ALL MEX'D UP

The besieged Mexican autonomous community San Juan Copala has been evacuated after an outbreak of paramilitary violence left five seriously injured and one dead.

Around 500 gunmen took over San Juan Copala’s town hall last Monday (13th). According to reports from the community, they spent the days that followed raking the town with constant gunfire, as well as going from house to house beating residents and burning the homes of those who had already fled the violence.

Last Friday (17th), the paramilitaries issued a statement threatening to massacre the 50 families that had stayed in the town if they didn’t leave immediately. All but two of the families have now managed to escape. The two families left are now completely surrounded by gunmen.

In the town square of the city of Oaxaca, women and children, camping there in protest since being forced out of their homes in August, have now gone on hunger strike in an attempt to pressure the government to send police in to evacuate the remaining families.

The community declared itself autonomous in January 2007 following the Oaxaca uprising which nearly drove the governor out of office (see SchNEWS 567). It has been under siege since February when paramilitaries cut off water and electricity and blockaded the town. Earlier this year, attempts to break the siege by international and Mexican activists ended violently when the paramilitaries opened fire on the caravans – in one incidence, killing two (see SchNEWS 726).

Community members have claimed governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz is behind the two paramilitary groups, Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT) and the Union for the Social Well-being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT), who are responsible for around 20 deaths and numerous beatings, rapes and disappearances.

*For more see www.glasgowchiapassolidarity.wordpress.com