While the APPO marches on the US Consulate in Oaxaca, Subcomandante Marcos declares from Chiapas, “to the Zapatistas it looks like there's a professional army murdering a defenseless population” in Palestine

Your silence hurts me. –Mahumud Darwish, Palestinian poet

When the Zapatistas rose up in arms on January 1, 1994, most of them thought they were going to die.  Many did.  Their rag-tag Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) set out to reverse 500 years of conquest, and it had a formidable enemy: the US-equipped Mexican military.  Indigenous communities were under a constant state of siege and occupation for the next two years.  However, the EZLN’s rifles and sticks weren’t its only defense: Mexicans and the international community mobilized to demand peace in Chiapas.

During the Festival of Dignified Rage in Chiapas, Subcomandante Marcos breaks the EZLN's silence on the drug war

On the first day of the Zapatista National Liberation Army's participation in the Festival of Dignified Rage, its spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos discussed the drug violence that has increasingly plagued Mexico.  Marcos' speech marks the first time the EZLN has addressed the drug war in any sort of depth.

Marcos couldn't avoid addressing drug violence in his discussion of violence against social movements.  He says Mexican President Felipe Calderon and the corporate media "use and abuse the word 'violence'" for their own means.  "They say they condemn violence, but in reality they condemn action."  Marcos accuses Calderon of using the drug war to pacify discontent with his government.  "Mr. Calderon decided that, instead of bread and circuses, he would give the people blood."

Tlaxcala is the only state without victims of organized crime

by Esther Sanchez, El Universal

In 2008, the war between the drug trafficking cartels left a record-breaking 5,630 people executed in the country.  According to El Universal's count, in the past four years 12,061 people have died from organized crime; 46.5% of these murders occurred within the past year.

The daily average of victims in 2008 was 15, and the most violent day was November 3, when 58 homicides with the narcos' mark were reported.  Of the fifteen, 19 were in Sinaloa and 12 in Durango.

Desde el Festival de la Digna Rabia, las organizaciones, colectivos e individuos participantes condenamos enérgicamente la horrenda masacre perpetrada por el ejército israelí contra la población civil de la Franja de Gaza el 27 de diciembre de este año, resultando en cientos de personas muertas y heridas, la mayoría civiles. Este crimen representa un aumento peligroso del holocausto permanente que se comete contra el pueblo palestino con el financiamiento de Estados Unidos y el silencio cómplice, hipócrita e indigno del mundo

From the Festival of Dignified Rage, the organizations, collectives, and individual participants strongly condemn the horrendous massacre perpetrated by the Israeli military against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip on December 27th of this year, resulting in hundreds of injured and dead people, the majority civilians.  This crime represents a dangerous increase in the permanent holocaust that is committed against the Palestinian people with United States financing and the world's enabling, hypocritical, and disgraceful silence.

Mexico's drug war fits into the rubric of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and the US security agenda

by Carlos Fazio, La Jornada

One. In the days leading up to the arrival of the first package of US armament, intelligence software, and military consultancy under Plan Mexico, Felipe Calderon's so-called "Operation Clean-up" takes on the appearance of a tribute to the White House and Capitol Hill.  Beyond the religious connotation of the "operation's" name, which refers to a dualistic Christian discourse: good/bad, clean/dirty, the leader with "clean hands," who declared himself an admirer of General Francisco Franco, seems to be carrying out a purification ritual.

A record-breaking 5,612 people were executed in Mexico’s drug war in 2008, making the drug war more deadly than the drugs

Mexico's daily El Universal, which began counting drug war executions four years ago, reports that 5,612 people were executed in Mexico’s drug war in 2008.  This year’s deaths more than doubled 2007’s total of over 2,700 executions.  By El Universal's estimates, about 8,463 drug executions have occurred during the first two years of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s six-year term in office.  Calderon deployed the army and federal police to combat drug cartels almost immediately upon assuming office in December 2006.

The 2008 death toll means that the drug war in Mexico alone (that is, not including the copious number of drug war deaths in Colombia) is more deadly than illicit drugs in the United States, which is the biggest drug market in the world and the destination for the overwhelming majority of the American continent’s drugs.

Activist organizations accuse the government of using the anti-drug operation to repress indigenous communities, poor neighborhoods, and social justice organizations

On November 27, 2008, rural education students in Michoacan put down their books and headed to the state’s capital, Morelia, to commemorate repression they suffered in 2002 with a protest demanding more resources for their schools and the firing of Elba Esther Gordillo, political hack and despised president of the national teachers union, the SNTE. The students from the Normal Rural Vasco de Quiroga in Tiripetío, Michoacán, were accompanied by their counterparts from fourteen other states, all members of the Mexican Federation of Socialist Peasant Students (FECSM in its Spanish initials).

photos by Cuajutli Vallejo Benitez and Casa del Migrante "El Hogar de la Misericordia"

Central American migrants risk everything, including their lives, to reach the United States.  During their journey they are robbed, beaten, kidnapped, or killed by individuals, gangs, drug cartels, the police, and the army.

Central American migrants wait for a train in Arriaga, Chiapas.  Some have armed themselves with pipes, rocks, and sticks to protect themselves during their journey.

Photo: Cuajutli Vallejo Benitez

Calderon’s “two-faced” policy combines police, the military, gangs, and Los Zetas to fulfill US mandate to deter Central American migration

“Humberto” is a Honduran subsistence farmer. He grows his beans and vegetables without pesticides and herbicides. “The chemicals they put in food these days ruin the taste,” he says. Humberto has a patch of land, a house, a wife, and five children—three of whom still live at home.

Like many small farmers, Humberto has a lot of debt. The bank is going to take his home if he doesn’t come up with the approximately USD$17,000 he owes. So Humberto packed some clothes, kissed the wife and kids goodbye, and headed north to the United States. He told them he’d be back as soon as he’d paid off the debt; it wouldn’t take long.