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Murder of Reporters Highlights Indigenous Divisions in Mexico
The following is from the article written by Diego Cevallos, published by the Inter Press Service News Agency:
The airwaves of "Radio Copala, the Voice That Breaks the Silence" only cover a few hectares in an indigenous region in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. But since the murder of two of the station’s four reporters, they have reached across borders.
A group of social activists joined Wednesday’s fact-finding visit to the area by inspectors sent by the governmental National Human Rights Commission to the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, created in January by Triqui indigenous people in the heat of divisions that have split the ethnic group.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Reporters Without Borders and the World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC) issued statements condemning the early April killings, and on Apr. 23 delegates of these groups and other organisations will visit Oaxaca to investigate the incident.
"We are indignant over this crime, which cannot go unpunished," Aleida Calleja, vice president of AMARC, told IPS.
On Apr. 7, 22-year-old Felicitas Martínez and 24-year-old Teresa Bautista were ambushed and shot to death on a rural road in their municipality.
The murders left the Radio Copala community station with only two reporters.
A couple and their young son were also injured in the attack.
Calleja blamed the murders on "the spiral of violence, division and poverty that reigns in the Triqui region and their fight for self-determination, which clashes with certain interests."
Florentino López, spokesman for the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), a coalition of dozens of leftist and anti-establishment groups that was clamped down on harshly in late 2006 after a six-month uprising against the notoriously corrupt state government, concurred with Calleja that the double murder "is linked to the division among the Triquis and the terrible poverty in which they live."
"But from our point of view, the government of Oaxaca (headed by Governor Ulises Ruiz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has ruled the state for over seven decades) has infiltrated the indigenous community to create irregular armed groups that maintain a state of terror and impunity in the Triqui area," López told IPS by telephone from Oaxaca.
Radio Copala began to operate in January, parallel to the creation of the autonomous municipality, but it does not have a permit from Oaxaca authorities to operate legally.
The station, which is dedicated to promoting indigenous culture, broadcasts for just four or five hours a day, and reaches only a few surrounding hectares.
Martínez and Bautista broadcast messages on health and education, in which they provided advice on a range of subjects. But they never discussed the divisions among their people.
Read the entire story here.
