Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

MEXICO-U.S.: Rape of EZLN Official Part of a Pattern, Group Says

NEW YORK, Nov 6 1995 (IPS) - The rape of the U.S. spokeswoman for Mexico’s Zapatista rebels may just be part of a wave of harassment directed against the Zapatistas’ U.S. supporters, an activist group claims.

The group, the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, says many of its workers and supporters have been spied on by Mexican officials, threatened or harassed outright.

Cecilia Rodriguez, the U.S. representative of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), says she may be just the latest victim of an orchestrated campaign of harassment by the Mexican government against the Chiapas-based rebel movement.

“On Thursday, Oct 25, 1995, in what was a simple excursion in broad daylight, I was raped and sodomised by three armed men in what was supposedly a tourist attraction, the Lakes of Montebello in the state of Chiapas, Mexico,” Rodriguez said in a statement.

“I am a casualty of a low-intensity war sanctioned, and more than likely facilitated, by the government of the United States,” Rodriguez declared. Last week, she filed charges in Mexico City for an investigation into the Chiapas attack.

If Rodriguez was victimised by the Mexican government, the National Commission argues, she may just be one of many U.S.-based activists targeted for their work.

“Many people are under surveillance by Mexican authorities in the United States,” argues Maria Jimenez, a spokeswoman for the National Commission. She claims that pro-Zapatista rallies have been monitored by undercover Mexican officials and that participants have been photographed by Mexican authorities.

Sarah de Cosse, a researcher for Human Rights Watch/Americas (HRW), agrees. “I have heard of demonstrations and public meetings, particularly those in favour of the Zapatistas, where there has been a Mexican government presence,” she says.

She adds that people known to work for the Mexican government have been seen taking photographs of participants. But de Cosse could not confirm reports of any Mexican surveillance of specific activists in the United States.

Jimenez counters that some people working with the National Commission or with “peace convoys” sending food to Chiapas have reported harassment by Mexican authorities.

One activist, Jaime Martinez, who attended a pro-Zapatista peace convoy, claimed he had been shown a file by Mexican authorities calling him an “enemy of Mexico” for his pro- democracy work in the United States.

“It’s a well-orchestrated type of campaign,” Jimenez says.

In addition to Rodriguez’s rape, Jimenez says she has received reports in which international groups working in Chiapas — including members of Global Exchange, Pastors for Peace and the International Red Cross — have been harassed. A Pastors for Peace food caravan to Chiapas was held at gunpoint, she notes, while other officials were threatened or expelled from Chiapas.

The timing of the attack on Rodriguez may also be significant. Rodriguez, Jimenez notes, was raped in Chiapas on the same day that Fernando Yanez, believed to be EZLN leader ‘Subcomandante German,’ was arrested by Mexican police in Mexico City.

Yanez has denied accusations that he helped found the EZLN movement, which seized the global spotlight on Jan 1, 1994, when its forces took over many key towns in the southern state of Chiapas. The EZLN and Mexican government have been engaged for months in tense, protracted peace talks, now held in the Chiapas town of San Andres Larrainzer.

On Sep 25 — as Rodriguez was raped in Chiapas and Yanez was arrested — rumours spread in Mexico that hard-liners in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) were on the verge of an all-out assault on the EZLN, Jimenez says. But the outcry over Yanez’s arrest — which led to his release last week — may have set those plans back.

Rodriguez noted in her statement that she has not been the only woman raped in Chiapas since what she calls the “low-intensity war” in the region began last year.

“I know there were three (indigenous) Tzeltal women raped at a military checkpoint, and three nurses raped and almost killed at the site of the peace talks,” she said. Jimenez adds that her group estimates at least 50 women have been raped — by military or paramilitary elements — in Chiapas since the EZLN uprising began.

De Cosse says that there has been no determination by the Mexican court system of responsibility for the rape of the Tzeltal women, allegedly committed by military officers in June 1994. Nor has there been any action taken in the San Andrez Larrainzer rapes, other than to open and number a file for investigation, she says.

Those two investigations, she says, indicate the near-total impunity of crimes committed both by military and paramilitary groups in Mexico.

Although the United States has not commented officially on the cases, Nicholas Manring, the U.S. vice consul in Mexico, indicated his own appreciation of the impunity claims when he spoke with Rodriguez, a U.S. citizen, after her rape. He told her he would forward a report of her rape to the Mexican authorities, but added, “They never prosecute here in Mexico.”

“I firmly believe that the Mexican as well as the (U.S.) government will at best busy themselves with bureaucratic procedures and at worst, and more than likely, accuse me, as they do all women, of hysteria, of lying, exaggerating, and (they will) demand details that I am unable to remember,” Rodriguez said.

Jimenez says her group suspects Rodriguez’s rape was committed either by Mexican military officers or by the ‘White Guards’ — paramilitary groups linked to the ruling oligarchy in Chiapas. She warns that the current government of President Ernesto Zedillo lacks the power to take on the Chiapas landowners or the White Guards, so there is little hope for redress.

 
Republish | | Print |

Related Tags

Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

MEXICO-U.S.: Rape of EZLN Official Part of a Pattern, Group Says

NEW YORK, Nov 6 1995 (IPS) - The rape of the U.S. spokeswoman for Mexico’s Zapatista rebels may just be part of a wave of harassment directed against the Zapatistas’ U.S. supporters, an activist group claims.
(more…)

 
Republish | | Print |

Related Tags



9780998785066