[IMC-Boston-Dispatch] 02/11: Confronting Felipe Calderon

[Sofia JarrinT]

shadowboxer at riseup.net wrote: Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 13:55:22 -0800 (PST)
From: shadowboxer at riseup.net
To: justiceforbrad at lists.interactivist.net,
 oaxaca-boston at lists.riseup.net,
 newyorkoaxaca at lists.interactivist.net,
 accionzapatistanyc at lists.riseup.net
Subject: [oaxaca-boston] Confronting Felipe Calderon

 For anyone who can make it to Boston next week to confront Felipe
Calderon. Word is that the Presidente may also be in New York City
February 11-14. If anyone has more information, spread it far and wide and
let's take action...


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  February 4, 2008

  Contact: Suren Moodliar,
  Massachusetts Global Action
  Phone: 617-482-3500
  Email:  suren [@] fairjobs.org

  PROTEST MEXICAN PRESIDENT FELIPE CALDERON'S VISIT TO CAMBRIDGE

  Monday, February 11, 2008 – 6:00pm
  In front of:
  Harvard's John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge.

  Summary:

  A growing coalition of local progressive organizations and
individuals has decided to protest the policies of the Mexican
government represented by its President, Felipe Calderón as he
addresses Harvard's FFK Forum. President Calderon arrived to power
in one more undemocratic election in Mexico, while his government
continues to repress indigenous people, the labor movement, in
particular in Oaxaca, and is responsible, together with government
of the United States for the situation of millions of undocumented
Mexican workers in the U.S. At the same time, Calderon is now
advocating for the Security and Prosperity Partnership, which
strengthens the NAFTA agreement, which has proven to be detrimental
for workers in Mexico and the U.S.

  Details:

  * In 2006, President Calderon stole the presidency from the Party
of Democratic Revolution candidate Andrés López Obrador. On July 2,
2006 Mexicans voted at over 130,000 different polling stations,
casting separate ballots for president, senator and federal
deputies. International and Mexican election observers noted that
there weren't enough independent and party observers present in the
process. In many regions, one party dominated, creating
opportunities for vote shaving, ballot stuffing, lost ballots and
other forms of fraud. The PRD's strongest accusation comes from the
fact that ballots in nearly one third of the country were not
counted in the presence of independent observers. One analysis of
IFE results found that in 2,366 polling places only a PAN observer
was present and in those places, Calderon beat Obrador by a 72-21
margin. Furthermore, PRD observers discovered that sealed ballot
boxes were being opened illegally at IFE offices where PAN's
observers
 dominated the process. These are just two examples of fraud within
the '06 Mexican election, compounded by hundreds of discrepancies
uncovered by independent electoral observers. Given a history of
electoral fraud in Mexico, during the nearly century reign of the
PRI and the explicit support of Calderon in the Western media, we
charge Calderon with manipulating Mexico's democratic process, just
as President Bush disenfranchised voters in Florida and Ohio to
become president in the United States and demand that democracy be
respected in Mexico, without interference from the United States or
any other Western power.

  * There are approximately 31 indigenous political prisoners
behind bars, punished for their autonomous community organization,
the defense of their territory and natural resources, the defense
of their right to freely decide their own community matters, and
their refusal to forget their culture and history. All of them
organized to improve the living conditions in their regions and
communities, yet charges have been invented to keep them locked up.
The paramilitary activity backed by the US and Mexican government
against Indigenous communities in Oaxaca from 2002 through 2005 and
the expansion of capitalism and empire on Oaxaca is enough for a
international call to standup in solidarity against the state
sponsored repression and for human peace, dignity and justice. What
makes Oaxaca and other indigenous struggles in Mexico notable  is
the commitment of strong currents within it to militancy, to non-
violence, to non-hierarchical forms of social structure, to
cooperation
 in place of competition, to local autonomy and, as much as
possible, to local self-sufficiency. The jails of Oaxaca now reveal
the war unleashed by the state government and those who have served
it down through the years. By means of a silent war, the
corporations and all the political parties are trying to do away
with the Indian peoples, plunder their natural resources, erase
their history with blood, and take their territory away from them.
Extermination, exploitation, lies, dispossession, and prison have
been the only state and federal government policies concerning the
Indian peoples of Oaxaca.

  On September 25, 1996, the massive repression of the Zapotec men
and women of the Loxicha region began when the Mexican Army
brutally attacked those who were demanding better living
conditions. The result was "200 illegal arrests, 150 cases of
torture, 32 illegal searches, 22 extrajudicial executions, 22
forced disappearances, 137 political prisoners or prisoners of
conscience, and an undetermined number of sexual abuses,
harassment, death threats, and corrupt procedural irregularities"
(Civilian Mission for the Observation of Human Rights, March 21-24,
2002).

  We therefore demand: Freedom for all Indigenous prisoners; Stop
repression against indigenous peoples; Land, culture, history,
language, Indigenous people are not merchandise.

  * Felipe Calderon inherited and strongly supports the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He supports deepening it in
the form of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).  Neither
benefits working people in the 3 countries of North America. NAFTA
weakened worker protections in all 3 countries, it increased low-
wage, dead-end employment in Mexico while destroying food
independence and agricultural employment in Mexico with highly
subsidized US crops. NAFTA also decreased job growth in the United
States by a million jobs. However, as a former Mexican foreign
minister remarked, NAFTA was "an agreement for the rich and
powerful in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, an agreement
effectively excluding ordinary people in all three societies."

  In this vein, SPP is being drafted by the North American
Competitiveness Council that consists of 30 corporate members. In
addition to rewriting regulations entirely in favor of the
corporations, it will likely extend US Government Patriot Act-style
"security" policies to Canada and Mexico. This extension and
recommended pro-corporate policies tend to be adopted by
presidential/executive decree rather than through deliberation by
elected bodies (Congress or Parliament).

  Progressive organizations and unions in all three countries seek
alternatives to NAFTA based on principles of real fair trade and
solidarity. Other models for Latin American economic cooperation
are being developed involving countries like Venezuela, Ecuador,
Uruguay, Bolivia, and Cuba while rejecting US-imposed free-trade
regimes. Felipe Calderon is helping lead the opposition to these
progressive initiatives. We demand repealing NAFTA and stopping the
Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement.

  * The governments of the United States and Mexico are responsible
for the current situation of millions of undocumented workers in
the U.S. These workers are on the one hand exploited and abused; on
the other the U.S. government persecutes and repress them through
raids, detention and deportations. The Mexican government, now
headed by Felipe Calderon, pushes millions of workers out of their
country and away from their families in desperate search for jobs
in the North, while at the same time participating in the North
American Free Trade Agreement that produced not more jobs for
Mexicans but more unemployment.

  Of particular note is the ill treatment that Mexican authorities
provide migrants coming from Central America in transit to the
United States. Hundreds of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans
attempting to go through Mexico are robbed, detained, and sometimes
killed in the process by corrupt police or gangs. Mexico signed the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and
Their Family, yet as of now it has not applied it in full or in
consciousness.

  We, therefore denounce these abuses and demand justice, and fair
and humane treatment from Mexico and the U.S. for migrant workers

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