Communique from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee

General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation

Mexico --- September22, 2007

---- To the People of Mexico: ---- To the adherents of the Sixth
Declaration and the Other Campaign: ---- Brothers and Sisters: ---- Compaсeros
and Compaсeras: The EZLN communicates to you the following reflections and
decisions we have made:

--- I. Reflections

--- Chiapas ---- At this time, thestate government of Chiapas and the federal government (of the PRD-PRI and the PAN respectively) are waging a campaign against the Zapatista communities. "Official" evictions, paramilitary attacks, invasions sponsored by officials, persecutions and threats, have become once again part of the surroundings of the indigenous communities, the Zapatistas, who have set upon constructing their own destiny and improving their living conditions, always without losing their indigenous identity.

Just like in the worst times of the PRI, of Absalon Castellanos and "Croquetas" Albores Guillen, the PRD government of Chiapas is attacking the poor and needy, while catering to and benefiting the powerful. Just like any right-wing government, that of Juan Sabines in Chiapas continues the repression and dispossession, but now under a left-wing flag and with the double sponsorship of the two "presidencies" of our country: that of Felipe Calderon (of the PAN) and that of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (of the PRD, and, above all, of himself).

In contrast to other occasions, these aggressions have been met by the silence
of those voices that before rose to protest and to demand justice, and that now
fall silent, perhaps so that we are not reminded that they applauded AMLO's
support for Juan Sabines and his recent call to support PRD candidates for the
municipal presidencies and the local congress.

In this way, what we have been saying for the last 3 years has been confirmed:
above there are no principals nor convictions; there are, rather, ambitions and
conveniences. And another thing we said has also been confirmed: the institutional left is nothing more than a shameless right, a left rubber-stamped by the right.

The same crime has a different judgment: if the repression is carried out by the PAN, then one must mobilize and detain fascism; if its is carried out by the PRD, then one must lose one's memory, hush, do ridiculous juggling acts, or applaud. In Chiapas there is a real step backward in government policy. This time it does not carry the shield of the confessional right, but rather of the "modern" and "legitimate" left.

We will do what we have to do: resist. It does not matter if we have to do it alone. It wouldn't be the first time; before we became coffee-shop kitsch, alone indeed we were.

Mexico

There are many aspects upon which to reflect, voice opinions, and take positions. This will be done another time another way. For now we just want to say that the determining factor in our country is not the supposed "neo-independence" of the legislative powers with respect to the media. Above, politics is the art of simulation, and the real agenda of organized crime (that is, of the government) is not demonstrated in the declarations of politicians.

What we want to say now has to do with the double effort, civil and pacific, which we are currently undertaking as Zapatistas: the Encounter of Indigenous Peoples of America, and the Other Campaign.

The first represents an event without precedent. Outside the official national and international circles, delegates and representatives of the original peoples of the American continent will come together to meet each other directly, to see and listen to each other. That is, to begin to respect each other. The fact that the encounter will take place in the besieged territory of the Yaqui Tribe in the Mexican State of Sonora symbolizes our permanent struggle to make ourselves visible and give ourselves the voice and ear that those above deny us.

The days 11, 12, 13, and 14 of this October, in Vicam, Sonora, Mexico, we will be represented as Indian Peoples, to whose brown blood we have added the color of the Zapatistas.

With regard to the Other Campaign, it represents for us the only serious effort to construct a national movement from below and to the left.

It is interesting that those who before criticized this effort now use the same words that we have used to refer to the political class, to the necessity to listen and to organize from below.

As a sign of our commitment to those who are now our compaсeros and compaсeras, in addition to carrying out encounters in our own territory so that they may know us better, we regularly send one or more delegations of the EZLN out to visit the places where others struggle in order to know them better.

Thus we made a first journey throughout all of our country, and now that we are making an outline of a national plan of struggle, with the feeling and thinking of all those who form the Other Campaign, we have made a second visit to the north of Mexico.

As we have done on other occasions, each time that we leave our territory to visit other parts of our country, the EZLN has addressed the existing political-military organizations in order to respectfully ask them not to carry out actions that could endanger the life and liberty of our delegates in their civil and peaceful work.

In every case, we have received the attention and respect of those revolutionary organizations, and in some cases we have received their sympathy for our political initiatives.

These are organizations with which we maintain differences in formation, structure, method, analysis, and history, but we recognize and respect them. Their existence and persistence, like ours, is due to the grave living conditions of our people and the lack of spaces for political participation and struggle. Currently, one of these revolutionary organizations, the Popular
Revolutionary Army (EPR), is carrying out a political-military campaign to demand that two of their companions in struggle be returned alive.

The demand for the appearance of these disappeared is not only legitimate, it is also a denunciation of the current dirty war that that adoring lover of military uniform, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, is re-editing for the present.

As Zapatistas we think that we can not ask of the Popular Revolutionary Army that they permit our delegation to travel through the territories where it has presence or influence and to declare a ceasefire and suspend the campaign that it maintains with the just and legitimate demand for the presentation of its disappeared.

On the other hand, the nervous stupidity of those in charge of the official repression has become more acute with the recent actions of the EPR, and it could be, if the leadership of the Popular Revolutionary Army was to generously agree to a ceasefire so that our delegation could carry out its work, that the military government of Felipe Calderon would launch an attack and later
PRETENDER ADJUDICARLE LA AUTORНA AL EPR ARGUMENTANDO DISPUTAS INEXISTENTES ... arguing inexistent disputes.

Not long ago a government official said that the disappearances denounced by the EPR were not carried out by the government, but rather by another revolutionary organization. But it is well-known that it was indeed the government that detained them and has them still, and thus it is the government that must return them alive.

II. Decisions.

Compaсeros and Compaсeras:

For these reasons that we have here tried to synthesize as much as possible, we have decided the following:

First. The Sixth Commission of the EZLN will suspend the journey of the second phase of the Other Campaign to the states and regions of the center and south of the country that it had announced for the months of October, November, and December of 2007. In its place, we will carry out civil and peaceful actions in defense of the Zapatista Communities.

Second. The EZLN will comply with our commitment, as part of the organizing commission, to attend the Encounter of the Indigenous Peoples of America. A delegation of Zapatista leadership will travel precisely for that purpose to the territory of the Yaqui Tribe in Vicam, Sonora, Mexico, October 11, 12, 13, and 14, to be present in this important meeting, key for the future struggle of the original peoples of our continent.

Liberty and Justice for Atenco!
Liberty and Justice for Oaxaca!

For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the
Zapatista Army for National Liberation.

Sixth Commission of the EZLN

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, September of 2007

In Oaxaca, Because There's Culture, There's Resistance:

A Full Report on the Battle for Oaxaca

APPO Battle for Oaxaca, July 16, 2007 ---- On the morning of July 16, 2007, the
people of Oaxaca poured into the Zocalo, intent on reclaiming their annual
cultural celebration known as the Guelagetza. By late morning, the People's
Guelagetza had become a megamarcha with thousands taking to the streets. By
early afternoon, it had become a battle for the city, after police attacked the
peaceful march. ---- In the indigenous language of Zapoteco, Guelagetza means to
participate and cooperate at the same time.

For hundreds of years, it has represented a space where peoples came together from across Oaxaca to celebrate and share their cultures. ---- But in recent years, the festival has been turned into a commercial spectacle for the benefit of tourists and corporations, with native Oaxaqueños having to pay thousands of dollars to watch as cheapened versions of their traditions and histories are sold off. This year, the
official Guelagetza is being sponsored by Coca-Cola, Inc. and the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.

The official Guelagetza is not us, explained one woman, a Oaxaqueña
artisan. Our Guelagetza has to be shared... It's like our life itself,
said another artisan.

This year, in a bold attempt to reclaim an authentic traditional
celebration from the government and big business, the Popular Assembly of
the People of Oaxaca (APPO) called for a boycott of the official
Guelaguetza, organizing an alternative festival.

The People's Guelaguetza was part of a resurgence of the popular movement
to overthrow the tyrant Governor Ulises Ruiz, and to strive for
self-determination of the people of Oaxaca, calling for Todo el poder al
pueblo, All the power to the people.

The movement hasn't gone away, said Dzahui and Patrocinio, two
indigenous students who are activists with the APPO. People have gained
consciousness. We know that, yes, we can...The people can govern
themselves.

For a time in 2006, the people of Oaxaca did govern themselves, as
popular assemblies successfully took over the city from the government.
But last fall, government forces crushed the popular rebellion and
regained control through violent repression, detentions and
disappearances.

The state strikes fear into the people, Dzahui explained. It's
something like terrorism. But the people are losing the fear.

In Oaxaca, the resistance movement has been growing steadily over the past
few months, with major actions marking the anniversary of last year's
uprising. But the repression has persisted. The Federal Preventive Police
(PFP) still occupy and patrol the streets of Oaxaca City, aided by local
gunmen known as porros and pistoleros.

Meanwhile, in the countryside, the government has suppressed popular
movements by waging low-intensity warfare on autonomous indigenous
communities. Recently, paramilitaries opened fire on indigenous protesters
defending the forests around San Isidro.

Early this month, Oaxaca was declared in a state of siege after Leftist
guerillas of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) reportedly blew up gas
pipelines of the Pemex corporation. On July 14, the government used the
attacks as its rationale for the military cordon formed around the
Guelagetza Auditorium, blocking the entry of the People's Guelagetza.

That day, Florentino Lopez, a spokesperson for the APPO, issued this
statement: We denounce that the state government tries to repress those
who attend the People's Guelaguetza. We denounce that it tries to massacre
the people, for which we declare ourselves on alert and we hold Ulises
Ruiz and the federal government responsible.

Nonetheless, the APPO went forward with the opening events of the People's
Guelaguetza, the colorful Convite and the nighttime Calenda on July 14 and
15. The Lunes del Cerro, the biggest day of the festival, began early on a
damp morning in the Zocalo. The rain came and went, but the people kept
coming.

The plaza was already bustling with an alternative APPO street fair,
encircled by a fair sponsored by the governing party of Ulises Ruiz. On
many walls, fresh paint declared, Long Live the People's Guelaguetza!
Boycott the Commercial Guelaguetza! with stencils of a crowd of
indigenous women, and of a man in indigenous dress, gun and machete in
hand, a skull of mourning in his headdress.

At 9 am, the cultural delegations began streaming in from all across
Oaxaca, from the mountains, the valleys, the isthmus. They paraded around
the Zocalo to the cheers of waiting crowds of (mostly) Oaxaqueños who had
come to celebrate their own Guelaguetza. The air was full of joy,
festivity, defiance. The brass bands struck up a number, the dancers
started up a dance, many decked out in bright colors, carrying flowers,
flags and traditional symbols.

Then, with the brass bands blaring and the delegations leading the way,
the People's Guelaguetza took to the streets. They were headed for the
Auditorium at the Fortín Mountain, military cordon be damned. The people
began to chant:

Oaxaca lives, the struggle continues!

The march route soon became a river of bodies with people chanting,
dancing, singing and playing music. The cultural delegations, in their
traditional dress and costumes, performed, danced and chanted as they
walked.

Ulises, understand, the culture is not for sale!

The mood of the crowd was festive and determined, its displays of
spontaneous celebration reflecting the hopes and frustrations of peoples
seeking to reclaim the dignity and authenticity of their cultures and
traditions, which they felt had been betrayed and commercialized for
profit in the official Guelaguetza.

The growing crowd was made up of people both young and old, male and
female, indigenous, mestizo and foreign. Mothers and fathers marched with
children at their sides or in their arms. Students chanted with working
people, as older men and women sang and danced. Oaxaqueños and visitors
moved freely among each other. Resistance and unity in motion.

Women to the center! some cried, and the women of Oaxaca took the center
of the street, clapping, chanting, cheering.

As the crowd approached the Fortín Mountain, it had grown to over 10,000
participants and observers, according to the official estimates of the
Oaxacan newspaper Noticias.

You see it, you feel it, the people are present!

Just hundreds of feet from the auditorium, the march was met with hundreds
of police, who lined up to create a wall across the avenue, preventing
people from accessing the auditorium. Nearby, trucks were full of
reinforcement officers waiting for escalation. There were Federal
Preventive Police, Municipal Police, Industrial and Bank Police, the Elite
Police of the Mexican Army.

They stood in full combat gear, ready to make war with the People's
Guelaguetza. Some chewed gum, smug and smiling. Some, mere boys, looked on
terrified. They all wielded big wooden bats. They sported shields,
helmets, ammunition belts, tear gas guns, real guns.

At first, only a few hundred people approached the police line, with the
rest of the march about ten yards back, continuing to chant and play
music:

We must press, we must press, the People's Guelaguetza!

The APPO attempted to negotiate a way for people to enter the auditorium,
but no go. Orders were orders. They had come from the top: If there is
no permission, order must be enforced were the words of Sergio Segriste
Ríos, Secretary of Citizen Protection, in a statement to the press two
days before.

As the crowd's hope was transformed into anger, there grew an explosive
tension in the air between the people and the police. The unarmed crowd
was decidedly unafraid of the armed officers standing before them. These
were people accustomed to such repression, yet still infuriated by it. The
crowd began to fill in towards the officers, and people moved between each
other, bodies in conversation.

The people wanted only to pass, they declared. They wanted no violence.
Old women scolded the police, children looked up and asked why not. People
held out empty hands to show they were unarmed. They demanded to pass, but
held back from pushing forward towards the police. A cushion of space
still separated them.

Only the cultural delegations turned back?they would resist in their own
way. On the other side of the police line appeared another, smaller crowd,
supporters from over the mountain who had come for the Guelaguetza. They
raised their hands and cheered. ¨Join us!¨ cried the crowd across the
police line, but they could not. The police now had two fronts, one behind
and one ahead.

Over the course of 15 minutes, anger continued to mount at what was seen
as an occupying army, standing in the way of the People's Guelaguetza.
Some in the crowd chanted, some joked and talked, their words
intermittently interrupted by the pop-pop of firecrackers. Others stood
silent, ready for the attack which they knew would eventually come, and
which many had experienced in other places and times.

Assassins! Assassins! they shouted, for all the times they had seen it
before.

There was an atmosphere of normality at the scene, as if this show of
governmental force and repression was expected and familiar. Once again,
as Florentino Lopez of the APPO commented, ¨the state will try to drown
in blood the struggle of the people.

Fists were raised high now. Voices, too: The people, united, will never
be defeated!

In the middle of the chants, the police line systematically pushed into
the crowd, batons raised, attempting to drive people back down the street.
Again, people held up open palms: We are unarmed. We are families,
children, old women and men. We are the people of Oaxaca. But the police
were charging, batons swinging, striking bodies and cracking heads.

In response to this offensive action, the crowd began throwing small rocks
from a decorative trough that lay before the Plaza Fortín Hotel.
Immediately came the tear gas, boom, boom, canister after canister,
tracing long arcs through the air. The people began to scatter, but not
far. They turned back around to hold their ground.

As a young participant named Carlos would later describe it, The
repression came from the government. We did nothing more than defend
ourselves...The repression was a weapon of the government against those
who raised their voice.

The strongest weapon in the hands of the government was the tear gas.
People crying, covering their faces, cradling their heads or others'
heads. Running, stumbling, fighting their way through the gas clouds for
dear life. Men and women grabbed the smoking canisters and threw them
back, sacrificing their eyes and skin. Groups of medics and supporters
rushing in to aid people impacted by the gas or injured by projectiles.

Still, the movement of people seemed fluid and almost natural, approaching
and retreating from the line of officers. It was the motion of people
tired of this customary violence and repression, but also of people who
seemed to know how to take care of and defend each other. Women and men,
old and young, threw projectiles, administered aid, carried their comrades
to safety.

The gas attack intensifying, more rocks flying in both directions. Women
and men of all ages began breaking off pieces of pavement and brick,
making piles in the street for others to throw. A woman, older and dressed
in her Sunday's best, cracked the roadway's divider, chiseling free large
red bricks to be thrown back at the Federal Preventive Police.

The crowd began to see the rising cost of resistance in the combatants and
bystanders being helped or carried back from the frontlines, heaving from
the gas, bloodied and broken by batons or projectiles thrown by the
police, some of the people obviously unconscious.

Police reinforcements now attempted to surround the crowd from the side
streets. To halt their advance, barricades went up?makeshift barricades
made of street signs, poles, advertisements, whatever people could get
their hands on. They recalled the barricades built by the hundreds to
defend the neighborhoods here in 2006.

A bus was driven into the middle of the avenue, then a second, then a
third. They formed a much bigger barricade. As officers attempted to seize
the buses, the crowd forced them out. Others proceeded to push back the
entire police line, this time with fire. The buses were set ablaze with
molotov cocktails.

Soon, big plumes of black smoke were wafting through the air, mingling
with the tear gas over the buses and barricades. On one of the buses was
spraypainted, Resistance can do it. Other buses reportedly commandeered
and driven by supporters soon arrived on the avenue.

Reporters and photographers?ourselves among them?scrambled throughout the
crowd, recording the clash of people and police. Let people see what is
happening, said one bystander. Let everybody see what this evil
government is doing to people.

Police and army reinforcements were coming from all sides. They swarmed
down from the top of the hill, over rooftops, down stairs, through
people's gardens. In the face of this overwhelming force, the remaining
crowds beat a retreat. Small fronts held their ground at nearby
intersections, vowing to defend the streets.

It began to rain, hard. Boys and girls stood in the rain, handing each
other sticks and masks for security. An empty Coke truck, burst open and
ransacked, sat lonely on an empty side street. As it turned out,
Coca-Cola, Inc., which had supplied its sponsorship for the official
Guelaguetza, had also supplied the combatants with their cocktails and the
street medics with their solutions.

And as a man down the street displayed for onlookers, Combined Systems,
Inc., of Jamestown, Pennsylvania had supplied the police with CN Gas,
their weapon of choice.

Mothers and fathers looked for their children along streets still thick
with the gas. I lost my daughter, cried one woman, weeping as another
helped her walk. She went to the front and I can't find her, I can't find
her.

A few blocks away, the streets of the center were clogged with traffic as
tourists and some residents drove out in horror, staring from fogged
windows and shaking their heads.

After over five hours of combat, the day´s battles were coming to an end.
On the other side of town, at the Plaza de la Danza, the delegations had
managed to resume the Guelaguetza on a makeshift stage, in spite of the
repression, in spite of it all.

Roman, a Oaxaqueño teacher and APPO activist, later argued, It's another
victory for the people's resistance in Oaxaca. Because it didn't happen
that the People's Guelaguetza was suspended. To the contrary.

The response of the mainstream press to these events of July 16th has been
either silence or spin. The Associated Press reproduced the Oaxacan
government's statement verbatim: About 200 people wearing masks and
carrying sticks, stones and bottle rockets began to provoke the
police...The police repelled the attack using tear gas. But independent
media reports, photos and video have all debunked the government's version
of events.

The world is only now learning how dearly the people of Oaxaca have paid
for their Guelaguetza and their resistance: 65 detained or disappeared,
50 seriously injured and possibly one protester dead (still unconfirmed)
at the hands of the police. There have also been widespread reports of
torture, beating and sexual abuse inside the prisons.

The APPO is now mobilizing all its forces against government repression
and police violence, and for the release of all prisoners and disappeared.
At the same time, the APPO refuses to negotiate with the government as
long as Ulises Ruiz remains in power and the PFP continues to occupy the
city. They have issued three immediate and non-negotiable demands:

For an end to police repression, harassment, and intimidation of the
social and popular movements in Oaxaca. Condemn governmental actions and
indiscriminate use of force by the State and Federal police. Demand the
release of all political prisoners, making Federal and State officials
responsible in the case of arbitrary detentions and disappearances of
civilians.

The movement in Oaxaca is now joined in this campaign by national and
international human rights organizations, and by a global movement of
solidarity.

The APPO has issued an international call for mobilizations in your own
places of origin, to integrate yourselves into a human wall to stop the
massacre against the people of Oaxaca. Already protests have been
initiated by the Zapatistas' Other Campaign in Mexico and by the
Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB) in California.

Back in Oaxaca, thousands marched again on July 18 to denounce the police
brutality, and to cast light on the plight of their imprisoned, their
disappeared, their wounded. La Marcha del Silencio, The March of Silence,
began at dusk. Its participants, wearing black, marched silently from the
Llano Park, down the winding streets and converging in the Zocalo.

Massive banners stretched the entire width of the street, displaying the
names and faces of all those detained, disappeared and in police custody.
Giant wooden crosses reading Repression, Poverty and Misery lined
the march. There were puppets of fallen comrades, displays of flowers,
entire families all masked in black, linked together by homemade chains.
All silent.

The march concluded at the Zocalo with words shared from the victims'
families. The crowed responded to these speeches with a chorus of chants,
echoed from one end of the square to the next:

Liberty, liberty, to those imprisoned for struggling!

The day before, the APPO had met in an emergency assembly, where
agreements are made...democratically, with the participation of all. On
July 18, the assembly announced its plan to push ahead with the boycott of
the commercial Guelaguetza, to hold massive marches of mourning every
three days, and to reestablish its encampment in the Zocalo.

Many here see the Battle of the Guelaguetza?or the Guerraguetza, as
some are now calling it?as something much deeper than a one-day protest.
Movement participants see it as a battle for Oaxaca itself, for its
culture and its people.

Patrocinio, indigenous student activist, said the demonstration was about
reclaiming the traditions, rescuing the culture of our ancestors...The
government doesn't give the people what they need, so we say ?Ya Basta!'
[Enough is enough!]

As one of the anonymous women in an APPO artisans' collective put it, the
night after the repression, The government can rob everything, but it
can't rob your dignity, your culture, your customs and traditions?In
Oaxaca, because there's culture, there's resistance.

Teacher-activist Roman had this to say after the day was over: We will
no longer permit our traditions and our culture to be sold to the best
bidder. Today demonstrated that the Guelaguetza has recuperated its
origins, in which the peoples of Oaxaca can coexist without selling the
culture. For this, he continued, the people of Oaxaca have decided to
struggle until their victory.

At his side that night of the 16th in the Zocalo, another teacher, a poet
and indigenous activist, offered these words to those who would listen:

When I sing and speak the truth, this is my protest. And when I sing, I
open other songs. But my song of Oaxaca doesn't exist today, because the
police are here. Where are you, Oaxaca, where are you? I love you, Oaxaca,
and I am with you.


Written by three eyewitnesses and independent reporters: Kelly Lee
(Boston), James Kautz and Michael GW (New York City). Photographs and
interviews by Michael GW.


Images:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/es/2007/07/88396.html
http://nyc.indymedia.org/es/2007/07/88414.html
http://nyc.indymedia.org/es/2007/07/88435.html

------------------------------

Mexico Under Scrutiny by Inter-American Commission

HUMAN RIGHTS:

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Apr 9 (IPS) - The delegates of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) who began a visit to Mexico Monday will leave at the end of the week with their suitcases full of files and complaints by civil society groups, which say the human rights situation in the country remains serious and that the government is attempting to criminalise social protest.

Among the cases that the visitors will study is the alleged rape and subsequent death of an elderly indigenous woman at the hands of soldiers, the dismantling of a special prosecutor's office that was investigating the abuses committed in the "dirty war" against opponents of the government in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and sexual harassment of women taken into custody by the police after a protest in the town of San Salvador Atenco.

The IACHR delegates will also receive detailed reports on the arrests of young demonstrators ordered by a governor who now sits on the ministerial cabinet, and on the harsh crackdown on a months-long social uprising in the southern state of Oaxaca.

Only the case of the indigenous woman, which occurred in February, and the closure of the special prosecutor's office correspond to the administration of conservative President Felipe Calderón, who took office in early December.

Nevertheless, human rights groups see the way these cases were handled as clearly indicative of the new government's approach to human rights questions.

The delegation will be headed by the president of the IACHR himself, Florentín Meléndez, who is rapporteur for Mexico; IACHR executive secretary Santiago Cantón; and human rights expert Daniela Salazar.

The representatives, who will be in Mexico until Apr. 14 on the seventh IACHR mission to the country, were invited by the government itself. But activists say the team has come to Mexico in response to repeated requests by human rights groups.

"We have been asking for this visit since last year, which was a very bad year for Mexico in terms of human rights, just as 2007 has started off to be," Edgar Cortez, head of the All Rights for All Human Rights Network, told IPS.

The 54 local organisations that make up the Network have spent months preparing the reports that they will present to the IACHR, an Organisation of American States (OAS) body. So has the government, whose officials will meet with the delegates, as will legislators and members of the judiciary.

Although the majority of denunciations by human rights groups involve incidents and events that occurred between 2004 and 2006, activists also complain that the current government has not taken any steps to clarify them and that it has not made it clear what its human rights policy will be.

Activists have repeatedly urged the Calderón administration to clarify its stance on human rights -- something that may occur this week, since the government has stated that the IACHR delegation will be informed of its official priorities in that area.

According to Cortez, the Calderón administration "has been guilty of omission with regard to human rights, and has also shown signs that it is really not very interested in the question."

Human rights groups have been concerned about the deployment of army troops to different parts of the country, ordered by the president on the argument that they would be fighting drug trafficking. In their view, it is a strategy aimed at militarising the country and criminalising social protest.

They also complain that the government has done nothing to clarify cases like the violent repression of protesters in the state of Oaxaca during the social uprising staged in the second half of 2006 to demand the removal of corrupt, abusive local authorities.

A total of 23 demonstrators and others -- including an independent U.S. journalist -- were killed, hundreds were arrested, an unspecified number of people went missing, and there was abundant testimony of abuses of power, all of which ended in total impunity.

Another issue of concern to activists was the disbanding of the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Social and Political Movements of the Past, created by former president Vicente Fox (2000-2006).

The special prosecutor's office was charged with investigating the repression against opponents of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) regimes that ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000. A total of 532 people were "disappeared" during the "dirty war" and thousands were tortured. But the office met with little success in its attempts to take legal action against those responsible for the abuses, such as former president Luis Echeverría (1970-1976).

Calderón allowed the special prosecutor's office to die a quiet death, and so far has given no indication of whether he plans to do anything to clarify human rights crimes committed by the security forces in the past.

"Hopefully, after the IACHR visit, the measures to be taken by the government in terms of human rights will be made clear; we really need to know what it plans to do," said Cortez.

One of the steps taken by Calderón that put human rights defenders on the alert was his decision to name Francisco Ramírez, former governor of the west-central state of Jalisco, as interior minister.

As governor, Ramírez ordered a harsh clampdown in May 2004 on hundreds of young demonstrators who had gathered in the western city of Guadalajara to protest against the Latin America/Caribbean-European Union summit.

The police illegally detained 73 protesters, tortured at least 19, and submitted 55 others to degrading treatment, according to an exhaustive report by the National Human Rights Commission, a government body.

At the time, Ramírez downplayed the accusations and said the police acted appropriately. He even decorated police officers implicated in illegal acts.

"Leaving internal policy and part of the official security strategies in the hands of Ramírez is simply appalling," said Cortez.

Activists say that under Ramírez, the government is adopting strategies to cover up for soldiers accused of committing abuses and crimes while on duty.

They argue, for instance, that the government is concealing the guilt of soldiers in the death of 73-year-old Ernestina Ascensio. On Feb. 25, the elderly sheepherder, who belonged to the Nahua indigenous community, was reportedly brutally raped by troops in the rural district of Soledad Atzompa in the eastern state of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico.

The initial forensic reports and testimony pointed to the involvement of soldiers. However, the Calderón administration denied that the woman had been raped, and claimed that she died of intestinal bleeding and severe malnutrition.

Human rights groups also argue that the government has been tolerant of abuses committed in May 2006 by the security forces in the case of San Salvador Atenco, 15 km east of the capital. During an operation to evict street vendors from an unauthorised area of the town, female protesters were purportedly subjected to humiliating sexual abuse, according to several reports. (END/2007)