Teotihuacan pyramids and Wal-mart face to face

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, Sept. 3 (IPS)—About a mile from the heart of the Mexican archaeological zone of Teotihuacan and its awe-inspiring pyramids, the US-based retail giant Wal-Mart is overcoming the resistance of a group of local residents and, to the amazement of UNESCO, is building one of its supermarkets.

Wal-Mart’s 652 stores in Mexico serve a total of 600 million customers a year and sell more than $12 billion in retail goods.

The new store going in near the Teotihuacan citadel, 30 miles north of Mexico City, is 80 percent complete, and is being built on land where a vibrant culture whose history is still full of enigmas flourished hundreds of years ago.

“We’ll put a stop to this with demolition, because a transnational corporation can’t just come and trample on our historical patrimony,” said Lorenzo Trujillo, head of the Civic Front for the Defense of the Valley of Teotihuacan, a group that represents some 100 local residents from the area around the world-renowned archaeological zone.

With the backing of municipal permits and authorization from the National Institute of Archaeology and History, Wal-Mart is building its new store on a 4-acre plot of land which forms part of the nearly 1,200 acres that are left of Tollan Teotihuacan, an indigenous name that means “Where Men Become Gods.”

The store’s neighbors are the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, the numerous temples and the Avenue of the Dead in Teotihuacan, estimated to be more than 1,400 years old.

The construction of the store “is absurd, but in this country, anything can happen,” said Lorenzo.

In response to the Civic Front’s protests, the governmental National Council for Culture and the Arts promised that it would review the legal aspects of the project, about which it claims to have received no prior notice before construction began.

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) also said it would investigate.

“We are prepared to take drastic measures, but sadly there are people living near the pyramids who support the store, because they say it represents progress,” said Lorenzo.

In late July, around 50 members of the Civic Front, which is mainly made up of peasant farmers, teachers and a few owners of small local businesses, occupied the building site for three days, demanding that construction be brought to a halt.

The protest ended peacefully, but the construction work continued, and a few days later Wal-Mart called for trials of those who occupied “its property.”

“The Teotihuacan community is divided, that’s true, but those who believe in the defense of our history, culture and identity will fight to the very end to prevent a transnational corporation from stealing our history,” said Trujillo.

The National Council for Culture and the Arts said it would examine the building permits, and would block completion of the new store if irregularities are found.

After the Civic Front filed complaints and the authorities investigated, the incomplete construction sites of two shopping centers were demolished in 1993 and 1997, not far from where the new Wal-Mart store is going in.

When it laid the foundations of its new store, Wal-Mart reported that a private archaeologist it hired found just a few isolated artifacts, like a ceramic container and an arrowhead.

But Trujillo said that could not possibly be true. “We are from this place, and we know that there is much more than that beneath the ground in this area,” he argued.

Teotihuacan is a religious citadel built at the dawn of the Christian era. The city reached its peak of splendour between the years 450 and 600 AC, but by the year 700, the local residents had left the area for unknown reasons.

The name Teotihuacán came from the Aztecs, who discovered the abandoned buildings around the year 1300.

Impressed by what they had found, the Aztecs thought the pyramids had been built by giants with the help of the gods, according to historians.

The citadel originally covered about 8,600 acres. But with the passage of time, settlements grew up around it, leaving unoccupied only the main ceremonial centres, where the pyramids are located, and a “buffer zone” where construction is limited.

But that zone, where Wal-Mart is building, has gradually shrunk.

Most of the area that was once Teotihuacan, a city that at its height had a population of 200,000, is now covered by houses and roads — and, soon, a giant Wal-Mart hypermarket, if the Civic Front’s efforts are unsuccessful.

Within the 8,600-acre area occupied by the ancient inhabitants, towns have cropped up like San Juan Teotihuacan, Santa María Coatlán, San Martín de las Pirámides and San Sebastián Xolapan, which are already home to more than 500,000 people.

Extrajudicial executions,
secret graves for Guatemalan campesino protesters

By Max Gimble

Sept. 2— A clash between police officers and armed campesinos occupying the Nueva Linda plantation in Champerico, a port city in southwestern Guatemala, left nine dead and many questions unanswered as investigations begin.

Mid-day on Aug. 31 approximately 800 police officers descended on a group of farming families that have been occupying the land since last September in protest of the disappearance of campesino leader Hector Rene Reyes. At least three police officers were killed in the confrontation, and at least six campesinos were shot dead, including two minors. Twenty-four individuals suffered injuries, at least twenty-five campesinos are still missing.

Homes were illegally entered and burned. Journalists, who were beaten and threatened by police during the forty-minute skirmish, allege that three of the six campesinos were executed extrajudicially, and campesinos leaders report that their missing family members are buried in a clandestine mass grave.

Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann immediately blamed the incident on the presence of clandestine groups, and classified the campesinos as “members of organized crime.” Nobel Laureate and current Goodwill Ambassador, Rigoberta Menchu agreed with Vielmann’s position and added that the farmers are “bandits.” Her comments were poorly received by many Guatemalans who feel that the human rights defender and peace activist is a turncoat.

Vielmann and Menchu’s statements reflect the fact that the Nueva Linda farmers were allegedly armed with automatic rifles. According to a Prensa Libre editorial from Sept. 2, authorities knew as early as last December that the campesinos were armed with AK-47s, but chose to send in police regardless.

A statement released by the Mutual Support Group claims that campesinos may have purchased the weapons to protect themselves from heavy drug trafficking that takes place in the region.

Campesino organizations strongly denounce the claim that the evicted families have any ties to organized crime, and insist that the government is to blame for not investigating the Sept. 5, 2003 disappearance of campesino leader Hector Rene Reyes. Rene Reyes was allegedly abducted by the private security of the owner of the Nueva Linda plantation, Spaniard Carlos Vidal Fernandez Alejos. In protest of the disappearance, the campesinos occupied land on Nueva Linda and stated firmly that they would stay there until the Rene Reyes case was clarified. The government did not attempt to negotiate with the campesinos, but rather issued a court order and deployed police to violently evict them from the land.

Further consequences of the conflict were the arrest of thirty-two campesinos, including one woman, Julia Cabrera, a single mother of ten children. According to Cabrera she was selling vegetables on the plantation when the police arrived and started throwing tear gas canisters. She witnessed her sixteen-year-old son David Natanael Lopez shot twice in the back and killed. “But I did not see who took my six-month old baby, because the police grabbed me by the hair and began to hit me,” Cabrera stated.

When she came to, she found herself inside a car and in police custody. Cabrera has been denied the right to attend her son’s funeral and she is concerned for the health and safety of her infant child.

On the national level, congressional representatives passed a resolution Sept. 1 condemning the acts of violence, most of who believe that the police “acted in an erroneous manner.” Independent congressman Pedro Palma Lau expressed that the confrontation left the 1996 Peace Accords behind. On Sept. 2, Congress heard reports on the Nueva Linda incident from Vielmann, Defense Minister Cesar Mendez Pinelo, and Human Rights Ombudsman Sergio Morales.

Mass graves and extrajudicial executions

So far in the investigation, authorities have names, photos, and possibly know the whereabouts of the few armed campesinos, and one weapon has been recovered. On Sept. 1, with a court order, representatives from the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office (PDH) and three congressmen visited the site to verify the existence of a clandestine mass grave. Alexander Toro Maldonado from the regional PDH office in Retalhuleu received the allegation from campesinos that “within the plantation a mass grave was dug where they [the police] buried the bodies of the campesinos and children killed in the confrontation.”

Sergio Morales said, “[The campesinos] showed us a place where the earth has been moved. They say that it is a grave and that between seven and twenty people are buried there.” While no graves were found, Damian Vail from the National Indigenous and Campesino Coordinator (CONIC), directed justice of peace Hugo Flores and congressmen Raul Robles (UNE), Luis Arguello (GANA) and Alfredo de Leon (ANN) to an area where they found an arsenal of weapons and a septic pit covered over with heavy machinery.

Morales added that campesinos had claimed bodies were thrown in a river but investigators had found no evidence of that. Toro Maldonado, announced that the PDH will request a court order to investigate four sites on the plantation for mass graves.

In addition to investigating claims of mass graves, authorities will investigate allegations of at least three extrajudicial executions on the part of the police. One journalist witnessed an elderly man being shot in the head after he was captured. Police proceeded to shoot the man five more times, kicked and trampled the body and then, according to the account, officer Boris Morales yelled, “Victory!” while standing over the dead body. Journalists recount two other incidents of extrajudicial executions.

Reporters claim that after the police discovered that members of the press witnessed them, they chased the reporters down, and beat and verbally abused them. One reporter was hospitalized. Police stole their equiptment and destroyed it, most likely to eradicate evidence of extrajudicial execution.

A history of Nueva Linda

Three years ago, in need of land, a group of campesinos originally from twenty-two different communities occupied territory by the side of a highway between the towns of Retalhuleu and Champerico (on the Pacific coast). After two years and with the assistance of a number of land rights and campesino organizations, the roughly 1,500 campesinos were granted rights to the Monte Cristo farm by the Guatemalan Land Fund.

Among the farmers that received access to Monte Cristo was Hector Rene Reyes, who, in spite of working as the administrator for the Nueva Linda Plantation, became a campesino leader not only at Monte Cristo, but also throughout the region. The owner of the Nueva Linda Plantation, Carlos Vidal Fernandez Alejos, opposed Rene Reyes’s decision to live and work at the Monte Cristo farm.

On Aug. 5, a few days after the Monte Cristo farm was turned over to the campesinos, Fernandez Alejos’ private security visited Rene Reyes with the pretext of picking up shotguns and other arms that were on the Nueva Linda plantation. The security officers asked Rene Reyes to accompany them on a visit of the plantation. Hours later the bodyguards returned without Rene Reyes, saying that they had left the campesino in the nearby town of Retalhuleu.

Since then Rene Reyes has not been seen again. The crime was not investigated, and in order to pressure the National Civil Police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the campesinos took action by settling on the Nueva Linda plantation. Authorities never attempted to negotiate with the campesinos, or to further investigate the disappearance. Instead, the plantation owner and authorities sought out a court order to evict the campesinos.

Guatemala has a long history of agrarian conflict, and on June 8, the country was paralyzed by a nationwide strike organized by a diverse coalition of groups to protest recent violent evictions of indigenous families from disputed land which left 1,500 families homeless. The protesters surrounded government buildings and blocked roads in twenty of the twenty-two departments of the country.

Although the strike was originally planned to last two days, only eight hours into the strike an agreement was reached, ending the strike peacefully. In the agreement, the Supreme Court agreed to investigate the legality and process of the recent land evictions. President Berger agreed that his administration would promote concrete measures to deal with the agrarian conflict. President Berger also promised to halt land evictions during a ninety-day period to review agrarian policy. In exchange for these concessions, the protesters agreed to a moratorium on protests and strikes during those ninty days, after which time they would reconvene with the government to evaluate what, if any, progress that had been made.

While Berger’s promise to halt evictions was broken on Aug. 7 when 113 families were evicted without force from a plantation in Escuintla, the eviction at Nueva Linda will redefine relations with campesino groups. The violence in Champerico took place just over a week shy of the ninety- day evaluation period. President Berger responded Sept. 1 that this group did not belong to any of the campesino groups who negotiated the moratorium, tacitly implying that this justifies the eviction.

The events of Aug. 31 will intensely shake Guatemala, its internal security policy, and the way it reacts to land takeovers and agrarian conflict. Campesino sector and campesino groups have stated that they will return to the use of massive blockades next week (when the 90 day period ends) to pressure the government to work out a solution that does not include violent evictions.

While investigations are underway, various land and campesino rights groups have requested that investigations be conducted with transparency, and that the Berger administration settle the root causes of the conflict: the lack of investigation into the disappearance of Rene Reyes, and poor land distribution and agrarian policy. Unless the latter is reconsidered and readjusted, Guatemala may find itself in another internal conflict that reflects 1980s era mass clandestine graves and extrajudicial executions.

Source: CounterPunch

Iraqi police crack down on squatters

By Patrick Cockburn

Baghdad, Iraq, Sept. 4— “The police are going to kill me unless you take me with you,” said Ahmed Hussein in a terrified voice, as half a dozen angry Iraqi policemen closed in on him. One of them had just taken his black pistol out of his belt and was holding it by his side.

Violence erupts with extraordinary speed in Baghdad. In the early morning of Sept. 3, a hundred or more blue-shirted Iraqi police, armed with sub-machine-guns, had expelled Hussein and 54 families from 17 luxury houses they had occupied illegally since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The houses, shaded by green bushes and trees from the ferocious heat, were once homes for Saddam’s relatives and guards in the well-off district of Jadriyah in the center of the capital. When he was overthrown, homeless families from all over Baghdad moved into the mansions. But Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, is trying to restore the power of the Iraqi government. This includes repossessing its property and moving out those who took it over -- often at the point of a gun -- at the height of the chaos following the US army entry into Baghdad.

Hussein had been volubly complaining about his eviction when the police standing around, mishearing what he had said, thought he had just accused them of looting his house. One grey-haired policeman said he had worked in the force for 22 years and was forced to live in a caravan in a distant suburb while Hussein was living rent-free in the house he had seized.

We finally persuaded a more senior officer to tell his men to allow Hussein to go and he jumped nervously into the back seat of our car, still exclaiming: “Let’s get away from here before they kill me.”

The Iraqi state, once all-powerful, is gradually reasserting itself. In the wake of the fall of Saddam, there was something of a social revolution. The poor of Baghdad, destitute and near starvation, seemed to draw real pleasure as well as profit from looting the ministries and museums and the houses of the supporters of the old regime.

Allawi, an old Ba’ath party member himself, is trying to win the support of party members and government officials who were marginalised during American direct rule. The police in Baghdad certainly feel that at last they have a government to their liking.

Their methods are not gentle. The police had moved in on the old government compound in Jadriyah at 7am yesterday morning. “They shot in the air to frighten us,” said Khadir Abbas Jassim, standing beside a heap of broken furniture, on top of which was a metal office chair with the foam stuffing bursting out of the torn seat.

He went on: “An American patrol came past and we asked them to help us but the police said we belonged to the Army of Mehdi.” Jassim said he had once been a professional cyclist, but now, like the other evicted squatters, “I make a living selling cigarettes and soft drinks by the side of the street.”

A few hours later the belongings of families removed by the police were being heaped up in lorries, with brightly coloured toys mixed with old carpets and cooking pots. Ten of the squatters were taken off to jail, including Ahmed Hussein’s father. A man in a brown shirt with blood oozing from his right eye appeared, saying: “The police were pushing my mother, and when I tried to stop it one of them hit me in the eye with his rifle butt.”

Inside the compound, General Hussein Abdullah, the policeman in charge of the operation, said that the squatters had been given plenty of warning that they were going to be evicted. “We are a legal state and we are just applying the law,” he said. He waved away complaints that he had no written order from a court to take over the property.

General Abdullah explained that he intended to make the houses he had just taken over his operational headquarters in the future. “It will take me 20 days to get it running,” he said. He pointed with disgust at light sockets that had been ripped out by the previous occupants and a swimming pool painted light blue, in the bottom of which was stagnant brown water.

The presence of a new police station is not very good news for the neighbours, which include The Independent office, because police stations are a frequent target of ferocious attacks by suicide bombers. General Abdullah said he would not block nearby roads, but police stations in Baghdad are normally protected by rows of enormous concrete blocks designed to protect them from bomb blast.

The manner with which the police took over the old compound of Saddam’s guards and evicted its inhabitants shows that they are regaining the swaggering confidence they had under the old regime. Hussein, whom we rescued, must have forgotten this when he criticised them.

Perhaps they would not have killed him as he feared, but they would probably have beaten him half to death.

Source: Independent (UK)