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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Kerry Kennedy goes to Guerrero: Encounter at El Charco |
| 2011-08-14 |
| By Chris Covert The Mexican government's war against indigent insurgencies cannot be explained without referring to the Chiapas conflict in 1994. On January 1st, 1994, about 3,000 armed guerillas with the leftist Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) took over several towns in eastern Chiapas and torched several police and military buildings. The date is significant because it is the date the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. EZLN's sentiment was the NAFTA would further "marginalize" indigent Indians in the sierras of southern Mexico. The war, at least the direct combat phase, was short lived. On January 12th a ceasefire was negotiated through Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz, of diocese in San Cristobal de las Casasa, a well known adherent of Liberation Theology which aided numerous communist armed movements in Latin America. The conflict then entered into a negotiation stage until 1995, when a Mexican Army unit overran rebel positions and surrounded them. The guerillas then retreated into the jungle. Their strategy charged to propaganda operations. It can be said without contradiction that the Zapatistas probably rekindled a revolutionary spirit in indigent Indians throughout southern Mexico having lain dormant since the end of the Mexcan Dirty War around 1982. Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas had all three been the center of leftist organizing and violence during that time, and all three had felt the response of the Mexican national government in the 1970s. But Guerrero became the focus of leftist conflict, especially on June 28th, 1995 in Atoyac de Alvarez municipality when 17 individuals were massacred allegedly by Guerrero state police while on a protest march near Aguas Blancas. The march was organized by the Organizacion Campesina de la Sierra Sur to protest the disappearance of a popular campesino leader, Gilberto Romero Vazquez, an individual who has never resurfaced. A video shot by an individual sympathetic to the state police can be seen here. A year later, the Maoist Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR) was formed on the first anniversary of the assault. According to Wikipedia, the EPR has planned and carried out several attacks in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas including six within the first three months of its announced formation, killing a total of 65 individuals most of whom are soldiers in the Mexican Army. Although Wikipedia claims EPR had no nexus with EZLN, both groups' operations territory often overlapped, although EZLN had moved into a presumably non-armed propaganda phase by 1995. EZLN did not support the EPR, but the EPR did voice support for the EZLN. Both groups released statements this summer in support of Mexican poet Javier Sicilia's Movement for Peace and Dignity. Sicilia has long time ties with the Mexican Catholic Church Liberation Theology movement which was eventually dismantled. Encounter at El Charco, Ayutla de los Libres The Mexican Army in its military district system of internal security already had forces available to deal with this new threat posed by the EPR. It also had one of best educated, most experienced counterinsurgency commanders, Brigadier General Juan Alfredo Oropeza Garnica, commander of the Mexican 27th Military Zone, headquartered in Acapulco. Brigadier General Alfredo Oropeza was by all accounts a dynamic front line commander who vigorously took on the EPR starting with his posting in 1997. Oropeza Garnica began his army career in 1962 and was American trained in counterinsurency doctrine in Panama. He also served at SEDENA's head of military intelligence in 1988. He served as assistant secretary of defense under General Antonio Riviello Bazana from 1988 to 1994. Oropeza Garnica's forces encountered EPR forces in at least three separate firefights starting in 1997 and 1998. The first in May, 1997 was at Guanabano in Atoyac de Alvarez municipality, which has been for decades a flashpoint of hostile leftist activity in Guerrero as well as home to the EPR. Oropeza Garnica himself was wounded in the ambush. According to Wikipedia, there were two engagements between Oropeza Garnica's command and the EGR in 1997 resulting in five soldiers and four guerillas dead. It has been suggested the next year's operation in June, 1998 was payback for the encounters in 1997. Kennedy in her Huffington post release referred to the battle at El Charco in June 2nd 1998 in which 11 individuals were killed and five more were wounded. By some accounts offered by human rights and leftist groups in Mexico as well as by Kennedy, the peasants at the attack were simply unarmed individuals who were gathered to discuss "production issues" within the community. One witness statement said that individuals sympathetic to both the EZLN and EPR were at El Charco that morning. Reports say that a unit of Guatemalan kaibiles, Guatemalan special forces, and elements of the Mexican 28th Infantry Battalion, part of the 27th Military Zone, totalling as many as 1,000 took part in or supported the early Sunday morning raid. However, contradictory versions of the firefight state that the attack was on defenseless peasants who were conducting agricultural business, while one version, by El Charco municipal commissioner Panfilo Santiago Hernandez, says armed fighters were at the village, but were killed. The report also said that none of the wounded were armed and that the death toll of armed guerilla elements was four while the other seven were unarmed. A subsequent 2004 joint investigation by both Mexican National Commission on Human Rights and an ad hoc group with the Guerrero attorney general's office said that the hands of all 11 dead tested positive for handling firearms. The investigation also ruled out that the attacking force used hand grenades, an issue human rights group keep hammering on in reports posted online. Ballistic reports on the raid also discounted close range gunfire, or coup de grace shots of the 11 dead, which is an another unsupported charge by human rights groups. Previous charges by human rights groups in the area, now discredited say that military helicopters were used in the raid. Human rights reports protest that following the battle a total of 22 individuals were arrested and transported to Acapulco for questioning which is in violation of current Mexican law. Human rights groups say at least one of the detainees were tortured for two days before being released. The 2004 report dismissed those charges based on medical examinations. By 1999, three individuals who were arrested in El Charco following the firefight were convicted of firearms and sedition charges, and sentenced in a Guerrero state court. Four others are still detained in Acapulco on unspecified charges. The encounter at El Charco, going by the existing descriptions was a classic early dawn ambush of an enemy at rest by a combined force of Guatemalan special forces and Mexican Army regulars, not quite the horrific slaughter of unarmed innocents human rights groups and Kennedy would have the world believe. Even so, eight years after the fact, now Major General Oropeza Garnica, promoted by Vicente Fox in 2004, led the armed forces parade in 2006, a ceremony which usually precedes appointment to the head of the army. Instead, Oropeza Garnica went on to head the agency developing the Mexican version of the G-36 5.56mm assault rifle, the FX-05 Xiuhcoatl. General Guillermo Galvan Galvan became Secretaria de Defensa Nacional. Oropeza Garnica retired in 2008. Then snub of Oropeza Garnica in 2006 has been described as the price he paid for the encounter at El Charco. It is far more likely the Oropeza Garnica snub was part of the deal that calmed PRD presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his followers following his razor thin defeat by Felipe Calderon Hinojosa in 2006. Kennedy's charges that indigent Indians suffered gross human rights violations at the hands of the Mexican Army at El Charco simply do not stand up to the available evidence. Indeed,it appears her charges are part of a Maoist group's information operation which she conducts to this day, albeit from the relative safety of Massachusetts. |
| Posted by:badanov |