From George Salzman
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/
Oaxaca, Wednesday 14 February 2007

Friends,

Oaxaca, the Great Mexican Social Volcano Rumbles is an introduction to Nancy Davies’ reports and commentaries from ‘ground zero’. It begins:

The great Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl, … on 19 September 1985 … brought unprecedented devastation to Mexico City. A massive self-mobilization of ordinary citizens responded spontaneously to rescue as many as possible of those trapped alive in the wreckage. Many speak of that event, which shook the heart of Mexico, as the beginning of an enormous surge in Mexican civil society. It is that …

Activists Demand that CompUSA, Sears, Kmart End Involvement in Controversial Mexican Dam - by sare, www.portland.indymedia.org

Public urged to protest and boycott retailers linked to Carlos Slim, investor in planned “La Parota” megadam.

Human rights, indigenous sovereignty, environmental and anti-globalization activists are calling for protests and boycotts of three major US retail chains-CompUSA, Sears and Kmart-due to their involvement with plans for a hydroelectric dam that would displace tens of thousands of indigenous subsistence farmers in southern Mexico and destroy critical tropical forest ecosystems. A 2006 United Nations report listed the planned “La Parota” dam near Acapulco as Mexico’s top economic, …

Here are a few recent stories regarding NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), followed by some background information.

NAFTA Toll-Highway Destroying Prime Agricultural Land
excerpt from the article: The Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) is its official name. Critics call it the NAFTA Highway. The publicized TTC is being treated as a regional story because of the disruption to Texas farmers and other property owners.

The TTC is no ordinary highway. The toll road would be four football fields wide. It includes separate lanes (up to six for automobiles, four for large trucks), plus tracks for freight trains, separate tracks for high-speed and …

Despite Attacks, Another Popular Assembly Emerges By Nancy Davies; Commentary from Oaxaca. January 28, 2007

The Triqui indigenous community of Oaxaca declared its autonomy on January 21, 2007 after the election of its municipal authorities. The election process required two months to complete. The new municipal president is José Ramírez Flores with vice-president Leonardo Merino, constitutional mayor Severo Sánchez and secretary Macario Merino. Six others were named to the new Council of Elders (Concejo de Ancianos).

The chosen new government will employ the traditional indigenous practice of usos y costumbres used among the Triqui, with a council of elders and decisions made …

The following report was put together by Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org, January 2007
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THE STUDENT OF TORTURE GETS TORTURED
(Testimony, Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, December 19, 2006)

In the city of Tlaxiaco, one victim of illegal detention and torture after another speaks to our emergency human rights delegation. Some stop in the middle of the hard parts to cry; some listening cry. Hard stories.

Cuitlahuac Santiago Mariscal, a teacher with the SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores Educativos), stands before us. ‘I am doing my thesis at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) on the systemic use of torture by Mexican ’security’ forces. …

An interview with Antonio Caba, a Maya activist working to hold ex-dictators accountable for one of the western hemisphere’s most violent civil conflicts in the modern era.

Written by Elias Lawless, upsidedownworld.org

WireTap Editor’s Note: Over the following months, WireTap magazine will publish interviews with Guatemalan Maya activists from the Association for Justice and Reconciliation looking to hold ex-dictators and military heads responsible for one of the hemisphere’s bloodiest civil conflicts in the modern era.

Last month marked the ten-year anniversary of the signing of the Peace Accords in Guatemala — an agreement that ended …

The following is the first essay in a compilation of three essays and two declarations by Indians of the northern Sierra of Oaxaca, which can be found here: Communality and Autonomy

Autonomy and self-determination: The past and future of and for our peoples.
by Jaime Martínez Luna
translation by George Salzman and Nancie Davies

Note:. Where a term may be unclear, I included, in italics, a numbered explanatory note, as e.g. [3] followed by the note.

Perhaps at no moment of our history have the indigenous peoples been at such a historic juncture, in which the analysis of our self-determination was the most certain …

The following is an email I received from George Salzman :
Friends, I received from a teacher here, a good person who I’ll call X, the following heartfelt e-mail to various international human rights (derechos humanos) organizations:

Dear Sirs:

When almost all the human rights organizations interested in knowing the situation of human rights in my country are paying a lot of attention to the Oaxacan struggle to get a new democratic order in this poor southern Mexican state, not many of them are looking to the dismay situation that most Central American people traveling through Mexico …

The audio on this page was part of a special 12-hour New Year’s Day broadcast on CKUT 90.3FM in Montreal. The shows combined are a look back at the resistance of local and global social justice movements in 2006, and a look ahead to the struggles to come in 2007.

In the audio player to the right you can listen to 16 of the 28 shows. If you want to listen to the rest, please head over to this page on the CKUT blog

Thanks to Jaggi for sending this out.

A …

MEXICO CITY, Dec 30 (Tierramérica) - Although they live near a gigantic water distribution system, the indigenous Mazahuas lack access to water and live in deep poverty. Since Dec. 11, when they shut off the valves of one of the system’s plants in protest, Mazahua women have kept up the vigil — and warn that it could turn radical.

“We prefer jail over continuing without water,” Beatriz Flores, a member of the “General Command of the Mazahua Women’s Army in Defence of Water”, told Tierramérica.

The group, despite its name, declares itself to be a peaceful movement. Its protest consists of maintaining …