Home | Friday 16th October 2009 | Issue 695
LA LA LA BOMBA
SchNEWS LOOKS TO
Amid the annual September celebrations of independence and revolution, a series of explosions hit symbols of capitalism across Mexico, each accompanied by anarchist graffiti. What the Mexican press have labelled the ‘Anarcho-bombings’ has since been used by the authorities to launch an attack on Mexico’s autonomous universities – hotbeds of radical politics and action.
After the first explosion on September 1st, the improvised butane bombs went off once or twice a week throughout the month, torching banks, car-showrooms, fast food restaurants and animal testing labs, causing thousands of pounds of damage but no injuries. As well as classic circled ‘A’s, the bombers daubed the targets with slogans denouncing animal rights abuses, demanding an end to prison construction and calling for an end to capitalism.
A previously unknown group called the Subversive Alliance for the Liberation of the Earth, Animals and Humans (ASLTAH) claimed responsibility for the bombings in an internet communiqué, raging, “your filthy techno-industrial system provokes our rage and hatred and we say to you now that we will not stop until we see your ashes.”
On September 30th, federal agents arrested Ramses Villareal Gomez, a 27 year-old student at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in Mexico City, in connection with the bombings. Villareal Gomez claims police threatened him with a 40-year sentence and said they would rape his wife if he did not co-operate in their investigations. Cops also searched his mother’s house, reportedly stealing money and two computers. They initially claimed they found a rifle, a pistol, explosives and documentation linking him to a “subversive” movement in the search.
Police claim they arrested Villareal Gomez after a newspaper clipping of the bombs with “Ramses” was left in an anonymous tip box. Three days later, following violent protests by anarchist groups, a judge ordered the authorities to release Villareal Gomez due to a lack of evidence. After his release Police admitted that they had been “mistaken” about the weapons, explosives and incriminating documents.
Since the arrest, a case dossier has been leaked to the Mexican media. Of the suspects named in the dossier, at least 15 are students at public universities and high schools. All are under 26. The dossier links the suspects to organisations such as the People’s Front in Defence of the Land (FPDT) in Atenco (See SchNEWS 543), the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO - see SchNEWS 567), the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) General Strike Council, and “national and international insurgent organisations.”
The Mexican authorities have been engaged in a struggle with students and academics over how autonomous universities are run since the UNAM opened in 1910. The universities have control over their budgets and the appointment of rectors and regents. They also prohibit the police and the military from entering the campuses without the rector’s permission and deny the authorities access to student records and biographies.
The level of political freedom and protection from repression and harassment on autonomous campuses has created an environment where students have been able to play important roles in political struggles. As well as the groups mentioned in the dossier, students have been particularly active in the Zapatista movement (See SchNEWS 250), and the man the authorities claim is Subcomandante Marcos, Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, was even a student at UNAM and a professor at UAM.
Some students have also been involved in solidarity campaigns with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who are at the centre of Colombia’s bloody civil war (see SchNEWS 656). Last year four Mexican students were killed in the Colombian military’s airstrikes in Ecuador which killed FARC commander Raul Reyes. One Mexican student, Lucia Morett, survived the attack.
Following the bombings, the search for Morett and her associates led to increased harassment and surveillance on campus activists under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism’. Morett’s name was also in the ‘Anarcho bombings’ dossier’.
The dossier claims Morett was in contact with Villareal Gomez, a charge she denies. Not one of the newspapers which have a copy of the dossier has printed any evidence related to Morett, Villareal Gomez or any of the 15 students.
Since the bombings, the ASLTAH have been making noise about “the battle for the dissolution of civilisation”. But, in a state riven with social strife and in danger of being overwhelmed by a bloody narco war, it is unlikely anyone is taking a fringe group of pyro-enthusiasts too seriously. The radicals of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Atenco however, remain a serious challenge to the status quo and the autonomous universities a real tool in their struggle. The ‘Anarcho-bombings’ now look set to be leapt on by the Mexican authorities as another opportunity to try and repress that struggle.
* See www.narconews.com and www.counterpunch.org/ross10062009.html
