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From: "Dana" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ZNet,Who's Listening - Spying on the Other Campaign,Jan 22
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 06:27:22 +0100

Who's Listening?
Undercover intelligence officers follow the Other Campaign.

by John Gibler
ZNet, January 22, 2006

Subcomandante Marcos is a media magnet. The man cannot stop at a gas station
without dozens of photographers and videographers climbing over each other
in a thick huddle around him, all fighting for the clear shot. Before he
steps out of a car or room, a circle of volunteers links arms, forming a
bubble into which he steps to then forge a path through the thicket of
photographers. And the vigor of the camera pile-up is renewed daily as a
fresh batch of local press and rotating correspondents fall in behind the
caravan of the Other Campaign, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation's
(EZLN) new effort to create a national, anti-capitalist, grassroots
movement.

On the periphery of the Marcos media orbit however, one finds a different
breed of cameraman, one who stands on the roadside as the caravan passes
through truck stops and small towns, one who leans against walls and
telephone poles across the street from the offices and houses where Other
Campaign meetings are held.

This cameraman-and they have all been men thus far-can be distinguished by
two characteristics. First, he stands completely rigid as he films, in sharp
contrast to the ninja contortionism of the press photographers. Second, he
does not seek images of Marcos, but of those around him-supporters, local
event organizers, groupies, reporters, and anyone who comes to speak or to
listen.

These cameramen are orejas (literally, "ears" in Spanish); they are spies
for the government, political parties, and local businessmen and power
brokers, some of them freelance, some on staff. Their function is different
than that of the uniformed Federal Preventive Police, who are also filming
the caravan daily.

Orejas are meant to be seen and not seen at the same time. They stand back
from the crowd and strike unassuming poses as if they were spectators or
curious passersby. But their distance and stillness stand out amongst the
flurry of activity that surrounds Marcos. Their calm methodology thus
betrays their assignment: filming and taking photographs of individuals in
the crowd, one by one, as if crossing items off of a list.

I have witnessed orejas work through the crowd daily and have caught several
filming and photographing me from a distance. One recent morning, as the
caravan prepared to pull out of Playa del Carmen en route to Cancun, a man
stepped in front of the car I was traveling in, snapped a photograph and
then moved on to repeat this operation in front of two other cars. By the
time I pulled out my camera and got out of the car to take his picture, he
had disappeared.

Later that day, two undercover intelligence officers rear-ended us at a red
light, causing us to lose sight of the caravan.  They drove a white van with
tinted windows which we had not seen earlier in the caravan. We asked if
they were police and they nonchalantly responded, "Nah." One said that he
worked for a "socialist non-governmental organization," without a name, and
the other for a "taxi drivers union." After following us to a mechanic and
paying, in cash, for the repairs to the back door, they-who supposedly came
in the caravan with us-gave us exact directions through a labyrinthine
neighborhood to reach the caravan's destination. We had to hitchhike for two
days while the back door was repaired.

The Fray Bartolome' de las Casas Human Rights Center and the International
Service for Peace, two San Cristobal-based non-profit organizations,
recently released a brief summary of "alarming signs" during the Other
Campaign's two-week trek across Chiapas.

"Throughout the entire trip," the release states, "the presence of
intelligence officers was clear and ostentatious. Many of them carried arms,
but above all else they carried still and video cameras. Their intention was
evident to record license plates, photograph faces, and record the speeches
of participants and members of the Other Campaign."

During the massive 2002-2003 protests across the United States against the
then impending invasion of Iraq, local and federal police went undercover
into the crowds of protesters to videotape and photograph organizers and
participants. Their intention was to gather information, and do so
unnoticed. The presence of orejas in the events and travels of the Other
Campaign is distinct.  The police agents and low-level freelancers here do
not hide or attempt to blend in with the crowd, they loom at the edge of the
action, and they do so to record and to intimidate.

In a country where year after year local and federal officials are involved
in the torture, assassination, and mass killings of community activists and
political dissidents, the presence of orejas carries a different weight than
that of the undercover peace march videographers. Not only does one feel
that they are being watched and recorded, but that at any time they might be
sought out and found.

I have confronted several orejas. They say that they are "sympathizers" and
that they work for non-governmental organizations. These non-governmental
organizations never have names, though they are always "socialist." I have
also tried to interview the uniformed federal police who film the caravan
daily only to hear "I don't know anything about it," regardless of the
question.

In Joaquin Amaro, on the coast of Chiapas, two over-sized and sparkling
clean pick-up trucks pulled up to the end of the parked cars from the
caravan. Ten men sat packed inside the trucks and another four outside on
the edges of the truck bed. Two reporters from national papers based in
Mexico City interviewed the men asking where they were from. They responded
that they worked for a nameless non-governmental organization. They said
that they were "Marcos fans." The fourteen men with military haircuts were
such devout fans that they sat crammed in two 4x4s while Marcos spoke to a
small crowd packed under a thatched roof several hundred yards away. The men
never left their trucks.

Why are so many orejas following the Other Campaign? Intelligence gathering,
intimidation, and repression so often respond to perceived threats that bear
little to no relation to the intentions and actions of those targeted. With
the Other Campaign though there is a real threat: a national grassroots
organizing effort to do away with all the registered political parties in
Mexico and the capitalist economic system that sustains them. What is more
dangerous, the Other Campaign aspires to uproot capitalism and political
parties without firing a shot or lighting a fuse, but instead by using
reason and argument to strip the parties of all semblance of legitimacy and
convince the people of Mexico to leave them behind.

President Vicente Fox and the leaders of the major parties have publicly
welcomed the Other Campaign as a sign that the EZLN is leaving armed
rebellion behind to participate in the democratic process.

"For us the case of the EZLN is part of the democratic change in Mexico,"
Fox told the press agency DPA. "This takes us to a new phase, a new stage in
the state of Chiapas that today enjoys great tranquility; there is now
social peace in Chiapas..."

Fox's comment can be attributed to one of two states of mind: denial or the
will to deceive, for the conditions in which most chiapanecos live,
particularly the indigenous, can hardly be described as peaceful. Beyond the
endemic racism and economic inequality in Chiapas, the state is still in the
throes of armed conflict.

In February 2005, the Fray Bartolome' de las Casas Human Rights Center
published a report titled "Genocidal Policy in the Armed Conflict in
Chiapas," documenting massacres and constant armed hostility carried out by
the military, state police, and paramilitary forces. CAPISE, a San
Cristobal-based think tank that studies militarization in Chiapas, has
documented the presence of 111 military bases and camps and at least three
distinct paramilitary groups in the state.

The EZLN, for its part, has organized 29 autonomous municipalities, all of
which are in civil resistance against the federal government. These
Zapatista communities have organized to construct and maintain their own
schools, health clinics, workers associations and governing bodies, known as
good government councils, (juntas de buen gobierno).

Fox's declaration of social peace in Chiapas comes at the end of a six-year
term during which he continually turned his back on the Zapatistas's demands
for constitutional reforms to protect indigenous culture and rights. Now he
wants to take credit in a way for the EZLN's Other Campaign, calling it a
part of the "democratic change" of his presidency. Fox can claim some credit
for inspiring the Other Campaign, though not as a result of democracy. In
2001, after the EZLN marched to Mexico City to promote their indigenous
rights law, Fox and the other major political parties killed the
Zapatistas's constitutional reforms. This betrayal lead the Zapatistas to
cut all ties with the government and the national parties, establish their
autonomous municipalities, and later write the Sixth Declaration from the
Lacandon Jungle and launch the Other Campaign.

The constant presence of orejas along the trail of the Other Campaign is a
clear indication that the government and political elite do not in fact
welcome the Zapatista organizing effort, and more over that they have not
left behind their use of counterinsurgency tactics to monitor and intimidate
social dissidence. The orejas might dissuade a few people from attending or
from speaking up, but for the rest they are a living example of why the
governing elite cannot be trusted.


John Gibler is a Global Exchange human rights fellow in Mexico.



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