Primero de Diciembre dia de la Dignidad Mexika!

Rights activist held in Oaxaca prison, alleges false arrest

By John Gibler/Special to The Herald Mexico El Universal Jueves 30 de noviembre de 2006

Alberto Cilia Ocampo, a thin 21-year-old university student and regional chess champion from Mexico City, came to Oaxaca to document cases of forced disappearances and other human rights violations on Monday

Alberto Cilia Ocampo, a thin 21-year-old university student and regional chess champion from Mexico City, came to Oaxaca to document cases of forced disappearances and other human rights violations on Monday. Little did he know that within hours of his arrival, he would become the next case. At 4 p.m. Monday, hooded state police officers grabbed Cilia off the street together with Sarah Weldon, a 22-year-old French university student and Omar Rodríguez Camarena, a 28-year-old graduate student in history, and whisked them off in the back of a state police pickup truck. "I saw two guys wearing ski masks approach me. They grabbed my head, slapped me in the face, forced me down and put a hood over my head," Cilia said through the metal grating of the state penitentiary in Ixcotel. For the next 46 hours, Cilia and his two friends would live what they had come only to bear witness to: torture, interrogations, constant relocations between various state holding facilities, forced confessions, and ultimately trumped up charges. Cilia came to Oaxaca City on Monday as part of a commission sent by the Yaxkin Human Rights Center, founded by his father David Cilia Olmos in 1991. David Cilia said he began to receive calls the night of Saturday, Nov. 25, when Federal Preventative Police fought for hours in the streets with hundreds of members of the Oaxaca People´s Assembly (APPO). After the police detained and beat dozens of APPO protesters David Cilia´s colleagues in Oaxaca urged him to send a commission to help investigate and document human rights violations in the wake of the confrontation. "We met and deliberated on Sunday and decided to send a commission that night," David Cilia said. "Alberto arrived in Oaxaca City on Monday morning, gathered numerous testimonies and was on his way back." Cilia first learned of his son´s disappearance at 4:11 p.m. on Monday when another member of the Yaxkin delegation called him. That call remains registered in his cell phone. State Judge Guadalupe Lucas Figueroa said the two young men were charged with "sedition and aggravated acts of arson." Judge Lucas Figueroa said police detained the three "suspects" because "they were burning a motorcycle and chanting political slogans," he said. Although the judge insisted state ministerial police carried out the arrest, a court clerk provided a copy of the police report that said state preventive police had made the arrest. After 46 hours, Alberto Cilia and Rodríguez were finally able to speak with relatives for 30 minutes on Wednesday at the prison in Ixcotel. Weldon, however, is still incommunicado. Her lawyers said officials from the National Immigration Institute would not let them speak with or see Weldon, nor would they confirm her whereabouts. The lawyers are preparing an injunction to prevent Weldon´s deportation. In Ixcotel, both Alberto Cilia and Rodríguez were in good spirits and had few visible signs of torture on their faces. They testified that they had been hooded, slapped, stepped on, had a burning liquid poured on their backs and were threatened with electrocution. Throughout their beatings, police constantly threatened both men with death saying they would cut up their bodies and mail the parts off to various relatives, the men said. Cilia said that when the police first searched them they argued about whether or not to apprehend them, some officers saying that was no evidence. After a brief dispute, the police arrested them. The victims said police took them to four different holding facilities in 46 hours, repeatedly beating and threatening them. Cilia said state police forced them to sign false confessions, including that APPO leader Flavio Sosa had paid them 50 dollars to make Molotov cocktails. Both men plan to fight the charges and say they´ll file criminal charges against their captors as well as state authorities.

Support the new magazzine: La Resistencia!!!

Surge La Resistencia, periódico que dará cuenta del movimiento de AMLO

Con la certeza de que "en estos momentos de definición histórica'' la información es fundamental, y que resistir no significa espera resignada, un grupo de veracruzanos para quienes Andrés Manuel López Obrador ganó las elecciones del pasado 2 de julio inició la publicación del periódico La Resistencia.

Se trata de un tabloide a colores con el cual buscan dar cuenta puntual del movimiento que acompaña a López Obrador, así como otorgar voz a las organizaciones y ciudadanos participantes en la Convención Nacional Democrática.

Con La Resistencia, de periodicidad mensual, busca "fortalecer nuestra organización y nuestra lucha" en la movilización civil pacífica que a lo largo del país han asumido diversas expresiones de manifestación.

En sus páginas se informa además del calendario de actividades y la fecha de los recorridos del tabasqueño por el país. El primer número recoge además el texto del discurso pronunciado por López Obrador el pasado 3 de noviembre, durante el acto de presentación de los integrantes de su gabinete.

Los miembros del consejo editorial, Miguel Angel Vázquez Reyes, María Novoa Portela y Ulises Martínez Flores, abrieron además una sección ­"Para mantener el recuerdo''­ en la cual consignan informaciones que desde muy variados ámbitos refieren a acciones a las que se oponen todos aquellos que participan en el movimiento de resistencia civil y a cuyas manifestaciones regionales dedican una plana entera.

Se ocupan además de informar sobre los conflictos vigentes en el país, como el de Oaxaca, donde expresan su solidaridad con la asamblea popular de esa entidad.

"Es un honor estar con Obrador"

Professors from th UNAM, talks with us about the power transition in Mexico!

Mexico needs to give loser a corner office


By John M. Ackerman and Irma E. Sandoval, professors at the Institute for Legal Research and the Institute for Social Research, respectively, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

Read article at The Chicago Tribune

November 21, 2006


With President Vicente Fox leaving office, Mexico will be witnessing a curious transition of power. Monday the backers of defeated Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador named him the country's "legitimate president," and on Dec. 1 President-elect Felipe Calderon will assume the official office. Though most pundits condemned Lopez-Obrador for taking such an extreme step, financial markets have barely noticed. The Mexican peso has gained ground since the July election and the stock market recently reached a record high.

The market is right and the ideologues are wrong. Lopez-Obrador's decision is an attempt to overcome a fundamental problem of constitutional design. In contrast to parliamentary systems, presidentialist constitutions do not provide institutional space for the leader of the opposition.

In England, for example, the leader of the opposition immediately takes his place on the front bench of the House, with his "shadow Cabinet" regularly challenging the government's policies. Under presidentialism, the losing candidate is simply sent home.

This is a major weakness of the system even when the electoral verdict is clear and the electoral authorities are trustworthy. Although the losing candidate may be a good sport, and concede to the victor, the people lose when the candidate fails to function as the leader of the opposition. The problem is far more severe when a cloud of doubt weighs over the electoral result.

This is what has happened in Mexico. Though the election was decided by fewer than 234,000 votes out of nearly 42 million cast, the electoral authorities have failed to take the most obvious steps to assure the public of the integrity of the process.

In contrast to Bush vs. Gore in 2000, Mexico's Federal Elections Institute has rejected media requests to gain access to the ballots to conduct an independent recount. Worse yet, even though the Federal Electoral Tribunal conceded the existence of widespread irregularities, it refused to disclose the details of its partial recount. Unsurprisingly, polls reveal that 30 percent of Mexicans, more than 35 million people, believe that Calderon did not win the election cleanly.

Most of these 35 million constituents inhabit the underside of the Mexican economy. Today, more than 40 million Mexicans live on less than $4 a day, while more than 40 percent of Mexico's wealth is concentrated in the top 1 percent of the population. Mexico's per capita real gross domestic product has grown by only 0.7 percent annually since the early 1980s. Migration to the U.S. has historically been a crucial escape valve. The Bush administration's decision to crack down on immigration and construct a wall along America's southern border with Mexico will only make problems worse.

Frustration abounds. Without a leader to help channel and organize this discontent, Mexico may indeed head toward a downward spiral of chaos and crisis. The present situation in the state of Oaxaca may unfortunately set the example for the future of the country as a whole. More than 1 million elementary students there were left without school for more than five months, 14 people have been killed, and a series of homemade bombs was recently detonated by opposition groups.

Within this context, Lopez-Obrador's alternate government may be precisely the stabilizing force that Mexico needs to revitalize its faltering democracy. Lopez-Obrador has gone out of his way to insist that his left-wing movement is non-violent and his backers have followed his example religiously. It would be a grave mistake for the new government to ignore, persecute or repress this movement. To the contrary, the challenge is to encourage Lopez-Obrador to operate as a responsible opposition leader and take concrete steps to collaborate on strategies to democratize the management of power and eradicate poverty and inequality.

There is a great deal of evidence supporting the theory that presidentialism is one of the principal causes of Latin America's notorious difficulties in stabilizing its democratic life. But there is no hope of changing the system in the short run. The challenge instead is to compensate for its grave deficiencies through creative statesmanship on both sides. Otherwise, the market's bullish preliminary assessment may prove misleading in the middle term.

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John Ackerman and Irma Sandoval are professors at the Institute for Legal Research and the Institute for Social Research, respectively, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Ackerman's book on democracy and accountability in Mexico will be published in February. Sandoval is the director of the Laboratory of Documentation and Analysis of Corruption and Transparency at UNAM.

From L.A video "We have president"

Rally in L.A, group of Mexican supporting AMLO!

http://apoyaamlo.blogspot.com/2006/11/en-los-angeles-tenemos-presidente.html#links

I want to share the following video with you:

Video Description

http://hoypg.blogspot.com
Toma de protesta de AMLO, Nov 20th, "En Contexto"

Personal Message

This video is awesome!

Sign petition on line for Human Rights in Germany, Brazil, Canada and France!

SIGN PETITION ON LINE AGAINST THE REPRESION IN GERMANY, FRANCE, Vancouver and BRAZIL

Ya está listo para firmar la carta de solidaridad con los compañeros de Alemania, Brasil, Canadá, Francia

http://www.petitiononline.com/rpresion/petition.html

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Mexico's left forms a coalition
By Kenneth Emmond/Look at The Herald Mexico
Please lok at the El Universal / Monday, Nov 6th, de 2006



What is FAP?

It´s the Broad Progressive Front (Frente Amplio Progresista), a coalition of Mexico´s three left-wing political parties, the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD), the Convergence Party and the Labor Party (PT).

Before the July elections, these parties campaigned together as the Coalition for the Good of All. Their presidential candidate was former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador. On Oct. 11, they formalized their status as the FAP coalition, with the goals of developing a common political agenda and presenting a united voting bloc in Congress.

It´s the first time a formal coalition has been created in Congress since enabling legislation was passed in 1977.

Antonio Gómez, a member of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), says it´s good for Mexican politics. He thinks of coalitions as "consensus-building instruments" that could help to break voting deadlocks that have stymied legislation in the past.

Horacio Duarte of the PRD concurs. "(It) allows the three parties in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to have consistent visions and common strategies and to present a common front, and this will allow us to work much more effectively," he said.

The three parties agree on a list of nine objectives. Most of them are motherhood-and-apple-pie items, but a couple stand out.

One is "transformation of the existing political regime." That might, or might not reflect López Obrador´s vow to change Mexico´s institutions, and might, or might not be good for Mexico, depending on what the changes are.

Another is to "recover the autonomy of the institutions, with respect to the special interests that have colonized the State, and return to a political system in accordance with the new plural reality of the nation." Few would look askance at that goal.

There may be another, less obvious objective alongside the laudable intent to consolidate viewpoints in Congress via the tri-party united front.

López Obrador´s refusal to accept defeat in the presidential election, and his refusal even now to recognize Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party (PAN) as president-elect, have distanced him from some powerful PRD members.

Governors of at least two PRD-dominated states and the party´s congressional coordinator, Javier González, have said they would defy his order not to acknowledge Calderon´s status, and are willing to work with him. Party founder Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, still a powerful force within the PRD, endorses that strategy.

Instead, López Obrador arranged to have his followers anoint him Mexico´s "legitimate president," with the swearing-in to take place on Nov. 20, the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. One editorial-writing wag commented that that will make him president of "Pejeland," a reference to his often-used nickname, el Peje.

López Obrador´s stance puts him in danger of being marginalized by his opponents within the party, especially after the PRD failed to win his home state, Tabasco, in the Oct. 15 election.

The concept of the FAP coalition was the idea of Manuel Camacho Solis, once a heavyweight for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) but most recently a PRD member of the Chamber of Deputies.

By endorsing the FAP, López Obrador may be able to turn the tables — to marginalize his in-party opponents by shifting the focus away from the PRD to the more broadly-based coalition.

If he succeeds, he may have another chance to run for president in 2012. Meanwhile, the coalition can prepare a legislative agenda to enhance its prospects for making electoral gains in the mid-term 2009 elections.

Whatever other effects the naming of López Obrador as "legitimate president" and the formation of the FAP may have, there´s at least one constructive element — the creation of a "shadow cabinet" to monitor the administration´s activities department by department and publicize its shortcomings.

Shadow cabinets are commonplace among opposition parties in countries like Britain and Canada, which operate under the British Parliamentary system. It makes sense there, since most cabinet ministers are members of Parliament, though they may also be recruited from the Upper House (the House of Lords in Britain and the Senate in Canada).

There, opposition party members have an opportunity to debate, question, harass, and even embarrass the government and its cabinet every day that Parliament sits. The daily Question Period, during which the opposition controls the agenda, makes it especially hard for a government to sweep unsavory issues under the carpet.

In a Republican system like Mexico has, a shadow cabinet does not have the same opportunity to interact directly with cabinet members. Instead, it must be creative, using news conferences and perhaps public demonstrations to highlight what it believes to be errors and mismanagement being committed within the administration.

It can still be effective at keeping incompetent or corrupt members of government in the public spotlight.

Questions remain about the FAP coalition. How effective will it be? Can it avoid the divisiveness that afflicts most coalitions and groups that lose elections? How will the more conservative wing of the PRD respond to it? Will López Obrador emerge as the party´s dominant force, or will power revert to the Cárdenas faction?

The FAP is an experiment with real potential in Mexican politics, and one that bears watching.



Video from Germany, look it!

http://apoyaamlo.blogspot.com/2006/11/video-manifestacin-1-de-noviembre-en.html

Forum, Nov 17, 5:30 pm. Dougwood Center

OAXACA RESIST - We are all Oaxaca - Todos somos Oaxaca

“TLC, Globalization and social movements in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero”, at the Dogwood Center, 706 Clark Dr. @ Georgia St. Friday, Nov. 17, from: 5:30 pm to 8 pm. Free entrance. But, we accept donations for the people of Oaxaca.
Next action, Nov. 19, Art Gallery.
Info. 604-618-8866
Organized by:
Frente de Mexicanos en elExterior /
Todos somos Oaxaca

Spanishforactivist@ google.com
http://www.Senderodelpeje.com/
http://www.radioamlo.org/