Video

The Demarest Factor: US Military Mapping of Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca, Mexico

By • Sep 1, 2012

This film is part of an ongoing investigation which has exposed US military mapping of communally owned indigenous land in the Southern Sierra in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The mapping took place under the auspices of the department of geography from Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas in collaboration with the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Fort Leavenworth, in Leavenworth, Kansas. The FMSO senior analyst Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey B. Demarest declares in several essays and texts that communal ownership of property, leads to crime and insurgency. The film irrefutably exposes an ongoing military strategy to criminalize indigenous land tenure and identity in order to secure political and economic interests in the region.

For more on this issue, please see: The Demarest Factor: The Ethics of U.S. Department of Defense Funding for Academic Research in Mexico by Simon Sedillo, of www.elenemigocomun.net.


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  • John Ahni SchertowJohn Ahniwanika Schertow is an indigenous rights activist of Mohawk (Kanienkehaka) and mixed-European descent. For the past 8 years, he has served as the e... read full bio

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  1. Pingback: Underreported Struggles #65, August 2012

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