Elio Henriquez and Andrea Becerril, correspondents, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Aug.28
--One of the seven people wounded last Wednesday by zapatista supporters in San Jose La Esperanza is General Pedro Cervantes Aguirre--brother of the National Defense Minister--, who was in command of the operations that ended in a skirmish, leaving two indigenous people wounded and three arrested.
Today the news spread around this city that Cervantes Aguirre sustained a crushing blow to his left side, caused by a club or a fist. His life is not in danger, but he did need to be admitted to the Seventh Military Region hospital, in Tuxtla Gutierrez.
According to the testimony of three indigenous men, "the first one to fire his pistol"--two bullets--on the day of the events in question was Cervantes Aguirre, who moreover "brandished a machete and challenged the townspeople," three of whom were arrested "and beaten in front of their companheros."
Meanwhile, federal government sources verified that the three Tojolobal indigenous men detained during the confrontation--Rosario Vazquez Rodriguez, Andres Perez Jimenez and Daniel Gomez Lopez--were released yesterday afternoon by order of the federal Attorney General, Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, in order to prevent the problem from growing.
It was also revealed that there was an agreement that the Federal Public Ministry agent, Miguel Zun~iga, who opened case number 338/99 for rioting, injuring and crimes against public officials with gangism, should set a bail of $17,000 pesos.
As the case record states, only four of the seven military personnel the Army says were wounded were admitted to the military hospital, where they stayed until last night.
Those hospitalized were Cervantes Aguirre, David Gustavo Jacinto Pimienta, Luciano Robles Martinez and Alberto Barragan Osorio, who registered a denunciation of the events that occurred.
Today, the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center denounced that the Attorney General had "arbitrarily" denied it a copy of the case report. Samuel Ruiz Garcia is president of the Center, which took on the defense of the accused, released today after the National Indigenous Institute posted bail.
The Center also stated that the medical examination of the three Tojolobales confirmed that they "had various contusion injuries in the abdomen, thorax, arms and head, sustained during the arrest; besides which, while they were in the Federal Judicial Police facilities in Tuxtla Gutierrez, they were not allowed visitors or introduced to their defense attorney."
Attorney Juan Lopez Villanueva said that in the process of filling out the case report "there was no Tojolobal interpreter, which is a form of possible ethnic discrimination. Despite the fact that the report shows that these men speak Tojolobal they were only offered Tzotzil and Tzeltal translators."
This, the attorney noted, constitutes "a serious violation in the report process," along with the fact that the Public Ministry agent "induced the statements of the accused, who did not make the statements spontaneously, but were induced by the social representative."
According to the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Center, in the skirmish between the people of San Jose La Esperanza and the military, headed by Staff Brigadier General Pedro Cervantes Aguirre, the latter "violated the human rights of the inhabitants and the rights of the indigenous peoples."
The Center emphasized that the Mexican Army "attacked personal liberties, assaulted physical integrity and freedom of thought and expression, and violated the right to assembly and the rights to due process, as well as the collective rights of the indigenous peoples, in particular the right to free and informed consent, with their imposition of military patrols."
The federal Attorney General, in turn, "violated the rights to due process," in at least three ways, it added.
Before returning to their communities this morning, the indigenous men--who said they had their faces covered with red bandannas when they were arrested, but were not armed--told how they were seized and treated during and after the events last Wednesday in San Jose La Esperanza.
The following testimony is from Rosario Vazquez Rodriguez: "We already know that the Army lies; they say we hit them first with the clubs, but it's not true. They flung very aggressive words at us. The companheras were telling the soldiers not to come into our community but they did not respect this. When we saw that they were already on their way in, I was behind the companheras and they just grabbed me; the companheras took off running. I had my club and when they grabbed me I threw it down; I didn't hit anyone. When they grabbed me that general (Cervantes Aguirre) grabbed me here by the shirt (he lifts his hand to his collar) and hit me like this in the face; that's why my eye is swollen.
"At that point they ganged up on me: about four or five of them threw me to the ground. When I was lying there they kicked me in the stomach and when I tried to get up that general told me, "don't move again or I'll shoot you." So I didn't move again after that. At that moment that general grabbed my hands and tied me from behind, and when I was tied up he told me "now stand up." I stood up and walked about 10 or 15 meters when I saw Daniel lying there, tied up. That soldier who took me told me: "lie down on top of your companhero" and I laid down.
"Then the soldier told me we should stand up, we walked a little way and there I saw Andres lying there. At that moment that general told us, "Now, we're going back, we're going to Rizo de Oro," They took us. Along the way they didn't do anything to us, they didn't hit us, they took us peacefully. The companheras saw that they were taking us away and tried to go back to yell at the soldiers to let us go, but when the soldiers heard the crowd coming back, was when they fired their guns, close to a farm called San Caralampio.
"We didn't see then if they fired in the air or at the people. We were tied up. When the soldiers came back they told us to keep marching. We got to Rizo de Oro, where the trucks are, at the Maravilla base (Tenejapa, seat of one of the seven new municipalities). There they told us to get down, that we were going to stay there. They didn't do anything else to us, they just told us where we were going to rest and after a little while they told us we could bathe, they gave us soap and water. Later they told us they were going to take us to the doctor so he could look at the wounds we had. He looked us over where they hit us; they had hit me in the head, and they gave me stitches.
"They gave us some pills for the pain; they told us to rest and we went to sleep. That was August 25. The next day when we woke up they gave us a little food and at about eleven in the morning they told us we were going to leave there, that we're going to go in a helicopter; they ran us out to the helicopter, we got in and they took us to Tuxtla to that base. There they passed us over to military doctors again and they didn't do anything else to us; they were handling us carefully. We waited about half an hour and from there they took us to the Public Ministry, where they told us that we were going to stay there. They didn't mistreat us anymore; they gave us food."
Andres Perez Jimenez told his part: "...When I realized what was happening, the general grabbed me by the neck with that cane. I was carrying my club; I turned around and they took away my club and threw it in the brush, and they grabbed me too, they pushed me in the dirt face-down. Later they tied my hands behind me and took away my boot; they threw it into the brush and when they were finished tying my hand they kicked me again, with a club, a long stick, they hit me twice here (indicates his side), but with the grace of God I was able to move away a little bit, so I didn't get the full force in the ribs.
"Then I told them I wasn't going to move anymore, when I saw they were going to hit me with the club again. He told me to get up and then I saw I was missing a boot, and it wasn't there where I was lying. 'Where is my boot?' I asked him. That general told him, 'Look for his boot.' They looked for it where they had thrown it and brought it back and put it on my foot. I got up, we started walking, and then I saw the soldiers were taking these two companheros away. We went to Rizo de Oro, but along the way there is a little farm called San Caralampio and they told us to rest there.
"There we saw that the injuries we have were deep, because they cut me here (he touches his arm) with a machete. That general was carrying a big machete, he cut here, with the grace of God it wasn't big, and he hit me other times here; it's still bleeding. And then there the crowd of companheros was coming from the community again, so the soldiers went back to see what was happening, but we didn't see because they didn't let us. At that moment they started shooting at the companheros, we didn't see if it was in the air or not. Afterwards the soldiers came back and we went to Maravilla. We are EZLN sympathizers."
Originally published in La Jornada, 8/29/99 ----------------------------------------------
translated by Leslie Lopez