Date: May 19, 2006 9:24:06 AM PDT
Subject: [narconews] Ross: The "Dirty War" Returns to Mexico
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May 19, 2006
Please Distribute Widely
Dear Colleague,
The great chronicler of Mexico John Ross reports in The Narco News
Bulletin that the violence earlier this month in Texcoco and San
Salvador Atenco bears a striking resemblance to the "dirty war"
tactics of the 1970s. Details on this period of terror, particularly
bloody in the state of Guerrero where hundreds of peasant farmers
were killed in anti-insurgency campaigns but also felt in Mexico City
and elsewhere, are just now beginning to come out as new government
documents are revealed.
In a report that first appeared in his "Blindman's Bluff" newsletter,
Ross writes, citing leading scholar of that period Carlos Montemayor:
"According to Montemayor's description, first an overwhelming force
is assembled with the primary mission of totally subjugating a
recalcitrant population. Then informers are introduced into the
village to identify and eliminate rebel community leaders and those
associated with them. If the leaders evade capture, their families
are held hostage. Young men are rounded up and selectively tortured
to extract information and to turn them into 'soplones' (informers).
"Meanwhile, shock troops terrorize the civilian population into
submission. Indiscriminate beatings, home invasions, the theft of
personal items of value, and the systematic destruction of property
are encouraged by police commanders. Women are raped and sexually
abused to underscore the occupation force's total domination over the
rebellious villagers.
"Virtually all of these dirty war characteristics were on display in
San Salvador Atenco May 4th when 3000 armed state police and elements
of the Federal Preventative Police (PFP), a force largely extracted
from the Mexican military, slammed into that dirt-poor town of 30,000
out on the dried lake beds east of the capital, killing one 14-year-
old, leaving a 20-year-old student hovering between life and death,
and arresting 209, all of whom required hospitalization from the
beatings they received under security force batons - although only
some prisoners actually received it (and they were chained to their
hospital beds.) Of 47 women arrested, 23 reported that they had been
raped or were otherwise sexually abused. One 53 year-old mother who
had gone to a local store to buy a birthday present for her son was
forced to perform oral sex on three police 'officers' to avoid arrest."
Read the full story in The Narco News Bulletin's continuing coverage
of the Zapatista Other Campaign:
From somewhere in a country called América,
Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
Narco News is supported by:
The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760
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