
document.
``In general, human rights cases are twice as difficult as any
other case, because these involve members of the military, the
judicial police,'' explains Arturo Requesens. ``You are bringing
cases against the same authorities... In some cases, you even
find that the prosecutors are related to the perpetrators of the
human rights violation.''
One month ago, a Special UN Rapporteur traveled to Mexico to
investigate the independence of the judiciary. He concluded that
at least 98% of cases taken to the prosecutors do not arrive
before the courts.
``The reasons for this are that the prosecutors do not carry out
their job as they should,'' says Requesens. ``Sometimes the arrest
warrants are not in order, which makes it impossible to follow up
with judicial procedures. The administration of justice is one of
the big problems in Mexico and though there has been a change of
party in central government and the states' governments, there
has not been any relevant changes in the administration of
justice.''
Human rights lawyers in Mexico also have to contend with a
parallel system of justice with its own rules that does not allow
for the participation of civil legal advisors - the military
judicial system.
The military has always been and still is one of the big powers
in Mexico, as in almost all the countries of Latin America.
``Unfortunately,'' says Requesens, ``the army is a very strong power
and there are problems with the administration of justice in the
military establishment.''
The cases of Victoriana Vázquez and Francisca Santos are a good
example of how justice works in Mexico when the perpetrators of
human rights violations are members of the military.
Vázquez (50) and Santos (33) left their homes on the morning of
21 April 1999 to go in search of their younger male relatives.
Antonio Mendoza Olivero, Victoriana Vázquez's 10-year-old
grandson, and Evaristo Albino (27), Francisca Santo's brother in
law, had not been seen since going to harvest crops the day
before.
As they searched, however, the two women were intercepted by a
group of armed soldiers, who threw them to the ground, tied their
hands behind their backs and ripped off their skirts. Three
soldiers raped Victoriana Vázquez, while others dragged Francisca
Santos into a nearby ravine, where she lost consciousness and was
also raped.
On 7 May 1999, Victoriana and Francisca learned that soldiers had
killed Antonio Mendoza and Evaristo Albino. There has not been
any effective investigation into these killings. Both women, both
indigenous Mixteco, gave official testimony to the Public
Ministry on 8 May 1999.
On 26 May 1999, The Public Ministry turned the case over to the
military justice system, thereby breaching international
standards and Mexican law, which both state that the competent
authority in cases involving human right violations by the
security forces is the civil one. According to reports, the
military has since closed the case without bringing anyone to
justice.
Other human rights violations are carried out by paramilitary
groups affiliated to the army, mostly based in the state of
Chiapas. After the indigenous Zapatista rising in 1994, the
government opted for a dirty war, seeking to paint the conflict
as an internal feud between indigenous groups. The government
paid and armed groups of indigenous in Chiapas. ``They paid them
so they would take arms against other poor indigenous, so the
government could present these actions like a confrontation
between poor indigenous,'' says Requesens. ``In 1997, 45 indigenous
people were massacred in Acteal in the state of Chiapas. These
were part of an indigenous group that did not belong to the
Zapatista Movement but they were part of the civil society and
they were in a small church praying when the paramilitaries
killed them. Killing this innocent and unarmed people was a way
to provoke the Zapatistas into retaliation. These kind of crimes
are still unresolved. There has supposedly been an investigation
since 1997 and it is something that still concerns us.''
Colombia's unreported killing fields
BY DOUGLAS HAMILTON
At the end of June, a leading Colombian trade unionist, Luis
Hernández, vice-president of the public services union
SINTRAEMCALI, was invited to Belfast by the recently elected Sinn
Féin councillor Eoin O'Broin. He met with Joan O'Connor of Sinn
Féin's International Department, with trade unions and the One
World Centre, highlighting the horrific nature of workers'
struggle in Colombia. Last year alone, 136 trade unionists were
assassinated by government-backed paramilitaries, with a further
54 killed this year.
Luis Hernández spoke in detail about his union's ongoing campaign
against the neo-liberal policies of the US-backed Colombian
government, in particular the privatisation of four key services
- electricity supply, telephones, clean water supply and
drainage.
Since 1994, SINTRAEMCALI has initiated a series of
anti-privatisation campaigns, involving joint action and
solidarity between local communities and workers. These campaigns
have highlighted the costs of privatisation that would be
incurred by local communities in terms of increased misery and
impoverishment. Moreover, the depth of corruption involved, in
particular the bribing of local councillors to support the
privatisation process, was exposed. Peaceful protests were
organised which were constantly dispersed by the army and police,
who brutally attacked workers.
In 1996, a seven-day strike was called which was finally broken
by the government, involving heavy injuries to and imprisonment
of strikers. In 1998, the union took by force the main
administration building of their employers, and over a 15-day
period there were daily confrontations with the police. By
stopping food from entering the building and cutting the water
supply, the authorities attempted to starve the workers into
calling off their actions.
Despite all this, the workers won their campaign and the
privatisation process was halted. However, the historic gains
made by united workers' action was achieved at huge human cost.
During the course of the struggle 13 workers were killed.
Collusion between paramilitary death squads and the ``security
forces'', life-threatening intimidation, the need for 24-hour
bodyguards and the daily movement of activists to safe houses
have become routine for Colombian trade unionists - an experience
all too familiar for Irish republicans.
This is a time when a similar struggle against the backdoor
privatisation of the health and education services is being
fought in Ireland. The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and
Public/Private Partnerships (PPP) may look mild, but they
represent the same process of profit making for business from the
provision of basic public services. The Colombian experience acts
as a huge source of inspiration.
Luis Hernández explained that, as in Ireland, the Colombian
people are fighting a war of national liberation. This is
reflected in Plan Colombia which, while presented as a policy to
combat drugs, is in fact a strategy to increase US military and
political control over Colombia, backed by the undemocratic
imposition of US neo-liberalist economic policies.
Irish republicans have much to learn from the principled
socialist struggle of Colombian workers. International solidarity
between Ireland and Colombia must be intensified.
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