Oaxaca: death squads murder civilians

The Solidarity Caravan with the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Mexico, was ambushed by death squads (UBISORT) that declared having the support of the governor, Ulises Ruiz. Two to five people killed.

These tragic and despicable events unfolded these last few days (May 28-30) as a popular caravan in solidarity with a besieged free municipality in the southern Mexican state. The paramilitaries, masked and very young, attacked the caravan killing at least two people: Mexican human rights activist Beatriz 'Bety' Cariño and Finnish internationalist Jyri Antero Jaakkola. A group of activists and journalists had to seek refuge in the forest with some of their members injured. Others were kidnapped but eventually set free.

Bety Cariño was a veteran human rights activist and founding member of the Indigenous Communitarian Radio Network of SW Mexico.


Jyry Jaakola was a human rights obsever from Finland.

The autonomous (self-ruled) municipality of San Juan Copala has been in the last weeks besieged by police, troops and death squads, which have forced people to stay in their homes under effective death threat. Snippers of UBISORT watch the streets and can at any time murder anyone.

This is the most sad situation that the illegitimate government of the right wing PAN (which rigged the elections by all accounts) has brought to Mexico: militarization, death squads and mafia wars. This is the destiny for the US colonies in America or elsewhere (see Iraq or Afghanistan: not much difference).

But Mexico has an alternative: a growingly strong popular movement that will eventually turn the tides.

Sources: La Haine[es] (includes videos), Oaxaca en Pie de Lucha[es].

Update: photos of Basque demonstrations against the attacks of Oaxaca at La Haine now.

Oaxaca caravan stopped

I reported yesterday on the solidarity caravan with the Triqui people of Oaxaca, that has constituted itself in autonomous municipality in order to confront the many abuses of the oligarchy, suffering since then the attacks and total siege of a paramilitary gang called UBISORT, which is supported by the authorities and oligarchs.

The caravan made most of its planned journey in spite of police harassment while solidarity demonstrations took place in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Barcelona and Greece. However upon arrival to the Triqui district they decided to stop and go back to Huajanapan de León because it was very apparent that UBISORT militias were ready to ambush them, shooting at the distance in sign of warning.

The demonstration at Mexico DF was also attacked and the reports say that Oaxaca City is now full of policemen in plain clothes.

The caravan has yet to decide if they make a second attempt to breach the paramilitary siege of the indigenous community, which is in dire need of everything.

More information (in Spanish) at La Haine, Indymedia Chiapas and Radio Plantón (audio).

Civilian caravan set to breach paramilitary control in Oaxaca

Not substantially different from what happened this past week at the Mediterranean but much less likely to reach the front pages, or even any page at all, of the international media.

I already reported a month ago on how a paramilitary gang, UBISORT, at the service of the Oaxacan oligarchy, lead by Governor Ulises Ruiz, attacked a civilian caravan in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, when they tried to breach their siege of the indigenous autonomous municipalities, murdering two, Betty Cariño and Jiry Jaakola.

Now the civil society of the southern Mexican state is willing again to risk their lives to challenge the impunity of the death squads and to bring emotional and material support to the isolated indigenous community of San Juan Copala, where several journalists and activists have already been murdered in the struggle between the democratic self-rule of the people and the landlords.

The risk is huge, like the Zionists, the paramilitary gangs at the service of the Mexican and multinational oligarchy are ready to kill. The members of the Misión Copala know this but still they march.

The Triqui people have no water, electricity, food nor medicines because of the siege by the death squads.

Spanish alternative information site La Haine is covering this new caravan on daily basis starting today (in Spanish language only).

Oaxaca: police attacks civilians at San Juan Copala

The communities in resistance of the Triqui people or Oaxaca, Mexico, whose uphill struggle against the paramilitaries of UBISORT, supported by the state, was mentioned here before on two occasions, denounced yesterday that the state police has attacked the people of San Juan Copala, murdering two young sisters: Selena and Adela Ramírez López, 18 and 15 years old respectively. Two men are also reported missing: Alfredo Martínez and Hipólito Merino.

The attack happened at noon (12:15 local time) when groups of heavily armed UBISORT militias and state policemen entered the autonomous village of San Juan Copala, taking the town hall by force.

Earlier, on July 26th, UBISORT paramilitary groups shot for hours against the village, injuring María Rosa Francisco, 35, when she went for wood. She is still missing. They also killed dozens of domestic animals.

On July 29th, Anastacio Juárez, brother of the leader of UBISORT Rufino Juárez, was murdered. The murder bears, according to the locals, the signature of an guvernamental execution, as there are precedents in which high leaders of repression have been murdered so they cannot speak in court and this serves also to rally the paramilitary bandits and to criminalize the popular movement that has been so far strictly nonviolent.

By 14:20 yesterday, the state police left the town but the paramilitaries are still entrenched in the town hall.

Full communications at La Haine (in Spanish).

New paper on Mexican genetics

An interesting freely available study has just been published: Irma Silva-Solezzi et al. Analysis of genomic diversity in Mexican Mestizo populations to develop genomic medicine in Mexico. PNAS, 2009.

Results
We analyzed data from 300 nonrelated self-identified Mestizo individuals from 6 states located in geographically distant regions in Mexico: Sonora (SON) and Zacatecas (ZAC) in the north, Guanajuato (GUA) in the center, Guerrero (GUE) in the center–Pacific, Veracruz (VER) in the center–Gulf, and Yucatan (YUC)in the southeast. Considering that Zapotecos have been shown as a good ancestral population for predicting Amerindian (AMI) ancestry in Mexican Mestizos (16), we included 30 Zapotecos(ZAP) from the southwestern state of Oaxaca (Fig. 1). For comparative purposes, we included similar data sets from HapMap populations: northern Europeans (CEU), Africans (YRI), and East Asians (EA), including Chinese (CHB) and Japanese (JPT). A HapMap-like database with SNP frequencies in Mexicans and HapMap populations was generated (http://diversity.inmegen. gob.mx).

Some assorted images:

Fig.1. Map showing areas sampled and diversity compared to HapMap standard samples. All populations are Mestizos except ZAP who are Native American Zapotecos.

Fig. 2. Plots of the Mexican and HapMap samples: A includes YRI (Yorubans), B without YRI.

Fig. 3A. Poulation structure of Mexicans and HapMap samples.

No novel conclusions, I'd say. As is known (at least by Mexicans) Northwesterners (represented here by SON) are "whiter" than average. All Mestizo Mexicans are basically a mixture of Europeans and Native Americans with very small apportion of African ancestry (more notable in Guerrero and some Veracruz individuals).

It is interesting to see anyhow how when a true Amerindian sample is introduced, a clear distinction appears with the East Asian HapMap sample that, by itself, can only be a poor approximation to Native American genotype. To a lesser extent surely it could be argued that CEU may not represent well the SW European ancestry of Mexicans but guess the differences are much less extreme (Europeans in general cluster all very close to CEU when in intercontinental contexts).

For further references on medical genomics regarding Mexico check this article at Science Daily.
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