11/07/08 Ciarán Mac Giolla Phádraig, an éirígí activist who is currently travelling in Mexico, provides an analysis on the similarities between the Irish republican struggle and the working class struggle in Mexico, including an interview on prison struggle with former political prisoner, David Venegas.
Tactics such as kidnappings, disappearances, state sponsored murder (be it by official law enforcement agencies or paramilitary gangs in the pay of the government), and illegal incarcerations of political and social activists are the tactics most favoured by the right-wing political class to suppress a risen people. If you were to ask the average person on the streets of Ireland or Mexico today if there is anything synonymous between our two countries, you could be almost sure their response would be negative. But, like a mirror image of Ireland from the days of internment or the imprisonment of the Rossport Five, the state of Oaxaca is no stranger to political policing and the imprisonment of anti-government activists. The citizens of Oaxaca and other Mexican states, such as Chiapas and Guerrero, are on a par with the Irish people in their refusal to lie down and accept the state of injustice of past and present repressive governments.
At the moment, there are currently 31 political prisoners in Oaxaca and hundreds of activists with arrest warrants hanging over their heads. Nevertheless, in the face of brutal oppression, the people, who are mostly indigenous, continue to struggle on. The current phase of the prison struggle began in 1996 when the state government randomly rounded up over 100 indigenous men and women from the Loxicha region of Oaxaca, falsely accusing them of being members of the recently emerged guerrilla group, the EPR (Popular Revolutionary Army). Being falsely accused and, without one shred of evidence, they were jailed in the hugely overcrowded state prison of Ixcotel, where today 13 are still being held - like most political prisoners here - on fabricated charges. This kind of story can be recounted thousands of times in southern Mexico. Most recently in January 2005, in the Zapotec indigenous community of San Blas Atempa, gunmen shot from the balcony of the city hall into a thick crowd of locals protesting the electoral fraud of the state. In the ensuing gunfire, four young men were wounded. They were rushed to hospital and after receiving treatment, they, and an accompanying comrade were arrested and bundled off to the state prison of Tehuantepec. The gunmen (all known) who fired on the crowd, along with the former mayor and the state representative Agustina Acevedo Gutierrez remain free to walk the streets. In May 2006 Oaxaca was once again thrown into conflict between the state and social organizations, which led to state-wide, grassroots resistance. This conflict arose when striking teachers assembled in the Zocalo (city square) for the 25th consecutive year, demanding better pay and more funding for schools – especially for those in marginalised rural areas.
While negotiating with the state government, the teachers camped out in the Zocalo in a mass protest, maintaining a 24-hour vigil to increase the pressure on the government. But, on the morning of June 14, the teachers were attacked by some 3,000 police officers attempting to break the strike. As a pitched battle unfolded, which was to last for several hours, the teachers were united with thousands of members of the community and university students and together succeeded in driving the police from the Zocalo to the outskirts of the city. Barricades were quickly erected on the streets to stop the police returning to attack what had started out as a peaceful strike. In the following days, meetings were convened with the participation of all the striking teachers, NGOs, community collectives, university students and parents to discuss the previous days actions by the state and to formulate plans to defend the city from further aggression. From this meeting the APPO (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) was born. On June 17, APPO’s newly formed assembly - with the backing of the vast majority of the people of Oaxaca - retook the Zocalo and re-erected their encampment. This time they had a new demand to add to their list - the resignation of corrupt state governor Ulises Ruíz Ortíz and his staff, whose grip on power resulted from blatant electoral fraud. Ulises declared he would not resign and, in response, APPO declared itself the legitimate government of Oaxaca. A state of civil rebellion began, which was to last for several months and resulted in a ferocious counter-attack, which led to thousands of beatings and hospitalisations, numerous disappearances, random incarcerations and at least 18 deaths at the hands of state and federal police working alongside right-wing paramilitaries.
The 25-year-old was, at the time of his arrest and detention, a council member of APPO, a political activist with VOCAL (Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Liberty), a student of agriculture and, most of all, a thorn in the side of the state and federal governments. In the time leading up to the day of his arrest David had courageously played his part - like so many of his Oaxacan comrades - in manning and organising the barricades in the city during the long months of intense struggle. Being such an unrelenting and powerful advocate of the common cause and after refusing bribes and seats of legislature, David was picked-up on the order of Ulises’ government who decided his voice must be silenced. On April 13 2007, while walking through a park in the city he was attacked and kidnapped by heavily armed members of the municipal police. Eyewitness accounts reported the police’s farcical attempt to plant drugs on David, first trying to stick them in his backpack, and then, when they wouldn’t fit, placing them upon his person. After disappearing for several hours and being beaten and tortured at the hands of "law-enforcement" officers, he eventually found himself in the offices of UMAN - the police unit that deals with small-scale drug dealing.
On entering Ixcotel on the morning of April 14, the state government, upon realising that the fabricated charges of drug dealing would not stand in court, decided to come up with more lies and another arrest warrant was presented to him, accusing him of damages to the Court of Justice in the centre of Oaxaca City. In a later hearing, David was found innocent of all charges and bail was approved. Instead of being released, he was transferred back to Ixcotel where yet another arrest warrant on different fabricated charges awaited him. Here, he was rearrested and illegally incarcerated once more while awaiting another court date. This farcical procedure was to be repeated four times in the next 11 months. Each time he was found innocent for lack of evidence, David was immediately transferred back to prison with a new arrest warrant awaiting him on trumped up charges. In February 2008, David was eventually cleared of all charges against him, but without any accompanying form of apology from the state or federal governments for the trauma caused to him and his family.
These are his words: “In the eyes of the government, here in Oaxaca there is not even one political prisoner, they say that prisoners of conscience do not exist. This, of course, is a lie. In this country there are between 600 and 1,000 political prisoners. In Oaxaca, there are at least 30 political prisoners affiliated with one or other social organizations or the movement in general, but there are a lot more who are there because they acted against the government or the powerful in the interest of their own people and these are the political prisoners who are, unfortunately, forgotten. “VOCAL and other organizations here in Oaxaca City are doing the work of trying to document the political prisoners, taking account of them. “The situation in Oaxaca prisons is diverse, because the situation in each prison is different. There are prisons like the prison where I was where the level of harassment is not as bad as the others because human rights groups are carefully observing and denouncing abuses. “This kind of observation by national and human rights groups increased after the 2006 rising, and because of the awareness created by these groups, the level of harassment in this particular jail and a few others is low, but in jails located in the more isolated parts of the state, the harassment from authorities is much worse. In these rural jails, the level of monitoring by human rights groups is less and the conditions for the prisoners are much more difficult. “In my opinion, prison is like a government plantation. Why is it a plantation? It is a plantation because obviously it is obligatory to be inside. It’s a plantation if you accept to feel and act like a prisoner and if you accept to leave freedom behind. “Freedom is more than physical freedom. Therefore, I have observed from my personal experience that political prisoners and prisoners of conscience have refused to accept this state of incarceration and continue to resist within the prison system itself. This is what a group of us comrades said to each other inside - we never accepted our imprisonment and continued to feel free even inside, nor did we stop resisting the bad government by whatever means we were able to. That meant that we wrote letters of protest, and this is the only means permitted to get out the ideas of a political prisoner.
“Moreover, in this way they are able to demonstrate that the participation of those inside the jails can equal that of the people outside working in the movement. So the struggle within is fighting for the best possible conditions for the prisoners while at the same time struggling alongside the people on the outside offering ideas for the movement and organization in general. “We have observed this in Oaxaca, as well as in the prisons in Chiapas - where the political prisoners went on hunger strike - that there exists this distinct form of organizing amongst the political prisoners. I think it is very important that on both sides of the prison walls there are organizations that are organising and offering each other mutual aid. This gives the prisoners inside strength to continue resisting with the idea that the walls will fall, not only from within but also from without. The walls must fall and those both inside and outside must achieve this. “In the Ixcotel prison there is a certain amount of self-governing by the prisoners - I am referring to the general patio area where control is exercised not by the prison guards or the authorities but by the prisoners themselves. “This allows us, the political prisoners, more space to organize and it allows us the benefit from contact with each other and our families who come to visit. It is very different from the situation of compañeros in other jails where the first punishment for the political prisoners is restricting their access to visits – which of course is something fundamental and vital for maintaining mental health and a high level of moral strength in order to continue struggling in this situation. “But there had to be a struggle to achieve this. There was a big riot, which led to dozens of deaths in 1996, that was about the struggle for control within the prison. The government came out the loser in this riot, and control was maintained by prisoners - whom we can call democratic prisoners - and since that time the government has not interfered in the self-governing of the prisoners of the political wing of the prison.
“There have not been any hunger strikes in the Oaxacan jails. Nobody in Oaxaca has taken on the hunger strike in recent years as a political prisoner. Probably, it is because the movement in Oaxaca is different to the movement in Chiapas. I think what is needed here is stronger monitoring by outside observers. Inside, we need to strengthen the morale of the prisoners and we think that a hunger strike now would not raise the morale of the prisoners. “We understand and applaud the actions of the hunger strikers of the compañero presos in Chiapas, but the attitude of the prisoners in Oaxaca at the moment is to take on the government more directly. “An important part in detaining the repression that occurred in the past few years was the level of international observation that took place from outside. If this had not happened, I think that the repression would have been even much worse. In addition, since the resistance has not stopped, so the repression continues, just not as severe as the state government would like it to be thanks to the amount of observation by both Mexican and international watch groups. “I think it is important that whatever happens in Oaxaca in the next while that the government is pressurised to stop their use of violence in response to peaceful protest. Nevertheless, as well, we need to seek mutual aid between us, and we need this accompaniment from compañeros from outside in order to provide a bit of hope for us here too!” David is currently on a state-wide campaign tour with VOCAL, promoting the cause of the political prisoners and forming alliances of resistance with indigenous communities. Ireland and Oaxaca, although almost 9,000 kilometres apart, are clearly cut from the same revolutionary stone when it comes to our struggle against the injustices used to silence our movements for social change.
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From Ireland to Mexico – The Struggle for the Rights of Prisoners
Throughout history, people from every corner of the globe have united in defiance of the injustices perpetrated by corrupt and authoritarian governments, only to be met by further oppression and injustice.
So what are the specifics of these similarities? They are our common struggles against colonialism, imperialism and modern day neo-liberalism.
In previous years the strikes had lasted two or three weeks, resulting in unsatisfactory and minimal pay increases for the teachers. But this year the situation took a new twist.
Recently, in the dead of night while sitting on the flat roof of a collectively run community and cultural centre overlooking the city, I had the opportunity to hear the account of one former political prisoner. The story of David Venegas Reyes’ arrest, beating and incarceration is a clear sign of the daily modus operandi of the Mexican state in their attempts to silence and criminalize, rather than listen to social movements.
Following further beatings for refusing to pose for the media in front of the planted drugs and despite the lack of evidence, David was accused of possession of heroin and cocaine with possible intention to sell, and thrown into the state prison of Ixcotel.
After hearing David’s personal story and giving him a brief summary of the political prisoners in Ireland - ranging from internment to the struggle for political status and the hunger strikes of 1980 and ‘81, I asked him if he could explain the situation regarding the prison system and the plight of Mexican political prisoners today.
“It is interesting, because the movement has had an influence within the prisons in terms of forming a committee for political prisoners. The political prisoners committee in Ixcotel - of which I am a part of - is organized not just on finding solutions for the problems of the prisoners, in their daily lives within the prison, but also to make a political input to the social movement that is happening outside.
“Its the biggest jail in the state, with 1,200 to 1,500 prisoners of both sexes, which amount to daily visits of some 6,000 people and a substantial level of human rights monitoring, so the government runs a risk in trying to reverse this state of things. So to arrive at this situation of self-governing part of the prison, there was definitely a big struggle on the part of the prisoners over the years and while I only arrived there in 2007, compañeros who had been there for much longer spoke of the huge riot of 1996 as that which defines what exists today.
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