Atenco’s agony: Mexico’s other campaign

Yadira Hidalgo
13 - 6 - 2006

A violent assault by Mexican police on the flower-sellers, residents and campaigners in the town of San Salvador de Atenco reveals the true face of state power, argues Yadira Hidalgo.
The Mexican town of San Salvador de Atenco has a history of fierce struggles. In 2002, early in the term of President Vicente Fox, its people opposed and eventually stopped the construction of an airport on their lands, resisting in the process the combined weight of the Mexican state and its big-business supporters. The townspeople's defence against great odds cost them several deaths, but the defeat they inflicted on the Fox government has not been forgotten on either side. Now, a new struggle at Atenco highlights the realities of power in Mexico in a period when the country's leaders seek to present a peaceful, democratic face to the world ahead of the presidential and legislative elections of 2 July 2006.

Many inhabitants of the valley of Texcoco on the eastern edge of Mexico City come to San Salvador de Atenco to sell their products, especially flowers, in the area around the traditional municipal market. A tradition that is generations old may be coming to an end, for the government plans to raze the area around the market and replace it with a modern shopping complex.

In pursuit of this plan, municipal leader Nazario Gutiérrez of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution / PRD) – Mexico's main centre-left party – had several local vendors ejected from the market at the beginning of April. This led to opposition from the vendors, which led Gutiérrez to deploy a detachment of local police on the pavements around them. The flower-sellers resisted this action too, and entered into negotiations with the authorities in an attempt to preserve their custom of selling in the market. The agreement they arrived at permitted them to continue their activities from 3 May 2006 without being bothered by the authorities.

At 7am that morning, the flower-growers arrived to set up their stalls, but met a detachment of police apparently sent to impede their access. The police soon entered the market area and started dragging the vendors away from the area.

The flower-growers were not alone, however. They had asked members of the Frente del Pueblo en Defensa de La Tierra (Front of People in Defence of the Land / FPDT) – the group that had opposed the construction of the airport on their land – to witness the installation of their stalls. After the police action had started, the FPDT defended the vendors. It was an unequal struggle: 400 local police equipped with shields, helmets and teargas canisters against eighty civilians armed with machetes, sticks, and stones.

A policeman interviewed soon after was told that he had received orders to "beat anything that moves". Videos taken at the scene showed the police doing just that; even local dogs and cars received blows from police batons. The police quickly were reinforced by state and federal police. For their part, the flower-growers were backed by local people sympathetic to the FPDT. Another video, shown repeatedly on national television, filmed the beating of a captured police officer. During the confrontation, a 14-year-old boy died from the impact of a police bullet fired at close range.

The EZLN: a media lynching

The Front of the People in Defence of the Land is one of the organisations aligned with the "other campaign", led by subcomandante Marcos of the Zapata National Liberation Army (EZLN), or "Zapatistas"). Marcos has been travelling the country since 1 January 2006 with the objective of creating links among civic organisations, and to elaborate a national plan of social struggle for the country.

Before the Atenco events, the "other campaign" had been largely ignored by Mexico's principal communications media. But Atenco gave the television duopoly of TV Azteca and Televisa, as well as the major newspapers and radio networks, reason to blame the EZLN for inciting violence in Atenco; they exploited the fact that Marcos had visited the town a week earlier, and that he had later been escorted into Mexico City by members of the FPDT.

In the days following the repression at Atenco, commentators and journalists heaped vehement abuse on the land campaigners. The incessant coverage of the beating of one policeman was in marked contrast to the refusal – except in La Jornada newspaper – to show the faces and bodies of local people broken by police batons and bathed in blood.

Marcos compared the media's management of this situation with the coverage of the infamous slaughter of students in Tlatelolco Square in 1968: "Then, the government said that the army had been attacked, and it took a long time for people to ask what the army was doing at a student meeting in the first place, and now the communications media have not thought to ask what the police was doing there in San Salvador de Atenco."

A question of solidarity

Once the Atenco repression had became public, "Delegate Zero" (Marcos's official identity within the "other campaign"), called on the campaign's supporters to demonstrate peaceful support for the people of the town. He also announced that the EZLN had declared a "red alert" because of the situation: this entailed closing the Caracoles (autonomous Zapatista communities) in the southern state of Chiapas, and suspending the activities of the "other campaign" until further notice.

Meanwhile, Marcos declared that he would remain in Mexico City until the demands of the people of Atenco are met: unconditional liberty for those arrested and the evacuation of the police and security forces from the town.

For its part, the alternative media published a list of 217 people arrested and sixty-nine missing after the Atenco confrontations. This list includes people from institutions as diverse as the National Autonomous University of Mexico, human-rights groups and other NGOs, and the dissident media. It also features five foreign human-rights workers and journalists who were detained and expelled: two Spanish citizens, two Chileans, and a German; all were deported to their countries of origin through obscure legal procedures, but only after reportedly being subjected to psychological and physical abuse by Mexican police.

Three of this group – María Sostres and Cristina Valls (from Spain) and Valentina Palma (from Chile) confirmed rumors that many women arrested at Atenco had been sexually assaulted. At the time of writing, Mexico's national commission on human rights has received more than 150 complaints related to the incidents of 3-4 May 2006 at San Salvador de Atenco. Seven of these are accusations of rape, and another sixteen involve accusations of other types of sexual abuse.

The gravity of the post-Atenco situation has led "Delegate Zero" to break his media blackout and grant interviews to the national media, including with La Jornada and the television chain Televisa. There, he has emphasised the civil and peaceful nature of the "other campaign", and argues that violence – including the assassination of a campaign supporter at San Blas, Oaxaca – is a product of the current political system. The repression, jailing, and even death of "non-conformists", Marcos declares, only achieves the destabilisation of the country during the pre-electoral period.

The violence at Atenco and elsewhere in Mexico augurs ill for Mexican democracy, and for the possibility of dialogue with the country's social movements that is one necessary component of progress towards a more just, equitable and peaceful society.

This article was translated by Robert P Kruger

Published in Open Democracy.

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