Mexican farmers take hostages, defeat gov’t displacement

Thousands of farmers armed with machetes, petrol bombs and stones have occupied a region slated for expropriation by the Mexican Government to build an airfield.
Photo courtesy of Indymedia

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, July 15 (IPS)— Peasant farmers who had thrown up roadblocks to protest expropriation of their land for the construction of a new airport near the Mexican capital released the hostages Monday that they had threatened to kill in response to the arrest of their leaders.

The government offered dialogue, and Interior Minister Santiago Creel mentioned the possibility of increasing the compensation offered the small farmers.

The release of the 19 hostages — mainly police officers and local officials — and the 12 local leaders who had been arrested after violent clashes Thursday with police eased the tension in the small farming town of San Salvador Atenco.

However, demonstrators in the rural community, where protests staged since last October against plans to build a new airport erupted Thursday, warned that they would maintain most of the road barricades to block expropriation of their land. The arrival of anarchists and global justice activists to support the farmers’ defense has bolstered their cause even further.

No airport will ever be built on the land surrounding San Salvador Atenco, said the protesters.

A number of people were injured and several vehicles were destroyed in last Thursday’s clashes. Local residents armed with molotov cocktails, stones and machetes said they were prepared to kill or to die rather than give up their land.

Most of the land around San Salvador Atenco, a community of poor peasant farmers on the outskirts of Mexico City, would be swallowed up by the new six-runway international airport which the government of Vicente Fox plans to build on some 15,000 hectares.

Mexico’s old international airport is operating at capacity, and has nowhere to expand as it is surrounded by urban areas. The new airport, the biggest public works project of the government of Vicente Fox, is to cost around 2.3 billion dollars.

To shouts of “land yes, airplanes no!” and “no hotels, no airplanes, land provides beans!,” the farmers freed the last four of the 19 hostages they were holding since Thursday.

Surrounded by soldiers and police, the protesters barricaded themselves in San Salvador Atenco’s central square over the weekend, while continuing to block the highway running past the town.

Farmers listen to a speech by one of their leaders during a stand-off with the police in San Salvador Atenco on Friday, July 12, 2002.
Photo courtesy of Indymedia.

As police and soldiers were deployed around the area, there were fears of a violent confrontation, but the Fox administration opted to engage in dialogue with the demonstrators.

The leaders of the protests arrested Thursday were released on Saturday and Sunday, after the government agreed to pardon those responsible for the destruction of vehicles and the roadblock, and promised not to use force against them.

In October, the government put an end to a 30-year debate over the location of the new airport, and announced the decision to build it in the area of Texcoco, 15 kms from the capital.

But the plan ran up against the determined opposition of poor farmers in San Salvador Atenco, who have rejected the work and housing alternatives they have been offered, and say they will not give up their land at any price.

Local residents have also taken legal action in court to keep the new airport from being built.

In addition, Texcoco’s swamps and rehydrated lakes are an important breeding-ground for migratory birds, which environmentalists are fighting to protect.

“Atenco is the struggle of culture against so-called progress,” wrote columnist Jaime Aviles in the daily La Jornada.

According to the government, 4,300 people will lose their land to expropriation, and 80 percent have agreed to the compensation offered.

But protesters in San Salvador Atenco say that is a lie, pointing out that around 2,000 people owning small plots of land in Texcoco have filed legal challenges in local courts to avoid losing their property.

Interior Minister Creel said that if no agreement was reached with local residents, there would be no airport. He offered to increase the compensation of 60 cents per square meter to be paid for the expropriated land.

In solidarity, members of around 20 leftist, anarchist, and global justice organizations joined the protesters in the central square of San Salvador Atenco.

This poor rural community has become a reference point in the fight against the neo-liberal economic model around the world, said activists with Mexican organizations like the insurgent Zapatista National Liberation Front, the General Strike Council of the National University, the Democratic Peasant Union and the Worker’s Committee on Human Rights.

Anyone wishing to enter the town, where several reporters were the victims of aggression by protesters since Thursday, must gain special permission from the demonstrators to pass through various security cordons manned by machete-wielding peasants.

The government must give up the idea of building the airport in Texcoco and provide economic and social support to boost agricultural development in the area, said Daniel Pájaro, one of the leaders of the protesters.

Although the land in Texcoco is salty and poor, locals depend on the subsistence and cash crops they can grow there.

Observers say that if local residents continue to fight the project, the airport, which has awakened great interest among powerful investors and was to begin operating in 2006, will never become a reality.

US set to launch civilian spy program

By Mike Burke

New York, New York, July 15— The Justice Department is expected to launch a pilot program in New York and other cities in August to train private citizens to be the “extra eyes and ears for law enforcement” in the war on terrorism.

While the Operation TIPS, or the Terrorist Information and Prevention System, has received little attention in the US press, the Sydney Morning Herald recently compared the program to the use of civilian informants by East Germany’s Stasi secret police.

“Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic states,” the Australian paper reported on July 15.

The government plans to launch the pilot program in 10 US cities, presumably the 10 largest, in August. Applications are already being accepted online. The program will be run as an arm of the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA).

“The program will involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to serve as [informants]. Workers, such as truck drivers, bus drivers, train conductors, mail carriers, utility readers, ship captains, and port personnel are ideally suited to help in the anti-terrorism effort because their routines allow them to recognize unusual events,” the website reads.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has been one of the few elected officials to publicly oppose the effort.

“It appears we are being transformed from an information society to an informant society,” he told investigative reporter Bill Berkowitz. “Do the math. One tip a day per person and within a year the whole country will be turned in, and we can put up a big fence around the country, and we’ll all be safe.”

Critics fear the government will attempt to use citizens to do surveillance that would be illegal for law enforcement agents.

“Americans should not be subjecting themselves to law enforcement scrutiny merely by having cable lines installed, mail delivered or meters read. Police cannot routinely enter people’s houses without either permission or a warrant. They should not be using utility workers to conduct surveillance they could not lawfully conduct themselves,” the Washington Post commented in an editorial last week.

According to the Operation Tips website, one million people will be trained in the initial pilot program. The Sydney Morning Herald noted that if the pilot program were to be held in the nation’s 10 largest cities, 5 percent of the cities’ populations would be trained as civilian spies.

“[This] means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police,” wrote investigative reporter Ritt Goldstein.

At its peak the Stasi used several hundred thousand informers to augment its full-time force of 85,000. Records were kept on 5 million citizens.

Source: NYC Indymedia: www.nyc.indymedia.org

Unarmed Nigerian women take over oil facility

Since July 8, 2002, unarmed women have blockaded Chevron's Escravos oil terminal in southern Nigeria, ceasing the production of an estimated 500,000 barrels of oil per day.
Photo courtesy of www.ananova.com

Compiled by Sean Marquis

July 17— An apparent deal has been reached to end a standoff between Nigerian communities and US-based oil giant ChevronTexaco.

Hundreds of Nigerian women occupying a ChevronTexaco oil terminal have agreed to end their eight-day siege following the company’s offer to hire at least 25 villagers and to build schools, provide electricity, water systems, and other amenities.

But the women’s representatives say they will wait until the verbal agreement is put in writing before they withdraw from the Escravos facility.

On Tuesday July 16, one of the protest leaders, Anunu Uwawah, said: “It is settled. We stay today, but once the paper is signed, we will leave.”

The takeover has trapped hundreds of American, Canadian, British, Nigerian and other oil workers inside the facility.

It has also shut down the terminal, which exports half a million barrels of oil daily and accounts for the bulk of the company’s Nigeria production.

About 400 workers were allowed to leave the site on Sunday and 800 workers remained trapped in the Escravos terminal, which is on an island in a swamp 190 miles east of Lagos in southern Niger Delta state.

The workers who were freed had been due to end their shifts, which can last weeks at a time.

The women have now threatened to strip naked in a traditional gesture of shaming men if any of the remaining captive workers try to leave.

“Our weapon is our nakedness,” said Helen Odeworitse, a representative of the women.

Many Nigerian tribes consider displays of nudity by wives, mothers and grandmothers as a damning protest and an act that shames those at whom it is aimed.

The lack of government development efforts in the Delta despite the fortunes being made there has prompted activists to focus their demands for roads, water and schools on the multinationals pumping the oil.

The occupation

Some 150 women took over the terminal on Monday, July 8, demanding the company hire their sons and use some of the region’s oil riches to develop their remote, rundown communities.

Increasing numbers of women joined the protest, bringing the total now involved to as many as 2,000. 

The takeover began when the unarmed women seized a company boat used to ferry in workers and invaded the terminal’s dock, airstrip and helicopter pad. The protest was peaceful and the chanting women had frozen the facility.

Chevron-Texaco’s Nigeria spokesman, Wole Agunbiade, said the women had “barricaded installations and restricted free movement.”

Uwawah said: “Chevron has long been neglecting the Ugborodo community in all areas of life. They have not shown concern at all to involve our people in employment and provision of social amenities.”

Uwawah described how the women, from the Ugborodo and Arutan communities, occupied the terminal carrying only bundles of food to eat.

“I was the leader of the air strip team. If any plane came, I would drive my people there and we circled it,” she said. “We wouldn’t let anyone come in or anyone go out.”

Saturday in the terminal airfield, two dozen women danced in the rain alongside four grounded helicopters and a plane, chanting: “This is our land.”

Uwawah said that the women were tired of living in poverty in the shadow of the oil terminal. She said everyone in the area lives without electricity except for those in one village where Chevron-Texaco’s Nigerian unit has an office. 

“We will no longer take this nonsense and this is the beginning of the trouble they have been looking for,” Uwawah said.

The negotiations

According to a report by the Associated Press, negotiations with company officials began on Friday in a community hall in Ugborodo village about 100 yards across the river from the oil terminal -- surrounded by armed police and soldiers wearing lifejackets emblazoned “Chevron.’’

Uwawah said the women weren’t intimidated by security forces. “If we die, Chevron will die with us,” she said.

Anino Olwu, 50, a leader of the women’s group, demanded, “hire our children and help us build a proper community.’

’ “If you move through our village, you’ll see there isn’t a single good building. There’s no road, no school, no single sign of development,’’ she said, pointing down Ugborodo’s muddy main street.

Olwu said many of the women’s sons had been repeatedly turned down for jobs by ChevronTexaco Nigeria, often after failing written aptitude tests. She said the women had written to the company weeks earlier with their demands, but had received no reply.

The women complained that previous company promises to transform the villages into modern towns had not been fulfilled.

ChevronTexaco officials said some of the women’s 23 demands would take time to fulfill, while others – such as a demand to build 80,000 houses – were unrealistic.

Dick Filgate, general manager of asset management for ChevronTexaco’s Nigeria subsidiary and one representative in the talks, said development projects required time to be carried out.

On another occasion, the American oil executive became frustrated and pounded his fist on the table when he was interrupted by a young man. Then a village chief representative admonished, “In our culture, only the chief pounds the table.”

ChevronTexaco eventually agreed to build schools and create water and electrical systems for the villages.

The oil company also would “look into” demands that ChevronTexaco help reverse the erosion of riverbanks surrounding the villages, Filgate said.

The women said the erosion had worsened in recent years after the company began dredging nearby rivers for soil to build a gas plant.

Filgate said the deal would be reviewed in five years’ time.

The background

Chevron Nigeria is a subsidiary of US oil giant Chevron Texaco and Nigeria’s third largest oil producer. It runs Escravos jointly with the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

Nigeria is the world’s sixth-largest oil exporter – and the fifth-biggest supplier of US oil imports – largely from the vast Niger Delta reserves.

Most of the crude oil produced by Chevron Texaco in Nigeria is exported from the Escravos terminal. The company’s $400 million Escravos Gas Plant is also located at the facility.  This is the first such action taken exclusively by women at the site, which has often been the scene of trouble.

The people in the Niger Delta are among the poorest in Nigeria. The land they live on, however, is the source of Nigeria’s $20 billion in annual oil exports.  The people in the region are demanding that the multinationals pumping out the oil give them the roads, water service and electricity that the government has not provided.

The struggle between international oil firms and local communities in Nigeria drew international attention in the mid-1990s, when violent protests by the tiny Ogoni tribe forced Shell to abandon its wells on their land.

The late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha responded in 1995 by hanging nine Ogoni leaders, including writer Ken Saro Wiwa -- triggering international outrage and Nigeria’s expulsion from the Commonwealth, an organization of Britain and its former colonies.

The Shell oil company is currently being sued in US federal court for its purported role in aiding the Nigerian government to brutally suppress the Ogoni people.

Sources: Ananova, Associated Press, BBC, Independent (UK), OREAD Daily