The Dominion - Oaxaca

Canadian-owned Mine Fuels Violence in Mexico

stephlaw — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:29:17 +0000

Residents of San José del Progreso are deeply divided over the mine

SAN JOSE DEL PROGRESO, MEXICO—It's been almost three years since hundreds of people took direct action to temporarily shut down Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver's gold and silver mine near Oaxaca City, Mexico. Since then, the neighbouring community of San Jose del Progreso has been deeply divided and residents have faced a series of difficult and sometimes deadly confrontations.

Three people have been killed so far, most recently, Bernardo Mendez Vasquez, who was shot seven times on January 18, 2012 by a municipal police officer. Locals say municipal authorities ordered the police to attack residents who were refusing to allow a new water system to be installed on their land because they feared it would be used to supply the mine with water.

Mine operation came to a two-month halt in 2009 when Zapotec community members from San Jose del Progreso and surrounding villages held it for nearly two months. The blockade ended with a massive police raid, during which demonstrators were beaten and 23 people were jailed, some for up to three months.

Fortuna has thus far avoided being linked to the violence by playing up the fact that people in San Jose are fighting with each other. CEO Jorge Ganoza has repeatedly referred to it as “senseless” violence.

"It is in no way related to our activities or involves company personnel, and we really hope that the people of San Jose, with the assistance of the state authorities, will find a long-term solution to this senseless violence,” Ganoza told the National Post regarding the recent killing.

The mine, known locally by the name of its subsidiary, Minera Cuzcatlan, went into production in late September 2011. Its opponents maintain that Fortuna Silver’s mine is the root of social problems that plague the once peaceful region.

In a press conference following the police shooting of Vasquez, mine opponents made it clear that they see a direct link between Fortuna Silver and the violence.

“The social and political conflicts that have ended the lives of three people are due to the appearance of the mining company, without the consent of the people, and not [due] to the control and power over the municipality as expressed by various authorities in the state government,” reads a statement signed by over a dozen Oaxacan organizations.

The existence of the mining project is something that residents of San Jose del Progreso cannot ignore. The main access road into the town passes directly in front of Fortuna’s massive operations, complete with the company's own power station, offices and a huge stockpile of ore, all surrounded by high chain link fence.

“In one year [the company] managed to cut the town in half, to divide the people, and the dispute became present in all spaces: in the primary school, in the secondary school, in the kindergarten, in the health centre, in city hall, in all of these situations,” said Bernardo Vasquez Sanchez, who lives in San Jose and works with the Co-ordinating Committee of the United Villages of the Ocotlan Valley.

In the centre of the village, which is home to about 1,200 people, Sanchez pointed out that there are two different taxi stands, one used by people in favour of the mine, and another by those who are opposed.

City hall has effectively been shut down since January, when municipal authorities and municipal police fled after the murder of Vasquez.

“Basically the entire town is divided in two parts, one part that has a mayor, and another part that does not have a mayor,” said Sanchez, who has worked with other community members to formally requested the dissolution of powers of the municipal government.

Sanchez and others are worried the project might eventually become an open pit mine, further threatening the region’s already fragile water system. Given Fortuna’s track record, there is reason to be worried: Simon Ridgway, chair of Fortuna’s board of directors, was subject to two arrest warrants in Honduras because of environmental contamination from an open pit mine now owned by Goldcorp Inc.

Father Martin Garcia Ortiz, a priest in San Jose del Progreso, was beaten and kidnapped by people in favour of the project in 2010. He was later jailed and then released without charge and subsequently decided to leave the parish.

According to sources in Oaxaca City and San Jose del Progreso, a group started by the mining company, called “San Jose in Defense of our Rights,” has taken on a paramilitary role in the community, intimidating opponents of the project.

“Things are so broken that there’s no other way out, the only way, I think, is that the company leaves,” said Father Ortiz.

Dawn Paley is a journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

A longer version of this story was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Fortuna Silver's mine

Bernardo Vasquez Sanchez

Police Raid Communities around Trinidad Mine

dawn — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:01:20 +0000

Oaxacan civilians blockade road, occupy mine to keep Fortuna off their land

SAN JOSÉ DEL PROGRESO, OAXACA–Early on the morning of May 6, a helicopter was spotted flying low near the Canadian-owned Trinidad Mine in San José del Progreso, Mexico. In the hours following, approximately 150 trucks filled with between 740 and 2,500 police arrived at the mine site.

The silver mine has been peacefully blockaded by community members since March 16.

Fear of environmental contamination and dwindling water resources are motivating the nearly two-month-long permanent civilian occupation of the mine and all its installations. Neither the Mexican government nor Fortuna Silver, the mine's operator, was able to reach an agreement with protesters, so police were sent in to clear the blockade.

An urgent action issued yesterday by Comité de Defensa de Los Derechos del Pueblo (CODEP) describes how "twenty-five hundred members of the federal police, AFI, judicial police, and the bomb corps entered the mine with a wealth of weapons: using tear gas, shots from various types of firearms, police dogs, savagely beating the people, and searching the homes of the people who were peacefully guarding access to the mine."

Eye-witnesses estimate that there were 150 people from the community blocking the mine when the police arrived.

During the raid, police began arbitrarily entering and searching homes, as well as confiscating personal possessions in the community of Magdalena, and in the municipality San José del Progreso. They were also arresting people randomly on the streets.

At least 23 people—possibly as many as 28—were detained. Two people, and likely several more, are missing. As of May 7, the state had released 19 people, while at least four remain incarcerated.

“We are struggling for our lives and we are defending our territory; the territory where we were born, raised, lived and will probably die," said one resident from the community of Magdalena, Ocotlán. "We sometimes forget that we poor people have the right to life; that we poor people can also defend all that we have.”

Environmental concerns are at the forefront of the protests led by Indigenous Zapotec people against Fortuna.

Independent laboratory tests by Sanica, a clinical analysis laboratory, confirmed the presence of cyanide, mercury, arsenic and lead contamination in regional water supplies stemming from activities at Trinidad and other local mines.

Reports of the deaths of at least 20 head of cattle in the last three months have provoked outrage among residents.

They are also concerned with the mine’s massive water demands.

“All the water that is at the bottom is water that the company moved down to be able to work at the lowest levels of the mine," said one local farmer. "Now all the water is contaminated with different heavy metals and it’s coming up to contaminate soil on the surface."

During the first stage of exploration, the water table had already dropped noticeably.

The primary mine shaft, which has been mined since colonial times, is estimated to be a few kilometres deep. Rising water levels inside the mine currently only permit access to 960 metres.

In response to the environmental effects that are starting to manifest after only three years of exploration, the residents of San José del Progreso held a community assembly on March 14. There, the community decided they wanted the mining company to leave.

According to Ríos Cruz, a resident of nearby Ocotlán and a member of CODEP: “Our objective is the cancellation of the project and the outright refusal from every one of the communities: a 'No' to mining." Cruz has since been disappeared, according to his family.

"All the authorities—state, federal and some municipal—are delivering our homeland, our soil, our land to the companies, but we can’t give the land away. It is our children’s and we are simply taking care of it for the moment,” said Cruz.

Local authorities, most notably Mayor Venancio Oscar Martínez Rivera, Quintín Vásquez Rosario and the head of the commission that administers the ejido, stood opposed to the decision of the people, going as far as to threaten them if they dared take action against the mine.

Residents who attended a meeting with authorities on March 24 allege that the mayor used a gun to threaten members of the Co-ordination in Defense of the Natural Resources and Our Mother Earth, a group formed earlier in the year to organize resistance to the mine.

El Imparcial, a local newspaper, reported that the local officials are being paid by the company to maintain their support and that the mining company has armed paramilitary groups to intimidate people who oppose the project.

Regardless of these tactics, people decided to blockade the mine site. Days after the closing of the mine, several trucks filled with soldiers arrived at the mine site.

When the people refused to give entry to the army, soldiers began to provoke and threaten them. When the army did gain access to the site, they proceeded to remove more than 30 tons of explosive material from the tunnels. This shocked local residents and generated more questions about the safety and environmental impacts of that quantity of explosives.

A month into the occupation of the mine, the members of San José del Progreso and neighbouring communities Maguey Largo and Magdalena, among several others, decided to shut down a federal highway between the capital city of Oaxaca and the coastal town of Puerto Ángel.

They entered the highway in the early hours of April 20 and declared that they would not lift the blockade until the authorities responded to their demands.

The following day, at least nine trucks of riot police and one truck of soldiers arrived to oust blockaders. An agreement was reached to end the road blockades in exchange for negotiations with the state government, which have thus far not borne fruit.

Prior to the May 6 raid on the mine site, there were reports of harassment and threats by police against people resisting the mine. Cruz was among those threatened by police.

****

Fortuna Silver has responded with demands that the government protect their nearly $30-million worth of investments in the mine.

The company, through its fully owned subsidiary Cuzcatlán, holds dozens of concessions that cover tens of thousands of hectares of land. (The average farmer in Ocotlán owns less than 5 hectares.)

Simon Ridgway, a Canadian citizen and the chairperson of Fortuna Silver, has also worked for Glamis Gold and Radius Gold. Ridgway left Honduras in 2000 after the Special Prosecutor’s Office on the Environment issued a warrant for his arrest, related to Glamis Gold's charges for crimes that included water usurpation, aggravated damages, forest crimes and disobedience to authority. The warrant against Ridgway was never executed.

In a press conference in late April, Canadian trade and environmental officials Paul Connors and Paula Caldwell St. Onge said the Canadian government embraces corporate social responsibility and that Canadian companies in Mexico respect that position. They also indicated that Trinidad Mine could be in production within a year.

At the same press conference, Mexican government officials went on to deny reports that the water around Trinidad is contaminated or that any animals have died as a result.

Protests that shut down the mine were dismissed as "a media stunt by people that are certainly trying to obtain benefits," according to Joaquín Rodríguez Palacios, sub-secretary to Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the controversial Governor of Oaxaca. "It's a small group, we all know it, who have a protagonistic attitude."

When this article went to press, Trinidad Mine was still occupied by police forces and had yet to recommence operations.

Click here for videos and updates about the repression in Ocotlán.

Komala Ramachandra is a law student at Harvard who has been working in Oaxaca for the last seven months.

Highway Blockades

Fuera Minas Asesinas!

Death in the Field

hillarybain — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:00:36 +0000

An interview with Arturo Rodriguez of the United Farm Workers of America

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez died in May after suffering a heat stroke while pruning grape vines at the San Joaquin County vineyard in California. Jimenez was a seventeen-year-old undocumented worker who had migrated from Oaxaca, Mexico to work in the United States. She was working in the fields with her fiancé and was pregnant at the time of her death. As an undocumented worker, Jimenez’s death points to the often severe realities faced by non-status agricultural workers in the US.

Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), migration from Mexico to the US has increased dramatically. NAFTA has failed to deliver the economic boom for Mexico that was promised and thousands like Jimenez migrate to the US each year seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

Jimenez’s death sparked protest in California, including a caravan from Lodi, CA, to Sacramento, CA, coordinated by the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). Jimenez’s death reinvigorated calls for an amnesty program for undocumented workers in the US who often face appalling working conditions that frequently go undetected due to the precarious status of the workers.

Arturo Rodriguez, president of the UFW, spoke with Dominion contributor Stefan Christoff about the recent death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and the political movement for regularization of non-status workers in the US.

Dominion: The death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez has drawn a great deal of attention to the case of undocumented farm workers in the United States. Commentators across the political spectrum are referencing this tragic event. Could you address the specifics surrounding her death?

Arturo Rodriguez: Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez was a 17-year-old farm worker who was pregnant while working in the fields in the San Joaquin County Vineyard, working with grape vines. Maria was working in the fields for long, long hours. The employer didn’t bring water until 10:30 that morning--work had begun at 6am. Maria had worked for over four hours without any water to drink and on that particular day, the temperatures soared above 95 degrees [Fahrenheit], and in the fields even hotter.

That afternoon, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez collapsed after not having enough water, or having any shade provided and without any sufficient rest. Consequently, Maria fell into a coma. Supervisors took no action, not calling the ambulances, not calling an emergency vehicle, instead putting her in the back of a sweltering van. About two hours later, [they] finally brought her to a hospital where, upon arrival, the doctors pronounced that the body temperature had soared to around 108 degrees.

At this point Maria was admitted to the hospital and over the course of the next days her heart stopped beating a number of times and finally her heart simply stopped beating. Doctors said that there was no real chance to revive her or for her to survive. At this point the family made a decision to shut off the machines that were keeping her alive.

Could you provide a picture of the trek that undocumented migrants are making from throughout the Americas, due to economic factors, to work in agricultural fields in the United States and Canada?

Migration occurs throughout the United States and into Canada. Towns that the workers come from, in Oaxaca or Chiapas in Mexico, have economic conditions that are so bad, so poor, that people are forced to look externally for ways to provide their children with enough to survive in these states.

Often families will pay thousands of dollars to smugglers, known as coyotes, to take people across the borders to a place where another family member is, or a place where they can work as an undocumented labourer where they slowly start working in the field. These people are then indebted to that particular coyote, so they are working first to pay off their debt.

Literally thousands and thousands of people are crossing each day. Estimates indicate that at least five hundred people are dying trying to cross the border each year. People are dying while crossing the deserts, dying from thirst, heat exposure or starvation.

Can you talk about these demands for safety reform within the context of the larger demands for regularization or status for all non-status people or workers in the United States?

Our organization has been working extremely hard for the past decade because we know that Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez isn’t an isolated case. In the US, at least 70 per cent of the farm labour force is undocumented. Oftentimes, workers like Maria are abused, or exploited, or mistreated, simply due to their lack of status in the US.

Consequently, we feel that it’s extremely important that we change this situation, to ensure that undocumented workers are afforded the same rights as anyone else in the United States when they come to work in this country. A very important part of our work as an organization is to bring about real immigration reform in the US.

Recently we have worked very closely with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Kennedy and Congressman Howard Berman on a special piece of legislation that would in particular deal with undocumented farm workers in the United States. Through this legislation, farm workers would bring proof that they have worked 150 days over a four-year period. This legislation would then provide a pathway to grant legal status for the workers and their spouses and children in the US.

We continue to work very hard on this legislation, as we think it’s the real solution to the current problem. [If the legislation were adopted], farm workers could enjoy the same protection as anyone else and they will no longer be discriminated against.

Do you see a parallel between the recent death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and the current position of the US government to not grant farm workers status in the US today?

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez is one of nine individuals that we know of who have died of heat stress just in California. Multiple other deaths have occurred due to equipment failures, due to heavy use of pesticides, and you can go on from there. The overwhelming majority of these deaths are undocumented people, so we know that these deaths are very closely linked to the legal status of these individuals.

Unfortunately, the legal status of undocumented farm workers needs to change for them to be treated as human beings. This is the reality that we face in the US and we are trying to do everything within our own power to ensure that these changes do come about. So it’s of utmost importance for us to ensure that farm workers receive the same type of legal status and protections that any other workers in the US [receive].

Throughout Mexico there has been unrest concerning the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Can you talk about the case of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez within the larger context of NAFTA, which some argue is forcing increased migration of undocumented workers into the US?

Unfortunately, NAFTA hasn’t been the solution for Mexico’s economic concerns that it was presented as. Many companies went to Mexico looking for a cheap labour supply, [but] once they found a cheaper labour supply in China or other parts of the world, they often abandoned the communities or cities in Mexico where they had set up.

Along the US-Mexico border, near Tijuana [and] other areas, you can often find factories that have been completely abandoned as a result of these corporations finding other locations internationally where they could find a cheaper labour supply, a labour supply they could better use and exploit for their corporate economic benefit.

Many large regions or states in Mexico, for example Oaxaca, were not impacted by any of the proposed economic gains from NAFTA. Oftentimes the areas that NAFTA impacted, in terms of US companies setting up factories along the border regions, are no less destitute [today] as these factories or companies are now leaving.

Today, large, large numbers of people in these states are in situations of unemployment, even homelessness, as they had left their homes in other parts of Mexico and are now stranded without work or opportunity. Oftentimes, the only solution that they had was migration to the US, in order to seek some kind of relief, in order to deal with the economic stress that they were feeling in Mexico.

Profound economic changes that benefit people will never take place unless there is real economic revival within Mexico and across other parts of Latin America. Huge numbers of people are migrating from across the Americas to the US in order to find jobs, basically to find economic relief; this is a real challenge.

Economic stability in Mexico means that people will have self-reliance where they live, an economic situation locally where they can provide for themselves, their families and their local communities.

Migrant Farm Workers

Canada's Mining Continuum

dru — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 05:02:53 +0000

Resources, Community Resistance and "Development" in Oaxaca

CAPULÁLPAM DE MENDEZ, OAXACA -- It is an open secret that throughout the Americas and the world, people are struggling against the intrusion of Canadian mining companies and their short term "get the gold and get out" strategies. The backlash against Canadian mining companies has, in some cases (particularly in Guatemala and Peru), strengthened broader social and political movements re-vindicating local control over land. In Oaxaca, Mexico, the struggle against a Vancouver based mining company is unifying an isolated Zapotec community, and bringing their struggles to state and nation-wide attention.

* * *

"Welcome to Ixlán: Our land is communal land, not to be bought or sold," pronounces a rusting billboard just outside regional centre of Ixlán, 60km north of the Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca’s capital city, Oaxaca de Juarez.

A couple of bumpy, graveled kilometers from Ixlán lies Capulálpam, a remote mountain village flanked by locally owned riverside eco-tourism getaways. The town center is but a square block, as the majority of community members are rural indigenous Zapotec farmers, who farm to support their families.

"The whole territory of Capulálpam is communally owned," explains Francisco Garcia López, a member of Capulálpam’s Commission of Communal Goods, standing on a rock above a river valley and indicating with a sweep of his arm the forests, rivers and mountains that comprise the municipality.

He then points down to a series of white buildings, with mining carts on tracks leading to openings into the earth.

"For 230 years, gold and silver mining companies have been exploiting tunnels in the mountains," he explains.

Thousands of people from Calpulálpam worked in the mine, until the union was broken in 1993. Only a few hundred people, mostly from the nearby town of Natividad, stayed on. In the last few years, there has been little activity at the mine.

Today, residents of Calpulálpam as well as former miners from the town have agreed that reopening the mine will not benefit the community. "The quantity and quality of our water supplies have been negatively affected by mining activity, that’s the main reason we’re demanding the cancellation of all mining concessions in our communal land," says López.

Skyrocketing gold prices, favorable mining laws and a recent flood of speculation-linked financing for junior mining companies have opened up the way for Vancouver-based Continuum Resources to buy up the majority of the mining concessions in the state of Oaxaca. The reactivation of the historic "Natividad" site, reportedly Oaxaca’s richest gold and silver mine, has been spearheaded by Continuum, majority owners in a joint venture which started up in 2004 with a Mexican firm. At the Natividad project alone, Continuum holds more than 54,000 hectares of concessions.

Underneath the entrance to the mine, an area where waste rock, chemicals and tailings have been thrown directly into the river below for centuries looks like a sagging black stain on the hillside. But it gets worse. Out of service electrical transformers, once used to power the mining operation, are now generating toxic Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which community members fear could be entering the water system.

According to López, over the last few years, 13 streams have disappeared completely because of Continuum’s exploration activities. The National Water Commission (Conagua) has confirmed that during the course of their activities, Continuum Resources captured underground water, which resulted in the disappearance of springs. The company maintains that "the mine and the mining activity are not responsible for the disappearance of the springs."

"People in Capulálpam know that mining isn’t sustainable" says Aldo Gonzales Rojas, a member of the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez (UNOSJO), an organization devoted to popular education and farmer-to-farmer outreach. In addition to dried up springs and contaminated water, "people can’t use sand from the rivers anymore because it’s contaminated, nor can we capture the frogs that are part of our diet without leaving our traditional territory," says Rojas.

Roadblock for Negotiation

"All of our complaints to the government were falling on deaf ears," says López, referring to the dozens of attempts by the municipal council and community organizations to have the federal or state government intervene in environmental conflicts with the company.

In October of 2007, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) ordered Continuum to halt all exploitation activities at Natividad due to environmental complaints. Locals were glad that the government stepped in, but remained concerned that the company would continue exploration work.

"We decided to take collective action," says López, referring to the decision by members of the community, including the mayor, to block the main highway out of Oaxaca City.

"On October 16th, we blocked the highway with fifty pickup trucks for five hours, demanding the permanent closure of the Natividad mine." They withdrew the roadblock once a working dialogue with the Secretary of Economy, the sub-Secretary of Government and Profepa was agreed upon.

Profepa issued another document in November of 2007, noting that among other infractions, Continuum had not carried out hydro-geological studies required of it, because "[the company] lacks permission from the authorities of Capulálpam to enter in their jurisdiction or territory."

Continuum acknowledges in official documents that it has received environmental complaints and that Natividad has been subject to temporary closure. The company does not appear to have adopted a protocol on corporate social responsibility.

Mexico has ratified the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169, on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, Article 16 of which reads "In cases in which the State retains the ownership of mineral or sub-surface resources or rights to other resources pertaining to lands, governments shall establish or maintain procedures through which they shall consult these peoples, with a view to ascertaining whether and to what degree their interests would be prejudiced, before undertaking or permitting any programmes for the exploration or exploitation of such resources pertaining to their lands."

López, a lifetime resident of Capulálpam, says that neither the government of Mexico nor the company has consulted with the people of the village. The main prospects for Continuum’s expansion of the Natividad mine lay under communally owned property in Capulálpam.

"Protest and Violence" in Context

"Investors may be aware that political and social tension has lead to incidences of protest and violence in Oaxaca over the past six months," warns a promotional piece for Continuum Resources prepared by Fundamental Research Corporation in April of 2007.

In her new book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein summarizes recent events in Oaxaca in the context of popular resistance to the current economic model in Mexico. Klein writes, "...the right wing government sent in riot police to break a strike by teachers who were demanding an annual pay raise. It provoked a statewide rebellion against the corruption of the corporatist state that raged for months."

The scale of repression is captured in part by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, which reports that stemming from the repression of the teachers’ strike in Oaxaca, between June and December 2006 20 people were killed, 25 people were disappeared, 349 people were detained and 370 people were wounded. The report notes that "the sections of the Federal Preventative Police (PFP) that intervened to restore public order have used repetitive and excessive violence."

The International Civilian Commission for Human Rights Observation describes the state repression of the uprising as "a juridical, police, and military strategy... whose final objective is to intimidate and gain control over the civilian population."

Stripped of its context, the "protest and violence" referred to in Continuum’s promotional material is rendered innocuous, and the company unabashedly capitalizes on it: "While other companies have shied away from exploration due to the violence in Oaxaca, Continuum has been able to acquire highly prospective properties with very large land areas due to a lack of interest there."

Continuum has made good off of "protest and violence," doing deals with Oaxaca’s corporatist governments, and joining a host of other mining companies, like Vancouver’s Eurasian Minerals in Haiti and others in Colombia, aiming to make a profit in parts of the Americas where repression and violence are often directed against popular movements.

Oaxaca, 2008

In the city of Oaxaca today, there is little more than graffiti as physical evidence of the 2006 rebellion. The full-scale repression intended to decimate the popular movements seems to have worked, at least temporarily.

On my first evening in Ixlán, I went to a gathering place behind the church to watch a fireworks display in honor of the city’s patron saint. Less than a block away was a military jeep with six heavily armed soldiers, monitoring the crowd.

A man approached me, and noticed I was looking at what seemed like too many soldiers for a small town festival. "They’re not here to protect us," he said quietly, "they’re scared of us. We supported the resistance in Oaxaca City, they know we’re strong."

For his work advocating for the rights of the 70,000 Zapotec people in the Sierra Juarez, as well as his stand in solidarity with the popular uprising in Oaxaca in 2006, Aldo Rojas from UNOSJO has received email death threats from unidentified individuals, and has reportedly appeared on military black lists, accused of being a guerilla.

Rojas continues his work for justice in the area, as do the citizens of Capulálpam, regardless of intimidation from a government that has proven it is willing to kill, torture and imprison its citizens in the name of control.

It is in this climate of "protest and violence" that Continuum Resources is determined to carry its project forward, and the likelihood is that the mainstream media and the Canadian Government rallies behind them in promoting the extractive industry’s "development" model in Southern/Indigenous territory.

For communities struggling against the extractive industries, consensus around who benefits and who pays is perhaps more easily reached than it is around other issues. As the popular Latin American folk song reminds us, "El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido/The people, united, will never be defeated."

Mural Oaxaca

Francisco Garcia López

Mining site near Ixlán

Thousands of police invade Oaxaca, protests continue

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:32:27 +0000

Thousands of riot police invaded Oaxaca on October 30 in order to crush an opposition movement that has held control of the southern Mexican state for several months.

On May 22, protesters began occupying the centre of the city after a list of teachers' demands -- including better pay and a series of measures to help poorer pupils -- went unanswered. The crisis escalated on June 14 when 750 police officers tried to remove the protesters, reportedly killing four.

In response to the police raid, the umbrella group, known as the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), was formed to support the teachers' movement. The APPO is made up of 365 grassroots organizations and is demanding the resignation of Governor Ruiz, whom they accuse of corruption and repressive tactics against dissenters.

Over the past several weeks, protesters have set up barricades, occupied public buildings and taken control of a dozen radio stations. Several marches have taken place including one numbering 900,000, according to organizers.

On October 27, at least three protesters were killed by those linked to the state government, including one American independent media activist Brad Will. These deaths were seized on by President Fox as a pretext for the police assault against the popular resistance.

Demonstrators have slowed police by erecting barricades, lying down in front of police vehicles and throwing sticks and stones at police contingents.

"The police can come and occupy with all their weapons and tanks. They can occupy one area, they can occupy one specific point, but they cannot control the city. They cannot take over our lives and our country," says Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca.

Reasons for anger in Oaxaca go beyond the corruption of Governor Ruez, to other factors including growing inequality, the siphoning of water resources from Indian communities to tourist industries and the collapse of corn prices.

Battle for Control in Mexican State of Oaxaca

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 22:08:58 +0000

As media reports focus on the clash of two candidates in the closest presidential election in Mexican history, another battle is playing out in the country's southern state of Oaxaca. The conflict has everything to do with the deep divisions that have created the largest crisis in Mexican politics in decades.

In late May, thousands of striking teachers occupied the centre of Oaxaca City, demanding an increased minimum wage, increased funding for schools, and an end to the siphoning of public funds by corrupt officials. On June 14, police attempted to break up the strike with a pre-dawn raid. Officers shot tear gas and bullets, and destroyed the tents of sleeping demonstrators. Police reportedly targeted the teachers' radio station, Radio Plantón, destroying broadcasting equipment. The teachers, however, fought back and drove the police out of the occupied area after a four-hour battle.

According to one journalist, the raid "ignited a mass uprising in the state and beyond."

Hundreds of thousands have demonstrated in favour of the removal of State Governor Ulises Ruíz, and the Asemblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca (APPO) was formed.

While Oaxaca is rich in natural resources, it is among the poorest regions in Mexico. Two thirds of Oaxaca's 3.5 million inhabitants descend from indigenous ancestry, a trait that correlates closely with poverty there.

While united behind its demand that "Ruíz must go", the APPO has since advanced a much broader political campaign, calling for civil disobedience to prevent the functioning of the government until Ruíz steps down.

On August 1, groups seized Channel 9, a state-run television station. While it was controlled by pro-APPO forces, the channel continually broadcast interviews with people in the street, who spoke about the effects of neoliberalism on their livelihoods and the political situation in Oaxaca. The station showed documentary films, including one on the living conditions of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

In retaliation, a paramilitary force entered the occupied TV studios on August 21 and thoroughly destroyed transmission equipment, riddling racks of electronics with bullets.

Pro-APPO groups responded by taking over 10 radio stations across the state. Their goal is to further a simple set of principles: that "institutions must be responsible to the popular will," that the "function of the state is to promote the interests of the public," and that "the responsibility of the public is to govern itself."