from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 MEXICO SOLIDARITY NETWORK WEEKLY NEWS SUMMARY MAY 15-21, 2001 Contents: 1. Indigenous law faces increased opposition in states 2. Atoyac marks 34th anniversary of massacre, Caba�as rebellion 3. Fox willing to negotiate fiscal reform 4. Briefs 1. INDIGENOUS LAW FACES INCREASED OPPOSITION IN STATES The set of constitutional reforms on Indigenous Rights and Culture approved by Congress in late April may face more difficulties on the path to ratification than previously believed. At least half of all state legislatures must approve the changes for them to take effect. This week, as protests by indigenous groups and organizations opposed to the law continued throughout the country, focused on drawing the attention of their own state representatives, a number of state legislatures have indicated they may not approve the bill, or will do so only with modifications, in which case the revised initiative would need to return to the federal Congress for renewed discussion and debate. The so-called "indigenous law" approved by both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies is a mutilation of the original initiative drafted by the Commission on Concordance and Pacification (COCOPA) for implementation of the San Andr�s Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture, signed in 1996 between the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the federal government as a partial outcome of peace talks between the sides. No agreement was reached on the other issues under discussion, and further talks were broken off after then- President Zedillo refused to implement the existing set of Accords. The EZLN and the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) support the COCOPA initiative as a form of implementing the San Andr�s Accords and as a way to untangle the peace process. Both groups have soundly rejected the altered bill approved by Congress, and the CNI has called on state governments to vote against it. Although the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has asked its local deputies to vote against the measure, the party only controls one state legislature, that of Baja California Sur. The rest of the state congresses are under the control of either the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), or a combination of the two. The PAN voted unanimously in favor of the bill in Congress, and has asked its local deputies to approve the measure in their state legislatures as well. All but a handful of PRI deputies, and all its senators, also voted for the legislation, and the party requested that its local deputies "consider approving" it. Nevertheless, the standard-bearer of the "No" camp among state governments is the state of Oaxaca, with a PRI governor and a PRI-controlled legislature. It was the Oaxacan deputies who broke rank with their party to vote against the bill in the federal Chamber of Deputies, and Oaxaca governor Jos� Murat has angrily denounced the "indigenous law" as a counterreform on indigenous rights which doesn't even come close to either the San Andr�s Accords or to the state's own indigenous autonomy law. The PRI legislators in Oaxaca have already said they plan to send the bill right back where it came from. Unexpected opposition to the bill has also emerged in the Quer�taro legislature, where PAN deputies make up 12 of the 25 members of the legislature. The remaining 13, divided between the PRI, PRD, PARM, PT, and PVEM, have either expressed doubts or outright rejection of the reforms. The PRI deputies announced their opposition after the Indigenous Affairs commission decided to hold forums and "consultations" among the indigenous communities in the state, all of which culminated with unanimous recommendations against the bill. As it stands now, twelve deputies in Quer�taro are opposed to ratification, twelve are in favor, and the deputy from the Green Party (PVEM), Ivonne Vandenpeereboom, has yet to make up her mind. PRI deputies may also vote down the reforms in the State of Mexico, Yucat�n, and Durango, while in Quintana Roo, San Luis Potos�, and Veracruz they have suggested they will only approve it after changes of some sort have been made. The Chiapas legislature is also divided on whether or not to ratify the bill, although governor Pablo Salazar Mendiguch�a has come out swinging against it. The states of Aguascalientes, Campeche, Chihuahua, Colima, Coahuila, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Nayarit, Puebla, and Tlaxcala, meanwhile, are all likely to vote to approve the reforms without serious debate. In the hope of an eventual rejection of the reforms by a majority of state legislatures, PRD federal deputy Marti Batres officially introduced the original COCOPA initiative as a PRD-sponsored bill in Congress on May 16. The measure is not expected to even be brought up for committee discussion until the process of ratification of the other "indigenous law" comes to an end. For his part, President Vicente Fox - ostensibly a supporter of the original COCOPA bill - implied this week at a press conference in his ranch in San Crist�bal, Guanajuato, that the indigenous law approved by Congress in fact was the COCOPA bill, and that it "dignifies" the indigenous peoples and communities of Mexico by "giving them their rightful place." Meanwhile, in Chiapas, indigenous communities, human rights groups, and other non-governmental organizations denounced that as of May 14, military patrols have sharply increased throughout the municipalities of Las Margaritas, Ocosingo, and Palenque. According to the Fray Lorenzo de la Nada Human Rights Center, the patrols - which supposedly and officially ended last December, following President Fox's inauguration - have increased around the communities of Para�so, San Jacinto Lacanj�, Ojo de Agua Tzotzil, Nuevo Mariscal, Nuevo Tila, Viejo Velasco Su�rez, and Cintalapa, in Ocosingo. Letters issued this week by the Coalition of Autonomous Organizations of Ocosingo (COAO) and the Ricardo Flores Mag�n Autonomous Municipal Council also said military encampments and bases had been fortified in the communities of Cintalapa, Amparo Aguatinta and Patihuitz. In the latter case, the ARIC-Independiente campesino organization claims the number of troops based there have more than doubled in recent weeks. 2. ATOYAC MARKS ANNIVERSARY OF MASSACRE, CABA�AS REBELLION Residents of the Guerrero coastal municipality of Atoyac de Alvarez, just northwest of Acapulco, gathered on May 18 to commemorate the 34th anniversary of a massacre in the town plaza which forced rural schoolteacher Lucio Caba�as Barrientos to flee into the surrounding hills. Caba�as then formed the Party of the Poor and an armed guerrilla unit which became Mexico's most important rebel group of the early 1970s. Caba�as was killed in 1974. His organization regrouped over the next decade, however, and eventually emerged again in 1996 as the nucleus of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). The government's war against Caba�as in the 1970s eventually became known as the "dirty war." It was characterized by military occupation of rural coastal Guerrero, the formation of a paramilitary brigade within the ranks of the Mexican Army itself dedicated to exterminating the rebellion by "any means necessary," and the subsequent detention- disappearance of more than 600 people, of whom nearly 400 hailed from the municipality of Atoyac. This year, the commemoration events in Atoyac were organized by the Guerrero-based Association of Family Members of the Detained, Disappeared, and Victims of Human Rights Violations (AFADEM), the Atoyac Civic Front, and the Campesino Organization of the South Sierra (OCSS), members of whose organization were ambushed and massacred by police in June 1995 in nearby Aguas Blancas. Marchers led by family members of the disappeared, including Guadalupe Gervacio Caba�as, Lucio Caba�as' aunt, filled the main square of Atoyac chanting, "They took them alive - We want them alive!" Several speakers demanded justice for the disappeared and the prosecution of Brigadier General Mario Acosta Chaparro, currently awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges, for his role in the "dirty war" and his presumed direct, personal involvement in the torture, disappearance, and/or extrajudicial execution of dozens of people in the 1970s. Roc�o Mesino, the young leader of the OCSS, meanwhile, denounced the roles of former governors Raymundo Abarca Alarc�n and Rub�n Figueroa Figueroa (both deceased), Israel Nogueda Otero, and Rub�n Figueroa Alcocer in the various massacres committed in Guerrero since the early 1960s, as well as in their presumed participation in the "dirty war" which, in many respects, continues to the present day in parts of Guerrero. Mesino also warned that congressional approval of President Fox's fiscal reform plan, which "affects the economy of the poorest" in Mexico, would be the "detonator" for the resurgence of guerrilla activity in Guerrero. Speakers at the event also demanded a full investigation into the clandestine cemetery reportedly discovered under the house of Guadalupe Gervacio Caba�as, which was occupied by the Army between 1972 and 1974 and where a number of campesinos were taken and never heard from again. Evidence of human remains at the site would be a powerful tool in the ongoing attempts to prosecute those responsible for the human rights violations, including forced disappearances, in Mexico during the dirty war. Also on May 18, however, representatives of the federal Attorney General's office announced they had exhumed 23 bone fragments from the site as well as a piece of cloth, but that none of the bones corresponded to humans and were in fact from "various" animals. Since the police statement did not state what animals the bones corresponded to, nor what parts of the animals' bodies they were from, fears were raised that a cover-up was in progress. Local human rights groups and the AFADEM itself had tried unsuccessfully to ensure that forensic experts were present during the exhumation process; instead, police with warrants arrived unexpectedly at Gervacio Caba�as' home on May 15 and uncovered the bones, collected them, and shipped them to a lab for analysis without allowing external experts to be present. 3. FOX WILLING TO NEGOTIATE FISCAL REFORM In his first "semestral report" to Congress - akin to a quarterly State of the Union address - President Vicente Fox Quesada urged legislators to quickly approve his fiscal reform proposal in an extraordinary legislative session, even if it means negotiating changes to the bill. Worried that further delays in implementing the plan would hurt the country's image as a solid option for foreign investment given the economic slowdown in the United States, Fox proposed that legislators "improve and approve" his plan, telling them to "find the best formula, whatever it is!" Fox's aides have also indicated that the president is rushed because he wants to present legislation to open vital nationalized sectors of the economy - electricity generation and distribution, as well as secondary petrochemical production - to private investment, but only after the fiscal reform has been approved. Fox's fiscal reform plan - which includes eliminating the exemptions on food, medicine, books, and educational expenses for the national 15% value-added transaction tax - has been stalled for over a month, faced with serious opposition from both the PRD and PRI parties, as well as sectors from within Fox's own PAN party. The value-added tax proposal is the most controversial element of the plan, and the one most likely to be altered in a revised plan to be presented by the PAN, possibly with PRI support, in coming weeks. The PAN has already called for "unlimited," open negotiations among the three major parties in Congress in order to reach a legislative "consensus" on such a revised plan, with Fox's support. The PAN is also suggesting it may heed Fox's call for an extraordinary session in order to fully discuss and debate the fiscal reform proposals until such time as a plan, "however it turns out," is approved. One of the "alternative" plans being circulated by the PAN in legislative circles calls for the value-added tax to be reduced from 15% to 12%, but still applied universally. Such a compromise would mean a 3% drop in the national sales tax on most goods, but a new 12% tax on basic groceries and medicines. Meanwhile, sources close to President Fox signaled on May 20 that the president was willing to negotiate an agreement with the PAN and the PRI to lower the tax even further, to ten percent, but again with no exemptions, and allowing individual states to tack on an additional one, two, or three percent state sales tax as well. The PRD has already indicated it is not interested in supporting any plan which would eliminate exemptions to the tax, and thus would presumably not be a part of the negotiations. 4. BRIEFS - The prison sentences of ten and six years, respectively, against Guerrero environmentalists Teodoro Cabrera and Rodolfo Montiel were annulled by a circuit court judge this week after ruling that the original judge in the case had failed to take into account evidence that the environmentalists had been tortured by the Mexican Army following their detention. While neither have yet been released, the ruling means they will receive a new hearing for re-sentencing and perhaps for a judge to overturn the original verdict. Meanwhile, both Cabrera and Montiel, whose cases have been brought to international attention by Amnesty International and the Goldman Foundation, were among the recipients of the Roque Dalton medal awarded this week by the Council on Cooperation with the Culture and Science of El Salvador. - The National Bank of Mexico (Banamex, or Banacci, not to be confused with the state-owned Bank of Mexico) was purchased this week by U.S.- based Citigroup for US$12.5 billion. Over eighty percent of the assets of the entire Mexican financial system will now be controlled by foreign companies if the sale is allowed to proceed. Mexico's other large private banks, Bancomer, Serfin, and Inverlat, are already in the hands of foreign-based consortiums, having been purchased in recent years by Banco Bilbao Vizcaya (Spain), Grupo Santander (Spain), and Scotiabank (Canada), respectively. The Mexican stock exchange (BMV) rose nearly six percent on news of the sale, and the peso rose to its highest level since August 1998, peaking at 8.97 pesos per dollar. President Vicente Fox, meanwhile, saluted the sale of Banamex as "a result of the excellent economic conditions in the country� we have a healthy, solid economy which attracts capital and investments. [The sale] is a demonstration of absolute confidence in the economic policy we are following." - Rodolfo Echeverr�a Ruiz, nephew of ex-president Luis Echeverr�a and currently a federal deputy for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was elected Secretary General of the once-ruling party on May 16 by an overwhelming vote of the 349-member National Political Council of the PRI. His victory was suprising, considering that Echeverr�a was not considered a frontrunner by any means, and that in the end he won 194 votes in the first round of balloting against a field of eight other candidates (his closest rival received only 56 votes). Critics said the election smacked of the old glory days of the PRI, when internal elections were held only to ratify decisions already taken by the party elite. Newspapers cited unidentified sources within the PRI in support of the rumors that suggested Echeverr�a's election had been decided several weeks ago at a conciliatory meeting between the four strongmen in the party - Francisco Labastida, Roberto Madrazo, Manuel Bartlett, and Humberto Roque Villanueva. ______________________________________________________________ SOURCES: La Jornada, Milenio, El Universal, El Financiero, Proceso. This report is a product of the Mexico Solidarity Network. Redistribution is authorized and encouraged provided that the source is cited. Comments: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This and previous news updates are archived at: http://www.mexicosolidarity.org " JC _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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